3 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love,

and Self-Transcendence1
Jennifer A. Frey

Inordinate love of self is the cause of every sin.

—Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II 77.4

A longstanding complaint against the Aristotelian approach to ethics is

that it is egoist (Hills, 2010; Hurka, 2003).2 In this chapter, I will attempt
to answer this old charge in a new and hopefully illuminating way: by
looking to vice and sin. To that end, this essay explores Aquinas’s account
of sin from a philosophical perspective.3 The reason to turn to Aquinas
is that he thought much more deeply about bad human action and its
essential motivational structure and causes than Aristotle did, and his
account of it makes especially clear that egoism, understood as a theory
of rational motivation that is grounded in one’s own private self-interest,
is incompatible with both acquiring and exercising the virtues that are
constitutive of living well.
For Aquinas, sin (peccatum) just is bad human action, broadly con-
strued, but sin in the deeper and more troubling sense of moral fault
(culpa) is restricted to rational creatures, and is characterized as volun-
tary action that is against nature because it is against right reason. To
sin is to fail to hit the goal of human life, which is happiness (beatitudo).
And although we may sin through passions or ignorance, what is most
striking and strange about us is that we have the power to sin from mal-
ice (malitia), as we do when we calmly and deliberately choose to act in
ways we clearly know are sinful, without regret or compunction. We can
even act from malice habitually—with ease and pleasure—as the vicious
person does. On Aquinas’s view, vicious actions are sin par excellence, as
they spring from an entrenched disorder of the will itself, the very power
through which we are supposed to attain the good human life. Aquinas
diagnoses this disorder generally as inordinate self-love and opposes it to
the well-ordered self-love that is virtuous action.
In order to understand Aquinas’s theory of sin, we need to be clear
about the rational structure of action. A proper account of this, however,
must begin with his theory of goodness. Therefore, I begin Section I with
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 63
a discussion of Aquinas’s account of substances as self-movers ordered to
a single, unifying end and relate this to his account of evil as privative. In
Section II, I discuss sin as a failure to hit the target of human life (happi-
ness) through failure to correctly apply principles of practical reason. In
Section III, I discuss sin in the sense of moral fault, and in Section IV, I
discuss the sources of this kind of sin, with a special focus on malice and
vice. I argue that whereas virtue is a self-transcendent orientation that
leads to happiness with others, vice is a self-centered orientation that pri-
oritizes individual or private goods over common goods. In Section V, I
discuss Aquinas’s view that vice, like all sin, springs from inordinate love
of one’s own good to the detriment of the good of others and communal
life. In Section VI, I show how his theory of sin and vice can help us
understand not only why Aquinas’s moral psychology is not egoist, but
also points to the importance of recovering the notion of common good
for contemporary virtue ethics.

I. Good and Evil

Evil (malum), for Aquinas, is conceptually and ontologically derivative; it
is a lack of form, due order, or measure in some thing. In order to grasp
this formula, we have to understand something of his account of being.
First, being is not a univocal concept; there is no sense to be made of
“being as such.” That is, being does not have a single account, definition,
or nature such that we could refer to it as a genus. For Aquinas, to talk
about being is already to have restricted one’s thought to some essence,
nature, or form. Aquinas does speak of “modes of being” (modus essendi).
In his discussion of the Aristotelian categories, Aquinas notes that being
can meaningfully be spoken of in different ways: substance, quantity,
quality, place, time, relation, and so on. In this sense, being “transcends”
the ten categories but only insofar as it runs through them all.
Second, Aquinas, like Aristotle, gives priority to substance as the pri-
mary sense of being, because substances exist through themselves (they
are ens per se), whereas the other modes of being only exist in substances
(and so are ens per accidens). Third, the paradigmatic case of substances
is living things: individual substances that share a common form or
nature with other members of their kind, such as sago palms, cats, and
human beings.4
Now, a human being is a living thing, and living things are natural, per
se unities. A per se unity is an agent (agens), and acts in characteristic
ways. Aquinas appeals to a special form of explanation for agents; let us
call this natural teleological explanation:

NTE: The movement of any part of a living thing, at any moment, is

explained by reference to the movement of the whole thing towards
a single, internal, unitary end: the nature or life form.
64 Jennifer A. Frey
To act (to be an agent) is to possess an internal principle of activity,
movement, and rest. Aquinas calls this internal principle appetite or incli-
nation, but Aquinas means by this a “principle or source of movement or
change” (ST I-II 6.1), rather than a conscious desire in our contemporary
sense. This is just to say: the explanation of what a natural agent does
makes a necessary appeal to its nature or form. All vital movement makes
reference to form.
Aquinas explains vital movements in terms of capacities or powers
(potentiae) for certain ends that define and measure its activities. On this
view, each power is its own internal principle of movement and rest, but
all powers are ultimately ordered to the realization of form. A power (in
operation) is not merely a potential for a certain end but in some sense
an actualization of it (though perhaps an imperfect one, if the power is
impeded or interfered with). The concept of interference itself contains
within it the idea that there is a tendency in the thing itself—an order and
inclination to a specifiable end that can be interfered with. Thus, Aquinas
argues that powers are, like the arrow of a tensed bow aimed at a specific
target by an archer, stretched towards a determinate target, such that if
the capacity (in operation) attains its end, just like when the archer hits
his target, this will be no accident.5 Finally, the perfection of a power is its
complete actualization; a power is fully actualized when it reaches the end
towards which it is naturally ordered.
Aquinas also calls living things “self-movers,” because they “deter-
mine themselves” to their own acts (ST I 18.1). Aquinas argues that in
order to make sense of self-motion, we must have some conception of
a unified subject that directs its various capacities to a single end: the
realization of its own form of life. For a self-mover, all of its movements
are ordered as parts or phases of its other movements, and all for the
sake of realizing the subject’s nature or form. For instance, the fern just
outside my office engages in many life activities, such as growing roots,
producing spores, and developing fronds. The intelligibility of all these
movements is ultimately explained by the coming to be, maintenance, and
reproduction of its form. It is a self-mover: it moves itself through its own
principles of change for the sake of making itself actual. It has an internal
principle of movement and change.
Armed with the idea that self-movers are ordered to the realization of
their unified natures, we can see that evil is kind of natural defect—the
failure of a substance to realize itself fully. For instance, an oak can fail
to develop strong roots due to lack of rain, exposure to a virus, or an
infestation of a parasite. One could truly assert of such an oak that its
condition is bad, defective, lacking, and yes, evil, precisely because an
oak is the kind of thing that needs strong, deep roots in order to achieve
its characteristic end—the mature life of the oak.
On Aquinas’s account of substance, knowledge of what a thing is—its
being—is at the same time knowledge of its end and good. On this view,
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 65
a living thing can no more cease to strive to attain its nature than it can
cease being what it is (ST I 5.1).6
We might sum up the view this way: to have being is to have some
measure of actuality or reality. Every act implies some sort of perfection,
because every act, as an exercise of a capacity, is ordered to an end that
both defines the act and measures it. What good adds to being, then, is
the desirability of attaining the condition of complete actualization of the
potential inherent to it. It is desirable for an oak tree to attain its mature
stage of existence, or its perfection, because anything short of that is an
imperfect or incomplete condition.7 Perfection is the condition of lacking
nothing that ought to pertain to a thing according to its nature.
Evil is ontologically and epistemically derivative of good because it is
a lack or privation of some perfection that it pertains to some being to
possess in actuality. Although evil is not its own independently intelligible
reality, it still exists in things. And so, Aquinas concludes that “evil can
only be in good” (QDM, 1.2 trans. 2001).

II. Failures of Making

So far we have spoken of malum simpliciter, the most general sense of
natural defect. Sin (peccatum) and moral wrongdoing (culpa) fit within
this schema, but each is more specific in its application. Whereas malum
refers to any privation of being, peccatum specifically refers to defective
acts—acts that lack the measure or due order that belongs to a thing by
its nature. For sin “properly consists in an action done for a certain end
and lacking due order to that end” (ST I-II 21.1).
Aquinas typically restricts his use of sin to the exercise of rational pow-
ers in doing and making. Within that sphere, he distinguishes between
peccatum in actu artis and peccatum in moralibus (QDM 2.1, 2.2; ST I-II
58.3). The former is relative to making (facere), whereas the latter refers
to the totality of human life (agere).8 Thus, when a chef makes a soufflé
that falls or an NBA player misses his shot, these are sins in Aquinas’s
sense of missing the mark or failing to hit the target of one’s intended
goal.9 So sin unqualified does not imply moral fault. Nevertheless, the
structure of both sins reflects the deeper analogy between skill and virtue.
Let us begin with mistakes in skill. Missing the mark presupposes a
capacity to hit it—a skill (techne). For example, Steph Curry does not just
happen to make a three-point shot, the way that I have once or twice.
My successful three-point shot is quite unlike Curry’s, because his is the
exercise of a skill. The difference comes down to the fact that the move-
ments of Curry’s body are informed by the practical rules (the appropri-
ate means or technique) that govern making a three-point shot within a
game of basketball; in making such a shot, he knowingly deploys such
rules (Small, 2012, 2017). By contrast, I am throwing up a ball at the
basket and hoping for the best.
66 Jennifer A. Frey
Aquinas thinks of the possessor of a skill as having a kind of practical
knowledge that perfects his acts on the court. The practical knowledge
of rules that constitutes the skill is not observational knowledge. Skill is
a habit of the practical intellect and thus requires habituation, primarily
of intellect but also bodily disposition (see QDV 4.1; ST I-II 57; ST II-II
47.4). Only through such habituation can the rules come to inform the
bodily movements of the skilled player.10
Aquinas thinks of habits as stable dispositions to act in ways that are
ordered to certain ends—a kind of existential readiness to act in ways that
tend to the successful achievement of them. Since his practical knowledge
flows from a habit, Curry does not typically have to deliberate about
what to do on the court.
Although he reliably and easily makes his shots, Curry sometimes
misses. And when he does, on Aquinas’s account he sins.11 Citing Aristotle
as precedent, Aquinas argues:

There may be fault both in things that come to be by nature and in

things that come to be by human skill when nature or skill does not
attain the end for which it acts. And what acts by skill or nature
may not attain its end because it deviates from the measure or rule
of requisite activity. And the measure or rule in the things of nature
is indeed the very inclination of nature that results from a form, and
the measure or rule in artifacts is the very rule governing the skills.
Therefore we can note two things in faults, namely, departure from
the rule or measure and departure from the end.
(QDM 2.1)

Here Aquinas argues that sin is faulty action, but what is essential to it is
not simply missing the mark, since that can happen faultlessly by bad
luck or interference. A sin has to be attributable to the agent’s capacities
directly; it must be a failure to hit the mark of action explained by lack of
correct application of the rules that govern it.12
The emphasis on principles or rules reflects the fact that skills are
rational powers, or “two way” powers. Natural powers are principles
of action and change that realize a single end unless externally impeded
or interfered with (Metaphys. IX.2). A rational power, by contrast, is for
opposing ends; therefore a rational power is perfected by habits (disposi-
tions) that are acquired through decision and knowledge, that reliably
dispose a two way power to be exercised towards one end. For instance,
the skill of medicine orders medical acts towards healing rather than
harming the human body; when a doctor heals, he correctly applies the
principles that govern his craft.
Although medicine disposes a doctor to heal through application of
principles, a doctor can also expertly harm in the same manner; in the
same way, Curry can expertly miss a shot. Whether or not such mistakes
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 67
are sins in either of Aquinas’s senses depends on the ends to which the
actions are ordered. If Curry misses a shot in order to teach better tech-
niques to those who want to win basketball games, this is not a sin.
Now, let us imagine that Curry misses shots in a playoff game in order
to ensure that his team loses, all for the sake of making money since he has
placed bets against his own team. To act in such a way is to sin in the sense
of culpa. To sin in this deeper sense, to cheat and lie for personal gain, is
a failure to hit the mark not of basketball but of living well. To predicate
this sort of failure to Curry’s acts we must admit that he is held to higher
standards than those internal to the game of basketball—viz., the stan-
dards of good human conduct. It is for this reason that Aquinas argues
that skill falls short of virtue: the possession of any skill is no indication
of its proper use in the context of human life more generally. Proper use
of skill, like proper use of all the principle powers of the human person,
depends on having a good will.
This last point brings out the fact that Curry’s actions are ordered to
ends whose intelligibility go beyond those internal to the game of bas-
ketball; as we have already shown, Aquinas thinks that every human
act is ordered and measured by the natural end (happiness) that consti-
tutes a good human life in general. This means that every human act is
moral—it is either good or bad qua human act. It is good if it contributes
to happiness and bad if it detracts from it. Because Curry is a human
person ordained to this end like any other, his actions on the court can
be assessed according to this more general measure. It follows that Curry
needs more than skill to succeed; he needs virtue, which, unlike skill,
enables him to become what he essentially is—not a basketball player
but a man.13
In order to understand sin in the more familiar sense of culpa or moral
fault, we need to understand Aquinas’s account of the internal, practical
principles that define and measure human life as a whole.

III. Failures of Living

Whereas the skilled player sins qua player through the improper use of
practical reasoning within a techne, and thereby fails to produce good
works, a man fails qua man through improper use of practical reasoning
as a whole, and thereby fails to be happy or live well. To understand sin
in the sense of culpa, then, we must first understand the goal it misses.
We cannot understand the role that happiness plays in Aquinas’s theory
of human action unless we take seriously the fact that life and natural
teleological explanation is at the center of the account. The will is not only
a vital power, but more importantly, “the principle of life in man,” and
Aquinas likens sin to a disease that weakens and deforms it (ST I-II 75.2).
Now humans are alive and self-movers; therefore, we determine
ourselves to our own acts. We have already seen that the concept of
68 Jennifer A. Frey
self-movement implies a unified subject that directs itself by a natural
inclination to a single end: the coming to be and maintenance of its own
natural form. Like the unifying end of any other living thing, human hap-
piness is that which can perfect us; it describes the condition in which the
potential inherent in us by nature is fully realized.
Rational creatures are engaged in the process of determining them-
selves to act through the use of practical reason and will; in this way they
move themselves to their natural end in a far more perfect sense than
other living things—freely, in accordance with a general cognition of the
universal good. Thus, Aquinas argues that what is essential to human
acts14 is that they are voluntary, which he describes in terms of a certain
kind of knowledge. Aquinas writes:

It is essential to the voluntary act that its principle be within the

agent, together with perfect knowledge of the end. Now knowledge
of the end is twofold; perfect and imperfect. Perfect knowledge of
the end consists in not only apprehending the thing which is the end,
but also in knowing it under the aspect of the end (ratio finis) and
the means to the end. And such knowledge belongs to none but the
rational nature. But imperfect knowledge of the end consists in mere
apprehension of the end, without knowing it under the aspect of the
end, or the relationship of an act to the end. Such knowledge of the
end is exercised by irrational animals, through their senses and their
natural estimative power.
(ST I-II 6.2)

There are three important points to make about this passage. First, vol-
untary action is also a form of self-motion; the principle of voluntary
(human) action is internal to the agent, which directs it to an end—living
well—that both defines and measures it qua voluntary (human or moral)
action. The internal principle of human action is a principle of practical
knowledge.
Second, whereas the movements of plants are in no sense voluntary
because plants do not have capacities of cognition or desire, animal
motion is imperfectly voluntary. The difference between animal and
human action is a difference in the capacities (or internal principles) by
which they move themselves to their natural ends; both move by knowl-
edge and desire, but a rational animal moves by universal or general
knowledge and desire. Animals have perceptual powers and thus act in
accordance with what they perceive in the world as good or bad. Aquinas
argues that animals recognize goods for themselves and act and react
accordingly. A sheep, for instance, sees the wolf as a danger or threat and
engages in avoidance behaviors. This is no accident; a sheep has instincts
that incline it towards what is conducive to its life and to avoid what is
harmful to it.
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 69
While an animal can regulate its behavior in terms of what it can
perceive as good or bad for it, it cannot make choices in light of mean-
ingful alternatives. In order to be able to transcend its instincts, the
sheep would have to possess capacities of intellect, reasoning, and will
that would allow it to perceive and desire goods (ends) under differ-
ent intentional descriptions (and levels of description), an ability that
implies that one possesses a general conception of how to live. An ani-
mal determines itself to act in a more perfect way than plants, but it
still doesn’t act for reasons—there is no logos or account it has or could
give of what it does.
Human action is perfectly voluntary because it proceeds from “perfect
knowledge of the end.” For Aquinas, a human not only knows its ends
when it acts voluntarily, but knows them in relation to its other ends, and
further, how these ends are ordered to its conception of how his life ought
to go on the whole. A human doesn’t merely see what it is after; it sees
what it is after in relation to his general conception of how to live. This
sort of general, conceptual knowledge is necessary to act for a reason, or
voluntarily, at all. This does not mean that all voluntary action is living
well; “perfect knowledge of the end” doesn’t mean infallible knowledge
of what is truly good.
It may help to make sense of Aquinas’s conception of such practical
knowledge as the internal principle of voluntary action by seeing it in rela-
tion to contemporary work on action. Aquinas would agree with Elizabeth
Anscombe that one displays this “perfect knowledge” insofar as one can
answer a certain sense of the question “Why?” with respect to what he does
(Anscombe, 1957, p. 11). Sincere answers to the question give reasons that
justify (and in so justifying, also explain), thereby making the action prac-
tically intelligible to others. Such answers typically refer to some end or
good that is being knowingly pursued in action, and such goods are typi-
cally made intelligible either in relation to other ends or simply in light of
one’s vision of life generally (which Aquinas thinks of as the ultimate end).
This picture of reason is teleologically ordered, for “ends are the reasons
why one wills means” (QDM 2.2).
If one can answer this sort of “Why?” question, then one demon-
strates not only that one knows what one is doing in a first personal,
non-observational manner, but further, that one knows that for the sake
of which one does it, and how this practical structure connects with one’s
vision of how to live. To possess the ability to act in this manner, in which
the general life in progress is rationally manifest in the particular action, is
to act from practical reason and will—i.e., voluntarily.15 Such a person is
able (at least potentially) to relate his particular action to his conception
of the “universal good” or “happiness.” This ultimate end—happiness,
living well, or the universal good—is not itself chosen; it is the condi-
tion for the possibility of choice or having reasons to act (DV 22.5; ST I
82.1–2; ST I-II 13.3; DM 16.5).
70 Jennifer A. Frey
Of course, the determination of what happiness consists in is the nec-
essary work of practical reason and is acquired and revised over time;
Aquinas does not think this vision needs to be especially articulate (or
true) in order to act voluntarily. Although Aquinas argues that we all
necessarily want to be happy (i.e., to participate in the universal good)
just in virtue of having a will, we have to form our own general concep-
tion of what happiness or the good life consists in, and we also need to
develop the virtues that will enable us to live consistently in accordance
with this vision.16
A final point about “happiness” or “the universal good”: it is a com-
mon good. For our purposes, there are three points to make about a com-
mon good as Aquinas understands it. First, it is a good that is common
to all human beings in virtue of their nature, as happiness is the end to
which we are all ordained. Second, a common good is not competitive,
which means that no individual’s happiness should in principle detract
from anyone else’s. Third, a common good is never the sole possession
of an individual, because the enjoyment of common goods only comes
through activities in which others also participate such that the good is
enjoyed in common between them. In fact, the pleasure of the activity
is intensified when participated in common with others. For instance,
the characteristic joy of playing Beethoven’s ninth symphony well could
never be identified solely with a single French horn player; such a joy
cannot be attained alone but only with the other members of the orches-
tra playing together. And the joy of playing the instrument is intensified
when shared. Happiness, then, as a common good, must be universal,
non-competitive, and enjoyed with others.
We are now in a position to say something substantive about virtue. A
virtue is “a disposition whereby the subject is well disposed according to
the mode of its nature” (ST I-II 71.1). Virtues are habits that perfect our
natural human powers of thought, action, and emotion so that they reli-
ably act in accordance with principles of right practical reason in order
to attain and maintain happiness, our natural end. Because we are not
naturally determined to any particular action, Aquinas argues that we
need to cultivate such habits in order to live well.
Now, if happiness is a common—i.e., universal, non-competitive, and
shared—good and the virtues dispose us to possess it, then the cultivation
of virtue involves coming to see ourselves as happy together rather than
as isolated individuals—i.e., seeing ourselves as parts of a greater whole.17
Once a person recognizes himself as an integral part of a larger whole, he
understands the good of the whole as his own. The virtues, then, enable
us to see that our perfection or happiness is a self-transcendent good.
The language of self-transcendence can be traced back to develop-
ments within humanistic and positive psychology. It is often described
in terms of “going beyond” the self, or being motivated by goods whose
value cannot be grasped in terms that are self-directed. To value such
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 71
goods requires that one have a grasp of the value and meaning of one’s
life in relation to something greater than oneself. Abraham Maslow, for
instance, argues that the fully developed and mature person in good
conditions “tends to be motivated by values which transcend his self”
(Maslow, 1969, pp. 3–4). Viktor Frankl, working more within the psy-
choanalytic tradition, argues that even in the worst possible conditions,
human beings need a self-transcendent vision of life in order to have rea-
sons to try to survive. Based on his own experience in Auschwitz, Frankl
argues that the human person “always points, and is directed, to some-
thing or someone other than oneself” (Frankl, Winslade, & Kushner,
2006, p. 110). When people are no longer able to place themselves within
this larger context, human beings tend to lose the sense of meaning and
purpose in their lives, and subsequently lose the will to live.
Frankl and Maslow’s views about the importance of a self-transcendent
practical orientation have been borne out in more recent studies that
have found strong correlations between measures of self-transcendence
and lack of depression, bitterness, and anger (Christensen, Allworth, &
Dillon, 2012; Lyubomirsky, 2014). Work on generativity—acts that are
concerned with caring for future generations—also consistently score
highly in measures of overall human flourishing (McAdams, 2013).
And finally, positive psychologists have become increasingly interested
in studying self-transcendence or connections to goods that are “greater
than the self” since Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman (2004)
put transcendence on their universal list of virtues found across history
and cultures. Under transcendence, Peterson and Seligman place char-
acter strengths that allow persons to “forge connections to the larger
universe and provide meaning” (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 30).
Transcendence “can be something or someone that inspires awe, hope, or
even gratitude—anything that makes our everyday concerns seem trifling
and the self seem small” (Peterson & Seligman, 2004, p. 39).
Focus on the ways in which virtue orients us to common goods and
therefore the cultivation of a practical orientation is self-transcendent in
the sense highlighted within certain strands of psychology helps to put
Aquinas into contemporary interdisciplinary conversations without dis-
torting his own views. Aquinas would agree with Maslow and Frankl
that the human person has a natural desire to transcend itself, and he
would agree with positive psychologists that we do this by seeing our-
selves as parts of a greater whole that gives greater meaning and value to
our lives.18 For Aquinas, what explains this is our common nature: man
is a political animal. This means, among other things, that his happiness
is found in friendship with others within the context of a political life that
operates under just laws. Without this context, the development of virtue
and the attainment of happiness isn’t possible.19
Vice is contrary to virtue because “the vice of a thing seems to consist
in its not being disposed in a way befitting its nature” (ST I-II 71.1). Sin
72 Jennifer A. Frey
is opposed to virtue since sin is inordinate insofar as it takes us away
from the end towards which our wills are naturally ordered—happiness.
Whereas the virtues unify our natural powers and thereby enable us to
hit the target, vice and sin create disunity and cause us to fail. Now if
virtue is self-transcendent in that it orients us towards a common, uni-
versal, participatory good that is greater than individual benefit, then
vice is a self-centered orientation that results in our lack of free participa-
tion in this common good. For Aquinas, vice is a practical orientation
of thought, feeling, and action that focuses one on private, competitive,
or individual goods rather than more common and universal goods. The
vicious person attempts to privatize happiness—to cut it off from its
proper context within the larger whole. This is to act against human
nature and right reason, since man is by nature a political animal, whose
happiness is participated in with others.

IV. The Causes of Sin

If to sin is to act against reason and nature, and in so doing to fail at life
on the whole, then why do we ever sin? Aquinas’s answer is Aristotelian
in form but Augustinian in spirit: the sinner acts from inordinate self-
love. In order to get clear about this formula, we must look to his account
of the primary and proximate causes of sin.
Aquinas divides sin into three categories based on their respective
proximate etiologies: sins of ignorance, sins of passion, and sins of mal-
ice. The gravest sins are those from performed from settled malice or vice.
The least voluntary and therefore least culpable sins are those caused
by ignorance. Just as ignorance of grammar is the cause of bad speech
and writing, so ignorance of the object of practical wisdom—the truly
universal good—can be the cause of bad actions.
Now this practical knowledge of how to live can be general or particu-
lar. For instance, one might possess general knowledge of how to live but
not particular knowledge of the circumstances. For example, one might
know that shooting an innocent person is wrong but not know that what
he aims at, here and now, is an innocent person. Such a person intends
to kill but does not intend to sin by killing an innocent human being;
depending on the circumstances, he may be blamelessly ignorant.
On the other hand, one might lack the general practical knowledge of
good and bad human action. Aquinas is clear that one cannot sin unless
one knows what one does under the description of sin or bad action.20
The second cause of sin is inordinate passion; we can act contrary to
our knowledge of how to live on account of the force of some intervening
passion.21 Aquinas recognizes that human passions are notoriously stub-
born, in large part because they are realized through physical changes. The
experience of fear can involve bodily perturbations—quickening of pulse,
shaking, sweating, chills, nausea—that can impede sound deliberation
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 73
and affect choice. On Aquinas’s account of akrasia, the passions distract
us from our general knowledge of the good life and lead us to do things
we would never do with our wits about us.
Consider Peter’s denial of Christ. His action is explained by his over-
whelming fear of the consequences of being truthful about his friendship.
His choice to deny Christ was not “clear-eyed”;22 he is distracted by his
fear, which makes him focus his practical attention on his safety rather
than his friendship. Peter regrets his choice as soon as his fear subsides.23
Peter acts wrongly in putting his individual safety above his friendship, but
the explanation of his doing this is his fear not his reason or a bad will.
Sinning from malice (malitia) is the gravest kind of sin, for it is the
“root of all sin” (ST I-II 19.4). There are two senses of malice in contem-
porary English. The first refers to a kind of spite and mean-spiritedness
that animates actions that intend to inflict harm or suffering on another
person. Such a definition is far too narrow; on Aquinas’s view even a
virtuous person might sin from malice on occasion, and moreover a sin
from malice needn’t imply any intent to harm another. A glutton overeats
with malice. The second sense refers to a legal category: intent to commit
an unlawful act without excuse. This is much closer to Aquinas’s notion
of malitia, or fully intentional wrongdoing—that is, wrongdoing that
cannot be explained by mitigating factors that lie outside our capacity
to choose. A malicious action is one with a particular sort of “deficient
cause”—a defect located in the will itself.
To sin from malice is to sin deliberately in the clear knowledge that
what one pursues is a sin. According to Aquinas, such a person “chooses
evil knowingly”24 and is said to “love defect itself” (QDM 3.12). Of
such a person, Aquinas writes, “not only will we say that the person wills
the good that they chiefly will, but also that they will the very deformity
that they choose to suffer lest they be deprived of the good they desire”
(QDM 3.12).
Consider a sin such as adultery. According to Aquinas’s analysis, the
adulterer’s reason for acting is the anticipated pleasures of sexual inti-
macy.25 Now the pleasure of sexual intimacy is a real and deeply attrac-
tive human good and is what the adulterer chiefly intends. However, the
adulterer also intends the deformity or defect of sin as the means to this
pleasure. Aquinas argues that such a person loves his own sensual plea-
sures to such an extent that she is willing to do what she knows is unjust
in order to attain it.
The cause of such sins of malice is a bad will, the capacity for rational
desire or choice. When a person sins in the heat of passion or in ignorance,
Aquinas says that he sins “while choosing” but not “by choice.” Peter’s
choice is made in a state of clouded judgment; for that reason, Aquinas
argues that he does not sin “by choice,” because his choice does not truly
reflect his conception of how to live (the “universal good”). By contrast,
the adulterer who sins from malice makes a deliberative decision to commit
74 Jennifer A. Frey
an injustice for the sake of satisfying his own appetites; he would make the
same choice in the heat of sexual passion or in a cool hour. Such a per-
son places his own gratification ahead of the demands of justice. In such
acts, Aquinas argues that the sinner “is moved to evil of its own accord”
(ST I-II 78.3). This is possible because the evil (adulterous intimacy) is cho-
sen as a means to a real good (sensual pleasure). So while malice is desiring
the bad—knowingly sinning—it is nevertheless in keeping with Aquinas’s
general metaphysical principle that “evil can only be in good.”
How can the will be moved to evil if it is a rational appetite for the uni-
versal good, and if all that one does is willed as contributing to this good?
Aquinas’s answer is Augustinian: a person can knowingly choose evil
(i.e., decide to sin) because of a preference for a lesser good—typically an
individual or private good, such as sensual pleasures, money, or honors,
over more common goods, such as friendship.
The worst form of malice, sin par excellence, is that which springs from
vice. Vice is a settled habit or disposition that inclines the will to acts of
sin with ease and pleasure, without regret or compunction. The vicious
person has a fixed and settled intention to sin. The cultivation of any vice
leads its possessor into a settled ignorance about what is truly good, for
when a person is disposed to want something inordinately, his capacity
for sound practical judgment is impaired. Even though vice makes us
unwise, Aquinas locates the error of vice primarily in the will rather than
the judgment. For example, a greedy man might exploit his workers and
deny them a just wage while paying himself exorbitantly, pollute and
destroy the environment, cook the books, and so on, all to keep accumu-
lating wealth for himself. Such a person knows that he is unjust; he acts
these ways because he thinks great wealth makes him a real man—that
it is a central mark of the good life. Aquinas argues such a person “sins
in ignorance” and not “because of ignorance” (QDM 2.3.9), similar to
the way that one who sins from weakness sins “while choosing” but not
“by choice.” For it is not just that the vicious person lacks some knowl-
edge, it’s that the account of this ignorance can ultimately be traced to
disordered desires that direct his attention to the pursuit of lesser goods.
Because the vicious person has a disordered will, Aquinas argues that,
“one who sins out of malice sins most seriously and most dangerously
and cannot be recalled from sin as easily as one who sins out of weak-
ness” (QDM 3.13). And since the cause of the sin is in the will, and the
will is the capacity for voluntary action, it is the most voluntary of the
sins and the least excusable.

V. Sin, Self-Love, and Self-Transcendence

We have seen that contrary to the characterization of his views in the con-
temporary literature, Aquinas does have a theory of willful wrongdoing.
But one might still protest that insofar as Aquinas argues that a rational
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 75
creature pursues evil sub specie boni, even the worst sinner is nothing
more than a well-intentioned idiot who strives to be good and fails. As
David Velleman (1992) has famously complained against this tradition,
it looks as though it rules out the idea of a truly satanic agent—one who
wants evil simpliciter. If we think of Satan as someone who at bottom
really seeks the good, Velleman argues, we drain all the terror and awe
out of him; we turn him, in short, into “a very sappy Satan” (p. 19).
Although we have already seen that the vicious man pursues his own
happiness by knowingly committing evil, and therefore is hardly well-
intentioned, it is still useful to take up Velleman’s challenge to give an
account of a satanic agent who does not fall prey to his objection. Unlike
Aristotle, Aquinas does have an account of Satanic agency—he provides
a moral psychological account of the fall of Satan at the moment of his
creation.
Satan is a rational creature—an angel—but in many respects he is prac-
tically alien from humans insofar as he possesses a higher form of intel-
ligence and is not embodied. Thus, Satan is not subject to ignorance or
error, he is not subject to the corruptions characteristic of original sin,
and he experiences no passions or bodily needs. Further, it is part of
Aquinas’s theory of angels that all have attained their full natural perfec-
tion from the first moment of their creation (making them very different
from ourselves). But angels, like all rational creatures, also have a super-
natural perfection, which consists in their participation in God’s eternal
life. This is clearly a higher good than their merely natural perfection.
Satan rejects this higher good because he wants to attain it without hav-
ing to rely on God’s grace. Satan prefers “pleasure in his own power” or
his own glory rather than his being glorified by God (QDM 16.3).
Satan’s pride and inordinate self-love causes him to lose sight of the
value of a higher, more universal and common good. Aquinas argues
that the devil “turned himself toward his own good without regard for
the rule of the divine will” (ST I 63.1).26 So while Satan’s choice does
involve an intellectual error—a failure to appreciate at the moment of
choice that eternal communion or friendship with God is a higher perfec-
tion and fulfillment—the ultimate source of that failure is his inordinate
desire for and pleasure in his sense of his own individual excellence.27 In
fact, Aquinas is clear that, given Satan’s nature as the highest angel, it
could have no other source. What the discussion of Satan’s fall shows, I
think, is that a rational creature is able to choose its own individual good
over higher goods. Free will contains the potential to sin, and necessarily
so. This seems to be built into Aquinas’s understanding of it as free—as
the exercise of a two way, or rational, power.
Aquinas’s account of the fall of the devil brings his formula of sin as
inordinate self-love into stark relief. Aquinas follows Aristotle in think-
ing there is a hierarchy of goods, and that the more universal and com-
mon a good is, the greater value it has (Aristotle trans. 1984 EN 1.2
76 Jennifer A. Frey
1094b5–10). He follows Augustine in understanding all sin as ultimately
rooted in inordinate desire for more individual or selfish goods, and
explains the possibility of such disordered preferences in the fact that one
can love oneself in the sense of one’s own private good inordinately by
wishing goods only, or primarily, for oneself (ST I-II 77.4).28
Aquinas calls this problematic self-love a general covetousness (cupi-
ditas), which is the inordinate desire to possess goods for oneself, and
he also calls it pride (superbia), which is the inordinate desire for one’s
own excellence. He distinguishes the two aspects of self-love because he
thinks that self-love under the aspect of desire for personal excellence
(superbia) refers to the will for the end, or happiness, while self-love
under the aspect of desire for worldly goods (cupiditas) is the will for the
means. This is not a psychological claim; that is, it is not a claim about
a person’s self-conscious psychological aims or thoughts either during
or prior to acting. Aquinas does not think that sinners are necessarily
thinking in these specific terms while or before acting any more than he
thinks that they are self-consciously considering their own happiness or
universal good while or before acting. These are claims about the practi-
cally rational structure of human action and sin. Bearing that in mind,
Aquinas thinks that all sin is selfish in the sense that it ultimately springs
from wanting happiness in the sense of a private form of excellence, one
whose benefits redound back primarily to oneself, often at the expense
of or to the neglect of others. And the means by which such “happiness”
is achieved is by coveting goods that do redound back primarily to the
self, such as bodily pleasures, honors, luxuries, adornments, wealth, and
power.
This self-centered self-love is, as it were, the most general framework
for understanding sin as inordinate self-love. Aquinas refers to this gen-
eral pride and covetousness as the remote or “primary” causes of sin.
The more proximate causes have already been discussed, but they are all
ultimately to be understood as forms of this general kind of egoism—this
chosen preference for one’s own individual good apart from one’s partici-
pation in the common good.
Now, if sin is inordinate self-love, this presupposes that there is some-
thing that is a well-ordered self-love in which human happiness properly
consists. And Aquinas does think this. We have already seen that accord-
ing to his theory of practical reasons, our reasons come from our ends,
especially the ultimate end towards which the will naturally tends: hap-
piness or the universal good. The very structure of willing, then, implies
self-love, insofar as whatever action one chooses is chosen for the sake of
one’s own happiness. Further, if to love is to will the good for someone,
in willing one’s own happiness one acts as a friend to oneself; for friends
love one another and will the good for each other. As David Gallagher
helpfully puts the point, “Every person naturally loves himself with a
love of friendship and wants or wills for himself all the goods necessary
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 77
for this end” (Gallagher, 1999, p. 29). Aquinas is clear that this self-love
is natural, necessary, and good (ST I 60.3).
But one cannot be happy merely by being a friend to oneself, for
humans are political animals and our happiness is found in social, law
governed relations with others. By nature we are parts related to a larger
whole (ST I-II 90.2). A political animal might choose to isolate himself
for some reason, but as Alasdair MacIntyre (to my mind successfully)
argues, he could only freely choose to do so qua political animal, that is,
as a product of social and political contexts in which he learned how to
act for reasons in the first place (MacIntyre, 2001).
In friendship as Aquinas understands it, one takes the good of the
friend as an essential part of our own good, such that their happiness
becomes part of one’s own. The happiness of friends is a common good
in which both friends participate. We are not in competition with our
friends—we rejoice in their good when it is attained, and sorrow when
harms befall them. When friends seek goods for each other, they treat the
friend as “another self.” What the friend wants for himself (his happi-
ness) is no longer understood in a private way; he wants it to be some-
thing shared, in a reciprocal way, with the friend. In this way happiness
becomes a “common good” shared with the friend.
Friendship involves a self-transcendent perspective in which one sees
one’s life and one’s good in relation to a greater whole. A friend under-
stands himself as part in the sense of a participant in a union of affection
and will with others. Insofar as one takes up this practical perspective,
one doesn’t see one’s happiness as in competition with the other—rather,
one’s own happiness is now bound up in intricate ways with the happi-
ness of the friend. If my friend suffers, I suffer. If my friend flourishes, I
flourish. Friendship transcends the perspective of the individual.
Such love of friendship is not disinterested; it manifestly does involve
pleasure and a perception of some commonality or likeness between the
friends. But neither is it selfish or egoist in any sense. For it is not the case
that I will the good of the friend as a means to my own good; that would
be to use that person rather than to will the good for them. Rather, in true
friendship, I will the good of the friend for her own sake. A friend is not
an instrumental but an intrinsic good.
In such friendships, we are willing to make sacrifices and suffer for
our friend’s sake, precisely because we love them for their own sake, will
their good, and see our own good as bound up inextricably with theirs.
For example, I can give up many enjoyable ways of spending my free
time for a sick child who needs my loving care and attention. I sacrifice in
this way—for the child—so that the child will benefit, because I love the
child and the child’s good. If I do so from proper self-love, then I sacrifice
because I value our relationship more than I value my free time. Aquinas
argues that “the part does indeed love the good of the whole . . . not
however so as to refer the good of the whole to itself, but rather itself to
78 Jennifer A. Frey
the good of the whole” (ST II-II 26.3.2, emphasis added). A good parent
always ultimately prefers the goods of family life, goods that can only be
shared in common and not solely by oneself, over private goods.29
To achieve “self-transcendence” in love for others is not a form of
“selflessness” or forgetting the self; rather, it involves transcending a
more enclosed mode of selfhood for the sake of a higher, more expansive
mode of selfhood. In friendship the self is extended or enlarged through
affective identification with the friend; in genuine friendships, partici-
pants experience both the happiness and unhappiness of the other as one’s
own; thus we wish and pursue good for them in a way that is the same
as we would wish them for ourselves. As David McPherson has recently
argued, such love is neither self-regarding rather than other-regarding,
nor other-regarding rather than self-regarding, because the regard for the
self now necessarily includes regard for the other (McPherson, 2016).
Let us return now to the idea of ordinate self-love, the love that ani-
mates virtuous action. For Aquinas, this only comes about through the
acquisition and exercise of virtue. As we grow in virtue, we learn to love in
ways that transcend the self, by expanding our conception of the self such
that the good of others becomes essential to our own conception of living
well. We become willing to sacrifice the pursuit of individual or private
goods for the sake of greater, common goods. We even become willing
to make ultimate sacrifices, such as the mother who dies so that a child
might live. Such a mother takes herself to be more perfect when properly
related to something greater than her own individual good, and this will
be reflected in her choices.
To become properly ordered to the common good involves more than
having the correct vision of life; it is primarily about loving others and
willing the good for them. The life of friendship is the happy life, in
which we take joy in flourishing together, rather than flourishing our-
selves at someone else’s expense.

VI. Virtue and Egoism

For Aquinas, to sin is to fail to transcend the self. More specifically, it is
to fail to perceive one’s own life in relation to the greater whole in which
one’s own perfection lies, which leads to a failure to desire to participate
in that greater whole with others. This is a failure of self-knowledge, to
be sure—a failure to see that one is a political animal whose happiness
is shared in common with others—but the explanation of this failure
ultimately lies in the will and one’s inordinate love of one’s own private
good.
Aquinas’s vicious person—the steady and stable sinner—is what we
would today call an egoist. The egoist takes all reasons for acting as prop-
erly understood in terms of individual or private benefit. As I have argued
elsewhere (Frey, 2016), in order for an agent to be called an egoist, he
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 79
must not only be able to take account of the good of others over against
his own, but also have a steady disposition to reject the good of others
in favor of what he takes to be his own, private good. Thus, in order to
be an egoist of any kind, one must make a practical distinction—a dis-
tinction within practical thought and deliberation—between one’s own
individual sense of good and the sense of the good of others, and possess
a stable preference (rational or otherwise) for one’s own private good
in matters of choice. When we put the point this way, it is clear that
Aquinas’s virtuous exemplar is no egoist, but his wicked person, and the
sinner more generally, is.
And yet, to say that Aquinas’s theory is not egoist is not to say that
it vindicates altruism. Insofar as we tend to think of altruism as disin-
terested love of the other, Aquinas is no altruist either. Participation in
common goods is not disinterested. The virtuous person sees that her
happiness is with others. Aquinas would never suggest that one is disin-
terested in one’s own happiness or perfection. Rather, one is necessarily
(by nature) ordained to one’s happiness or perfection. This necessity is
baked into his account of self-movement and his metaphysics of sub-
stance. While some (McDonald, 1990) have suggested that this is a kind
of “meta-ethical egoism,” again, as I have argued elsewhere (Frey, 2016),
this rests on a mistaken notion of what egoism could possibly be.
In this essay, I have argued that Aristotelian virtue ethics, properly
understood, is not egoist. I have turned to Aquinas on sin to show this,
because what reflection upon sin in Aquinas makes clear is the absolute
centrality of the common good to his account of virtue and the good life.
The common good is what has gone missing from much of contemporary
work on virtue, but the idea of participation in a shared common good
is crucial to any account of virtue that takes seriously the Aristotelian
formula that man is a political animal. Sin and vice impedes the full real-
ization of our nature as political animals, because it prevents us from
entering into the forms of communion with others that is the essence of a
good and happy human life.
Aquinas teaches that the pursuit of individual goods to the detriment
of common goods fosters competition and coveting of goods that will not
truly fulfill us. On Aquinas’s view, the deeper meaning and purpose of
human life is to live with and for others. Sin, for Aquinas, is ultimately a
failure to meet the self-transcendent demands of life with others. In short,
it is a failure of love.

Notes
1 Thanks to audiences at the University of Notre Dame, Centre Culturel Irland-
ais, and the University of Stockholm for many helpful comments and sugges-
tions on an earlier draft. I would also like to thank participants in a working
group meeting and summer seminar of the Virtue, Happiness, and the Mean-
ing of Life project, grant ID #56194.
80 Jennifer A. Frey
2 The charge goes back at least as far as Sidgwick (1907).
3 It is therefore obviously incomplete as an analysis of Aquinas’s full account
of sin. But as Aquinas himself writes, “The theologian considers sin chiefly as
an offense against God; and the moral philosopher as something contrary to
reason” (ST I-II 71.6.5 trans. 2008). I will, qua moral philosopher, limit my
attention to how sin is an offense against human reason. I will leave questions
about sin as an offense against God to the theologians.
4 It can be hard to keep track of the different terminology here—substance,
essence, nature, and form—but it may be helpful to note that Aquinas often
uses these terms interchangeably. Every substance is a nature, and essence is
by another name, called nature. For the purposes of this essay, I will tend to
prefer talk of nature, since Aquinas seems to associate nature with essences
“according as it has an order toward the proper operation of the thing.” DE,
c.1, lines 36–49 (trans. 1968). For further discussion of the use of natura in
Aquinas’s metaphysics, see Dewan (2001). A further reason to prefer nature
over form is that the latter is always ambiguous between natural forms and
forms of reason.
5 By comparison with an archer, Aquinas in no way means to imply that vital
powers involve psychic awareness of a goal. Psychic awareness only comes
into his picture once he discusses conscious animals and rational creatures.
6 For contemporary defenses of this kind of “natural goodness,” see Foot
(2001) and MacIntyre (1999).
7 Of course, Aquinas does not think of desirable in this sense psychologically.
He is thinking of it in terms of potential being actualized, where full and
complete actualization is the desirable condition for the thing in question.
8 Roughly this corresponds to Aristotle’s distinction between poiesis and praxis.
While much has been written about this distinction, for our purposes it is best
to understand it as marking a contrast between an action whose end is a prod-
uct that can be evaluated independently, such as a shoe, a work of art, or even
the outcome of a game or sport, and an action whose end is living well or living
a good life.
9 As Josef Pieper (2001) points out, this broader notion of sin is something that
Aquinas inherits from tradition. Pieper argues that the Greek word for sin
used in the New Testament, hamartia, originally had a more general meaning.
For instance, Homer employs this term repeatedly to describe a warrior hurl-
ing his spear and failing to hit his target. A similar use can be found in Aristo-
tle, who also uses it to refer to failures of skill and ethical failure (pp. 16–17).
10 Likewise, one also needs to see that the rules that govern the action must
be realized in the proper matter. I could never be as good as a typical NBA
player, no matter how hard I trained with experts. In addition to lack of
innate talent, these men possess a different physique from me, one far more
conducive to playing good basketball.
11 There are two levels at which we might invoke the notion of rule here. There
is the general level of the rules of the game, which gives intelligibility to any
basketball move qua move in the game of basketball (i.e., a lawful move
within the game, as defined by the rules of the game that serve as means to
the end of the game, which is winning). But at a more particular level we
may think of the rules that govern the three-point shot. Here we think of
the means necessary to attain that end, which include, among other things,
proper positioning of one’s limbs, proper grasp of the ball, proper jump tech-
nique, and so on.
12 Of course, there may simply be a failure of execution—maybe one’s hands
don’t do what one intended they would, for whatever reason. Aquinas has
 Aquinas on Sin, Self-Love, Self-Transcendence 81
almost nothing to say about that, although my guess is that it would not be
the sort of failure that most interests him, which is the failure of judgment of
means. See also QDM 1.3.
13 “In order that man may make good use of the art he has, he needs a good
will, which is perfected by moral virtue; and for this reason the Philoso-
pher says that there is a virtue of art; namely, a moral virtue, insofar as the
good use of art requires a moral virtue. For it is evident that a craftsman is
inclined by justice, which rectifies his will, to do his work faithfully” (ST I-II
57.4.2).
14 Aquinas makes a distinction between human acts proper and “acts of a man.”
Examples of the latter are stroking one’s beard or tapping one’s fingers on the
table. The principle of these acts is not reason but imagination. Although one
does them knowingly—they are self-aware of the acts—the principle of the
act is not practical judgment (ST I-II 18).
15 Anscombe allows that one might answer “no particular reason” in response
to the “Why?” question, and that this would not be a refutation of the ques-
tion. I see no reason why Aquinas cannot say the same for acts that are “indif-
ferent” in their type, such as counting the number of azalea blooms in the
bushes at the park. But one could not say “no reason” in response to an act
of killing without raising suspicion and alarm. For Aquinas’s discussion of
indifferent act types, see ST I-II 18.8.
16 Aquinas would agree with Gareth Evans (Evans, 1982, p. 104) that concepts
are inherently general such that a potentially endless series of different objects
can be brought under them. Evans calls this the Generality Constraint. For
evidence that Aquinas holds a similar position, see his discussion of intellec-
tual operations in ST I 75.5.
17 For “a man’s will is not right in willing a particular good, unless he refers it
to the common good” (ST I-II 19.10).
18 For a comprehensive discussion, see Sullivan (2014).
19 Part of the explanation of this is that virtue requires training and reinforce-
ment. It also helps to remember that for this tradition the extended family
was the basic political unit.
20 This does not mean that one acts with the thought, “I am sinning.” It sim-
ply means that if you asked them if it was in some sense bad or wrong,
they would acknowledge it, even if only in a qualified way. A complication
here is when one’s ignorance is a result of negligence. In such cases, there
must be some admission or recognition that one “could have and should have
known.” Such cases are obviously very difficult to adjudicate.
21 In fact, he uses these terms interchangeably. For excellent discussion, see Kent
(2007) and Kent and Dressel (2015).
22 The notion of clear-eyed akrasia has no conceptual foothold in Aquinas’s
system any more than it does in Aristotle’s.
23 In the Gospel according to Matthew, we read that Peter immediately “went
out and began to weep bitterly” (Matt 26:75 New American Bible).
24 Aquinas’s definition: “A sin committed through certain malice is one that is
done through the choice of evil” [peccatum ex certa malitia dicitur esse quod
est ex electione mali] (ST I-II 78.1).
25 Some might protest that they have committed adultery primarily for love,
not sexual pleasure. To this the only response is to point out that there are
innumerable ways to express and feel love for another person; what makes
adulterous love unique has to involve desire for sexual intimacy with a person
who is the spouse of another, and that particular form of intimacy makes no
sense outside the context of distinctively sexual pleasures.
82 Jennifer A. Frey
26 Aquinas gives a structurally similar analysis of the fall of Adam (ST II-II 19.7).
27 For an excellent discussion of the implications of this view for our under-
standing of the inter-relations between will and practical judgments, see Hoff-
man (2007).
28 In other places (ST II-II 25.7), Aquinas draws the contrast between material
goods of the outward man and spiritual goods of the inner man, rather than
private vs. common goods. This is the same contrast of lesser and greater,
now thrown into a theological register, given that his topic is caritas.
29 This doesn’t mean that parents don’t ever value private goods. Of course, they
do and must! It is just to say that ultimately, they value the good of the fam-
ily more, and they are willing to subordinate their needs to that of the family
when it is demanded of them.

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