Inconstancy

INCONSTANCY. - From the Latin inconstantia, lack of constancy, fickleness, it is a vice opposed to prudence, inasmuch as through it one is led to change one's judgment without reason. The initial motive for such a change lies in the appetite, which impels one to turn away from the first good resolve, in view of something that one loves inordinately: but the true cause of it lies in a defect of reason, which repudiates what it had previously accepted, through weakness in resisting the impulse of passion, which it could and should resist.

It follows that inconstancy is a defect of reason, which fails in commanding what has already been counseled and judged. Inconstancy, therefore, is a vice contrary to prudence by defect, and more properly contrary to that activity of prudence (imperium) by which the intellect proposes to the will its judgment, as one that must be carried out (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 47, a. 8; q. 53, a. 5).

Inconstancy is also an internal vice that proceeds from lust, inasmuch as man, driven by concupiscence and by the love of lewd things, is hindered from carrying out what he had decided to do; for example, from withdrawing from the proximate occasion of sin. It is the vice of that man who vainly promised to withdraw from the dangerous person, and to whom Terence (Eun. 67-9) kept repeating in a tone of reproach: Haec verba una... falsa lacrimula... restinguet (cf. Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 153, a. 5).

Andrea Gennaro