Virtue, Aquinas, and New Year’s Resolutions
The Oxenham Group had the honor of hosting Dr. Charles Nemeth as a guest speaker at our bi-annual company summit in December. Dr. Nemeth is a professor at Franciscan University and an accomplished attorney and author. His presentation was based on his recent book, Finding Happiness in a Complex World: Rules from Aristotle and Aquinas. Seeing as virtue is one of Oxenham’s core values, the team was thrilled to have ample time with an expert on the topic.
Nemeth’s primary claim, taken from the works of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, is that the pursuit of virtue in all things is the best and surest path to happiness in the here and now.
This is a strange claim to modern ears. We’re used to hearing that happiness comes from a new morning routine, dating app, or remote job that pops up on our social media feed. But upon further thought, I realized that this idea—virtue as a path to happiness -- isn’t actually that foreign to modern man. Particularly this time of year, as millions of Americans are considering their New Year’s Resolutions.
Fundamentally, New Year’s Resolutions are things that we feel we should probably already be doing and will certainly make our lives healthier and happier. We get excited about forsaking comfortable, fun, or easy things for uncomfortable, unfun and difficult things. We implicitly know (and act upon) the idea that doing things that aren’t gratifying now will lead to far greater happiness than the things that are. This is virtuous.
I took the opportunity to ask Dr. Nemeth what advice Aquinas or Aristotle would give us as we consider our New Year’s Resolutions. Two thoughts came to mind:
Growth in virtue is about acting: We can only think, strategize, or plan for so long. To grow, we must act. Aquinas exhorts that a good habit is incrementally set one action at a time.
Weeding out bad habits needs to be gradual and not overly ambitious: Any serious growth in habit will not be spontaneous, or “cold turkey,” but rather incremental. Aquinas calls us to be always, step by step, day by day, eyeing the prize of virtue.
As you consider your 2024 New Year’s Resolutions, which is an excellent practice, please take this wisdom with you. I would like to wish you and yours a happy, virtuous new year!
—Caleb Fitzgerald