Aquinas Involuntary Ignorance

In my essay I shall discuss Aquinas’ understanding that blame is excusable due to ignorance if and only if they are involuntarily ignorant. I shall outline Aquinas’ understanding of voluntary ignorance and involuntary ignorance as an excuse from blame. Then I shall analyse this view, and conclude that whether or not the individual is blameable can, in some cases, only be prescribed by the individual.
Aquinas as a Neo-Platonist believes that existence is a good in itself, therefore, all things that improve existence are good. For humans our most important act of existence is the one that separates us from the animals around us, our ability to reason. As animals are not provisioned with morality, then our morality must be based on reason. Reason
Which breaks down in two ways, “ignorance of evil choice” when one busies themselves with a passion or a habit and, “not taking the trouble to acquire the knowledge one ought and can have” . And, “affected ignorance” choosing ignorance so that they are free from the bonds of knowledge. Extending the example, our driver hitting the badger because they are on their phone instead of looking at the road which has signs informing that they are at an animal crossing, and that the badger would have been visible had they looked out of the windscreen. We would not allow them to say they are blameless because they didn’t know the animal was there, as they had the obligation to know. Aquinas would suggest that we are “ignorant of evil choice” if we let an irascible passion hinder our knowledge, which being a passion is not immoral in itself, over rule temperance, a cardinal virtue, in our desire for a concupiscible passion without sin.
Rosen contends a scepticism of the ability to blame another for voluntary ignorance, as the blamer has to know whether or not they were voluntarily ignorant . As the ability to positively blame someone for ignoring their epistemic procedural obligations due to a habit or passion as voluntary ignorance requires one to will ignorance because of a lack of virtue, and we cannot simply know another’s will, which is important for Aquinas’ fourfold epistemology on moral acts. If we cannot
If the amount of information one ought to know is in some way subjective, then in turn whether or not someone is culpable for blame will also be subjective. Therefore in order to prevent moral blame from being attributed in these scenarios, one could, arguably have to constantly be searching for knowledge in all areas of knowledge. Aquinas uses the example of an archer to explain involuntary ignorance, in order to be voluntarily ignorant the archer must have prevented themselves from generally knowing if another person was hunting at that time. However, in practise, to know whether or not someone was in the area at that time, in order to prevent blame, they feasibly would have to have known specifics about that area to ascertain whether or not others where using it. As to properly understand generalities it seems one must have some grounding in the specifics of the subject, in order to fully understand the generalities. This leaves a stringent requirement on some human actions to the point that it may lead to complete inaction, as we try to know generally via