A Short Primer On Beatitudo In Aquinas

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A Short Primer on Beatitudo in Aquinas

W. H. Marshner

(A) The sense of ‘beatitudo’.

The first job is to determine what ‘beatitudo’ meant simply as a matter of ordinary language, reserving til later the question of its learned definitions (rationes). There are three options: happiness, well-being, and fulfillment. To see which option is best, one needs to consider the following facts.

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A Tale Of Two Beatitudes

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Reviews: A Tale of Two Beatitudes

Review of Russell Hittinger, A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory (Notre Dame, 1987), 232 pp.

By W. H. MARSHNER

FAITH AND REASON
Vol. XVI, No. 2
Summer 1990

The job of ethics is to tell us which actions are right and wrong, while the job of a “grounding” for ethics is to tell us why. For example, a “grounding” might show that right actions measure up to something, and the wrong ones don’t, and then tell us why this measure matters. Different kinds of grounding have been tried in the history of ethics; one is called “natural law” theory, and the three authors at issue in this review — Thomas Aquinas, Germain Grisez, and Russell Hittinger — all favor some version of it.
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