The Non-Aristotelian character of Aquinas's ethics: Aquinas on the passions

Abstract

Although Thomistic philosophy has often been equaled to a Christianized Aristotelianism, Eleonore Stump weakens this common conception through the unraveling of the notions of virtue and passion within the Thomistic ethics, and comparing these with their Aristotelian counterparts.The exposition of the Thomistic theory of virtue serves as a starting point to the development of the classification of the passions that Thomas Aquinas presents. Given their different cultures, one pagan and the other Christian, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas construct two different theoretical apparatus, dependant on their own fundamental final realities: non-personal metaphysics for the former, and Trinity for the latter. In the case of Aquinas, the perfection of virtues and the passions do not only depend on rationality, but God plays a main role in this respect.