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Abstract
Constitutivism locates the ground of practical normativity in features constitutive of rational agency and rests on the concept of a constitutive norm – a norm that is internal to a thing such that it both defines and measures it. In this essay, I argue that Aquinas understands happiness as the constitutive principle of human action, since happiness is the end that both defines and measures it. Turning to the thought of Aquinas opens up new possibilities for constitutivism by showing how the constitutive principle of action can be the ground of a practical realism in ethics.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Jennifer A. Frey is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina.
Notes
1 I take this example from Makin (Citation1989).
2 Analogous terms share no common definition, but do manifest proportionality and these similarities between senses of the term make their common name no accident. In order to understand an analogous term we must not seek a common definition but consider its homonymous manifestations and appreciate the similarities and differences between them. For a more detailed analysis, see Frey and Frey (Citation2017).
3 God is alive for Aquinas (in fact, God is most fully alive, for Aquinas), but doesn’t have parts and doesn’t move in the sense outlined here. So in whatever sense God determines himself to His own act, this must respect the fact that God is never merely potentially in act, but always and necessarily so self-determined. I will pass over this complication here, since this paper does not address Aquinas’s views about God, or his views about the analogy of being that allow us to speak intelligently about God.
4 For a recent account of self-motion that also draws on Aquinas, see Boyle and Lavin (Citation2008). For a recent account of natural normativity, see Foot (Citation2001).
5 I will not attempt here to engage in a metaphysical analysis of this, as the metaphysics in question are difficult and subject to scholarly disputes. The point is that we must identify some principle here, and to see how it functions as a constitutive principle or norm.
6 Aquinas would not agree with all that Korsgaard (Citation2009b) says about constitutive principles. For instance, he sees no need for a “guiding requirement.”
7 For a contemporary defense of this position, see Anscombe (Citation2005).
8 Of course, the deliberation can be merely potential or habitual and dispositional. Deliberation does not always pick out an actual mental process that takes place prior to acting. We can grasp the deliberative structure of an action without having to refer to something “in the mind.”
9 We also choose actions because we think that they avoid some evil, but avoiding evil is just another way to maintain or preserve one’s good.
10 It is this ability to see the general in the particular that makes the knowledge “perfect.” Aquinas obviously does not think the knowledge that agents have of their actions is perfected until they acquire practical wisdom.
11 My understanding of the first principles of practical reason is deeply indebted to Flannery (Citation2001).
12 For further discussion of this point, see Frey (Citation2018a, Citation2018b).