Alina Beary

It seems like people have character traits that explain a good deal of their behavior. Call a theory character realism just in case it vindicates this folk assumption. Recently, Christian Miller has argued that the way to reconcile character realism with decades of psychological research is to adopt metaphysical reductivism about character traits. Some contemporary psychological theories of character and virtue seem to implicitly endorse such reductivism; others resist reduction of traits to finer-grained mental components or processes; and still others remain silent on the metaphysics of traits. In this paper we argue that character realists do not have to, and in fact should not, be reductivists. We introduce a theoretical dilemma for reductivist character realism. Then we explain how nonreductivists can meet the standards for empirical adequacy laid out by Miller and others. Further, we argue, hylomorphic nonreductivism avoids the theoretical dilemma that threatens reductivism. It also fits nicely the major commitments of recent models of virtue in psychology. Thus, character realists should not be reductivists.

From experience, we know that some cognitive processes are effortless and automatic (or nearly automatic), while others are hard and deliberate. Dual process (DP) accounts of human cognition explain these differences by positing two qualitatively distinct types of cognitive processes within the human mind—types that cannot be reduced to each other. Because DP constructs are bound to show up in discourse on human cognition, decision-making, morality, and character formation, moral philosophers should take DP accounts seriously. Here, I provide an overview of the current state of DP accounts—their basic tenets, major concepts, and the various models of the DP framework—and note some of its more salient criticisms from the psychological research community. Finally, I show that DP accounts’ commitment to a real qualitative distinction between rational and non-rational human behavior puts them at odds with a Thomistic/Aristotelian view of practical rationality.

Since the wife-husband team of Anne Case and Angus Deaton popularized the term deaths of despair, psychologists have become more interested in decoupling despair from clinical depression and anxiety. Despair’s central marker is the loss of hope. It is characterized by feelings of social and spiritual isolation, meaninglessness, hopelessness, helplessness, demoralization, and shame. Causes of despair are complex, ranging from individual (e.g., grief, bad health, addiction, abuse), to societal (e.g., social and cultural dislocation, unemployment, economic disaster, poverty), to a combination of both. Sometimes, acknowledging and/or addressing despair’s material causes is enough. But the problem with despair is that it tends to generate a vicious cycle of self-defeat. Often, it manifests in self-perpetuating negative cognitive biases, self-defeating emotional reactions, and self-destructive behavior. To break free, the person must address the psychological and spiritual roots of her despair. Here, I offer insights from a Christian tradition grounded in the monastic spirituality of the Desert Fathers in the hopes that these might help a therapist seeking to do just that. After distinguishing between an emotion and a sin of despair, I locate the latter’s roots in the vices of acedia and pride. Finally, I point to the virtue of humility as a traditional cure for despair.

In this dissertation, I aim to accomplish two goals. The first goal is to draw contemporary moral philosophers' attention to the need for a principal approach to virtue individuation. When we individuate virtues, we answer questions about the number of human virtues that exist and the ways in which they differ from one another. Most contemporary moral philosophers answer these questions in a haphazard way -- a practice that is in no small way responsible for the chaotic and cacophonous state of contemporary virtue ethics. I spend the second chapter developing a case for a principled approach to virtue individuation and laying out the desiderata for such a principle. I suggest that whatever criterion of individuation we adopt, it should be flexible yet parsimonious, so as to respect and preserve the diversity within the virtues. Moreover, our criterion must connect to our foundational beliefs about human nature and the nature of virtues in a non-trivial way. Having established the desiderata for a criterion of virtue individuation, I move to my second goal. This goal is to articulate Aquinas's approach to virtue individuation as a model for the way in which one might go about articulating one's own criterion. I argue that Aquinas individuates virtues based on their subject, their object, and their mode, and that this approach is an organic product of Aquinas's metaphysics of human nature. Accordingly, I dedicate the third chapter to sketching the relevant aspects of Aquinas's moral psychology and to situating Aquinas's account of habitus -- which is commonly translated into English as "habit" or "disposition" and of which virtue is a species -- within his moral psychology. The fourth chapter lays out Aquinas's account of virtues, paying special attention to the questions of virtue's subject, object, and mode. It also maps out the conceptual space -- the taxonomy of virtues -- that individual virtues may inhabit. With the conceptual apparatus thus established, in chapter five I explicated the Thomistic principle of virtue individuation. I demonstrate and test Aquinas's method by examining the virtues of generosity and magnificence, infused and acquired temperance, and, finally, a contemporary case of anger-regulating virtues.

Thomas Aquinas famously argues that it is not necessary to be virtuous in order to be wise. To many contemporary moral philosophers, this claim signals Aquinas’s failure to address the interrelatedness of our moral and intellectual life. I conduct a case study of Ivan Karamazov to demonstrate that this view is mistaken. After sketching Ivan’s character, I present Aquinas’s accounts of wisdom and pride and their nuanced relationship. I argue that Ivan illustrates the Thomistic view that pride, though not an insurmountable obstacle to one’s acquisition of some intellectual virtues, makes it impossible for anyone to achieve wisdom. The vice of pride therefore proves truly devastating to one’s intellectual life, since wisdom, for Aquinas, is the highest and most important of intellectual virtues.