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Chapter One - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

Tobias Hoffmann
Affiliation:
Catholic University of America, Washington DC
Jörn Müller
Affiliation:
Universität Würzburg, Germany
Matthias Perkams
Affiliation:
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, Germany
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Summary

The ethics of Thomas Aquinas should be counted among the most fruitful and influential approaches to moral philosophy. It is often seen as the medieval counterpart to the towering achievements of ancient and modern ethics produced by thinkers like Aristotle and Immanuel Kant. This chapter provides a rough sketch of Aristotle's influence on Aquinas's ethics. It provides views on Aquinas's commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics (EN), the Sententia libri Ethicorum. Aquinas's views on the will imply that the systematic structure of his action theory and ethics differs from Aristotle's in an important respect. Aquinas does not merely assume that the will, as a rational appetite, is a distinct power of the soul. For Aquinas, the most fundamental action of a human being is the internal act of the will, which is completed when the will accepts one course of action proposed by reason (Perkams).
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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