The moral goodness of worship: Thomas Aquinas on the virtue of religion (Saint)

The goal of the work undertaken in this dissertation is to investigate Aquinas's position on the moral goodness of worship. The end pursued hopes to be a limited but helpful contribution to the ethical part of philosophy of religion. Consequently, the methodology followed in this work relies on a careful analysis of Aquinas's texts dealing with this question, so as to trace the development of his thought on this point.; The first chapter of this dissertation establishes the status quaestionis and presents the articulations of the question as Aquinas received it at the beginning of his academic career. Chapters II and III follow the development of his thought through his life, in four early texts, and in a question in the Summa theologiae (2-2, 81). The discussion of latria is transformed by Aquinas into a discussion of religion. This shift in terminology denotes an intention on Aquinas's part to reconsider positively some aspects of paganism, on the one hand, and to distinguish strongly religion from the theological virtues, on the other. Aquinas explains that religion “implies an order towards God” (2-2, 81, 1). This ordo in the case of the virtue of religion is the ordering of oneself to one's transcendent principle of being, by means of specific acts. The ordering of oneself is comparable to the right proportion established by the virtue of justice in human dealings. This presentation of religion allows to refer both Christianity and paganism to religion as instances to a form, and thus to recognize the possibility of moral goodness in pagan worship and also distinguish the form of religion from the concrete realization of its acts in the Judeo-Christian tradition.; The final chapter of the dissertation investigates Aquinas's account of the acts of worship in the Summa theologiae (2-2, 82–91). The importance of the incorporation of devotion and prayer into the “treatise” on religion is underlined in reference to Aquinas's effort of distinction between religion and the theological virtues. An analysis of his organization of the relationship between exterior acts of religion and worship helps us to discover Aquinas's personal and original reflection on the matter.