Aquinas on virtue : a causal reading Thomas Aquinas (1225 1274) an Italian Dominican friar and Catholic priest is one of the most influential theologians in the Christian tradition and certainly the most influential theologian of the Roman Catholic Church. By synthesizing classical Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy Aquinass thought continues to have an astonishing impact on an array of disciplines. Scholarship on Aquinas is flourishing with studies of natural law theory action theory the morality of the passions feminism political theory etc. Yet despite the contemporary renewal of virtue ethics a movement in Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox traditions that attempts to answer the question How should I live To date no full length treatment of Aquinass theory of virtue exists. Nicholas Austin aims to fill that gap. Aquinas on Virtues offers a new and comprehensive interpretation of how Aquinas uses the four causes formal material final and efficient to understand virtue in general and how these causes underlie his treatment of specific virtues that make up the bulk of his ethics. In the final part of the book Austin applies the causal approach to four contested issues in contemporary virtue theory: practical wisdom; virtue and the passions; the teleology (or ultimate end) of virtue; and infused moral virtues exploring the relation between grace and virtue Defining virtue Defining temperance causally Virtue as a habit Virtue as a good habit Virtues definition Causal ethics Exemplar and object End and agent The causal analysis of virtue Rational virtue Passionate virtue Telic virtue Graced virtue Rethinking infusion Appendix : Virtue defined