Compare And Contrast Thomas Aquinas On Being Goodness

Thomas Aquinas’ many-sided theory of goodness is that it can be found in all things in some way, and Christopher Hughes deeply explores this in his reading Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and God.

Aquinas believes the God is the ultimate good. He also does not think that God and mankind should be comparable in terms of moral virtues. God never has obligations or duties at mankind does when it comes to divine goodness.

The definition of “good” is not as black-and-white as approval and disapproval according to Aquinas. He defines “good” as more “enticing” or “desirable”. The most universal type of goodness is the idea that everything is good as everything is being.

On the other hand, Aquinas’ theory of evil, involves the absence of good. He admits that it is unreasonable to envisage a world where animals don’t eat other animals for example. While it’s not a perfect world, Aquinas believes that if God did make “the perfect world” then it would be vastly different to the world we live in. He also admits that some things flourish at the expense of others, which is not a form of evil.

Wilful evil is classified in the category of being, and harming someone is an example of this. This form of evil is certainly considered so by Aquinas, as opposed to natural evil or evil consequence. The example of harming someone is another person choosing not to act well, rather than that person being made to exist by God.

Absolute goodness is perfection, which mankind could strive for without every achieving so. Depriving goodness beyond existence would be considered evil characteristics because it’s lacking fullness

Perhaps this is due to the idea of evil being good deprived of a being, and how interesting that is considering I had never thought of that