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The Object Of The Moral Act: Understanding St. Thomas Aquinas Through The Work Of Steven Long And Martin Rhonheimer, John Makdisi

Faculty Books

In the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor Pope John Paul II stated that the “morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the ‘object’ rationally chosen by the deliberate will.” Since that time the interpretation of the moral object has garnered increased attention among Thomist scholars. Yet it remains a source of dispute. Two scholars who take rather opposed views on what Aquinas means by the moral object are Martin Rhonheimer and Steven Long. The purpose of this dissertation is to elucidate the account of Aquinas’s doctrine through a comparison of the interpretations of each of these scholars with …