Posts by: GaryH
This question really is a no-brainer. It’s wrong to kill innocent people, right? Right. On a question like this, the answer isn’t surprising, so we need to pay attention to the reason why Thomas thinks it’s wrong to kill an innocent person. The basic distinction Thomas makes (and, remember, he always makes a distinction) is [...]
It shouldn’t surprise us that Thomas has written about thankfulness. There are very few topics that he did not cover. He devotes an entire question of the Summa to thankfulness. (It is part of his section on justice.) I’ll just mention a distinction—one that surprised me—that he makes in article 4 of the question on [...]
After discussing questions about killing plants, animals, and sinners by private citizens, public officials, and clerics, Thomas picks up the weighty and delicate subject of suicide. His position is that “it is altogether unlawful to kill oneself.” Thomas isn’t messing around here. He usually reserves language like “altogether unlawful” for serious purposes. And this is [...]
The question of whether a cleric can kill a sinner (criminal) is not one that occupies the thoughts of Christians today. But whenever we find such a question that occupies a past thinker it’s important to reflect on why we don’t find such questions pressing. Sometimes we don’t find the question pressing anymore because the [...]
Previously I covered what Thomas says about killing plants and animals and killing sinners. Regarding plants and animals, Thomas says it’s okay to kill them because they are for our use. Regarding sinners, Thomas says it’s okay to kill them because they have by their actions descended to the level of animals—sinners have lost their [...]
After his discussion of whether it’s a sin to kill plants or animals, Thomas discusses the question of whether it’s permissible to kill sinners. Thomas says it is not a sin to kill sinners. We’ll see that the question of killing sinners is importantly related to the question of killing animals. I don’t know about [...]
As a way of getting my blogging going, I thought I’d start a series of posts on some teachings of Thomas Aquinas. I think this will be interesting (at least to me) because Thomas covers so much material in easy-to-digest portions and because his Summa is available online. So today, let’s start—for no specific reason—with [...]
There are, at least, two general ways of thinking about moral rights and goods.One way is to think of rights as protections against others who would prevent me from satisfying my desires.What is good is what satisfies the desires I happen to have.On this view, if I have a desire to eat, then, all things [...]
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