Treatise on Habits (part 2b)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~59,200 words · 281 passages
Cite this work
- APAThomas Aquinas. (n.d.). Treatise on Habits (part 2b). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-aquinas/treatise-on-habits-part-2b
- MLAThomas Aquinas. Treatise on Habits (part 2b). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-aquinas/treatise-on-habits-part-2b.
- ChicagoThomas Aquinas. Treatise on Habits (part 2b). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-aquinas/treatise-on-habits-part-2b.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The treatise on habits: how what we do repeatedly ends by making us what we are.
Context and history
It is the foundation of the whole ethics of virtue, and what makes it different from an ethics of rules: the point is not knowing what is right but becoming someone who does it. A note on the edition: **this is a part of the Summa theologiae**, not an independent work. The title is the English editor's, who published the treatises separately. For citation, the Summa with its question and article number.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Obj. 3: Further, man is the subject of virtue and sin, inasmuch as he is partaker of reason. Now ignorance excludes knowledge which perfects the reason. Therefore ignorance excuses from sin altogether. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. iii, 18) that "some things done through ignorance are rightly reproved." Now those things alone are rightly reproved which are sins. Therefore some things done through ignorance are sins. Therefore ignorance does not altogether excuse from sin. I answer that, Ignorance, by its very nature, renders the act which it causes involuntary. Now it has already been stated (AA. 1, 2) that ignorance is said to cause the act which the contrary knowledge would have prevented; so that this act, if knowledge were to hand, would be contrary to the will, which is the meaning of the word involuntary. If, however, the knowledge, which is removed by ignorance, would not have prevented the act, on account of the inclination of the will thereto, the lack of this knowledge does not make that man unwilling, but not willing, as stated in Ethic. iii, 1: and such like ignorance which is not the cause of the sinful act, as already stated, since it does not make the act to be involuntary, does not excuse from sin. The same applies to any ignorance that does not cause, but follows or accompanies the sinful act. On the other hand, ignorance which is the cause of the act, since it makes it to be involuntary, of its very nature excuses from sin, because voluntariness is essential to sin. But it may fail to excuse altogether from sin, and this for two reasons. First, on the part of the thing itself which is not known. For ignorance excuses from sin, in so far as something is not known to be a sin.…