Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
On Evil
Evil is the privation of a due good — not a positive reality, and the ground of every defect from physical pain to original sin
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | On Evil (Late (Aquinas's mature treatment of evil and the passions, parallel to the Summa)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
On Evil
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.
Space
On Evil
The created moral cosmos in which agents act and in which evils — physical and moral — occur as privations.
Matter
On Evil
The embodied human agent whose passions and habits De Malo analyses in detail; the bodily substrate of capital vice.
Observer
On Evil
The morally serious agent whose intellectual and volitional powers De Malo analyses; the structure of the voluntary act is the central technical subject.
Energy
On Evil
The energies of will and passion; the appetitive forces that, misdirected, produce capital vices.
Information
On Evil
Privations as discrete absences of due goods; the capital vices as a taxonomy of structured moral defects.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
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.