Ethics of

Thomas
Aquinas
Aristotle + Plato+ God
- Life and Work
- Aristotle’s Metaphyics
-St. Thomas’ Metaphysics
- Thomistic Ethics
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Aquinas was dubbed “the dumb

ox” by his fellow students, for
being large and quiet. He was
apparently quiet because he was
busy thinking; he became the
Catholic church’s top theologian,
a title he still holds today,
without dispute.
Aquinas’s major work, the Summa
Theologica, is divided into 4 parts.

Prima Pars (1st Part) Existence and

Nature of God
Prima Secundae (1st Part of the 2nd
Part) Happiness, Psychology, Virtues,
Law (Human, Natural, Divine)
Secunda Secundae (2nd Part of the 2nd
Part) The virtues in detail
Tertia Pars (3rd Part) Christian
Doctrine
During the Middle Ages, many of Aristotle’s works were
lost to Western Europe, beginning in the first few
centuries AD.

Aquinas merged Aristotle with Christianity after the

recovery of his philosophy via Muslim scholars in the 12th
and 13th century.

The ‘purposiveness’ or ‘end-directedness’ of nature in

Aristotle is identified by Aquinas with God’s purposes.
 • 1. On the Ethics of Aristotle, Aquinas
introduced two notions:
• 1.1 Creation : God created the
• world out of nothing
The • 1.2. Synderesis: Do good and
Transformation • avoid evil. The first principles of morality.
of Aristotelian Synderesis is a habit.
Ethics • 2. Aquinas also fused Aristotle’s Ethics with
his Metaphysics
• 3. Aquinas’ Metaphysics is a combination of
Aristotle’s and Plato’s.
The Metaphysics of Aristotle

First Philosophy (The book was

named Metaphysics by some
chance).
Here, he disputes Plato’s claim that
the real beings are the forms or
ideas.

For Aristotle, the real beings are

the concrete individuals or
substances in this world. Non-living
(water, earth, fire & air) and Living
substances (plants, animal, man).
 • Consists of 14 books
• Book I or Alpha outlines "first philosophy", which is a knowledge
of the first principles or causes of things.
• Book II or "little alpha": The purpose of this chapter is to address
a possible objection to Aristotle’s account of how we understand
first principles and thus acquire wisdom.
• Book III or Beta lists the main problems or puzzles
(ἀπορία aporia) of philosophy
• Book IV or Gamma: Chapters 2 and 3 argue for its status as a
The First subject in its own right.
• Book V or Delta ("philosophical lexicon") is a list of definitions of

Philosophy about thirty key terms such as cause, nature, one, and many.
• Books VII-IX: Zeta, Eta, and Theta[edit]
• The Middle Books are generally considered the core of
the Metaphysics.
• Books X–XIV: Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, and Nu: On Change , on
beings in general, first principles, and God or gods. This book
includes Aristotle's famous description of the unmoved mover,
"the most divine of things observed by us", as "the thinking of
thinking".
• Books XIII and XIV, or Mu and Nu: Philosophy of mathematics, in
particular how numbers exist.
 Aristotl
e
The four CAUSES or principles of
explanation:
MATERIAL CAUSE: that out of which
something is made (raw material);
FORMAL CAUSE: that in a thing which
CAUSES OF ALL THINGS
makes it to be such a thing (this kind
of thing);
EFFICIENT CAUSE: that by which some-
thing is made, the active agent;
WHATEVER EXISTS
FINAL CAUSE: that for the sake of which
something is done, the goal or
purpose.
Substance Quality Place Position Action
Quantity Relation Time Possession Passion

Socrate is white is in is is speaking

s Athens seated

is is a it is has a is being
one friend noon toga spoken
to to
Plato
 The task of First Philosophy is to
explain the first causes and principles
of individual substance.

Primary causes:
Back to The
• 1. Matter (Hyle)
Metaphysics • 2. Form (Morphe)
of Aristotle • 3. Efficient (Aitia)
• 4. Final (Telos)

Primary Principles:

• 1. Act (ενεργεια)
• 2. Potency (dynamis)
The Four
Causes
Accidental Change: Change in the 9 accidents
Substantial Change

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

 For changes to be possible, there must be the principles of act and potency.

Act: A substance has its specific level of existence and unity

Potency: A substance is a certain matrix of possibilities to be this or that. …

to have another level of perfection.

The Principles A substance, principle of Act is its FORM and its principle of Potency is
MATTER.

of Act and
Potency Substance = Matter + Form

E.g.: Living Substances: Plants, Animals, Men. They have specific Activities
determined by their form (soul). FINAL CAUSE.

Since change is a passage from potency to act (acquisition of a new

perfection), it demands an antecedent existence of an EFFICIENT CAUSE.
Which should be in act.

Nemo dat quod non habet . A mere possibility cannot actualize itself.
 The Cosmos of Aristotle

• Aristotle views nature as a kind of organism with unconscious goals in the

process of realization.
• Each levels of being has its own goals. The lower level tends towards
the goals of that which is above it.
• Plants: reproduction
• Animals. Sensual pleasure and knowledge
• Man: moral virtues and contemplation, in imitation of Unmoved
Mover.
• As the cause of all the individual substances, the First Mover must also
be an individual substance. Since he is the ultimate cause, he must be a
pure act. He needs no other to actualize himself. He is immaterial. He
is perfect. His activity can only be that of thinking. Thinking only of
himself.
 Summing Up, in the First Philosophy

• Aristotle presents a loosely unified metaphysics of individual substances,

hierarchically ranked according to form of the substances.
• The lower level of substances approximates the specific end of the substance
above it.
• Man approximates the specific activities of the first mover: contemplation. The
First Mover is the Final End.
  Metaphysics has threefold object: beings
as beings, the first principles of beings, and
suprasensible beings, especially GOD as
cause of all beings.

 The immediate object of metaphysics is

beings as beings. However, every science must
investigate the causes of its object. In the case
of beings as beings, these causes may be the
extrinsic or intrinsic causes of each particular
being: existence and essence, form and
matter, EFFICIENT and FINAL causes.
 This conception of metaphysics was held by
all Scholastic philosophers.

St. Thomas
Aquinas
 Aristotle’s metaphysics is focused on the study of the real
requires the study their causes to explain why such
substance is such.

4 Causes –
Formal – that in a being that makes it to be such, this kind of
being;

Aristotle’s Material – that in a being out of which it is made;

Efficient – that which by its action makes a being to be;

Metaphysics Final – that for the sake of which something is made or done.

vs Aquinas’ Aquinas focused on The Cause of the Act of Being of All

substances.
Aristotle assumed that the world was eternal in its
existence. What is to be explained are changes.

Aquinas however transformed the theory of act and

potency by inquiring about the why things have
existence.
He arrives at the First Cause who is also the First Mover,
and also the Final End of all creation.
Neo-Platonic Theory of
Participation

Where many beings are found to be –

intrinsically similar in that they share some one perfection
common to all yet are diverse (dissimilar),
(1) this common perfection of similarity cannot find its adequate
sufficient reason in these many participants precisely as many and
diverse.
(2) The only adequate sufficient reason for this common sharing
must be some one unitary source from which this common
perfection derives.
(3) What all beings share in common is the act of existence itself.
Hence, all beings necessarily point back to one single ultimate
source of existence itself.
 Thomistic Synthesis:
 Aristotle’s concern with change, Aquinas transformed
FINAL CAUSE
into the question of existence: God is both efficient
and final cause of all beings.
EFFICIENT
 Relation
CAUSE between beings and Being is conceptualized
in terms of the Neo-Platonic theory of
Participation.

Aquinas existentialized both Aristotle and Plato

to show that all beings not only come from God as
their First Cause but also return to Him as to
their perfect-ion as the Final Cause.
 Aquinas’ Ethics

• Metaphysics is the basis of his Ethics

• Following Aristotle, morality consists in attaining the goal. What is the best life for
man? What should man be? Virtues.
• But they are not the purpose (end) of man. They are means towards the ultimate
final end, God, himself.
• God is not only final end.
• Following Plato, he is at also the ultimate source (cause) of all beings. Everything id s
participation and imitation of the Good.
• Man yearns for God.
 Synderesis: The first principle o Morality
which is: “Do good and avoid evil.”

Every person in any given situation,

generally is in possession of this
God is the fundamental principle.

Good man
longs for Conscience is the concrete particular
judgment by which, in a given situation,
a person knows what he ought to do.
Application of the synderesis.

Synderesis is self-evident. In same

manner as the principle of non-
contradiction.
Human nature determines God’s commands determine
what is ‘natural’ in what is ‘lawful’ in ‘Natural
‘Natural Law’. Law’.

Viewed from the human Viewed from God’s

perspective, the perspective, humans
principles of natural participate in the Eternal
law are knowable by Law, which is God’s
human nature and eternal plan— “A law is a
are structured to aid rule of action put in place
in furthering by someone who has care
individual and of the community” –Mark
communal goods. Murphy
 Aquinas’s first
• Good should be
principle of morality done, and evil
is:
avoided

Synderesis
We are by nature
inclined toward the
Good, according to • Preservation of life
Aquinas, but we
cannot pursue the • Procreation
good directly
because it is • Knowledge
abstract—we must
pursue concrete • Society
goods which we
know immediately, • Reasonable Conduct
by inclination.
Those goods are:
Aquinas, then, has a value-based ethical
theory. The rightness or wrongness of
particular actions is determined by how
those actions further or frustrate the goods.

Certain ways of acting are “intrinsically

flawed” or “unreasonable” responses to
these human goods.

Like Aristotle, Aquinas seems sure there can

be no formula provided to determine what
action is right or wrong in all particular
cases.

Prudence (practical wisdom) is required for

the most part, if not always, to determine if
a given act is intrinsically flawed or not.
 Morality is not simple a matter
of attaining the end and
fulfillment of human nature. It
is a matter of absolute
exigency.

Following Aristotle, the norm of

morality is right reason, i.e.
Morality: A fulfillment of man’s rational
nature. Following Plato, the norm
of morality is the Good itself as
demand manifested in synderesis and
conscience.

Morality is an absolute obligation.

Not merely attainment of personal
goals an fulfillment. This Aristotle
an principle turns morality into an
affair of restricted number of
fortunate people who are properly
educated and fulfilled.
 However, by retaining this Aristotelian
metaphysical framework, he found that
The Final end the Platonic Good demanded by the
rational soul is at the same time the end
of human Nature.
is the
ultimate good Morality in this sense is
incumbent upon all men, as we
all share the same human
nature.
Efficient causality and creation

• God who is the Ultimate Good is at the same

time the the First Cause as He is the Creator.
• He is the source of all being and at the same
time all beings tend towards Him.
• Morality is not merely something that we owe
to ourselves as having a rational human nature.
It is not merely a pursuit of the excellence of
the human soul.
• Morality through synderesis and conscience is
an absolute obligation in the face of that
absolute Good. Synderesis and conscience are
expressions and resonance in man of God who
creates and draws man to his love.
 Moral fault therefore is not merely a matter of
ignorance and error of judgment.

Sin. The act by whichiman as will freely chooses

a lower or lesser good instead of the Absolute
Good. Thereby degrading his own being which
in essence an orientation towards that Good.
End of Man
The moral end is not perfection of my human
nature. The moral end is the absolute Good
itself. To know God, to serve God.To love God.

Contemplation vs Beatific Vision

Murphy provides a nice account of how acts can be intrinsically
flawed or unreasonable:
Aquinas does not obviously identify some master principle that one can
use to determine whether an act is intrinsically flawed … though he
does indicate where to look -- we are to look at the features that
individuate acts, such as their objects …, their ends …, their
circumstances …, and so forth. An act might be flawed through a
mismatch of object and end -- that is, between the immediate aim of
the action and its more distant point. If one were, for example, to
regulate one's pursuit of a greater good in light of a lesser good -- if,
for example, one were to seek friendship with God for the sake of
mere bodily survival rather than vice versa -- that would count as an
unreasonable act. An act might be flawed through the circumstances:
while one is bound to profess one's belief in God, there are certain
circumstances in which it is inappropriate to do so…. An act might be
flawed merely through its intention: to direct oneself against a good --
as in murder …, and lying …, and blasphemy … -- is always to act in an
unfitting way. –Mark Murphy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-law-ethics/
Must prudence determine the right action in every situation, or are
there at least some universal general rules that are always valid or
correct?

And while Aquinas is in some ways Aristotelian, and recognizes that virtue will always
be required in order to hit the mark in a situation of choice, he rejects the view
commonly ascribed to Aristotle (for doubts that it is Aristotle's view; see Irwin 2000)
that there are no universally true general principles of right. –Mark Murphy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-law-ethics/