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The End of Ethics: A Thomistic Investigation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Capitalizing on the diversity of ways in which the phrase “the end of ethics” can be interpreted, this article explores how, from a Thomistic perspective, the virtue of prudence might be considered the “end” of ethics. After bringing to light certain problematic aspects of the relationship between ethics and prudence, it is argued that Aquinas’ understanding of the intellectual virtues allows for a clear line to be drawn between the two. In this way, it is possible to say where ethics “ends” and prudence begins. This answer, however, seems to raise a further difficulty which, upon resolution, reveals a sense in which prudence is also the “end” of ethics when “end” is taken to mean its goal.
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- Copyright © 2013 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2013 The Dominican Council. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 2014
References
1 Aquinas, Thomas St., Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Litzinger, C. J. O.P., (Notre Dame: Dumb Ox Books, 1993)Google Scholar, prologue, n.1.
2 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, prologue, n. 1.
3 ST II-II.47.1. English translation from The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 3, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948)Google Scholar.
4 Cf. ST I-II.54.4, 55.3, 57.2 ad 3; the former two discuss the perfective nature of habits/virtues in general, while the latter addresses the specific manner in which virtues perfect the intellect.
5 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 1, lect. 11, n. 132.
6 ST I-II.57.5.
7 This is the foundation for the pivotal Thomistic distinction between actio and factio. While factio is an operation that finds its terminus in an external work, actio is an immanent operation done for its own sake. Both ethics and prudence pertain primarily to actio, although there is a highly qualified sense in which one can talk about a prudence of art (or factio). Cf. ST II-II.47.4 ad 1.
8 St. Thomas is here taking natural philosophy as a broad category, under which Physics, Mathematics, and Metaphysics all fall.
9 Cf. Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, prologue, n. 1.
10 This is the beginning of the corpus of Question V, article 1 of Aquinas's Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius. The English translation is taken from St.Aquinas, Thomas, The Method and Division of the Sciences, trans. Maurer, Armand (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1986), p. 12Google Scholar.
11 ST II-II.47.2
12 Cf. ST I-II.54.1 and 2; note also that in 54.2. ad 1 St. Thomas clarifies that it is the formal, not material, aspect of the object that specifies a habit.
13 See ST I-II.57 (all six articles) and Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 6, lect. 3, n. 1143. I have chosen to leave scientia in the Latin, as opposed to adopting the standard translation of “science” on account of the significant difference between the Aristotelian-Thomistic notion of science and the colloquial connotations that the term now possesses.
14 Cf. ST I-II.57.2.
15 For more on why this is the case, see Aquinas, Thomas St., Commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, trans. Berquist, Richard (Notre Dame: Dumb Ox Books, 2007), pp. 17–18Google Scholar, and Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 6, lect. 3, n. 1145. The former offers a logical consideration of scientia in its relation to necessary demonstrations, while the latter considers scientia as a virtue of the intellect.
16 ST II-II.47.3. See also, Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 6, lect. 3, n. 1150.
17 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 6, lect. 1, n. 1123.
18 ST II-II.47.16 ad 3.
19 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 6, lect. 6, n. 1194.
20 ST I.14.16.
21 This terminology is taken from McInerny, Ralph, Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (Wasington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1997), pp. 38–40Google Scholar.
22 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 1, lect. 11, n. 136.
23 For a more detailed account of all of the varied possibilities and degrees of speculative and practical knowledge, see Dolan, S. Edmund F.S.C., “Resolution and Composition in Speculative and Practical Discourse,” Laval Theologique et Philosophique 6 (1950), pp. 14–20Google Scholar.
24 Recall ST II-II.47.3.
25 None of the objects of the “speculative sciences,” namely, natural things, the mathematicals, and the metaphysicals, are “operable” objects, since they cannot be made by art nor accomplished in action.
26 It is only in the light of this graded understanding of speculative and practical reasoning that the question raised in II-II.47.2 makes sense. When St. Thomas asks “whether prudence belongs to the practical reason alone, or also to the speculative reason?” [emphasis added], he is asking about where prudence falls on the spectrum. His answer is that it is entirely practical.
27 ST II-II.47.3, corpus and ad 1; II-II.47.4.
28 In fact, since prudence aims at the common good, which is the highest cause in the genus of human actio, St. Thomas says that prudence is wisdom in the practical order. See ST II-II.47.2 ad 1.
29 Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 6, lect. 7, n. 1200.
30 ST II-II.47.4.
31 Cf. ST I-II.57.1 and 3.