Chapter 3 considers the various divisions of moral virtue. This chapter describes Thomas’s response to the Stoic thesis that the virtuous person lacks passions. Aristotle states that some moral virtues are about the passions. The chapter ends with a discussion of the Neoplatonic thesis that there are different kinds or stages of virtue that lead to contemplation.

The seventh section of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is full of interesting puzzles. Why is courage treated here, among the virtues immediately agreeable to self, when it is useful to both its possessor and others? Why do so many of the virtues listed here seem like vices? And why does Hume linger on those virtues of which he seems the most suspicious? This chapter attempts to answer these questions. First, I outline the structure of the section and explain its oddities in more detail. These oddities reflect Hume’s ambivalence about some of the virtues immediately agreeable to self. Second, I argue for the importance of the aesthetic concept of the sublime for his treatment of these virtues. Appreciating this importance can illuminate some of the oddities. Finally, I argue that, although Hume believes that our attraction to these virtues needs correction, this correction cannot consist merely in judging these virtues against the standard of useful virtues. Instead, the correction requires another virtue immediately agreeable to self – delicacy of taste.

Opposing conceptions of specific emotions are often in circulation at the same moment in time. This is particularly true of a period of monumental upheaval, as was the case in the early modern era. This essay looks at the contradictory notions of pride that traversed the early modern age and the way Shakespeare explores various facets of this emotion in his late tragedy, Coriolanus. On the one hand, the classical ideal of the ‘magnanimous man’ became an enduring pillar of early modern aristocratic ideology, based as it was on the cult of honour. In Christian belief, on the other hand, pride was regarded as the most heinous of the seven deadly sins. Both strands of thought identified a sense of innate superiority and self-sufficiency as the bedrock of pride. In Coriolanus Shakespeare creates a protagonist who is regarded by others as the epitome of pride, and who sees himself as independent of all human bonds. What the play reveals, however, is that even an emotion that is thought to be largely self-determined is inextricably social. The ideal of autonomy on which pride is premised is revealed as a myth.