Natural Law (Aquinas)

Question 1

Who is best known for his theory regarding Natural Law?

Answer 1

Thomas Aquinas.

Question 2

In Aquinas, what is the first key feature of Natural Law?

Answer 2

The first is that, when we focus on God’s role as the giver of the natural law, the natural law is just one aspect of divine providence; and so the theory of natural law is from that perspective just one part among others of the theory of divine providence.

Question 3

In Aquinas, what is the second key feature of Natural Law?

Answer 3

The second is that, when we focus on the human’s role as recipient of the natural law, the natural law constitutes the principles of practical rationality, those principles by which human action is to be judged as reasonable or unreasonable; and so the theory of natural law is from that perspective the preeminent part of the theory of practical rationality.

Question 4

What does the Natural Law participate in?

Answer 4

The Natural Law participates in the Eternal Law.

Question 5

How do Natural Law and Eternal Law differ?

Answer 5

The Eternal Law, for Aquinas, is that rational plan by which all creation is ordered; the Natural Law is the way that the human being ‘participates’ in the Eternal Law.

Question 6

For Aquinas, what did the Natural Law constitute for humans?

Answer 6

The Natural Law constitutes the basic principles of practical rationality for human beings, and has this status by nature.

Question 7

What does notion that the Natural Law ‘constitutes the basic principles of practical rationality’ imply?

Answer 7

It implies that the precepts of the Natural Law are universally binding by nature, and that the precepts of the Natural Law are universally knowable by nature.

Question 8

What does it mean for the precepts of the Natural Law to be ‘binding by nature’?

Answer 8

No beings could share our human nature yet fail to be bound by the precepts of the Natural Law. This is so because these precepts direct us toward the good as such and various particular goods.

Question 9

What does it mean for the precepts of the Natural Law to also knowable by nature?

Answer 9

All human beings possess a basic knowledge of the principles of the Natural Law, which is exhibited in our intrinsic directedness toward the various goods that the natural law enjoins us to pursue.

Question 10

How can Natural Law be seen from both God’s view point, and the human view point?

Answer 10

From God’s point of view, it is law through its place in the scheme of divine providence, and from the human’s point of view, it constitutes a set of naturally binding and knowable precepts of practical reason.

Question 11

What view points therefore cannot sustain Aquinas’s Natural Law?

Answer 11

• Atheism: One cannot have a theory of divine providence without a divine being.
• Deism: Natural Law view rules out a deism on which there is a divine being but that divine being has no interest in human matters.
• Nihilism
• Relativist and Conventionalist views

Question 12

What does Aquinas say is the most fundamental precept of Natural Law?

Answer 12

Good is to be done and evil avoided.

(only action that can be understood as conforming with this principle, as carried out under the idea that good is to be sought and bad avoided, can be understood as an intelligible action)

Question 13

In Aquinas’s view, how is ‘good’ fundamental?

Answer 13

Good is fundamental. Whether an action, or type of action, is right is logically posterior to whether that action brings about or realizes or is some good.

Question 14

Can we, according to Aquinas, just seek ‘good’?

Answer 14

No one can, in acting, simply pursue good — one has to pursue some particular good.

Question 15

What particular goods (which therefore are to be pursued) does Aquinas maintain are particular?

Answer 15

Life, procreation, knowledge, society, and reasonable conduct.

(It is not clear as to whether this is supposed to be an exhaustive list)

Question 16

Are there ways in following Natural Law that are intrinsically flawed?

Answer 16

Yes, according to Aquinas.

Question 17

How must an act be right or reasonable?

Answer 17

It must be an act that is in no way intrinsically flawed.

Question 18

Does Aquinas identify a principle by which we can work out if an action is intrinsically flawed?

Answer 18

No, but he does indicate where to look — we are to look at the features that individuate acts, such as their objects, their ends, their circumstances, and so forth.

Question 19

Does Aquinas think that we can always find a principle of conduct that will exhaustively cover principles of right?

Answer 19

Aquinas has no illusions that we will be able to state principles of conduct that exhaustively determine right conduct, as if for every situation in which there is a correct choice to be made there will be a rule that covers the situation.

Question 20

What Aristotelian insight does Aquinas allow for?

Answer 20

He allows for the Aristotelian insight that the particulars of the situation always outstrip one’s rules, so that one will always need the moral and intellectual virtues in order to act well. But he denies that this means that there are no principles of right conduct that hold everywhere and always, and some even absolutely. (e.g. Stealing is always wrong, etc., and we know that through Natural Law)