Scott MacDonald

Aquinas argues that practical reasoning requires foundations: first practical principles (ultimate ends) grasped by us per se from which deliberation proceeds. Contrary to the thesis of an important paper of Terence Irwin's, I deny that Aquinas advances two inconsistent conceptions of the scope of deliberation and, correspondingly, two inconsistent accounts of the content of the first practical principles presupposed by deliberation. On my account, Aquinas consistently takes first practical principles to be highly abstract, general, or formal ends, ends subject to specification and determination by a process of reasoning. Aquinas therefore gives deliberation wide scope, allowing (indeed, requiring) it not only to settle for us the things that are for the sake of our ends but also to engage in determining in important respects what our ends are. Accordingly, I conclude that Aquinas's foundations in ethics are “thin.” Our natural grasp of first practical principles gives us very little in the way substantive ethical principles.

The purpose of the article is to offer a detailed exegetical analysis of the argument in chapter four of "de ente et essentia" in which aquinas argues for a distinction between "esse" and essence and to develop an interpretation of it on the basis of the analysis. I argue that the reconstructed argument shows that aquinas argues for a real distinction and that he establishes it earlier in the argument than some commentators have thought. I criticize a rival interpretation of the argument defended recently by joseph owens.