Aquinas on the Enumeration of the Virtues

Abstract Daniel Russell has argued that virtue ethics requires a criterion for enumerating the virtues and suggests that reasons for action distinguish them (2009). This paper explores and defends Thomas Aquinas’s (ca. 1225–1274) view that virtues are distinguished by what makes us good in overcoming the difficulties we face. Aquinas’s account explains why agents can seemingly perform different virtuous actions for the same reasons while still satisfying the demands set by Russell for a theory of enumeration.