Most of us wonder how to make sense of the apparent moral excellences or virtues of those who have different visions of the good life or different religious commitments than our own. Rather than flattening or ignoring the deep difference between various visions of the good life, as is so often done, this book turns to the medieval Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas to find a better way. Thomas, it argues, shows us how to welcome the outsider and her virtue as an expression rather than a betrayal of one's own distinctive vision. It shows how Thomas, driven by a Christian commitment to charity and especially informed by Augustine, synthesized Augustinian and Aristotelian elements to construct an ethics that does justice-in love-to insiders and outsiders alike. Decosimo offers the first analysis of Thomas on pagan virtue and a reinterpretation of Thomas's ethics while providing a model for our own efforts to articulate a truthful hospitality and do ethics in our pluralist, globalized world.
"While Ethics as a Work of Charity contains many close readings and strives to settle any number of textual disputes, it is not at all a pedantic work. Its chief virtue lies in the thoughtful and imaginative use to which it puts these careful readings. Decosimo adopts a spirit that he finds in Aquinas himself, one that combines an insistence on attentiveness with an even greater insistence on char
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"[T]he author argues that Aquinas welcomes pagan virtues. All of humanity share in sin's brokenness and a desire for good. A capacity for virtue is thus part of what it means to be human . . . This important work shows us how central the virtues are for Aquinas's moral theology."
Catholic Medical Quarterly
"[Decosimo] presents a lucid and innovative argument about the disputed status of 'pagan virtue' in debates in Christian ethics. To some readers, the very notion of 'pagan virtue' will raise eyebrows. Yet while most Christians today continue to believe that Christian faith permeates and transforms all aspects of a believer's life, most also affirm that people of any religious faith - or none - are
