Thomas Aquinas and the voluntarists

Medieval Philosophy and Theology

Volumn 6, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 167-182

  Hause, Jeffrey ^a  

^a St John's Seminary College

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EID: 60949825393     PISSN: 10570608     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/medievalpt1997628     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. One of the many issues commentators disagree about is whether Aquinas signiticantly changes his account of human action over the course of his career. See, for instance, Odon Lottin, Psychologie et Morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, 6 vols. (Gemblouz: Duculot, 1942-1960)
2. Rosemary Zita Laurer questions Lottin's findings in "St. Thomas's Theory of Intellectual Causality in Election," New Scholasticism 28 (1954): 299-319
3. and Lottin replies in "La preuve de la liberié humaine chez saint Thomas d'Aquin," Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 23 (1956): 323-30
4. George P. Klubertanz, S.J. defends Lottin in "The Root of Freedom in St. Thomas' Later Works," Gregorianum 42 (1961): 701-24. Two dissertations take up the issues: A. B. Wingell, "The Relationship of Intellect and Will in the Human Act According to St. Thomas Aquinas" (University of Toronto Ph.D. diss., 1966)
5. and David M. Gallagher, "Thomas Aquinas on the Causes of Human Choice" (Catholic University of America Ph.D. diss., 1988), who argues that Aquinas did not change his views substantially. I will, therefore, limit my investigation to a group of works which, scholars agree, present substantially the same account of human action and the will's contribution to it: De malo (DM), De virtutibus in communi (DVC), Sententia super Peri hermeneias (IPH), and the IIa Pars of the Summa theologiae (ST). These late works contain Aquinas's fullest, most mature presentation of action theory. Scholars who conclude that Aquinas did change his action theory over time tend to find that these later works offer a more voluntarist, or more explicitly voluntarist, action theory. If I can show that Aquinas does not propound a voluntarist account in these later works, then I will have done most of the work needed to show that Aquinas never propounded a voluntarist action theory
6. Alan Donagan, Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987)
7. T. H. Irwin, "The Scope of Deliberation: A Conflict in Aquinas," in Review of Metaphysics 44 (1990): 21-42
8. Daniel Westberg, Right Practical Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Westberg, using the words "voluntarism" and "intellectualism" in the broad sense, sensibly claims Aquinas is neither a voluntarist nor an intellectualist. However, he clearly takes Aquinas to be an intellectualist in the narrow sense of "intellectualism."
9. David Gallagher, "Free Choice and Free Judgment in Thomas Aquinas," in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophic 76 (1994): 247-77
10. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, "Absolute Simplicity," in Faith and Philosophy 2 (1985): 353-82
11. John Finnis, "Object and Intention in Moral Judgments according to Aquinas," in The Thomist 55 1991: 1-27
12. Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995)
13. Gallagher, "Free Choice," p. 275
14. In conversation, Paul Hoffman made this proposal
15. Kent, Virtues, p. 120
16. Stump and Kretzmann, "Free Choice," p. 362
17. Finnis, "Object and Intention." Other proponents include Stump and Kretzmann ("Absolute Simplicity") and David Gallagher ("Free Choice")
18. Finnis, "Object and Intention," p. 7
19. For an explanation of this odd claim, see Jeffrey Hause, "Thomas Aquinas on the Will and Moral Responsibility" (Cornell University Ph.D. diss. 1995), pp. 90-113