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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo' and 'Nature and Utility of Religion'

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5 ideas

20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act
1857 We don't have to will even perfect good, because we can choose not to think of it [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: The will can avoid actually willing something by avoiding thinking of it, since mental activity is subject to will. In this respect we aren't compelled to will even total happiness, which is the only perfect good.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.h to 07)
1846 The will can only want what it thinks is good [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: Will's object is what is good, and so it cannot will anything but what is good.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.06)
1847 The will must aim at happiness, but can choose the means [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: The will is compelled by its ultimate goal (to achieve happiness), but not by the means to achieve it.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.07)
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / d. Weakness of will
20850 Passions are judgements; greed thinks money is honorable, and likewise drinking and lust [Chrysippus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Chrysippus says (in his On Passions) that the passions are judgements; for greed is a supposition that money is honorable, and similarly for drunkennes and wantonness and others.
     From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.111
     A reaction: This is an endorsement of Socrates's intellectualist reading of weakness of will, as against Aristotle's assigning it to overpowering passions.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 5. Action Dilemmas / c. Omissions
20869 The highest degree of morality performs all that is appropriate, omitting nothing [Chrysippus]
     Full Idea: He who makes moral progress to the highest degree performs all the appropriate actions in all circumstances, and omits none.
     From: Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]), quoted by Sophocles - Sophocles' Electra 4.39.22
     A reaction: Hence concerns about omission as well as commission in the practice of ethics can be seen in the light of character and virtue. The world is fully of nice people who act well, but don't do so well on omissions. Car drivers, for example.