Aquinas

The ethics of Aristotle and of Thomas Aquinas are teleological, eudemonistic, and realist. In a Thomistic perspective, the concept “nature” is a means to establish moral goods or ends on the basis of human experience itself, to give goods a morally compelling character by presenting them to choice as a “law”. Aquinas lays out the order of inclinations by proceeding from those shared by all creatures, to those shared by animals, and finally to those which are distinctively human. For Aquinas, the ultimate purposes of human life reflect the will and intentions of God, in whose image humanity is created. The recent revival of “virtue ethics” highlights the historicity of human agency, and the dependence of moral goodness on communities of practi...