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Peter Furlong presents the first systematic study of Thomas Aquinas’s account of moral responsibility.
Aquinas on Moral Responsibility explores how Aquinas understands what it means to be morally responsible. Rather than focusing narrowly on freedom of the will alone, Furlong reconstructs Aquinas’s view by examining the practices through which we hold each other responsible, such as praise and blame or reward and punishment. These practices, he argues, are central to understanding what it means to be morally responsible in light of one’s actions.
The book opens by clarifying Aquinas’s conception of moral responsibility itself before asking what sort of control must someone possess over their actions in order to be responsible for them. Furlong argues that Aquinas adopts a version of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, in which agents are responsible for their actions only if they could have done otherwise. He also defends an incompatibilist interpretation of Aquinas, arguing that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism.
Furlong considers, through Aquinas, the ways in which a theory of moral responsibility must take into account ignorance, our settled character, luck, and passions. The result is a unified and carefully argued interpretation of Aquinas’s enduring contributions to debates about freedom and moral responsibility.
"This is a well-written book by a serious scholar who is clearly well versed in Aquinas’s texts, the secondary literature, and debates surrounding Aquinas himself, who is also conversant with the discussion surrounding similar questions in contemporary analytic philosophy. Furlong offers novel and interesting interpretations of Aquinas’s position." —Angela McKay Knobel, author of Aquinas and the Infused Moral Virtues
Peter Furlong is a professor of philosophy at Valencia College. He is the author of The Challenges of Divine Determinism.
Acknowledgements
Citation Method and Latin Texts
Introduction
Abbreviations
1. Moral Responsibility, Praise, and Blame
2. Desert for Punishment and Reward
3. Mastery, Voluntary Action, and Control: Sourcehood and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities
4. The Compatibility Question
5. The Epistemic Condition on Moral Responsibility
6. Moral Responsibility and Tracing
7. Moral Responsibility and Omissions
8. Moral Responsibility and the Passions
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index