Thomas Aquinas On The Sense Appetite As Participating In Reason

For Aquinas and Aristotle, moral virtue and vice, and also continence and incontinence, concern the manner in which the sense appetites (the seat of the passions or emotions) participate in reason. This dissertation examines exactly how this participation works in Aquinas's thought. The first chapter examines how reason and the sense appetites are parts of the soul and the manner in which the soul can be spoken of as a whole composed of parts. The second chapter investigates how these parts can be ordered or disordered and the manner in which moral virtue is an ordering of the parts of the soul. The third chapter examines the metaphysical status of these parts of the soul and their habits and it also examines Aquinas's doctrine of participation. The fourth and fifth chapters examine Aquinas's doctrine of how the sense appetites participate in reason in his early texts (1251-1259) and his late texts (1268-1274) respectively and charts development in Aquinas's thought. The sixth chapter discusses Aquinas's mature thinking in light of the current scholarship on this topic. The conclusion explains exactly what kind of participation Aquinas has in mind when he says that the sense appetites participate in reason.