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The Four Cardinal Virtues

by Marcel De Corte | Translated by Inez Fitzgerald Storck | With introductory essays by Inez & Thomas Storck

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• Product Code: tfcv
• Publication date: 3/16/2026
• Pages: 544
• Size: 5.5 x 8.5

• $26.95

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•   Description
•   About the Author
•   Endorsements

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  Marcel De Corte

  The Four Cardinal Virtues

   

  Prudence · Justice · Fortitude · Temperance

  A Thomistic Masterpiece

  A major volume recovering the four cardinal virtues as the architecture of personal sanity, social order, and Christian civilization.

  544 pages 5.5 × 8.5 Paperback & Hardback

  Translated by Inez Fitzgerald Storck · With introductory essays by Inez & Thomas Storck

   

  ✦ OVERVIEW ✦

  Insofar as the four cardinal virtues—prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance—are remembered today, it is in a distorted and partial fashion. Yet the resulting void is at the root of the evils of the “dis-society” in which we live: totalitarianism, unbridled capitalism, social alienation, consumerism, hedonism, and the unchallenged reign of technology. To return to sanity, we need prudence, the virtue directing all the others and indispensable for the determination of appropriate personal and societal actions; justice, particularly essential for the pursuit of the common good; fortitude, required for fidelity to commitments and the sacrifices these entail; and temperance, applying to all moderation in conduct, not just regarding food and drink. Without the recovery of these virtues, the collapse of what remains of our civilization cannot be prevented. The Belgian philosopher Marcel De Corte is a prophetic voice heralding the coming chaos, basing his analyses on Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. His prognosis for the future, however, does not leave us without hope.

  The need for moral realism

  For De Corte, the virtues are not decorative moral ideals. They are the habits by which man becomes capable of acting according to reality, reason, and the common good.

   

  ✠ FROM THE BOOK ✠

  “

  For Aristotle and St. Thomas, prudence is the most important characteristic in a man. It is what makes him a man in the full sense of the term.

  Prudence

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  Unity among citizens is the common good par excellence, and this unity is only possible if each renders unto others in society (ad alium in communi) what is due them.

  Justice

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  In contradistinction, fortitude no longer exists as a virtue ordered towards the good.

  Fortitude

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  The wages of sin remain ever present, and nowhere more than in the realm where pleasure reigns.

  Temperance

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  It is in this way, and not otherwise, that sound morals can continue, beyond the fleeting existence of individual morality in a society.

  Conformity to Reality

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  Thus, justice, the queen of all the virtues, will be restored.

  Justice

  Why read it?

  Because the modern crisis is not merely institutional, political, or economic. It is moral and metaphysical: a crisis in man’s capacity to see reality, judge rightly, act justly, endure nobly, and live with measure.

  Who is it for?

  Readers of Catholic philosophy, Thomistic moral theology, social thought, political philosophy, and anyone seeking a serious account of how virtue sustains civilization.

   

  ✠ INSIDE THE VOLUME ✠

  Prudence

  The directing virtue without which action becomes impulse, ideology, or calculation.

  Justice

  The virtue by which personal right and the common good are restored to their proper order.

  Fortitude

  The virtue that permits loyalty, sacrifice, endurance, and greatness of soul amid trial.

  Temperance

  The virtue that restrains excess and restores measure to the whole of conduct.

  “For centuries, since the moral insights of Plato and Aristotle, the virtues were considered as the heart of morality.”

  —Thomas Storck

   

  ✦ ABOUT MARCEL DE CORTE ✦

  Marcel De Corte was born in Belgium in 1905 and died in 1994. A philosopher and heir to the great Aristotelian tradition, he taught at the University of Liège until 1975.

  His philosophical work attends especially to the moral and social disintegration of modern man after the French and Industrial Revolutions.

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  Arouca Press · Marcel De Corte Library

   

  A monumental Thomistic treatment of the virtues that form the soul, discipline the passions, and sustain the common good.

• Marcel De Corte was born in Belgium in 1905 and died in 1994. Philosopher, heir to the great Aristotelian tradition, contemporary of Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Gabriel Marcel, and Gustave Thibon, he taught at the University of Liège until 1975. Author of more than twenty works on philosophical reflection, he is notably interested in social evolutions that stem from the French and Industrial Revolutions, principally regarding the moral and social disintegration of modern man.

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  Praise for Marcel De Corte

  Endorsements for The Four Cardinal Virtues

   

  Philosophers, jurists, and Catholic writers commend Marcel De Corte’s work as a major contribution to Thomistic realism, moral philosophy, and the recovery of Christian civilization.

  Ⅰ

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  One of the greatest contemporary Catholic philosophers, an intellectual concerned with politics and attentive to the unique reality of persons and things, humble before what is objective and thus opened to the truth.

   

  —Danilo Castellano
  Italian philosopher and author whose works include L'aristotelismo cristiano di Marcel de Corte

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  One of the greatest twentieth-century masters of the counterrevolution.

   

  —Juan Vallet de Goytisolo
  Spanish jurist and philosopher, author, among other works, of Ideología, praxis y mito de la tecnocracia

  Ⅲ

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  For centuries, since the moral insights of Plato and Aristotle, the virtues were considered as the heart of morality. It is this which Marcel De Corte, with so many lively and interesting comments on contemporary society, brings to life in this series of books.

   

  —Thomas Storck
  author, editor and translator, most recently author of Economics: An Alternative Introduction (XIII Books)

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  Marcel De Corte, of an unsurpassed intellectual mettle, professed philosophical realism which is in perfect accord with his anti-modernism.

   

  —Miguel Ayuso
  Professor of Political Science at the Comillas Pontifical University, Madrid, and author of books on social and political topics, most recently of ¿El pueblo contra el Estado?

  Realism

  Humble before the objective order of persons and things.

  Counterrevolution

  A major Catholic witness against the derangements of modernity.

  Virtue

  A recovery of the moral architecture of man and society.

  Anti-modernism

  Philosophical realism placed against the illusions of the modern world.

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  The Four Cardinal Virtues

   

  An essential commendation of Marcel De Corte’s Thomistic realism and his enduring Catholic witness to truth, virtue, and civilization.

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