عنوان

Aquinas and Later Scholastics on Willful Wrongdoing

Number

TL8x19s71c

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Aquinas and Later Scholastics on Willful Wrongdoing

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Dressel, Ashley

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Kent, Bonnie D

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

UC Irvine

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2014

Body granting the degree

UC Irvine

Text preceding or following the note

2014

Text of Note

Aquinas holds that all people desire what they desire sub ratione boni, or, as J. David Velleman puts it, "under the guise of the good". While this thesis has had many advocates from antiquity to the present, critics often accuse its proponents of failing to account for familiar phenomena, including willful wrongdoing. The willful wrongdoer calmly and deliberately does what she knows is bad. Aquinas argues that both the guise of the good thesis, and what I call the Socratic thesis -- the notion that all wrongdoing involves ignorance -- are compatible with willful wrongdoing. Here, I assess the merits and shortcomings of Aquinas's account, and explore how later scholastic philosophers, John Capreolus, Thomas Cajetan, and Francisco Suárez, interpreted and altered it. In the first chapter, I examine Aquinas's view of vice. I show that Aquinas, unlike Aristotle, holds that vicious actions are instances of willful wrongdoing. He believes that vices distort the agent's perception of her ultimate end, leaving her capable of clear-eyed evil in the pursuit of an apparent good. In the second chapter, I consider Aquinas's account of several states, including despair. Aquinas holds that these states are both instances and sources of willful wrongdoing. His account of them and their origin suggests that, contrary to popular belief, Aquinas believes some wrongdoing originates without a prior error in reason.In the third chapter, I examine how influential fifteenth and sixteenth century thinkers John Capreolus and Thomas Cajetan interpret Aquinas's account of willful wrongdoing. I argue that while each successfully resolves several of the original account's weaknesses, each also overlooks the primary role Aquinas accords to the will in such wrongdoing. In the final chapter, I turn to the prolific early modern Spanish philosopher Francisco Suárez. Suárez, like Aquinas, adheres to both the guise of the good thesis and the Socratic thesis. I examine his understanding of the Socratic thesis in light of the distinction he draws between moral and metaphysical necessity.

Dressel, Ashley

Kent, Bonnie D

UC Irvine

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y