Using an easy terms, can someone please explain to me Thomasian Ethics' law and happiness?

 

One of Thomas Aquinas' achievements in Ethics is to note, as much as possible, all of the aspects that matter in ethical assessment of behavior. He holds that an action's goodness or badness resides in the inner act of will in the outward act of the body, in the act's very essence, and also in its consequences. In addition, he recognizes that what matters in ethics is not just what one actually does, but also his purpose to do the act.

Thomistic ethics, like that of Augustine, being relatively vague but usually sensible, does not fall into only one tidy contemporary category of moral philosophy. We may assume that he is more of a deontologist or Kantian than a utilitarian by not giving emphasis on the outcome of actions in his so-called characteristics of actions. Although his core philosophy is that acts must be aimed at what is nice, his theory relates to utilitarianism and consequentialism in general. Aquinas, like Aristotle, is a virtue ethicist when he advocates the positions filled by virtues in morality. But although Aquinas is Aristotelian in many respects, he denies the idea that there are no inherently true general concepts of morality usually ascribed to Aristotle. The theory of natural law of Aquinas discards wholesale particularism categorically.

We may claim that Aquinas is certainly against such contemporary moral ideologies because of his notion of natural law. The doctrine is of course, incompatible with nihilism or the view that denies that values exist. It is also irreconcilable with relativism and conventionalism, which claim that values are entirely linked to one's culture or fully defined by tradition alone. Since Aquinas claims that certain universal concepts of morality are in fact known to all he is therefore opposed to absolute meaning skepticism.

It is relatively true to Thomistic ethics. For example, his basic prescriptions for doing good, resisting bad, seeking wisdom, and living in harmony with our neighbors indicate that governments should support research and technical projects that seek to produce beneficial results. The philosophy, on the other hand, recommends that no entity can promote the development of weapons of mass destruction or the exploitation of human beings by others.

Unsurprisingly, between the moral philosophy of Aquinas and that of his co-theologian, Augustine, we can find several parallels. To a large degree, however, Aquinas departs as sin-laden and disordered from the Augustinian view of the world. He, instead, advocates the positive representations of the universe by Aristotle as logical, moral, and orderly. Aquinas is more likely to consider earthly happiness as desirable relative to Augustine, but to the degree that the present goods are geared towards and subordinated to the realization of eternal ones in heaven.