Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xm8r8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-14T16:16:13.550Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

37 - Action and intention

from VI - Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2014

Jean Porter
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
Robert Pasnau
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
Christina van Dyke
Affiliation:
Calvin College, Michigan
Get access

Summary

Near the beginning of the second part of the Summa theologiae, Thomas Aquinas offers a detailed analysis of human action. This analysis presupposes that the human act has an objective, complex, and morally significant structure (see 1a2ae 18.4 ad 3), and that any adequate moral theory will give a central place to this structure. Today, even those most sympathetic to Aquinas’s moral theory are likely to find these presuppositions unconvincing and the details of his analysis bewildering. Yet Aquinas was hardly alone, either in his presuppositions or in the attention he devoted to the analysis of human action. On the contrary, earlier Latin discussions contain a rich and complex debate over the moral and theological significance of the structure of the human act. The terms of this debate are complex and by no means identical to Aquinas’s own. For that very reason it is worth examining in its own right, for its substantive interest and also for its continuing relevance to contemporary moral and legal philosophy. What follows represents an attempt to trace the main lines of this debate, without claiming an exhaustive treatment. Given its continuing importance, Aquinas’s analysis will be given extended attention, but as will be apparent, that analysis is only fully comprehensible in the context of the preceding debate.

ACTION AND INTENTION IN EARLIER LATIN THOUGHT

The late eleventh and early twelfth centuries comprised a period of far-reaching institutional development and reform, both in the church and in civil society. In this context, long-standing questions about the meaning of sin or wrongdoing and the status of problematic actions took on new urgency. Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, theologians and jurists devoted considerable attention to identifying the components of the human act in virtue of which it is sinful or praiseworthy, and drawing out the practical consequences of this analysis. At the same time, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were also marked by intense attention to the inner life of the individual and to the value and appropriate expressions of inner freedom.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Southern, Richard observes, in Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995–2001) I: 145–58
Constable, Giles shows in The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) pp. 257–93
Blomme, Robert, La doctrine du péché dans les écoles théologiques de la première moitié du XIIe siècle (Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1958) pp. 3–99
Marenbon, John, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) pp. 253–5
Journal of Religious Ethics 28 (2000) 367–94
Lottin, Odon, “Le problème de la moralité intrinsèque d’Abélard à saint Thomas d’Aquin,” in Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Gembloux: Duculot, 1948–60)
Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005) pp. 274–308;
Brock, Stephen’s excellent Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998)
Pilsner, Joseph, The Specification of Human Actions in St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) pp. 70–140

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Action and intention
  • Edited by Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Edited in association with Christina van Dyke, Calvin College, Michigan
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
  • Online publication: 05 August 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107446953.045
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Action and intention
  • Edited by Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Edited in association with Christina van Dyke, Calvin College, Michigan
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
  • Online publication: 05 August 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107446953.045
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Action and intention
  • Edited by Robert Pasnau, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Edited in association with Christina van Dyke, Calvin College, Michigan
  • Book: The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
  • Online publication: 05 August 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107446953.045
Available formats
×