This is because in the final analysis, that which appoints (praestituit) the end to the moral virtues is, strictly speaking, a form of understanding or reason that is distinct from prudence. What I intend to show, however, is that the notion the prudent man subjects everything he does to the inclinations of his appetites (even if those appetites have been purified by the presence of grace) is not consonant with St. One might think of certain New Natural Law theorists who think that prior to choice, there is no morally significant order of goods to be pursued (because such goods are incommensurable) or of the moral motivation theorists such as Keenan who maintain that "strivings" of the will are "antecedent to questions of intention and choice." One of the reasons their theories are sometimes considered consistent with Aquinas is that he says the moral virtues, which are present in the appetitive part of the soul, provide the ends to prudence, which uses those ends as the beginning of its deliberation. There is, on this account, reasoning about means but little to no reasoning about ends themselves. Some renowned theologians have argued that the knowledge the virtuous man has regarding the ends he pursues comes about merely by inclination. Given that the moral virtues are located in the appetites (either in the rational appetite known as the will or in the sensitive appetite), the question that arises is whether the end these virtues point an individual towards are antecedently cognized in virtue of some other habit or power or whether, on the contrary, they are responsible for all virtuous action independent of the intellect. Thomas Aquinas' account of what appoints the end to the moral virtues. This dissertation, which is to be published in the summer of 2021 as "Conforming to Right Reason" by Emmaus Academic (with translated footnotes, an introduction by Steve Long, and an index, etc.), investigates St.
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