The Cardinal Virtues

The cardinal virtues are the four moral virtues around which the whole of upright living is ordered: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. A virtue is a stable disposition to do good; these four hold first place because all the others are attached to them. Wisdom names them together as the very work of God’s wisdom. “Does one love righteousness? Her labors are the virtues: she teaches self-control and prudence, justice and courage, the most useful things for people in life.” Wisdom 8:7

Written in Greek, the language of the philosophers, this book names the four by their very names: temperance, sōphrosynē (σωφροσύνη); prudence, phronēsis (φρόνησις); justice, dikaiosynē (δικαιοσύνη); courage, andreia (ἀνδρεία). What reason had discerned, the Spirit gathers up and refers to its source.

Four hinges

The word cardinal comes from the Latin cardo, “the hinge”: these virtues are the hinges on which the door of the moral life turns, the fixed points that carry all the rest. They are also called moral virtues, from the Latin mos, moris, “custom,” because they are formed by repeated acts and shape the manner of acting. The ancients had already recognised them by reason alone, and Scripture gathers them, referring them to God, their source: they are fully themselves only when turned toward him.

This fourfold grouping goes back to Plato, handed on by Cicero; the very name “cardinal” is Christian: Ambrose, commenting on the Gospel, was the first to give it to these four virtues.

Each orders a power of the soul

Man acts through several powers, and each cardinal virtue sets one of them right. Prudence perfects practical reason: it discerns, in each situation, the true good and the right means of reaching it. Justice sets the will right in its relation to others: it renders to each what is due. Fortitude and temperance govern the passions, those movements of desire and fear that incline man before any judgment: fortitude steadies the soul before what frightens or discourages, temperance moderates the attraction of pleasures. Thus reason, will and passions, once ordered, make the whole man act according to the good.

Of these four, prudence holds first place, for it enlightens the other three: without right judgment about what must be done, neither justice, nor fortitude, nor temperance would find their just measure. Tradition therefore calls it the charioteer of the virtues, the one who leads them.

Acquired by effort, raised by grace

These virtues are won first by exercise: the just act repeated makes one just, as the courageous act makes one strong. Such are the acquired virtues, within reach of human reason and will. But God also gives higher ones, infused with sanctifying grace: the same names, a new measure, for they now govern man’s acting no longer according to right reason alone, but according to the divine life received in him. Grace does not destroy nature, it raises it higher: the acquired virtues remain and are taken up, ordered to an end that surpasses them.

Under the guidance of charity

The cardinal virtues make man upright; the theological virtues, faith, hope and charity, unite him to God. The first order the means, the second give the end. And it is charity that animates them all: it is the form of the virtues, the love that turns them toward God and without which they would stop halfway. To these virtues are added the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which make the soul docile to his motion and carry each virtue higher than its own powers. Ordered by prudence, raised by grace, animated by charity, the four virtues become the very body of the Christian life. “make every effort to add virtue to your faith, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control perseverance.” 2 Peter 1:5-6

Thus all that is upright in human action gathers into them, and Paul calls the believer’s gaze to it. “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is just, whatever is pure… if there is any virtue and anything worthy of praise, these are the things to fill your thoughts.” Philippians 4:8