4 Stages of Virtue

Philosophical Musings - How catechesis is insufficient unto itself.

In my last two articles I spoke about (1) how to find peace in the unification of one’s appetites, (2) and that emotional maturity occurs when our passions are ultimately aligned to the truth about good and evil. Today I’d like to reflect on how that alignment of our passions takes place.

The reason I think its worth taking time to reflect on is due to an error that I’ve noticed in myself as well as in the Catholic Culture. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that “ethics” is a science that is both speculative and practical. Its object is practical, while its subject is speculative. This distinction is important, because it reminds us the varying virtues. There are speculative virtues such as wisdom, and then there are practical virtues such as those which we call cardinal (prudence, temperance, courage and justice). Now, the mere studying of ethics does not translate into practical virtue, even though the content (subject-matter) is ordered to help us understand how to grow, practically. It can occur, for instance that one think in order to find more inner-freedom, a greater sense of holiness, that he or she must simply learn more. But this is incomplete at best.

Informing our conscience, and reflecting on ethics is important. However, without growing in the practical virtues, it amounts to a person who only knows that their attachments to evil are wrong, but cannot move past that marker. Socrates seemed to have made the same error, where in his mind, all one needed was to simply know what righteousness was in order to become righteous. But practical experiences tells us otherwise.

The four stages can be understood in the following way:

1. Vice or Viciousness

   Intellect: In error about good and evil
   Passions: Desires disordered goods
   Actions: Acts sinfully

2. Incontinence
   Intellect: Self-honesty about good and evil
   Passions: Desires disordered goods
   Actions: Acts sinfully

3. Continence
   Intellect: Self-honesty about good and evil
   Passions: Desires disordered goods
   Actions: Acts righteously

4. Virtue
   Intellect: Self-honesty about good and evil
   Passions: Desires rightly ordered goods and delights in the good
   Actions: Acts righteously

What we can note from these stages, is a unity being generated slowly between our mind, our heart, and our practical actions. Within the intellect, we must initially grow in the speculative virtues of wisdom. Much of this is accomplished by humbly submitting to the truth, and not rationalizing about the good/evil. As Bishop Barron would indicate, this is the first and original sin, when eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Once one begins to be honest with themselves in all humility about such truth, he moves into the incontinent phase, where now he must change his behavior. Once that behavior is changed, he can then move into the next phase, where his passions themselves have yet to be re-ordered. I sometimes call this place the “desert.”

G. K. Chesterton once said something along the lines of: the Christian faith hasn’t been found wanting and therefore abandoned, but its been found difficult and left untried. Its here that one is likely to confront the murmuring of those in the desert, and the forgetfulness that there is a land over-flowing with milk and honey. This land is the land of virtue, where the passions are finally at rest in the good, experiencing delight in things such as chastity, prudence, temperance, courage and justice.

For this reason, I would suggest that you gage when you’ve learned enough, and then set in order to move and act according to these Divine Truths. But train your passions in the incarnational type of truth that occurs when you act correctly. Your passions will fall into line, and with great ease and delight you will have reached virtue’s reward!