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Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices
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.
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.
472 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
Jennifer A. Herdt
6 books10 followersJennifer A. Herdt is Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale University. She joined the Yale faculty in 2010, following eleven years on the faculty of theology at the University of Notre Dame. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Her primary interests are in the history of moral thought since the 17th century, classical and contemporary virtue ethics, and contemporary Protestant social ethics and political theology. She is the author of Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago: 2008), Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: 1997), and of over 20 articles and book chapters that have appeared in a variety of journals. They deal with subjects ranging from humility and the code of the streets, indiscriminate divine love, Locke and martyrdom, and connections between divine compassion and the mystification of power.
Living in the Philippines for 10 years, Herdt grew up in a tight-knit international scientific community, religiously pluralistic. Raised Methodist, she and the other children freely batted around questions about religion and the tensions between faiths. A desire to ponder and resolve theological matters started there and never left her.
Her primary interests are in the history of moral thought since the 17th century, classical and contemporary virtue ethics, and contemporary Protestant social ethics and political theology. She is the author of Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago: 2008), Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: 1997), and of over 20 articles and book chapters that have appeared in a variety of journals. They deal with subjects ranging from humility and the code of the streets, indiscriminate divine love, Locke and martyrdom, and connections between divine compassion and the mystification of power.
Living in the Philippines for 10 years, Herdt grew up in a tight-knit international scientific community, religiously pluralistic. Raised Methodist, she and the other children freely batted around questions about religion and the tensions between faiths. A desire to ponder and resolve theological matters started there and never left her.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 2, 2021
An excellent and sweeping survey of the development of virtue in Christian ethics, along with its growing anxiety over right intention. Herdt sets forth a positive vision for the role of habituation and moral exemplars in the Christian life, and showed Erasmus in particular to be a compelling resource, even if (as she acknowledges) his antischolasticism left him without many conceptual tools and in danger of semipelagianism (which is not good).
I’ve seen some articles that quibble with Herdt’s interpretation of Aquinas, and these criticisms should probably be heeded. It also seemed that Herdt thinks that a forensic account of justification is what really short-circuits moral agency. While it does seem true that Bunyan, at least, is somewhat paralyzed by his preoccupation over the genuineness of his faith (and his renunciation of works), it does not seem necessary that a forensic/Reformation account of justification short-circuits human moral agency. We can see, for example, Oliver O’Donovan’s reflections on faith and agency in Self, World, and Time, 105-112.
One of my favorite portions of the book was the final part, which showed how Rousseau, Hume, and Kant’s moral theories are (despite themselves) very much indebted to the Augustinian worry about whether virtue is truly ordered by love for God.
I’ve seen some articles that quibble with Herdt’s interpretation of Aquinas, and these criticisms should probably be heeded. It also seemed that Herdt thinks that a forensic account of justification is what really short-circuits moral agency. While it does seem true that Bunyan, at least, is somewhat paralyzed by his preoccupation over the genuineness of his faith (and his renunciation of works), it does not seem necessary that a forensic/Reformation account of justification short-circuits human moral agency. We can see, for example, Oliver O’Donovan’s reflections on faith and agency in Self, World, and Time, 105-112.
One of my favorite portions of the book was the final part, which showed how Rousseau, Hume, and Kant’s moral theories are (despite themselves) very much indebted to the Augustinian worry about whether virtue is truly ordered by love for God.
August 7, 2024
Have finally decided to put this to bed for now, having read only a third of the way through after picking the book up in Aberdeen slightly more than two months ago.
I'd like to pursue this line of thought further sometime, that is the different Christian notions of the pursuit of holiness and what that looks like, especially the tension between (more Protestant) authenticity and (more Catholic) imitation.
I'd like to pursue this line of thought further sometime, that is the different Christian notions of the pursuit of holiness and what that looks like, especially the tension between (more Protestant) authenticity and (more Catholic) imitation.
September 20, 2012
Good history of the concept of virtue from Aristotle to Kant, and essential reading for those seriously interested in the topic. But it's written mostly for scholars and the average reader will find it laborious.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews