This article appears in Issue XXVIII: “The Cardinal Virtues” of the Word on Fire Institute’s quarterly journal, Evangelization & Culture.
Josef Pieper (1904–1997) was one of the biggest names in German Catholic life in the twentieth century. One of his many claims to fame is that he introduced Cardinal Karol Wojtyła (later St. John Paul II) to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). He was the catalyst for bringing them together. His action resulted in a quarter-century intellectual partnership, with Cardinal Ratzinger serving as St. John Paul II’s prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005.
Pieper was also a Thomist philosopher famous for his books on virtue and tradition, including The Four Cardinal Virtues, published several times by different publishers, with its first English edition in 1954. In this book, he unpacked the meaning of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, otherwise known as the “cardinal virtues,” first articulated in the works of Plato (the Republic) and Aristotle (the Nicomachean Ethics) and later adopted by Christian writers, including St. Ambrose and St. Thomas Aquinas. They are called “cardinal” virtues because the Latin word cardo means “hinge,” and they are the hinge upon which other virtues are hung.
Prudence: The Filter of Deliberation
For Pieper the meaning of the virtue of prudence is primarily this: “That not only the end of human action but also the means for its realization shall be in keeping with the truth of real things.” This in turn necessitates that “the egocentric ‘interests’ of man be silenced in order that he may perceive the truth of real things, and so that reality itself may guide him to the proper means for realizing his goal.”
This idea of prudence has nothing in common with concepts like cunning or risk aversion. Rather, it is about having the capacity to read reality as it is and act upon this understanding. Pieper further explains that this requires the operation of what Aquinas called memoria, docilitas, and solertia. These three concepts are known as quasi-integral parts of the virtue of prudence.
The theological virtues, the cardinal virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit all play together in concert.
With memoria, or memory, it is important that this faculty of the soul accurately recalls events as they were, that recollections are not falsified. With docilitas, there needs to be an openness to learning from others rather than an “I already know everything” attitude. Solertia is the capacity to take in various pieces of data and quickly conclude what the right, most prudential, action is, given the array of circumstances.
Pieper also explains that the cardinal virtue of prudence is assisted by the theological virtue of charity and the Holy Spirit’s gift of counsel. The theological virtues, the cardinal virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit all play together in concert. The strength of the cardinal virtues is thus directly related to the strength of the theological virtues.
Justice: The Habit of Giving Others Their Due
This second cardinal virtue is at the center of the Church’s social teaching. St. Thomas approached the subject by examining the relationship of individuals to one another, the relationship of the social whole to individuals, and the relationship of individuals to the social whole. These subclasses of justice are known as commutative justice, which orders the relation of individual to individual; distributive justice, which orders the relationship between the social whole to individuals; and legal or general justice, which orders the relationship of individuals to the social whole. Pieper explains that the hallmark of all three forms of justice is some kind of indebtedness.
The Church’s social teaching is critical of conceptions of justice that deny that the social whole owes anything to individuals or that individuals owe anything to the social whole. These mentalities are associated with the extremes of collectivism, typical of Communist and Fascist forms of government, and radical individualism, typical of libertarian forms of liberal political theory.
Another central concept of Catholic social justice theory is the idea that it is the responsibility of governments to foster the common good (bonum commune). This is not very popular among liberal political theorists. They either deny that there is such a thing as a common good or offer a very narrowly defined version of it, on the grounds that individuals all have different conceptions of what, for them, is their good. John Rawls, one of the most celebrated liberal theorists of the twentieth century and a professor at Harvard University, said that if a man wanted to spend his life counting blades of grass, then that would be his good, and no one else had any standing to judge it otherwise. He also said that St. Thomas Aquinas was “irrational” and that St. Ignatius of Loyola was “mad.”
Collectivist ideologies go in the opposite direction, promoting such an extensive view of what constitutes the common good that there is little or no respect paid to the legitimate freedom of individuals. Governments driven by collectivist ideologies will often use legislation to enforce social uniformity. In such countries, there is only one type of school, one curriculum, one healthcare system, one political party, and so on.
In addition to the above triad of relationships and their distinctive classes of justice, there is also the human person’s relationship to God. Pieper explains how St. Thomas Aquinas deals with the issue of justice in terms of the concepts of religion and piety. The latter is a disposition of the soul that recognizes a debt to its Creator which, of its very nature, cannot be fully repaid. Piety is also one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Fortitude: The Cardinal Virtue of Martyrs
Pieper begins his analysis of fortitude by remarking that angels cannot be brave because they are not vulnerable. Only those who are vulnerable, who have something to suffer, can be brave. He then defines the highest achievement of fortitude as martyrdom and describes the readiness for martyrdom as the essential root of all Christian fortitude.
Having begun on such a dramatic note, Pieper then assures his reader that fortitude has nothing to do with recklessness or a daredevil personality type. Rather, “genuine fortitude presupposes a correct evaluation of things, of the things that one risks as well as of those which one hopes to preserve or gain by the risk.” Fortitude therefore presupposes the operation of prudence and justice before it comes into play.
While Pieper’s treatment of the virtue of justice was strongly related to issues in contemporary political life, his treatment of fortitude veered into the territory of mysticism, linking the virtue to the concept of the dark night of the soul. Pieper quoted St. Teresa of Avila as saying that fortitude ranks first and foremost among the prerequisites for spiritual perfection. In her autobiography, she declared that “an imperfect human being needs more fortitude to pursue the way of perfection than suddenly to become a martyr.” Taking the first steps into the dark night and enduring the dark night require fortitude.
Fortitude is not only a cardinal virtue; it is also a gift of the Holy Spirit. As Pieper explained: “In the gift of fortitude the Holy Spirit pours into the soul a confidence that overcomes all fear: namely, that He will lead man to eternal life, which is the goal and purpose of all good actions, and the final deliverance from every kind of danger.” As such, “the supernatural fortitude bestowed by grace, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit, pervades and crowns all other ‘natural’ modes of Christian fortitude.” Pieper concluded this section by observing that those who go to war against various forms of social injustice without the fortitude of the mystical life are likely to fall victim to the “noisy sterility of spiritual pride.”
Temperance: Upholding an Ordered Whole
According to Pieper, temperance is about acting in such a way that the internal order of the person is fostered and upheld. It is linked to the forces of self-preservation, such as eating and drinking and reproducing. These powers can become violently self-destructive once they degenerate into selfishness and the virtue of temperance is not developed. What St. Thomas calls “the order of reason” must trump and restrain the temptation toward self-indulgence.
Pieper concluded that “to the virtue of temperance as the preserving and defending realization of man’s inner order, the gift of beauty is particularly co-ordinated. Not only is temperance beautiful in itself, it also renders men beautiful.” While this could be taken in a literal sense to mean that the person who is moderate in his intake of food and drink and who fasts on a regular basis is likely to be in better physical shape than someone less temperate, Pieper emphasized that he meant his statement to be taken as beauty in the spiritual sense, or what he called “the glow of the true and the good irradiating from every ordered state of being.” For Pieper, the ultimate meaning of temperance is linked to the purification of the senses.
Pieper’s work on the cardinal virtues remains a treasure to be rediscovered by a new generation of Catholics seeking to understand the moral teaching of the Church as character formation rather than duty parade rule following.