Notes from Gathered for the Journey Six (6) essays David McCarthy

o How generous can one be with time and treasures with four children—twoin college and one in Catholic high school? Prudence grounds the moralreflection in reality—―the prudent person uses good sense she is capableof to choose well concerning all activities in this world.‖ (203, emphasisadded)III. Cardinal Virtues as the Path to the Good Life in This Worldpp 202 – 206The Path to Good LifeChallenge—to argue that the cardinal virtues ―may rightly be called to the path tothe good life in this world.‖ (203)Someone may say these virtues are helpful, but can we really argue that they arethe ―hinge‖ (cardo) ―of a good life in this world‖?Historically, the cardinal virtues are consistently ―center stage‖Mattison‘s first argument is from the classic quality of these virtues—from Platoand Aristotle, through the Jewish scriptural tradition and into Christian thinking(204)Look to natural law to account for this consistency—hence the interlockingquality of Cloutier, Dillon and McCarthy‘s essays.All rational people encounter life-situations demanding these virtues, so theirreasonableness lies open to all reasonable persons—such universality is axiomaticto natural law reasoning. (204)What if we disagree about ―right‖ and ―wrong‖?All voices in the Western tradition—and surely in the Eastern tradition—do not,however, exhibit undivided solidarity in what is morally right and wrong.We could look to Aristotle‘s solution—the mean (mathematically, speaking). Isthe ―mean‖—the middle between to extremes a good model to referee thisquestion? (204) Example, establishing the mean of chastity between extremes ofpromiscuity and prudishness.At first blush—maybe—but in the end we still must ask what comprises―promiscuous‖ behavior as distinguished from ―prudish‖ behavior vis a vis thevirtue of chastity. (205)When all the smoke clears, we end up having an all-too-formal structure –notidentical, surely, but suffering from Kant‘s problems.Look to the fundamental narratives of the community―What guards against a contentless morality is the reliance of the virtue approachon paradigmatic actions to exemplify each virtue.‖ (205)We look to virtue in warfare (prescinding from the justice of a particular conflict).Fundamental Moral Theology Page 50 of 54Class Notes – Father Michael Seger