Vocation to Love: Supererogation in Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas’s account of religious vocation has been interpreted as involving a qualified duty, where ordinary people fall short of living up to the moral ideal of becoming a monk or nun. Such an account of religious vocation makes a hash of Aquinas’s thought and misses important aspects of his ethics. Aquinas holds that religious life is praiseworthy, but not morally required, because there are multiple sources of normativity. I conclude by proposing that, while elements of Aquinas’s notion of supererogation might be shared with other traditions in virtue ethics, his theological commitments are central to his notion of supererogation.