AQUINAS ON THE SOCRATIC PARADOX AND THE PROBLEM OF VIRTUE

In Natural Reason and Natural Law, James Carey states that, for Aquinas, the good is pursued necessarily as according to the first principle of practical reason, but then makes the stunning admission that humans really seem to almost always pursue 'the best'. Such an admission opens Thomistic natural law to an attack from the Socratic paradox that all evil stems from ignorance, a philosophical premise that implicitly undermines all moral responsibility. While Carey and others consider Aquinas' position as ultimately defensible, they nowhere consider its Socratic articulation. This paper therefore offers a new analysis of Aquinas' rejection of Socrates' paradox.