II. In virtue of what is an act praiseworthy or worthy of reproach?
QUODLIBETAL QUESTIONS Q.
whereas contrary badness is contrary unsuitability, that is, some feature that is incompatible with suitability.
From what has been said so far, a corollary follows: there can be multiple moral goodnesses in one and the same underlying act. For one and the same act can have the right circumstances not merely in virtue of having many particular circumstances—those do not constitute multiple goodnesses, but come together as one single complete goodness—but in virtue of having all the circumstances pertaining to one virtue and also all those pertaining to another virtue. Thus the act will conform to diverse perfect dictates of prudence regarding many ends proper [to diverse virtues].
For example: I go to church out of justice, because I am bound to do so by obedience or by a vow that I have made; I also go out of charity toward God, in order to pray or to worship him; and I also go out of brotherly charity, in order to edify my neighbor. And, briefly, the more ordinate motives there are that come together in a given act, the better the act is—whether it has moral goodness or also, in addition, meritorious goodness.
Similarly, multiple badnesses can come together in one and the same act: as many badnesses as there are dictates of reason prescribing opposite features that should be present in the act.
II. In virtue of what is an act praiseworthy or worthy of reproach?
As for the second main topic, I say that praiseworthy and worthy of reproach— indeed, more generally, deserving of reward and deserving of punishment—fall under the broader notion of imputable.
And there is a single basis for the applicability of this broader notion: an act's being within the agent's free power. Now granted, intellect and will both contribute to this power; but the indifference by which what is done can not be done and what is not done can be done—understanding those as divided and not as conjoined, that is, in the divided sense, not in the composed sense—this indifference or indetermination with respect to either possibility, I say, can be reduced completely only to the will itself.
For any other active power is active naturally and thus is, in its own right, a power for what is determinately one—that is, for one of a pair of contradictories. Thus, even if it is an active power with respect to many disparate effects, as the sun is the cause of many effects here below, nonetheless, in the case of any given contradiction, any such cause is determined to one of the pair of contradictories, as the sun is determined to generating this plant and this worm, and so forth.
By contrast, the will alone is indifferent to contradictories and is such that it determines itself to one or the other of them: as we read in Metaphysics IX [1048a5–15], otherwise it would perform contrary actions at the same time.
THE GOODNESS OF INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ACTS
So it is because his act is in his power indifferently in this way (granted, presupposing some intellection) that the act is imputable in its own right to the agent. This is why Augustine says in On Free Choice of the Will III.1.2–3, "It is quite clear that if this movement is blamed, it is not natural, but voluntary." And then the words of his student: "Unless the movement of the will by which it turns [away from God] were voluntary and in our power, a human being would deserve neither praise nor blame," just as I said above in the question about natural necessity in the will.4
25 So 'imputable' implies two relations: one to the power or control of the agent, and the other to something corresponding to the act or agent in accordance with justice and on account of the act itself. And the second relation follows from the first: it is because someone is in control of his act that something is owed to the act and to the agent on account of his act. The first relation remains the same in itself whether the act is good or bad, but the second varies. It does not vary formally in terms of goodness or badness; rather, the difference between a good and a bad act, which is based on the suitability or unsuitability discussed in the first article, is presupposed, and what varies is what corresponds to that act in virtue of its being good or bad.
A good act, you see, is imputable for praise or reward, whereas a bad act is imputable for reproach or punishment. By contrast, a neutral or indifferent act—although it is in the agent's power—is imputed as worthy of reproach in a certain respect, in that the agent was able to act ordinately, or at least as not praiseworthy, because it lacks something that the agent was able to do in a praiseworthy way.
26 From this it is clear that an act is not imputable in virtue of formally the same feature in virtue of which it is morally good. It is morally good in virtue of its suitability to the rule according to which it ought to be elicited; it is imputable in virtue of being in the free power of the agent. But 'praiseworthy' and 'worthy of reproach' imply both these things. For although formally they express that the act is imputable, with the further determination of that for which the act is imputable, they materially connote that on account of which the act is imputable for this or that, namely the goodness or badness on account of which it is to be imputed for punishment or reward.
27 But we can distinguish two ways in which something is imputable. In one way, taking
'imputable' in its most proper sense, what is immediately in the power of the will can be called 'imputable.' Only willing is imputable in this way, because only willing is immediately in the free power of the will.
In another way, whatever is unqualifiedly in the power of the will, but not immediately, can be called 'imputable.' And in this way an act of another power that the will, through its own act of willing, can command to be elicited or prevent from being elicited is imputable to the will, because the whole process of action up to and including the act itself is in the power of the will.
4 Quodl. q. 16 nn. 2, 47ff.