Thomas Aquinas

With regard to Ethics, Thomas adopted Aristotle’s ethics but transformed it by

introducing 2 fundamental notions:

a) The notion of the creator-God, the ground and source of being of man and of the
world, and
b) The notion of synderesis (natural capacity and disposition of practical reason), the
habit of the first principles of morality, specifically, that of conscience.

In effect, what Thomas did was to put together the Ethics of Aristotle and his
metaphysics, transformed it into a synthetic whole, but only after the metaphysics
itself was first complemented and deepened by the Platonic and neo-platonic
notions of Participation and human interiority.

In the hierarchy of living substances (plants, animals, man), the end of the lower level
tends toward that of the level above it.

Plant, through nutrition, growth and reproduction, has a specific end of unfolding and
perpetuation of the species. So it tends toward the specific end of animals (which
is its fulfillment through sense cognition and sense pleasure).

Animal – there if fulfillment through sense cognition and sense pleasure.

Man – the end is the higher kind of fulfillment and pleasure in the activities of moral
virtue and contemplation. It tends toward or attracted ultimately by the First
Motor, the Most perfect Being, whose perpetual activity as Final End causes the
changes and activities of all the rest.

The substances are linked with one another within each level by virtue of a common form
of nature. (The lower level of changes may be traced back to the sun as the
efficient cause.) Each specific level and category of individual substances has its
own specific end. Each level of specific end tends to approximate the specific
end above it, eventually; we can trace all specific activities to the First Motor as
the final end of all.

So Thomas arrived at a being who is the First Cause, the ultimate efficient cause. He is
the Cause of being, Creator, Ground of all things. He is also the Final end of all
creation in whom everything finds fulfillment. He is pure unlimited being, Pure
act, in contrast with the created beings which are limited participations of the act
of being.

In effect, Thomas borrows the Platonic notion of participation by which everything is a

limited imperfect participation and imitation of the absolute Good, from which
everything proceeds and to which everything returns.
On the one hand, Thomas followed the path of Aristotle in taking Metaphysics as the
study of being as being, considering being primarily as a concrete individual
substance, investigating its composition and causes, leading to the question of
ultimate cause.

On the other hand, he is also Platonist in viewing the relation between the first cause and
its effects not simply as one of causality of motion and change, but one of
causality of the act of being itself. It is a relation of participation, by which all
things are viewed as degrees of perfection and being and being and limited
participations of Pure Act.

Being therefore is being in relation to the human spirit as demanding/urgency/need for

the absolute. It is being in the light of that which is the deepest yearning of man
as will and in the light of that which man necessarily seeks. Man should strive for
perfection. But perfection is not perfection per se. It is only perfection by
participation with the perfect. Man as absolutely perfect but only insofar as he
participates in the absolutely absolute perfection of God.

Following the Aristotelian Theory of Causes, Morality consists in attaining the goal or
the final cause of human nature, which is a composition of form and matter whose
specific activity is reason.

The goal and fulfillment of reason lies in the direction of the moral and
intellectual virtues, which are the very ends of morality for Aristotle, although in
Thomas, these virtues are only means to the ultimate, final end of man, which is
God himself.

Following Neo-Platonic view, the one God is that of which everything is but a
participation and imitation, from whom all things proceed and to whom all things
return.

The moral end of man is not simply a natural end toward which man by nature tends.
Man tends toward the good – and this is made manifest to him in conscience and
synderesis.

Conscience is the concrete particular judgment by which, in a given situation, man knows
what he ought to do.

Synderesis (more general) – is the intellectual habit or disposition by which man, in any
given situation, as tending for the absolute good, is in possession of the
fundamental principles of morality.

In any experience, man possesses at least the first principles of morality – “To do good
and to avoid evil.” “Act in such a way that you become what your being demands
to be.” “Act so that you are true to your being.”

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So morality is not simply a matter of attaining the end and fulfillment of one’s nature. It
is a matter of absolute (exigency) demand of the human spirit as manifested in
conscience.

Following Aristotle, the norm of morality therefore is Right Reason, which is man’s
rational nature ordained to its final end.

Following the Neo-platonic principle, the norm of morality is the Good itself as
manifested in conscience. (Influence of Plato: soul seeking the absolute; and
participation)

So in this perspective, morality becomes a matter of absolute obligation rather than

merely an issue of attaining our natural goals or following our natural tendencies.

Morality means man as Will consenting to the innermost demand of his very being,
which is consenting to the absolute or divine will.

Moral fault is therefore not simply a matter of Ignorance and error of judgment but SIN,
the act by which man as Will freely chooses a lower lesser good instead of the
absolute Good and thereby degrades his own being, which in its essence is an
orientation and vocation to the absolute Good.

From this presence to man of what is Other/Transcendent to him (Beatific Vision) comes
true fulfillment, happiness and repose.