13. The End of All Things and of People in Particular (SCG 3,16–63)
The End of All Things and of People in Particular (SCG 3,16–63)
AS I HAVE shown, Aquinas spends time early in SCG 3 arguing that all agents act for good ends. Following the discussion of evil in SCG 3,4–15, he returns to the notions of goodness and ends in SCG 3,16–25 and then proceeds to say what he takes to be the ultimate end of human beings. You may wonder why Aquinas introduces his treatment of evil where he does. Indeed, you may take it to amount to a rather long digression pointlessly stuck into a discussion of goodness and ends. Yet there is a definite flow of thought at work here. If everything acts for a good end (SCG 3,2–3), then how can evil be aimed at as an end? In SCG 3,4–15 Aquinas is evidently trying to answer this question by saying that evil is not, in fact, aimed at as an end and that it is not something positive or actual that aims at some end. With those points made, he feels that he can return to actually existing things aiming at good ends, as he does from SCG 3,16 onward.
SCG 3,16–25 is arguing that all creatures tend to, or aim at, the goodness that is God. This thesis, though, might strike you as puzzling or downright unintelligible. Does a cabbage aim at God’s goodness? Does my cat? Do atheists? How could they? What would it mean to say that they could? In SCG 3,16–25, however, Aquinas is obviously aware that people might raise questions like these since he engages with them, at least implicitly. So at this point I shall try to explain what Aquinas is driving at when maintaining that all creatures aim at God, whom he believes to be goodness itself.