Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices

University of Chicago Press (2008)
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Abstract

Augustine famously claimed that the virtues of pagan Rome were nothing more than splendid vices. This critique reinvented itself as a suspicion of acquired virtue as such, and true Christian virtue has, ever since, been set against a false, hypocritical virtue alleged merely to conceal pride. _Putting On Virtue_ reveals how a distrust of learned and habituated virtue shaped both early modern Christian moral reflection and secular forms of ethical thought. Jennifer Herdt develops her claims through an argument of broad historical sweep, which brings together the Aristotelian tradition as taken up by Thomas Aquinas with the early modern thinkers who shaped modern liberalism. In chapters on Luther, Bunyan, the Jansenists, Mandeville, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant, she argues that efforts to make a radical distinction between true Christian virtue and its tainted imitations actually created an autonomous natural ethics separate from Christianity. This secular value system valorized pride and authenticity, while rendering graced human agency less meaningful. Ultimately, _Putting On Virtue_ traces a path from suspicion of virtue to its secular inversion, from confession of dependence to assertion of independence

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reprint Herdt, Jennifer A. (2012) "Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices". University of Chicago Press

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Citations of this work

Practicing Hope.Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung - 2014 - Res Philosophica 91 (3):387-410.
Putting on Virtue Without Putting Off Feminists.Emily Dumler-Winckler - 2015 - Journal of Religious Ethics 43 (2):342-367.

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