Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Aquinas’s Philosophical Commentary on the “Ethics”: A Historical Perspective by James C. Doig

2002; Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception; Volume: 66; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tho.2002.0033

2473-3725

Tobias Hoffmann,

Medieval Philosophy and Theology

BOOK REVIEWS 485 Aquinas's Philosophical Commentary on the "Ethics": A Historical Perspective. By JAMES C. DOIG. The New Synthese Historical Library 50. Dordrecht: KluwerAcademicPublishers, 2001. Pp. xvii+311p. $105.00 (doth). ISBN 0-7923-6954-8. Did Aquinas ever work out a moral philosophy, or does he only conceive of a theological ethics, an ethics that considers man as ordered to a supernatural end? James Doig offers an important contribution to this ongoing debate by arguing that Aquinas's Commentary on the Ethics is a philosophical, not a theological,commentary. Its principal purposes, he claims, were to discover the intentioAristotelis and thus to correct earlier interpretations ofthe Nicomachean Ethics, and to present Aristotle's response to the question of human happiness (xi-xvii). On this basis, Doig proposes that the Commentary is the principal text for Aquinas's moral philosophy (274). Two main counter positions must be addressed: first, that Aristotle's Commentary was only a preparatory work for the Secunda Secundae and therefore lacks any intrinsic philosophical value (Gauthier); second, that Aquinas's interpretation ofAristotle was distorted by his theological perspective Oaffa). The first two chapters document some central points in Thomas's analysis of Aristotle's text and several putative corrections of earlier interpretations of the Ethics, the most prominent of which are for him those of Albert and Averroes. According to Doig, the most important point of disagreement between Aquinas and his Latin predecessors is that for Aquinas happiness consists chiefly in contemplation, which is the actualization of wisdom, and not in an activity guided by practical reason (26-33). In opposition to Averroes, Aquinas contends that Aristotle did not hold that contemplative happiness is obtained through a connection of the human agent with the separate agent intellect (47f.). In chapter 3, Doig argues that it is consistent both with the philosophical practice of Aquinas's time and with the role philosophy plays in his other writings that he should have composed a philosophical commentary on the Ethics. Doig cites several witnesses to Aquinas's philosophical reputation, notably Masters of Arts, particularly Siger of Brabant (106f.). More importantly, he documents how Thomas uses philosophical arguments to discuss issues of theological relevance: the unicity of the intellect, the eternity of the world, the necessity of choice, and the unicity of substantial form (92-102). Yet Thomas's arguments with the other Masters of Paris on these points are intelligible even apart from his theological concerns. For instance, in De unitate intellectus he argues that the unicity of the agent intellect for all mankind contradicts philosophical principles and is contrary to the intention of Aristode (94f.). Chapter 4 examines Jaffa's claim that Aquinas's Commentary "subordinates philosophical to theological principles, and interprets the data of philosophy from the viewpoint of theology," a thesis Jaffa spells out in his Thomism and Aristotelianism (1952) in terms of six "principles of Christian ethics." Doig responds in some detail that Aquinas did not regard these principles as particularly Christian or theological; for Thomas, in Doig's judgment, they are 486 BOOK REVIEWS thoroughly rooted in the corpusAristotelicum. The principlesin question regard: (1) particular providence, (2) perfect happiness as impossible in this life, (3) necessity of personal immortality to complete the happiness intended by nature, (4) personal immortality, (5) special creation of individual souls, and (6) a divinely implanted natural habit of moral virtues (synderesis). Concerning principles (2) and (3), Doig refers to Aquinas's reading of Aristotle's discussion in Ethics 1.10, where the Stagirite asks whether someone can be considered happy while still alive, given the changing fortunes of life. Aristotle concludes that during one's lifetime, one can only be considered "blessed as men," meaning that in this life only an imperfect happiness can be had. Citing this text, Aquinas argues-as a philosopher, according to Doig-that since the desire of nature is not in vain, it follows that the desire for perfect happiness will be fulfilled after this life (Sentences Commentary, Summa contra Gentiles, and Ethics Commentary) (122-35). Doig pays particularly close attention to the sixth topic (158-92). Aquinas understood synderesis-a term that originates with St. Jerome-as the habitus of the first...