Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices

468 Pages·2008·2.47 MB·English

by  Jennifer A. Herdt

putting on virtue

Putting On Virtue
The Legacy of the Splendid Vices
jennifer a. herdt
the university of chicago press chicago and london
Jennifer A. Herdt is associate professor of theology at
the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of
Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy (1997).
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2008 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2008
Printed in the United States of America
The University of Chicago Press gratefully
acknowledges the generous support of the Institute
for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts in the College of
Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame
toward the publication of this book.
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-32724-2 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-32724-8 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Herdt, Jennifer A., 1967–
Putting on virtue : the legacy of the splendid vices /
Jennifer A. Herdt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-32724-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-32724-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Virtue.
2. Imitation. 3. Christian ethics. 4. Ethics. I. Title.
bv4633.h47 2008
179'.9–dc22
2008009645
The paper used in this publication meets the mini-
mum requirements of the American National Standard
for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
For Jan

contents
Preface | ix
Introduction | 1
part i: splendid vices and imperfect virtues
1 Aristotle and the Puzzles of Habituation | 23
2 Augustine: Disordered Loves and the Problem of Pride | 45
3 Aquinas: Making Space for Pagan Virtue | 72
part ii: mimetic virtue
4 Erasmus: Putting On Christ | 101
5 The Jesuit Theatrical Tradition: Acting Virtuous | 128
part iii: the exodus from virtue
6 Luther: Saved Hypocrites | 173
7 Bunyan and Puritan Life-Writing: The Virtue
of Self-Examination | 197
part iv: the anatomy of virtue
8 Jesuits and Jansenists: Gracián and Pascal | 221
9 Emancipating Worldly Virtue: Nicole, La Rochefoucauld,
and Mandeville | 248
part v: pagan virtue and modern moral philosophy
10 Rousseau and the Virtue of Authenticity | 283
11 Hume and the Bourgeois Rehabilitation of Pride | 306
12 Kant and the Pursuit of Noumenal Purity | 322
Conclusion | 341
Notes | 355
Index | 433
preface
This book began with a certain curiosity, formed somewhat inchoately
during my graduate school days at Princeton, about the fact that cer-
tain forms of Christian faith champion a theatrical conception of moral
development while others judge it false and hypocritical. When, years
later, I returned to puzzle this over more fully, I began to understand
the issue in terms of diff ering understandings of the relationship between
acquired and infused virtue, and to see it as a key to unlocking the dy-
namics of early modern moral refl ection. Anxiety over the authentic-
ity of acquired virtue was a transformed and exacerbated rendition of
Augustine’s critique of pagan virtue that continued to shape theological
and philosophical ethics well into the eighteenth century. This project
took shape, then, as a particular way of narrating the story of virtue and
of thereby beginning to recover and recast a Christian ethic of mimetic
virtue freed from these distorting preoccupations.
I have accumulated many debts in the course of writing this book and
count myself thereby enriched. I am grateful for the opportunity to ac-
knowledge at least some of them here. Jeff rey Stout, Gilbert Meilaender,
Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Cyril O’Regan off ered vital
support and wise counsel on the project in its early stages; without them
I would not have had the confi dence to proceed. Students in my graduate
seminar “Virtue and Hypocrisy” let me try out some of my initial ideas
for the project on them; I am particularly grateful to Mary Hirschfeld,
Douglas Finn, and John Infranca for their enthusiasm and insights.
I presented an early sketch of the project to the “Law and . . .” Inter-
disciplinary Colloquium Series at the University of Notre Dame Law
School, and in that context I benefi ted from questions from Cathleen