Virtue and the Practice of the Law

Join our Guild Chaplain, Father Edward Horkon, with a 1.0 Wellness VA CLE-eligible (credit pending) presentation.

One-hour in person and online live one credit VA Wellness CLE (credit pending) looking at the role of our Catholic Faith in the practice of law. The in-person portion will include a light lunch.

This is a member's only event. If you have not signed up for 2025-2026 dues, please sign up on the main webpage prior to registration.

Often people think of ethics as simply maintaining the rules of a society or a profession, including the legal profession. It is certainly important to maintain justice and harmony by upholding the rules of fair conduct. But we intuitively know that we can and should aspire for more, to become noble, excellent people. As thinkers from the ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to the medeival theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure to modern psychological authors such as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Soren Kierkegaard such as have known, we need a purpose in life, a striving for something higher, truly to be happy. The angst described by the more pessimistic existentialist philisophers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sarte is a reflection of their despair about whether people can any longer have this pursuit of higher and immortal values. One central problem is that we have lost the language to talk about this desire for excellence, this desire for a deep striving in life for all that is good, true and beautiful. The talk is an attempt to employ the Aristotelian idea of virtue as excellence, combined with the religious virtues of faith, hope and charity to show how the practice of law can be a part of this striving for true excellence and for the promotion of all that is good, true and beautiful in life.