Abstract

This dissertation is an investigation into how St. Thomas Aquinas in De Malo situates Aristotle's account of moral development in the Nicomachean Ethics within an orthodox Christian account of sin, concentrating on the importance of Aristotle's concept of akrasia, called incontinence or weakness of will. ;Since Aquinas's De Malo has only recently been translated into English, an analysis of that work in particular will be of interest in understanding Thomas's treatment of the problem of evil in the good world that God created. The classic Greek idea is that one who knows the good cannot act contrary to that knowledge, so knowledge, or enlightenment is the key to the truly good life. In Book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle quotes this saying of Socrates but then questions if that is true, since common sense observation seems to show that men do, in fact, act contrary to their knowledge of the good in some cases. That leads to his investigation of akrasia, or incontinence. ;Thomas follows Aristotle in beginning with the importance of knowledge of the good, and of training and habituation in the virtues in order to live a good life. Thomas distinguishes between sins done out of ignorance, which would fit with the Socratic idea, and those done from weakness, and those done from malice. Aristotle and Plato acknowledge that there are cruel and brutish men who do evil; but they do not quite fit the definition of malice since malice involves willing that which is evil while knowing that it is evil. Furthermore, the Christian cannot ever be said to have arrived at complete goodness. He or she is always still subject to sin, or choosing the wrong course even when he knows the good and this wrong choice would be not out of ignorance or malice, but weakness. ;The concept of the will as the active and effective power in human action is essentially a Christian, not a Greek, idea. But akrasia can be interpreted as weakness of will. Thomas investigates just how weakness of will is involved when one can be said to have knowledge of the good and then act otherwise, making distinctions between knowledge of the universal good and of the particular good, and between assent and consent to an action. Akrasia is thus the concept which Aristotle's understanding of wrongdoing has in common with a Biblical account of sin; and it functions as the link and pivot for Thomas's work of harmonizing, as far as possible, the Aristotelian ethic with a Christian one