The Importance of Conscience in Aquinas' Story

St. Thomas thinks that the basic principle everyone has in mind up front from the beginning is do good and avoid evil. That's something we have up front, but obviously you can see that can be filled in with a lot of detail about the moral life. What ethics or practical philosophy is meant to do is fill out the picture of how we move from where we are into the situation of overall well-being, happiness, how we become free. So for Aquinas then moral principles, laws, norms, are not simply external impositions or threats, what they are is critical instruction,.