Aquinas and the Sins of Ignorance

Contemporary Readings of Aquinas on the Moral Object The contemporary moral theologian Duarte Sousa-Lara maintains that there are three schools of interpretation regarding Thomas Aquinas’s account of the moral object. First, there is what he calls the “classical” interpretation, which understands the moral object to be a thing measured by reason. Second, there is a proportionalist interpretation, which contends that the moral object includes the agent’s intended remote end. As exemplified by Louis Janssens, the proportionalist interpretation correlates Aquinas’s moral doctrine with that of Peter Abelard. Third, there is a “contemporary” interpretation that SousaLara himself affirms. This interpretation construes the moral object as a “proposal” that the agent presents to himself and that can be morally evaluated in precision from his intended remote end. John Finnis, Germain Grisez, and Joseph Boyle also emphasize the agent’s “proposal” in their interpretation of Aquinas’s teaching on the moral object. In association with this understanding of the moral