Virtues of the Human Heart 2
Study Guide Questions for pg. 16-24
If you are looking for the beginning of the study on Josef Pieper’s “A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart” then you can go HERE for a brief introduction. At the bottom of the introduction you will find the links to each section of the study guide as it becomes available. If you would like to see the growing list of book studies available for free on this site you can go HERE. Enjoy!
Last Line of Reading Ends: “…establish their rule before his eyes.”
Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)
Truth, Justice
Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)
According to Pieper, what is the “finite spirit” of man “urged and compelled by its nature” to do?
What does the man “who does good” follow?
What does the “becoming of the moral person” depend upon according to Pieper?
What did Pieper say “false prudence” is tied to?
What did Pieper describe as the highest “norm” for man?
According to Pieper “a man is wise when…” what?
What is “the prerequisite for justice?”
What did Pieper say is “the basis of all just order in the world?”
Where does justice not “fromally exist” according to Pieper?
What did Pieper say the “holder of governmental power” cannot be forced to do?
What will the “just man…decide to give” to others?
Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)
What did Pieper mean when he said, “man’s good lies in being in accordance with reason?”
What did Peiper mean when he wrote, “prudence…is the ‘forbearing lamp that characterizes for us not the future but the immediate?’”
Pieper wrote that being prudent requires “the individual's appropriate response to reality.” What did he mean by this?
What did Pieper mean by claiming “only one who is first prudent can do good?”
Why does Pieper think covetousness is a kind of “false prudence?”
Why might “disregarding oneself” be essential to prudence?
What does it mean to say that “there can be no higher norm for man than simply God…along with his truth?”
What does it mean to say “A man is wise when all things taste to him as they really are?”
Why might truth be a “prerequisite” of justice?
What did Pieper mean by saying, “the greatest and most fruitful effects occur precisely and only when the utmost and the supreme power of man’s nature willingly submits and weds itself to the transforming core power of the new life?”
What did Pieper mean by saying the “beloved is not properly ‘somebody else’?”
Why did Pieper say that the “holder of governmental power can in fact not not be compelled to fulfill his duty of justice?”
Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)
Pieper claimed, “a whole category of psychological illnesses is based substantially upon…selfish ‘subjectivity.’” Offer a definition for the term “psychological illness.” Do you agree with Pieper that psychological illnesses can be produced by selfishness? Why or why not?
Pieper wrote, “That one man gives to another what belongs to the other is the basis of all just order in the world.” Is this a sufficient account of the concept of Justice? In other words, are there certain matters of justice which this definition cannot account for or does it essentially cover the whole of the matter? Explain your position and why you hold it.
Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)
Read Deuteronomy 16:18-20. How important is it to God that his people behave justly? Does this passage give any indications as to what is a proper definition of justice?
What does Proverbs 29:26 teach about justice? How practically should this teaching affect our expectations about getting justice?
Read Luke 18:1-8. What should we take away about the concept of justice from this teaching? What difference can be seen between earthly justice and heavenly justice?