Thomas Aquinas produced a voluminous body of work on moral theory, and much of that work is on virtue, particularly the status and value of the virtues as principles of virtuous acts, and the way in which a moral life can be organized around them schematically. Thomas Osborne presents Aquinas's account of virtue in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts, to show the reader what Aquinas himself wished to teach about virtue. His discussion makes the complexities of Aquinas's moral thought accessible to readers despite the differences between Thomas's texts themselves, and the distance between our background assumptions and his. The book will be valuable for scholars and students in ethics, medieval philosophy, and theology.

‘At just over two hundred pages, this study offers a crash course on virtue in Aquinas’s thought that will serve anyone conversant with medieval philosophy. For that matter, even specialists in Aquinas’s ethics who want to disabuse themselves of their misreadings will find a friend in this book. Eschewing a novel inroad into this oft-treated topic, Osborne instead treats readers to an exhaustive, philosophically rich exposition of Aquinas’s treatment of virtue. The ratio of true claims to false or even questionable claims in his study is the highest I know of in any work on Aquinas’s ethics. Osborne aims to let Aquinas’s views emerge from this retelling, as I am confident they will for anyone already initiated into the study of medieval philosophy.…. The result is a study that the reader can put a great deal of trust in.’

Jeffrey Hause Source: Journal of the History of Philosophy

‘The book is both highly scholarly and lucidly written, and technical terms are carefully unpacked … this study is warmly recommended.’

Rik Van Nieuwenhove Source: Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies