FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE 1. What is a virtue? A virtue is a good habit, i.e., a' habit that perfects a person's capacity for human or personal activity by disposing him to act rightly.
2. Is man alone the subiect of virtues? In ·this world, only man ·is the subject of virtues. For virtue perfects a being precisely as a person.
3. How does virtue perfect man as a person? Personhood or being a person is constituted by transcendence, the openness to the Absolute and Infinite that enables a being to determine or "dispose of" himself in relationship to the Absolute, his fellow men and the rest of reality. This "self-disponibility" vis-a-vis the totality of reality is freedom in the sense of a capacity. Virtue perfects freedom by establishing man in the state of a right and good personal relationship to the rest of reality and by disposing him, consequently, to act in ways that express and deepen this relationship.
4. What kinds of virtue are there? Besides moral virtues, which perfect the will, St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, recognized also intellectual virtues such as art and the. oreticol wisdom. But the Iotter type ore virtues only in certain respect (secundum quid) because they make a person good only in a limited way and not precisely as a person, e.g., a good musician or metaphysician. Because they do not establish an individual in a right personal relationship with the Absolute, his fellow men and the rest of reality, the socalled intellectual virtues are not virtues in the full sense of the word. However, in addition to the ·moral· virtues there ore others, and these ore theological virtues. 5. Why are some virtues called theological? Some virtues are called theological because, as.their nome suggests, they primarily establish a·n individual in a right personal relationship to God
253