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Aquinas and Simplicius on Dispositions – A Question in Fundamental Moral Theory, 2001
By: Boland, Vivian
Title Aquinas and Simplicius on Dispositions – A Question in Fundamental Moral Theory
Type Article
Language English
Date 2001
Journal New Blackfriars
Volume 82
Issue 968
Pages 467-478
Categories no categories
Author(s) Boland, Vivian
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
One of the areas on which Fergus Kerr has kept a wise eye and to which he has made valued contributions over many years is moral philosophy. In fact, he had the task of teaching moral theology in the early years of his career but quickly moved on. He was quite relieved to do so, he told me once, not least because he found Shakespeare more relevant to morality than the geography of the fallopian tubes. Leaving behind moral theology in that sense did not mean his leaving behind a concern with moral questions. On the contrary, he has maintained great interest in developments in fundamental moral theory and in the centrality of morality for all theology. In this, he is faithful to Aquinas who, as Leonard Boyle has argued, envisaged Summa Theologiae as a work in which the moral is central. If, as Kerr himself has been arguing recently, beatitudo is a key to the unity of the Summa, then this is further support for what Boyle argued on historical and palaeographical grounds. This is not to claim that what Aquinas had in mind was anything like what moral theology came to describe later on, when a strict distinction and even separation of dogma and moral came to prevail, especially in seminary training. Aquinas belongs to an earlier world, from which contemporary moral philosophers continue to learn, in which these later distinctions did not apply. The inherent difficulty in separating them is clear if one tries to answer the question of whether the theology of grace belongs to dogma or to moral. One of the key areas in which Aquinas continues to contribute to debates in moral philosophy is in relation to virtue-theory. Anglo-Saxon moral philosophy has contributed with distinction to the revival of interest in the notion of virtue, as mentioning the names Anscombe, Foot, and MacIntyre is enough to show. A crucial building block in Aquinas's moral theory is the notion of habitus or disposition since, for him, following Aristotle, a virtue is a kind of disposition. But this more philosophical part of his account of virtue has received little enough direct attention in recent times for reasons that may become clearer as we proceed. What I want to do in this paper is to look again at those questions in the Summa where Aquinas explains this notion of habitus or disposition. It is important for his understanding of the human being as a moral agent as well as for his account of grace, and in particular of those gifts of faith, hope, and what Christian tradition calls theological virtues. It is a text whose examination will lead us into a number of central and current questions about the nature of Aquinas's theological synthesis and about whether or not we may consider any of his work as purely philosophical, i.e., philosophical as distinct from theological. [introduction p. 467-468]

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  • PAGE 1 OF 1
Aquinas and Simplicius on Dispositions – A Question in Fundamental Moral Theory, 2001
By: Boland, Vivian
Title Aquinas and Simplicius on Dispositions – A Question in Fundamental Moral Theory
Type Article
Language English
Date 2001
Journal New Blackfriars
Volume 82
Issue 968
Pages 467-478
Categories no categories
Author(s) Boland, Vivian
Editor(s)
Translator(s) 
One of the areas on which Fergus Kerr has kept a wise eye and to which he has made valued contributions over many years is moral philosophy. In fact, he had the task of teaching moral theology in the early years of his career but quickly moved on. He was quite relieved to do so, he told me once, not least because he found Shakespeare more relevant to morality than the geography of the fallopian tubes.

Leaving behind moral theology in that sense did not mean his leaving behind a concern with moral questions. On the contrary, he has maintained great interest in developments in fundamental moral theory and in the centrality of morality for all theology. In this, he is faithful to Aquinas who, as Leonard Boyle has argued, envisaged Summa Theologiae as a work in which the moral is central. If, as Kerr himself has been arguing recently, beatitudo is a key to the unity of the Summa, then this is further support for what Boyle argued on historical and palaeographical grounds.

This is not to claim that what Aquinas had in mind was anything like what moral theology came to describe later on, when a strict distinction and even separation of dogma and moral came to prevail, especially in seminary training. Aquinas belongs to an earlier world, from which contemporary moral philosophers continue to learn, in which these later distinctions did not apply. The inherent difficulty in separating them is clear if one tries to answer the question of whether the theology of grace belongs to dogma or to moral.

One of the key areas in which Aquinas continues to contribute to debates in moral philosophy is in relation to virtue-theory. Anglo-Saxon moral philosophy has contributed with distinction to the revival of interest in the notion of virtue, as mentioning the names Anscombe, Foot, and MacIntyre is enough to show. A crucial building block in Aquinas's moral theory is the notion of habitus or disposition since, for him, following Aristotle, a virtue is a kind of disposition.

But this more philosophical part of his account of virtue has received little enough direct attention in recent times for reasons that may become clearer as we proceed. What I want to do in this paper is to look again at those questions in the Summa where Aquinas explains this notion of habitus or disposition. It is important for his understanding of the human being as a moral agent as well as for his account of grace, and in particular of those gifts of faith, hope, and what Christian tradition calls theological virtues.

It is a text whose examination will lead us into a number of central and current questions about the nature of Aquinas's theological synthesis and about whether or not we may consider any of his work as purely philosophical, i.e., philosophical as distinct from theological. [introduction p. 467-468]

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