Because the moral philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas is egoistic while modern consequentialism is impartialistic, it might at first appear that the former cannot, while the latter can, provide a common value on the basis of which inter-personal conflicts may be settled morally. On the contrary, in this paper I intend to argue not only that Aquinas' theory does provide just such a common value, but that it is more true to say of modern consequentialism than of Thomism that it (...) gives in to the partiality of different interests and fails to provide a robust common value on the basis of which disagreements may be settled morally. This is so primarily because the egoism of Aquinas represents a fundamental commitment to personal moral development which is absent from modern teleological theories. (shrink)