Taxonomy of the Virtues

The organizing framework for this project is the taxonomy of virtues developed by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica. His taxonomy encompasses all of human experience, including the theological, intellectual, and moral virtues. The version here focuses only on the moral, or cardinal, virtues. You can download a full pdf of the tree here.

You can see how comprehensive the taxonomy is by working from left to right. It starts on the far left, with the node labeled "Daily Life." Moving to the right, Daily Life is then divided into Thinking, Acting, and Feeling. The virtue of Prudence perfects our thinking. Below that, Justice is the virtue that perfects our actions, ensuring that we always act justly —fairly —to everyone. Further below, feelings are divided into feelings that repel and feelings that attract. The virtue that perfects our capacity to deal with feelings of repulsion is Fortitude, and with feelings of attraction is Temperance.

Each of those virtues is then further subdivided. So for example, Fortitude is divided into virtues for dealing with repulsion (or fear) of deadly evil, which is Fortitude proper, and fear of other evils. This latter is then further subdivided into addressing the evil (think of that as offense) and enduring the evil (defense). In terms of addressing the evil, we have a virtue for doing so financially, and that's the virtue of Munificence, and for doing so through any other activity, which is Magnanimity. The virtues for enduring evil are, for enduring psychological strain, Resilience, and for physical strain, Perseverance. And so on.

You can view a more complete version interactively. Click on the small connecting circles to expand or contract parts of the tree. 

Enjoy!