Creation, Human Dignity, and the Virtues of Acknowledged Dependence J OHN O’CALLAGHAN University of Portland Portland, Oregon I. Introduction WHAT ROLE do relations of dependence have in determining how we should think about ourselves and our flourishing as human beings and creatures of God? In Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, 1 Alasdair MacIntyre argues that moral and political philosophy have failed to recognize what he calls the “virtues of acknowledged dependence,” a failure that results in a distorted account of human flourishing. A more adequate conception of human flourishing requires greater reflec- tion upon human life as the embodied life of an animal, immersed in relations of interdependence among fellow members of the human species. MacIntyre suggests that his earlier work in After Virtue suffered from the inadequacies in moral and political philos- ophy that he would now criticize, as he attempted a renewal of Aristotelian conceptions of virtue without Aristotle’s “metaphysi- cal biology.”In this essay I begin with MacIntyre’s reflections in order to consider the resources in St.Thomas Aquinas for a more adequate conception of the “virtues of acknowledged depend- ence” among human beings, particularly themes in St.Thomas that Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 1, No. 1 (2003): 109–140 109 1 Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999).