Thomas Aquinas on Malice without Vice

Thomas Aquinas’s claim that not all malicious sins proceed from an agent’s vice is examined. First, I summarize Thomas’s arguments to the effect that all vicious actions are malicious, so as to provide the relevant backdrop. Vicious actions are always malicious because one’s vice makes the object of the action connatural to the acting agent, and this object always involves the willing choice of a spiritual evil in pursuit of some temporal good. Second, I explain the two ways in which malicious and non-vicious sins arise: sickly bodily dispositions and the removal of a restraint. Third, I explore the characteristics of malicious and non-vicious sins, and how these differ from those malicious sins that proceed from one’s vice. Ultimately, since agents who perform non-vicious malicious actions pursue objects that are not connatural to them, I conclude that such sins constitute a mean of sorts between sins of passion and vicious sins.