The Good That Draws the Will

Abstract

The middle part of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae begins with the end that motivates human action properly speaking. The highest natural end is a vision of God in beatitude that can only be obtained through a gift of grace. Thomas’s central argument is modeled after ancient genres of philosophical exhortation or protreptic, but he adapts these in the Summa as he does in his preaching. Thomas turns from the last end to the will, since the will must move the human being toward that end. At the origin of the circular relations of will and intellect, Thomas discovers God already present.