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There is an apparent paradox with respect to Aquinas’s teaching on proximate and remote ends. On some occasions, he seems to assert that a proximate end specifies a human action, while the remote end is inconsequential. On other occasions, he appears to hold not only that a remote end gives a species to a human action, but also that this species has greater formal influence than the species from a proximate end. The way to resolve this paradox is to realize that Aquinas addresses two different questions with respect to the specification of human action. Sometimes, he is exploring what is required to determine a particular species of human action. In this case, he thinks that willing a proximate end (such as ‘having intercourse with another’s spouse’) is sufficient to determine this action’s species (adultery), and that no further end would add something critical for making this determination. On other occasions, he is wondering what the species of an action would be in a case where a particular proximate end (such as theft) is already being willed by an agent for a particular remote end (such as murder or almsgiving). In this case, he believes that the human action in question has two moral species, one from each end; the species from the remote end has a kind of formal primacy, since the proximate end is being willed for the remote end’s sake.

This chapter shows that end, object, matter, circumstance, and motive can all be understood to contribute to the specification of human actions for Aquinas in a fundamentally consistent way. Although specification by end and by object have characteristic differences, they are at base compatible because both end and object can refer to precisely the same reality in human action. The same goal can be both a human action’s final cause (end), and that good to which the will is directed (object). Specification by matter can be integrated with the first two: Aquinas asserts that matter specifies human action either because it has been willed as an end or possesses a distinctive formal aspect (like an object’s). Specification by circumstance can be fit into the picture through object: Aquinas believes that a ‘circumstance’ essential with respect to right reason takes on a new name, ‘condition’ or ‘difference’, and constitutes in whole or in part something essential to an object’s formal aspect. Although motives may seem more difficult to integrate since they are sometimes presented as causes for appetite, Aquinas says that motives are ‘proper objects of the will’ and asserts that they specify as ‘ends’ of human action.

A crucial task for any moral theory is to determine what makes a human action to be of a certain kind. For instance, what makes almsgiving to be in its own species rather than in the species of theft or selling? Aquinas addresses this issue in a few of his works, most notably Commentary on the Sentences, De Malo, and the Summa Theologiae. However, a puzzle arises when his writings are examined carefully. Aquinas uses five different terms — end, object, matter, circumstance, and motive — to signify what gives species to human actions. Although similarities in meaning can be discerned among certain of these terms, it is difficult to grasp how all five could refer to what specifies human actions. In this monograph, the five terms used by Aquinas are examined and compared to propose a more comprehensive account of his teaching on specification of human action.