Peter Abelard (1079-1142) is widely recognized as one of the most important writers of the twelfth century, famed for his skill in logic as well as his romance with Heloise. Even among Abelard's writings, the Collationes - or Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher, and a Jew - are remarkable for their daring and intellectual imaginativeness. Written probably c.1130, the work contains the fullest exposition of many aspects of abelard's ethics, the only statement of his unusual eschatological theory, and some (...) of his most interesting ideas about faith and the relationship between theism and revealed religion -/- This is the first full critical edition of the Collationes. Based on an entirely new collation of the manuscripts, it provides a facing-page English translation, detailed notes, and an extensive historical and philosophical introduction. (shrink)

Nearly all attempts to include Aquinas among the class of divine command theorists have focused on two kinds of texts: those exhibiting Aquinas’s treatment of the apparent immoralities of the patriarchs (e.g., Abraham’s intention to kill Isaac), and those pertaining to Aquinas’s discussion of the divine will. In the present paper, I lay out a third approach unrelated to these two. I argue that Aquinas’s explicit endorsement of one ethical proposition as self-evident throughout his writings is sufficient justification to include (...) Aquinas among the class of divine command theorists. I examine Aquinas’s persistent contention that the proposition “the commands of God are to be obeyed” is a self-evident or per se nota proposition of ethical reasoning, and I then trace Aquinas’s appeals to it in the Sentences commentary, De Veritate, and Quodlibet 3. I conclude with a discussion of passages where Aquinas argues that the experience of moral necessity or obligation requires reference to divine commands. (shrink)

This essay explores the phenomenological features of the passional response to evil that Aquinas calls ‘hatred of sin’ in Summa Thelogiae II-II Q34 A3 and I-II Q23 A1, among other places. Social justice concerns and philosophical objections, however, challenge the notion that one can feel hatred toward an agent’s vice or sin without it being the agent who is hated. I argue that a careful, contextual reading of these texts shows that Aquinas cannot be read as commending ‘hate’ in any (...) form. The texts under consideration offer no comfort to those who appeal to hatred of sin or vice to legitimate sentiments or actions that can be reasonably taken to express hatred of persons. (shrink)

The following paper discusses John of St. Thomas’ study of the way in which a habit (moral or epistemic virtue or vice) is a cause of an action it prompts. I begin with contrasting the question of causality of habits with the general question of the causal relevance of dispositions (2). I argue that habits constitute a very peculiar kind of dispositions marked by the connection with the properties of being difficult and being easy, and there are some special reasons (...) to admit the irreducibility of dispositions of this kind. I argue also that there is a special sort of causal connection between a habit and an action it actually prompts. Then I present an analysis of four theses of John of St. Thomas on the causality of habits, which, I think, constitute the most mature and reliable study of the causality of habits in the scholastic tradition: (i) Habits are efficient causes of actions they prompt (3.1). (ii) Virtues do determine the very natures of actions they prompt (3.2); (iii) Virtues do not have a proper counterpart among the characteristics of actions they prompt (3.3); (iv) The formal object of causality of virtue is a masterpiece performance of an action (3.4). In my analyses of John’s arguments for these theses I make three claims: not all powers are “in state of readiness for action”; habits are powers of powers or dispositions of powers; the general concept of a strategy is the key to grasp the properties of being difficult and being easy, and habits should be analysed as a kind of strategies. (shrink)

Aquinas’s eudaimonism is normally interpreted as twofold in the sense of it dividing into the imperfect, natural happiness of Aristotle and the perfect, supernatural happiness of Augustine. I argue in this work that Aquinas is logically committed to a third type of happiness that, in light of the standard view, rendershis eudaimonism threefold. The paper begins with an overview of the standard twofold model of Aquinas’s eudaimonism; it then turns to the model’s logicalproblem whose solution requires the postulation of a (...) third type of happiness. In the second part of the paper, two clarificatory issues are addressed, several objections are considered, and in closing, I explain why Aquinas’s commitment to a third type of happiness offers the Christian wayfarer grounds for a new optimism. (shrink)

Lex naturalis, autonomia et moralitas Quomodo Thomas Aquinas nos in fundamentis doctrinae ethicae ad hoc tempus aptae inveniendis iuvare possitDissertatio haec, doctrina Thomae Aquinatis de lege naturali innitendo, quaestionem movet, quomodo conceptus autonomiae personali pro fundamento doctrinae ethicae sumi possit. Hoc ideo possibile esse videtur, quia lex naturalis, ut dictamen rationis, fines determinat, ad quos unusquisque homo in sua vita seipsum rationabiliter ordinare potest. Ex quo etiam ratio patet, cur in vita humana moralitati obsequendae opera danda est. Est enim homo (...) “animal sociale”, cuius igitur finis naturalis est (praeter alia) in societate humana vivere. Ex hoc duo principia possunt inferri: 1) nulli est nocendum; 2) ius suum cuique est distribuendum. Modus tamen applicandi harum praeceptorum, sicut et ceterorum praeceptorum legis naturalis, a persona agentis eiusque historica et sociali situatione dependet. Translatio: Lukáš NovákNatural Law, Self-Determination and Morality Thomas Aquinas and the Quest for the Foundations for an Up-To-Date EthicsStarting from Aquinas’s natural law theory, the article discusses in which way one can ground an ethical theory relying on the concept of personal autonomy. This is possible because natural law, as a law of reason, determines the ends for which every individual human being reasonably may strive. In this context, it is also possible to justify the role of morality in human life. This is due to the nature of man as a social animal whose natural ends include a life in a human community. From this one can infer the two principles, not to harm others and to attribute his right to everybody. The application of those rules, as of any other rule of natural law, depends upon the person of the agent and his historical and social situation. (shrink)

Francis of Marchia dealt at length in several different contexts with the nature of the will and willing. Here I examine just one of those discussions: the possibility for the will to go against reason's final judgment, a topic related to weakness of will and the source of sin. Marchia is clearly of a voluntaristic bent, holding that the will can indeed act against the determination of reason. After examining Marchia's argumentation for his position, I explore some of the background (...) to Marchia's view in a distinctively later medieval understanding of the human mind as a system of internal acts and dispositions, with the possibility that several of them belong to the same faculty simultaneously. This increasingly complex conceptualisation of the mind mirrors a new, more complex conceptualization of the "Self". (shrink)

Scholars discussing Aquinas’s ethics typically understand it as largely Aristotelian, though with some differences accounted for by the differences in world­view between Aristotle and Aquinas. In this paper, I argue against this view. I show that although Aquinas recognizes the Aristotelian virtues, he thinks they are not real virtues. Instead, for Aquinas, the passions—or the suitably formulated intellectual and volitional analogues to the passions—are not only the foundation of any real ethical life but also the flowering of what is best (...) in it. (shrink)