Ethical teaching Andrey Sheptytsky about the natural virtues

Abstract

The article highlights the ethical teachings of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky on natural virtues which are an important part of his ethical system. Under natural virtues Metropolitan understands the perfections of human nature. These are the following: prudence as the virtue of mind, courage as the virtue of emotion, restraint as the virtue of sensuality, and justice as the virtue of will. These virtues are natural because they should be characteristic to the man of sense. But the virtues do not occur in individuals automatically or out of necessity. They emerge along with the acquisition of certain habits to freely behave in a moral way in accordance with the rules which the mind recognizes as natural. By Sheptytsky, the ethics of the natural virtues is a creative process of self-identity. It is based on the ethical teachings of Thomas Aquinas and is entirely within the boundaries of the early neo-Thomism. Unlike Jacques Maritain and E. Gilson, Sheptytskygives the ethics not an existential but a metaphysical interpretation. Thus, Metropolitan does not switch from early neoThomistic to existential type of the ethics of Thomism. The teachings on the virtues as the perfections of natural properties of the soul are essentially different from the modern phenomenological understanding of these virtues as values (Scheler, Hartmann, Hildebrand). Sheptytsky has fully used the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas on the natural virtues to justify generally idealistic Christian humanism.