 (vii) The analogy comparing one’s life as a whole to arts and crafts, each with its own distinctive function, operatio, seems weak, questionable and indeed question-begging. For life as a whole is open-ended both in having no knowable duration (see 2.2. below) and in requiring judgment about the choice-worthiness of ends as well as means and techniques (see 4.4.1. below). Moreover, Aquinas like Aristotle regularly insists on the irreducibility of the distinction or distinctions between, on the one hand, ars or factio (arts, crafts, techniques) and actio (the precise subject-matter of morality and morally significant choices).