William Matthew Diem

Although it is common in the Catholic moral tradition to hear punishment spoken of as “just” and demanded by reason, it is remarkably difficult to say why reason demands that malefactors suffer or to articulate what is rendered to whom in punishment. The present essay seeks to fill this lacuna by examining Aquinas’s treatment of punishment. After examining several themes found in his work, the paper will conclude that the conceptual key to the reasonableness of punishment is to be found in the norm that demands contrapassum and that this norm is immediately derived from the same moral insight as the Golden Rule. Thus, the paper concludes, the notion of retribution is intimately and inextricably bound up in insights that are foundational to any coherent Christian ethics.

Within the Thomistic moral tradition, the is-ought gap is regularly treated as identical to the fact-value gap, and these two dichotomies are also regularly treated as being identical to Aristotle and Aquinas’s distinction between the practical and speculative intellect. The question whether (and if so, how) practical (‘ought’) knowledge derives from speculative (‘is’) knowledge has driven some of the fiercest disputes among the schools of Thomistic natural lawyers. I intend to show that both of these identifications are wrong and the debate has been misframed. The is-ought gap is not the fact-value gap, nor does the is-ought gap correspond to Aquinas’s distinction between the speculative and practical. This opens the possibility of a resolution--within the Thomistic school--to a debate that has, heretofore, proven particularly resistant of consensus. I close by offering a tentative account of precisely how synderesis gives us our first awareness of moral law from a prior speculative understanding.

Thomas Osborne has asserted that ‘No one has developed an argument against premotion that works if the distinctions made by the Thomists are granted.' This article attempts to form just such an argument. Specifically, it argues that the Thomistic system – even with the distinctions it relies on having been granted – cannot account for human freedom, at least not in a sense sufficiently strong to sustain human guilt for sin. Further, it argues that the Thomists, by their own clear though tacit admission, acknowledge this insufficiency.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center’s commentary on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2018 responsum concerning hysterectomy fails to address the explicit reasoning that the CDF offers to justify its response. The CDF does not condone the hysterectomies in question as indirect sterilizations, justified by double effect. Rather, it defines procreation—and consequently sterilization—such that the moral categories of direct and indirect sterilization are not applicable in such cases. The CDF responsum is far more radical and consequential than the NCBC commentary acknowledges. The responsum provides Catholic ethicists with an occasion for a necessary conversation that can be had only once the reasoning of the 2018 responsum is taken seriously in its own right.

Aquinas implies that there is a single end of man, which can be known by reason from the moment of discretion and without the aid of revelation. This raises the problems: What is this end? How is it known? And how are the several natural, human goods related to this one end? The essay argues, first, that the naturally known end of man is the operation of virtue rather than God; second, that the virtue in question is, in the first place, moral rather than intellectual; third, that the sub-rational goods, though naturally desired, are ultimately valuable as instrumental means to further goods; and finally, that there is, for Aquinas, a fundamental paradox at the heart of man’s moral experience, and that the axiology developed in the essay can help us to appreciate this paradox. It will also argue, in passing, that Aquinas’s axiology bears the clear mark of Cicero’s moderate Stoicism.

Aquinas implies that there is a single end of man, which can be known by reason from the moment of discretion and without the aid of revelation. This raises the problems: What is this end? How is it known? And how are the several natural, human goods related to this one end? The essay argues, first, that the naturally known end of man is the operation of virtue rather than God; second, that the virtue in question is, in the first place, moral rather than intellectual; third, that the sub-rational goods, though naturally desired, are ultimately valuable as instrumental means to further goods; and finally, that there is, for Aquinas, a fundamental paradox at the heart of man’s moral experience, and that the axiology developed in the essay can help us to appreciate this paradox. It will also argue, in passing, that Aquinas’s axiology bears the clear mark of Cicero’s moderate Stoicism.

Anscombe argues in “Modern Moral Philosophy” that obligation and moral terms only have meaning in the context of a divine Lawgiver, whereas terms like ‘unjust’ have clear meaning without any such context and, in at least some cases, are incontrovertibly accurate descriptions. Because the context needed for moral-terms to have meaning does not generally obtain in modern moral philosophy, she argues that we should abandon the language of obligation, adopting instead the yet clear and meaningful language of injustice. She argues further that we should develop an account of human flourishing to answer the question why we need to be just. The essay contends that Aquinas has an account of obligation that requires neither a god nor an account of human flourishing, and that proceeds immediately from the common apprehension of justice Anscombe noted.

Anscombe argues in “Modern Moral Philosophy” that obligation and moral terms only have meaning in the context of a divine Lawgiver, whereas terms like ‘unjust’ have clear meaning without any such context and, in at least some cases, are incontrovertibly accurate descriptions. Because the context needed for moral-terms to have meaning does not generally obtain in modern moral philosophy, she argues that we should abandon the language of obligation, adopting instead the yet clear and meaningful language of injustice. She argues further that we should develop an account of human flourishing to answer the question why we need to be just. The essay contends that Aquinas has an account of obligation that requires neither a god nor an account of human flourishing, and that proceeds immediately from the common apprehension of justice Anscombe noted.

This essay examines the role that circumstances play in determining the morality of moral acts as presented in ST I-II, q. 18 and argues that q. 18 uses two different sets of principles that are left unreconciled in the text. The paper argues that consequently the text is not coherent but is radically divided; specifically, q. 18 holds both that a circumstance—by virtue of being a true circumstance and accident of the act—can make a good act evil but also that whenever a circumstance renders a good act evil it must cease to be a circumstance and an accident. This paper then shows that in De Malo, q. 2 Aquinas provides a distinct and heretofore unappreciated account of circumstances and that he explicitly used the unique features of this account to reconcile the propositions that were left unreconciled in q. 18.