Aquinas and Sartre: On Freedom, Personal Identity, and the Possibility of Happiness

Thomas Aquinas and Jean-Paul Sartre are usually identified with completely different philosophical traditions: intellectualism and voluntarism. In this original study, Stephen Wang shows, instead, that there are some profound similarities in their understanding of freedom and human identity. Aquinas gives far more scope than is generally acknowledged to the open-endedness of reason in human deliberation, and argues that we can transform ourselves in quite radical ways through our choices. S...