The Hidden God. Achilles, Aquinas, and Moral Action in an Ordered World

The central goals of this essay are three: (1) to situate St. Thomas’s moral psychology within his cosmology, with special emphasis on the notion of virtual quantity; (2) to illuminate and confirm that moral psychology through an examination of Achilles as Homer present him in the Iliad; (3) to suggest that if St. Thomas’s picture of the psychological landscape can be validated by reference to Homer, then so, too, might his metaphysical portraiture bear more credence than it is typically awarded. Particular attention will be given to Achilles’ anger and the psychological distinctions by which St. Thomas makes such anger and its attendant acts intelligible.