HKB
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Often appears with: reason and the intellect · education and the training of the young · duty, conscience, and obligation · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · will, choice, and freedom · universal assent · temperance and self-mastery · state of innocence · simple vs solemn vows · sensitive powers · religious profession · religious persecution and toleration
Usually: argument (5) · detachment (5) · coming of age (2) · skepticism (2) · reflection (1) · exhortation (1) · indignation (1)
“Accordingly for a man to do a good deed, it is requisite not only that his reason be well disposed by means of a habit of intellectual virtue; but also that his appetite be well disposed by means of a habit of moral virtue.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) · insight
He rejects the reply that people know axioms when they reach the use of reason, saying innate claims would still make reason unnecessary, and he argues the view collapses into saying people know and do not know at once.
nature imprinted, children cannot be ignorant of them: infants, and all that have souls, must necessarily have them in their understandings, know the truth of them, and assent to it. 6. That men know them when they come to the Use of Reason answered. To avoid this, it is usually answered, that all men know and assent to them, WHEN THEY COME TO THE USE OF REASON; and this is enough to prove them innate. I answer: 7…
Locke rejects the claim that people first know innate maxims when they reach the use of reason, noting children and even many adults take years or never to think of such abstract propositions.
12. The coming of the Use of Reason not the Time we come to know these Maxims. If by knowing and assenting to them “when we come to the use of reason,” be meant, that this is the time when they come to be taken notice of by the mind; and that as soon as children come to the use of reason, they come also to know and assent to these maxims; this also is false and frivolous. First, it is false; because it is evident th…
Meditations urges using reason only when it rests on justice or public good, and insists that if reason is present, one should apply it rather than seek excuses or distractions.
any pleasure or credit thereon depending, but always from some probable apparent ground of justice, or of some public good thereby to be furthered; or from some other such inducement. XI. Hast thou reason? I have. Why then makest thou not use of it? For if thy reason do her part, what more canst thou require? XII. As a part hitherto thou hast had a particular subsistence: and now shalt thou vanish away into the com…
In Question 101, Article 2, Aquinas argues that children would not have perfect use of reason at birth because reason depends on sensitive powers hindered by the infant’s bodily conditions, though they’d be better than now for that state.
corruptible body is a load upon the soul" (Wis. 9:15). Therefore, before sin and the corruption which resulted therefrom, children would have had the perfect use of reason at birth. Obj. 2: Further, some animals at birth have the use of their natural powers, as the lamb at once flees from the wolf. Much more, therefore, would men in the state of innocence have had perfect use of reason at birth. *On the contrary,* …
In response to whether moral virtue can exist without intellectual virtue, Aquinas frames objections that seem to allow moral habits independent of reason, then prepares the argument that this may not hold.
in *Ethic.* vi, 13. Hence he maintained that as long as man is in possession of knowledge, he cannot sin; and that every one who sins, does so through ignorance. Now this is based on a false supposition. Because the appetitive faculty obeys the reason, not blindly, but with a certain power of opposition; wherefore the Philosopher says (Polit. i, 3) that "reason commands the appetitive faculty by a politic power," wh…
He distinguishes simple and solemn vows for children, arguing that before puberty vows lack force due to weak reason and dependence on guardians, yet can be annulled within limits.
as in imbeciles and madmen. Therefore just as imbeciles and madmen cannot bind themselves to anything by vow, so neither, seemingly, can children bind themselves by vow to enter religion. Obj. 2: Further, that which can be validly done by one cannot be annulled by another. Now a vow to enter religion made by a boy or girl before the age of puberty can be revoked by the parents or guardian (20, qu. ii, cap. Puella). …