I guess I just don’t see the point in judging potential actions. How did that come to be a significant part of ethics?
Ethics concerns what we ought to do, and “what we ought to do” concerns the future. In order to say how one ought to act in the future, one must use general categories of act. We can’t see the future particular actions, after all. We have to decide what we will do.
Tense is not central. We can judge actions in the past and present as well as the future. Ethics is not concerned only with potential acts.
But do you decide what you will do based on rules alone? Or did experience instill wisdom that directs your actions? Maybe the rules are just a commemoration of the wisdom earned by our ancestors.
Phronesis depends upon principles of practical reason. “Wisdom” is not generally thought of as unprincipled or non-rational. If someone steps awkwardly to avoid a puppy, he may not be saying to himself, “There is a rule against kicking puppies, therefore I musn’t kick this puppy,” but his awkward step is nevertheless rooted in the principle of practical reason which has been instilled in him in one way or another, namely the principle to not kick puppies. The level of ethical deliberation involved in a particular act will depend on circumstances, but even habitual or “impromptu” acts will be informed by the practical principles we have imbibed in the past.
I’m not saying wisdom is purely irrational. I’m saying following rules without understanding makes one a robot, not a moral person. And if one has the understanding, one doesn’t need the rule.
If you have moral understanding then you will be able to give that understanding to other people who are open to learning. And if you rely on this strange idea that “a rule is something one follows like a robot,” then you will have no way to impart understanding to others.
But the whole point of this discussion is that a rule is not something you follow like a robot. If that were true then the bolded text from Aquinas would make no sense. In that case a general principle could never encounter a defect. Even the word “rule” is something you have imported into the discussion, as part and parcel of a strawman.
Oh sorry, I didn’t realize that.
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That’s alright. Maybe it is worth remembering that a “rule” in its natural sense actually admits of exceptions.
A non-cognitivist might well claim that all moral reasoning is post hoc rationalization, but everyone else will apparently accept that some form of principled reasoning is involved in ethics.
I think Shakespeare would say the heart is the judge. Reason is the lawyers.
Where do you think he says something like that?
Interestingly, in antiquity “heart” is not a non-rational organ. It was seen in a much more robust way than our “emotional center.” The commonplace division between affect and intellect does not arise until the modern period, or at the earliest the late medieval period.
Shakespeare is considered modern, but his ethics would probably be better discussed in another thread. 
What has no truth value? The pain? The Need? But neither does the cat or the mat. “The cat is on the mat” does, and so to “Alan has a pain” and “Beth needs a laxative”