Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The purpose of this thesis is to study the account given by Thomas Aquinas of prudentia or right practical reasoning. While there is no doubt that Aristotle's ethical doctrine was the source for St.Thomas, it is commonly thought that the spirit if not the substance of Aristotelian phronesis is altered by the Christian concepts of law, obedience to God, free will and sin. ;To assess the influence of the Christian theological tradition, a short survey is made of the history of the notion of liberum arbitrium. A tendency emerges to equate free choice with 'free will', identifying the element of freedom with the will and not with the intellect. Much of the reason for this is the need to explain the psychology of sin. ;With the infusion of Aristotelian philosophy in the twelfth century, many theologians began to develop a more balanced philosophy of human action, but the voluntarist view of freedom, sin and grace was strongly defended and came to dominate, in spite of Thomas' profound explanation. ;A new account is given of the stages of the process of human action, reducing the steps from twelve to four. The basis for this is to combine cognition and volition in each stage, so that Thomas can be seen to have given more precise names to a basically Aristotelian account, although Thomas' stage of execution is a genuine contribution adding more possibilities for an explanation of akrasia. ;The heart of practical reasoning is the process of decision, and this thesis looks at all of Thomas' examples of the 'practical syllogism' to show the development of his views from his early works to the Summa Theologiae. ;Having shown how the intellect and will are closely related in each stage of practical reasoning, prudence emerges clearly as the right disposition of the intellect for deliberating, deciding and executing action. A firm basis for a new view of freedom, law and the possibilities for error is provided by Aquinas' psychology of action.