Lesson 8 Ethics

Lesson 8:
Virtue Ethics
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
• Saint Thomas Aquinas was a Catholic Priest in the Dominican Order

and one of the most important Medieval philosophers and
theologians.
• He was immensely influenced by scholasticism and Aristotle and
known for his synthesis of the two aforementioned traditions.
• Although he wrote many works of philosophy and theology
throughout his life, his two monumental works are Summa Theologica
and Summa Contra Gentiles. But his most influential work is the
Summa Theologica that extensively discusses man which consists of
three parts; God , Ethics and Christ
IN THOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY
• Man is substantially body and soul.
• The soul is united with the human body because it is the substantial form of the
human body.
• It is the principle of action in the human body and the principle of life of the body.
• But the soul however, requires the body as the material medium for its operation
particularly perception.
• Soul has operative functions which do not need a material medium; they are the
man’s intellect and will.
• Thus at death, intellection and will remain in the soul which is immortal, simple
and incorruptible.
• Body and soul before death are essentially united because the two exist in a
correlative manner.
Works
No single work of St. Thomas can be said fully to reveal his philosophy. His works
may be classified according to their form and purpose.
The principal ones are:
• Commentary in the Sentences (a series of public lectures; 1254–56),
his earliest great work; seven quaestiones disputatae (public debates; 1256–
72);
• commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, De anima, Ethics,
part of the Deinterpretatione, and the Posterior Analytics;
• treatises on many subjects, including the Summa contra Gentiles (1258–60);
and, most important of all, Summa theologica (1267–73), an incomplete but
systematic exposition of theology on philosophical principles. St. Thomas's
philosophy is avowedly Aristotelian;
• the methods and distinctions of Aristotle are adapted to revelation
According to St. Aquinas:
• Thomas Aquinas wrote "Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much
as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.“
• Thomas believed "that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine
help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act.
• For St. Thomas Aquinas, the goal of human existence is union and eternal fellowship
with God.
• For those who have experienced salvation and redemption through Christ while living
on earth, a beatific vision will be granted after death in which a person
experiences perfect, unending happiness through comprehending the very essence
of God.
• During life, an individual's will must be ordered toward right things (such as charity,
peace and holiness), which requires morality in everyday human choices, a kind of
Virtue Ethics.
• Aquinas was the first to identify the Principle of Double Effect in ethical decisions,
when an otherwise legitimate act (e.g. self-defense) may also cause an effect one
would normally be obliged to avoid (e.g. the death of another
Five positive statements about the Divine Qualities or the Nature of
God:
• God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or

matter and form.
• God is perfect, lacking nothing. o God is infinite, and not limited in the
ways that created beings are physically, intellectually, and emotionally
limited.
• God is immutable, incapable of change in respect of essence and
character.
• God is one, such that God's essence is the same as God's existence.
Thomas distinguished four kinds of law:
• Eternal law is the decree of God that governs all creation. It is, "That
Law which is the Supreme Reasoncannot be understood to be
otherwise than unchangeable and eternal.
• Natural law is the human "participation" in the eternal law and is
discovered by reason. Natural law isbased on "first principles": . . . this
is the first precept of the law, that good is to be done and promoted,
andevil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are
based on this.
• Human law (the natural law applied by governments to societies)
• Divine law (the specially revealed law in the scriptures).
Five rational proofs for the existence of God, the "quinquae viae"
(or the "Five Ways")
• The argument of the unmoved mover (ex motu): everything that is moved is moved by a
mover, therefore there is an unmoved mover from whom all motion proceeds, which is God.
• The argument of the first cause (ex causa): everything that is caused is caused by
something else, therefore there must be an uncaused cause of all caused things, which is
God.
• The argument from contingency (ex contingentia): there are contingent beings in the
universe which may either exist or not exist and, as it is impossible for everything in the
universe to be contingent (as something cannot come of nothing), so there must be a
necessary being whose existence is not contingent on any other being, which is God.
• The argument from degree (ex gradu): there are various degrees of perfection which may be
found throughout the universe, so there must be a pinnacle of perfection from which lesser
degrees of perfection derive, which is God.
• The teleological argument or argument from design (ex fine): all natural bodies in the world
(which are in themselves unintelligent) act towards ends (which is characteristic of
intelligence), therefore there must be an intelligent being that guides all natural bodies
towards their ends, which is God.
• Aquinas believed that Jesus Christ was truly divine and not simply a
human being or God merely inhabiting the body of Christ. However,
he held that Christ had a truly rational human soul as well, producing
a duality of natures that persisted even after the Incarnation, and that
these two natures existed simultaneously yet distinguishably in one
real human body.
• Thomas defined the four cardinal virtues as prudence, temperance,
justice , and fortitude. The cardinal virtues are natural and revealed in
nature, and they are binding on everyone.
• There are, however, three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.
These are somewhat supernatural and are distinct from other virtues
in their object, namely, God
Thank You!

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Lesson 8:

• Saint Thomas Aquinas was a Catholic Priest in the Dominican Order

• God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or

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