The Multifarious Moral Object of Thomas Aquinas

The Thomist 67 (2003): 95-118 THE MULTIFARIOUS MORAL OBJECT OF THOMAS AQUINAS KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J. Pontifical Gregorian University RDme, Italy CONTEMPORARYETHICS tends to simplify the moral universe by recognizing relatively few factors as determinants of morality. A person is virtuous if he is respectful of others, reliable, industrious, tolerant of differences. Or he is immoral if he acts uncharitably, lacks compassion, or is disrespectful of the rights of others. Even if, for instance, a violation of the rights of another is brought about by means of particular type of action-by, for instance, failing to respect a contract previously agreed to-the determining factor is not the lack of correspondence between what is done and what was promised but rather the attitude that leads to acts of that type, which attitude could just as well be understood as a lack of compassion or of fellow-feeling. The moral universe that Thomas Aquinas depicts in his ethical writings is a much more complicated affair.1 Of course, the more general virtues are important in his theory: faith, hope, and 1 See Thomas's De Malo, q. 2, a. 9, where he argues against the Stoics who saw all sins as one: going against reason. He argues that such an approach finishes in a sort of legalism. Since there are no real distinctions among sins, sin comes to be associated with crossing lines: that is, the various boundaries between reason and unreason. "And they say similarly that, given that someone in erring goes beyond rightness of reason, it makes no difference in what manner and for what reason he does this: as if to err were nothing other than to cross certain preset lines" ("Et similiter dicebant, quod non refert dummodo aliquis peccando rectitudinem rationis praetereat, qualitercumque vel ex quacumque causa hoc faciat, ac si peccare nihil esset aliud quam quasdam positas lineas transire"). 95 96 KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J. charity; prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. But in addition to these, he recognizes a number of other, subsidiary virtues: the various types of justice (distributive, commutative, general, and particular), religio, and epieikeia, for instance. If we turn to vices (while bearing in mind that the structure of vice mirrors that of virtue), the picture becomes more interesting still. There we find gluttony, derision, back-biting, simony, ingratitude, presumption, pusillanimity, cruelty, etc. But even this does not fully capture the difference between the Thomistic moral universe and that of contemporary ethics. It is not as if Thomas were more willing than we typically are to divide up the various types of virtue. Rather, in good Aristotelian fashion, he starts from the wide variety of acts regarded as moral or immoral in the world in which he lives, and then seeks to understand them by analyzing their characteristics and by classifying them according to type. One way to gain an appreciation of all this is to study Thomas's understanding of the object of the moral act, since the object is the place where our actions hook onto the moral universe-and hook on to it, indeed, at discrete, well-defined points. I propose, therefore, in this essay to examine fairly closely the corpus of Summa Theologiae I-II, question 18, article 2, in which Thomas confronts the question whether an act of man has its goodness or badness from its object. This passage will serve as springboard for the consideration of other related passages both in Thomas and in other authors, especially Albert the Great. I Here are the first couple of sentences of STh I-II, q. 18, a. 2: I respond that, as was stated above, the good and evil of an action, as also of other things, depends upon fullness of being or the defect thereof. The first thing, however, that appears to pertain to fullness of being is that which gives a thing its species. Just as a natural thing has its species from its form, so an action has its species from its object-and so also a movement [has its species] from its terminus. MULTIFARIOUS MORAL OBJECT 97 We might very well ask, why does goodness depend on fullness of being? The basic...