VIRTÙ ESEMPLARI: L'ETICA TOMMASIANA TRA NEOPLATONISMO E ARISTOTELISMO.

This paper offers an historical analysis of the role of moral exemplarity in Thomas Aquinas' thought, in order to contribute to the current discussion on moral Exemplarism. First, I will argue that, by combining Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, Aquinas' ethics amounts to a peculiar exemplarist theory of the virtues. The Aristotelian emphasis on the phronimos, combined with the Neoplatonic exitus-reditus conceptual schema, results - I will argue - in an account of the degrees of virtue which grounds a form of theological exemplarism. Then, I will claim that, in order to make sense of Aristotle's own ethical dynamism, an understanding of the development of virtue by degrees is needed. By means of such an understanding, I will show that the distance separating Aquinas' and Aristotle's account of virtue development significantly reduces. Thanks to this analysis, I will finally support a model of virtue development grounded both in moral exemplarity and in an ideal of dynamic unity of the virtues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]