Dr. Vost on Thomas Aquinas and Virtues

You can find the complete interview here

Kapler: I know that Aquinas was very instrumental in bringing you back to Catholicism. How did that happen?

Vost: I was drawn into atheism by various philosophers: Ayn Rand, a philosopher associated with a philosophy called Objectivism was one. Albert Ellis was a psychologist. He had a system called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy; he also happened to be an atheist. These people, Ayn Rand in particular, said her system was based on the philosophy of Aristotle. Albert Ellis said his psychology was based on an ancient system of the Stoic philosophers. Now it just so happened that both those Stoic philosophers and Aristotle were not atheists; they were theists. These were also systematic thinkers that St. Thomas Aquinas knew very, very well.

Well, it wasn’t until my early forties that I first came across the writings of Thomas Aquinas himself. Here I saw an absolute, true master of the writings of Aristotle. There’s a saying I like to quote from Charles Darwin, “My modern peers of the day are like mere school boys compared to old Aristotle.” I had that kind of an ah-ha when I came across Aquinas!

Kapler: Aquinas – I’ve heard you describe him, most recently in your book Unearthing Your Ten Talents, as a master of psychology. What did you find in St. Thomas that you didn’t find in the other great psychologists you have studied, and even taught about as a college psychology professor?

Vost: Much of his work in psychology comes through in the Second Part of his Summa Theologica. Thomas examines in great detail what it means to be a human being. How is it that we think, and how is it that we feel? How does this reflect us being made in God’s image? Thomas looks at things like: Virtue, how do we make ourselves our best possible selves? Sin, how do we avoid those things that pull us away from God and make us less than what we are? There’s a true profundity of thought there.

Kapler: When you talk in Unearthing Your Ten Talents about “the virtues,” they aren’t something we hear a great deal about today – not in pop psychology, not even from the pulpit, at least not in my experience. Why does Aquinas put such emphasis on “the virtues,” this list of habitual qualities; and why do we need to pay attention to that today?

Vost: Thomas wrote in the thirteenth century, and much of theology focused on sins and our fallen human nature, things that are very important. Thomas also wrote a great deal about those, but he also had an emphasis on how we are good, very good – wondrously made in the image of God. So to understand ourselves, we have to understand the powers God gave us. And virtues are basically perfections of those various powers.