UNIT 4:Introduction…
FRAMEWORKS AND
PRINCIPLES BEHIND OUR
MORAL DISPOSITION
Lecturer: Pastor B. Mendez I
Subject Professor
Contextualization of the Topics…
Since we are living in the society and we have the duty to take care all things living
and non-living beings, it is also dignified if we first know how to put things in their proper
places. Our action affects other living beings living with us in the society. By a simple rush
and unexamined decisions will put the society’s stability shaken and will bring up chaos.
In this unit we will discover and unveil the hidden mystery of the society where we
are now. In this time of pandemic we have seen in the news and other social media about
our leaders’ decision in dealing with the current pandemic. And as a citizen we are also
bound to follow those decisions. But how do we follow those decisions? Did we understand
them? Or did we just follow because we are afraid to be punished?
Lastly, as a citizen of this country we must not only accept immediately things being
implemented but we should also learn how to ask why and what. Because sometimes or
oftentimes we are being blinded by our mere loyalty to our leaders. In the previous unit (unit
3) we have seen already different theories and development in our society and ourselves.
UNIT 4: Lesson 1
Aristotle and St. Thomas
Aquinas Ethics
Aristotle’s Ethics
Aristotle thought that work on virtue had a profoundly political aspect. According to Aristotle
our capacity to perceive good and bad is inextricably linked to the complexities of our sociality, and
it is hard to imagine a sound reading of Aristotle (or any other good philosopher) on topics such as
virtue and practical reason that did not involve our capacity to distinguish good from bad.
Human beings, Aristotle thought, are at home in ordered communities, and our capacity to
track practical good and bad and right and wrong (even to engage in means- end reasoning,
interestingly) are capacities properly exercised in society: it is evident that the state is a creation of
nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere
accident is without a state is either a bad man or… he is like the ‘Tribeless, lawless, heartless one,’
whom Homer denounces—the natural outcast…. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain,
and man is the only animal who has the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an
indication of pleasure and pain, and is therefore found in other animals…the power of speech is
intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and unjust. And
it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and
the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.
Continuation…
Further, according to Aristotle, individual human beings develop their understanding of good, bad, right,
and wrong by criticizing their fellows’ bad conduct in light of community standards
The polis is the natural setting for virtuous activity in Aristotle, and even though there is no question
that Aristotle sees virtuous citizens as working for the good of the polis, it is not clear how far Aristotle’s
understanding of virtue and sound practical reason locates these excellences as aimed, first and foremost, at the
good of the community rather than at the virtuous person’s own good (even if participation in ordered community
life is required if individuals are to thrive). It is one thing to hold that an individual human being’s good cannot be
understood in isolation from that individual’s participation in an ordered community. As near as I can tell, Aristotle
thought as much. It is quite another to treat the proper end of virtuous activity as the common good understood
very broadly—as extending, for example, beyond the boundaries of the polis, of political friendships, of a
community ordered by shared customs or rules, of humans who share a common language, beyond, even the
reach of norms enjoining hospitality. Notoriously, Aristotle has little to offer on the question of how individuals who
are in these respects strangers to one another are capable of doing right or wrong by each other.
In short, Aristotle’s understanding of the point or target or end of virtuous activity certainly transcends
the apparent limits of love of self far enough to encompass love of neighbor. Aristotle’s insistence on the
centrality of communities ordered by shared customs and rules shows us this much. But the circle of those who
will count as my neighbors is rather narrower than contemporary ethicists might have hoped.
St. Thomas Aquinas Ethics
Aquinas understands virtue as directed to the common good in much more expansive terms.
Aquinas takes up Aristotle’s stress on our sociality, together with the thought that human beings are the only
animals who will develop an articulate sense of good and bad (if all goes as it should go in their lives).
Aquinas also moves arm-in- arm with Aristotle in focusing on the importance of an ordered community to an
understanding of the kind of common good at issue in the exercise of virtue. For all that, Aquinas’s account
of the extent of the ordered community served by virtuous activity, and the kind of order at issue in the
community, grows beyond any Aristotelian root.
Full discussion of the sort of order at issue in Aquinas’s account of the common good (for the sake
of which we cultivate and exercise acquired virtue) requires entering into the difficult territory of Aquinas’s
undeniably theological account of natural law. Discussion of Aquinas on the character of natural law is
beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice to say that the boundaries that delimit any distinct human
community— the polis, say, or nation, or state, or club, or group of people with shared customs, or religious
group, or group of users of one or more human languages—do not circumscribe virtue’s arena on Aquinas’s
account. The kind of transcendence of personal good at issue in Aquinas’s understanding outstrips the sort
associated with the political and social dimensions of virtue in Aristotle.
Continuation…
The moral philosophy of St. Thomas (1225-1274) involves a merger of at least two apparently disparate
traditions: Aristotelian eudaimonism and Christian theology. On the one hand, Aquinas follows Aristotle in
thinking that an act is good or bad depending on whether it contributes to or deters us from our proper human
end— the telos or final goal at which all human actions aim. That telos is eudaimonia, or happiness, where
“happiness” is understood in terms of completion, perfection, or well- being. Achieving happiness, however,
requires a range of intellectual and moral virtues that enable us to understand the nature of happiness and
motivate us to seek it in a reliable and consistent way.
On the other hand, Aquinas believes that we can never achieve complete or final happiness in this life.
For him, final happiness consists in beatitude, or supernatural union with God. Such an end lies far beyond what
we through our natural human capacities can attain. For this reason, we not only need the virtues, we also need
God to transform our nature—to perfect or “deify” it—so that we might be suited to participate in divine beatitude.
Moreover, Aquinas believes that we inherited a propensity to sin from our first parent, Adam. While our nature is
not wholly corrupted by sin, it is nevertheless diminished by sin’s stain, as evidenced by the fact that our wills are
at enmity with God’s. Thus we need God’s help in order to restore the good of our nature and bring us into
conformity with his will. To this end, God imbues us with his grace which comes in the form of divinely
instantiated virtues and gifts.
Continuation…
ONE, GOOD, BEAUTIFUL
CREATION RETURN
EMANATION SALVATION
This illustration shows the process of salvation according
to St. Thomas Aquinas
because…
When God created human beings He created them GOOD and
BEAUTIFUL. But during the fall of the first created human
beings, they were stained by sin and that is why God (the
creator) sent His Son to redeem and clean the satin of sin in the
heart of human beings in order that same human beings from the
creation will return to their creator who is the source of goodness
and beauty. To receive that redemption, one must accept and do
his/her share in the plan of salvation by becoming VIRTUOUS.
Stay Safe and PRAY
Always
THANK YOU!
