On Evil
Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo — Aquinas's 1269-72 late series of disputed questions on the metaphysics and psychology of evil
Tradition: High medieval scholasticism / Thomistic moral metaphysics
Evil is the privation of a due good — not a positive reality, and the ground of every defect from physical pain to original sin
De Malo is Aquinas's late series of disputed questions, composed 1269-72 during his second Paris regency, contemporary with the first two parts of the Summa Theologiae. Its 16 questions take up: evil itself (Q1, the privation-theory inherited from Augustine and the Neoplatonists), original sin (QQ4-5), venial sin (Q7), the seven capital vices (QQ8-15, the most extended scholastic treatment), and demonic temptation (Q16). The famous Question 6 — "Whether man's acts are voluntary" — is the principal Thomistic treatment of free will and the source for much of the contemporary debate over Aquinas on libertarian vs. compatibilist freedom. The work's structure follows the Augustinian privation-theory but develops it with full Aristotelian metaphysical machinery: evil is not a substance but the absence of a due perfection, and the causes of evil are accidental causes of the privation of an intended good. De Malo is, with De Veritate and De Potentia, the third great Aquinas disputed-question cycle and the most accessible single source for his mature ethics.
Author
Editions cited
- Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo (composed 1269-72); Leonine critical edition vol. 23 (Editori di San Tommaso, 1982); English trans. Richard Regan, ed. Brian Davies, On Evil (Oxford UP, 2003)
School Embodiments
De Malo is foundational for Catholic moral theology — the privation-theory of evil, the analysis of the capital vices, the treatment of free will and the structure of the voluntary act.
"Evil is not a being, nor a kind of being; it is the privation of a due good in something that ought to have that good." (De Malo, Q1, a1)
The privation-theory is metaphysically realist: evils are real privations of real goods, not subjective evaluations or projections.
"Although evil is not itself a being, the privation that constitutes it is a real privation in a real subject." (De Malo, Q1, a2)
The privation-theory descends from Augustine and the Neoplatonic tradition (Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius) — Aquinas extends and Aristotelianises the inheritance.
"As Augustine says, evil is a falling-away from being, not a being; and as Dionysius says, evil is contrary to being and contrary to the good." (De Malo, Q1, a1, citing Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius)
The Aristotelian framework — privation as one of the three principles of natural change, alongside matter and form — is the formal apparatus by which Aquinas analyses evil.
"Privation is reduced to the matter, as the absence of form to that which is in potency to form." (De Malo, Q1, a3)
The disputatio method and the confidence that practical reason can analyse the structure of evil are characteristically rationalist scholasticism.
"In every voluntary defect there is some failure of reason; and the cause of moral evil is reducible to a defect in the practical intellect." (De Malo, Q3, a3)
Aquinas's discussion of moral evil as ignorance owes a debt to Plato's no-one-does-wrong-knowingly tradition, though Aquinas qualifies it through the distinction between cognitive and affective failure.
"No one chooses evil under the aspect of evil; but he may choose what is evil under the aspect of some good, real or apparent." (De Malo, Q3, a8)
Aquinas's treatment of demonic temptation (Q16) and original sin (QQ4-5) influenced later Catholic moral theology and (through Bañez and the Molinists) the early modern debates over grace and free will.
"The demon can suggest, but cannot compel; the will remains free and the act of consent is the sinner's own." (De Malo, Q16, a8)
Thomist tradition.
Internal Tensions
The privation-theory has been criticised in both directions: as too austere (modern problem-of-evil writers find it inadequate to the felt reality of suffering) and as too generous (the analytic literature on moral evil sometimes finds Aquinas insufficiently attentive to positive malice). The famous Question 6 on the voluntary has been read both as libertarian (Stump) and as compatibilist (MacDonald); the textual evidence supports both readings. The work's influence on Catholic moral theology through Trent and Vatican I is uncontested; its influence on Protestant moral theology (especially via the via media of Hooker and Anglican moral theology) is also significant.
I. Time
The temporal life of the moral agent, in which capital vices form and virtues are cultivated; the eternal time within which sin has its meaning.
Attributes
II. Space
The created moral cosmos in which agents act and in which evils — physical and moral — occur as privations.
Attributes
III. Matter
The embodied human agent whose passions and habits De Malo analyses in detail; the bodily substrate of capital vice.
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IV. Observer
The morally serious agent whose intellectual and volitional powers De Malo analyses; the structure of the voluntary act is the central technical subject.
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V. Energy
The energies of will and passion; the appetitive forces that, misdirected, produce capital vices.
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VI. Information
Privations as discrete absences of due goods; the capital vices as a taxonomy of structured moral defects.
Attributes
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How On Evil resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 6 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
6 mainstream positions
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.