Thursday, July 2, 2026

Virtues in heaven

Here are two Aristotelian theses:

  1. Complete human flourishing requires the exercise of all the human virtues.

  2. Courage is a human virtue.

Add a highly plausible thesis that likely everyone will accept:

  1. The exercise of courage requires apparent or real danger.

Now add some theses that a Christian will surely accept:

  1. In heaven, there are no apparent danger.

  2. In heaven, there is no real danger.

  3. In heaven, there is complete human flourishing.

Contradiction!

I find it nearly impossible to deny 3-6. That leaves 1 and 2.

One move available to the Christian Aristotelian is to weaken 1. Perhaps complete human flourishing only requires the exercise of fundamental virtues, and courage is a non-central virtue. But traditionally fortitude also counts as a cardinal virtue, cardinal seems to imply fundamental, but fortitude is a virtue of dealing with evil—whether in the form of real or apparent danger, or of suffering, or of hardship, while there is no evil in heaven. So the problem comes back for fortitude. One solution is to deny the traditional cardinal virtues as being fundamental, and insist that the only fundamental virtue is love. Fortitude is just a central situational way for love to manifest.

Another move is simply to deny 1 altogether, of course, denying the whole link between virtues and flourishing. This is probably too radical.

And of course one might just deny 2. The most plausible move would be to say that only love is a virtue.

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