On Evil

ELIZABETH C. SHAW AND STAFF AQUINAS, St. Thomas. On Evil. Edited by Brian Davies, and translated by Richard Regan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. xviii + 535 pp. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $24.95; AQUINAS, St. Thomas. On Evil. Translated by John A. Oesterle and Jean T. Oesterle. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. xxii + 547 pp. Paper (2001), $28.00-The Quaestiones disputatae de malo are a neglected masterpiece. Composed around 1270, these sixteen questions show Thomas Aquinas at his very best, arguing in careful and extended detail for a wide range of theses surrounding the ethical questions that he cared so deeply about. As the title suggests, the questions are all clustered around the nature of the bad (malum), particularly moral badness. To my mind, the De malo is Aquinas's finest work in moral philosophy.

After an initial, highly difficult question (q. 1) on the metaphysics of the bad (it is, in short, a privation), Aquinas turns his attention to bad action (peccatom), and then very quickly turns to focus on the sort of bad actions most relevant to theology: voluntary bad action (culpa). At this point we are squarely in the moral domain, and so we might as well speak (as both translations do) of bad actions as sins. In question 2, Aquinas takes up questions regarding the character of sin, assessing the way in which intentions, actions, objects, and circumstances contribute to the moral status of an action, and exploring questions about omissions and neutral actions. (He covers similar ground in Summa theologiae I-II, qq. 18-20, but the discussion here in De malo is much more clear and expansive, offering many illuminating examples.) In question 3, he takes up the causes of sin, distinguishing among temptation, ignorance, weakness, and malice. Questions 4-5 turn to original sin; question 6 contains his most extensive and sophisticated treatment of free will; question 7 discusses venial sins (a more philosophically interesting...