Individual and Social Ethics

Abstract

Vives’ ethics are basically a humanistic synthesis of Christian theocentrism and Greek rationalism. From the Judaeo-Christian tradition Vives derives the guiding principle that morality is a normative order demanded from man’s free will by the creative action of the Author of Nature. This divine order consists in the subordination of the inferior to the superior part of man. According to the dualistic rationalism of Platonic thought Vives finds in reason the noble component of man, in the body his lower and less dignified part. Moral order, therefore, is the subjection and control of the inferior passions by the intellectual powers. The humanistic emphasis consists in presenting morality as the acme of human perfection: to be moral is simply to be a perfect human being. These views were not entirely new. Indeed, Christian and medieval ethics were but different versions of identical or similar conceptions. What is relevant and worth studying in Vives’ ethics is precisely the characteristic slant and emphasis with which he presented them. The first part of this chapter is an attempt to explain the naturalistic, rationalistic, and secularized trends of Vives’ moral philosophy.

“Christianus: perfectus et consummatus homo” From De Pacificatione