Aquinas on the will’s fixity after death

My essay “Aquinas onthe Fixity of the Will After Death” appears in New Blackfriars.  (It’sbehind a paywall, I’m afraid.)  Here’sthe abstract:

Aquinas holds that after death, thehuman soul can no longer change its basic orientation either toward God or awayfrom him.  He takes this to be knowablenot only from divine revelation but by purely philosophical reasoning.  The heart of his position is that the basicorientation of an angelic will is fixed immediately after its creation, andthat the human soul after death is relevantly like an angel.  This article expounds and defends Aquinas'sposition, paying special attention to the action theory underlying it.

This is atopic I’ve written about here at the blog, but this new academic articleexplores it more systematically and in greater depth.  I will also be addressing it in the book onthe soul and I have been working on for some time and hope to finish by year’send.