5. For Scotus's ethical theory, see John Hare, God's Call: Moral Realism,
Anselm on ethics
relation between Augustine and Anselm, see R. D. Crouse, "The Augustinian Background of St. Anselm's Concept Justitia," Canadian Journal of Theology 4 (1958) and Hiroko Yamazaki, "Anselm and the Problem of Evil," Anselm Studies 2 (1988).
Anselm's ethical views have received very little attention from contemporary scholars, and as a result there is no satisfactory systematic treatment of them available in the contemporary literature. Important aspects of Anselm's ethical views, however, are discussed in: Eugene
Fairweather, "Truth, Justice and Moral Responsibility in the Thought of St. Anselm," in L'homme et son destin d'apr`es les penseurs du moyen age: Actes du premier congr`es internationale de philosophie m´edi´evale (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1960); Jorge J. E. Gracia and J. J.
Sandford, "Ratio quarens beatitudinem: Anselm on Rationality and Happiness," in J. Yu and Jorge Gracia (eds.), Rationality and Happiness: From the Ancients to the Early Medievals (New York: University of Rochester Press, 2003); Douglas Langston, "Did Scotus Embrace
Anselm's Notion of Freedom?," Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1996); Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, "Anselm's Account of Freedom," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (2001); and the works cited in note 1. For more complete bibliographical information, see Klaus Kienzler et al., International Bibliography – Anselm of Canterbury: Anselm
Studies Volume iv (Lewiston, Queenston, and Lampeter: Mellen Press, 1999), especially §10.5.
For the sake of simplicity, I treat consequentialist and eudaimonistic (or virtue-ethical) theories as species of teleological theory, though they are often treated separately.
For Scotus's ethical theory, see John Hare, God's Call: Moral Realism, God's Commands, and Human Autonomy (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001); John Hare, "Scotus on Morality and Nature," Medieval Philosophy and Theology 9 (2000); and Thomas
Williams, "How Scotus Separates Morality from Happiness," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 69 (1995). Hare suggests not only that Scotus's ethical theory can be seen as a natural development of views already present in Anselm, but also that Anselm's ethical theory can be seen as a natural development of certain views of Augustine.
Although Hare seems to me right about the relationship between Scotus and Anselm, his suggestion about the relationship of both to Augustine seems mistaken. Augustine certainly emphasizes the role of justice in morality, and in this respect must be regarded as a source for Anselm's views. But I see no evidence to suggest that the emphasis on justice led
Augustine either to separate morality from happiness or to develop (as both Anselm and Scotus do) a doctrine of two affections or wills.
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jeffrey e. brower 6.
Anselm's success at integrating key elements of eudaimonism is all the more striking given the paucity of resources that he had to work with. Because he belongs to the period of medieval philosophy prior to the recovery of Aristotle in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he was writing well before any part of the Nicomachean Ethics, one of the chief sources for later medieval eudaimonism, was available in translation to philosophers in the Latin West. For an account of eudaimonistic ethical theory, therefore, Anselm had to rely on what could be gathered from the often diffuse writings of such philosophers and theologians as Augustine, Boethius, Cicero, and Seneca.
I have little to say, in what follows, about Anselm's theory of action. But for an argument that Anselm's moral psychology leads him to embrace a distinctive theory of action, one that differs in important respects from that of medieval Aristotelians, see Calvin Normore, "Goodness and Rational Choice in the Early Middle Ages," in Henrik Lagerlund and Mikko Yrj¨onsuuri (eds.), Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002).
For useful summaries of medieval eudaimonistic ethical theory, to which my own discussion is indebted, see: David Gallagher, "Thomas
Aquinas on the Will as Rational Appetite," Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (1991); Scott MacDonald, "Egoistic Rationalism: Aquinas's Basis for Christian Morality," in Michael D. Beaty
(ed.), Christian Theism and the Problems of Philospophy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); Scott MacDonald
(ed.), Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology (Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 1991); Scott MacDonald, "Later Medieval Ethics," in Lawrence C. Becker (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ethics, vol. i (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991); and Williams, "How Scotus Separates Morality from Happiness."
This is at least one of the motivations behind the standard medieval view that things are good to the extent they are in being, and that evil is a privation of being. For discussion of the various considerations motivating this view, see the introduction, as well as the essays, in MacDonald, Being and Goodness.
10.
The distinction between essential and (kind-relative) accidental being is customary in late-medieval philosophy. See, for example, Scotus's discussion in Quodlibet q. 18.
11.
This last point must be qualified in light of the fact that medieval eudaimonists also distinguish degrees of being in connection with different metaphysical kinds, so that the being of God is said to be greater than that of human beings, which in turn is said to be greater than
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