Natural Law of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Hobbes

Natural Law and Socrates

Natural law or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis) is a theory that posits the existence of a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere. The phrase natural law is opposed to the positive law (which is man-made) of a given political community, society, or nation-state, and thus can function as a standard by which to criticize that law. In natural law jurisprudence, on the other hand, the content of positive law cannot be known without some reference to the natural law.

HistorySocrates, the celebrated Greek philosopher and moralist, was born at Athens in the year 469

B.C. His father, Sophroniskus, was a sculptor and he followed the same profession in the early part of his life. His family was respectable in descent, but humble in point of means. He had the usual education of the Athenian citizen, which included not only a knowledge of the mother tongue, and readings in the Greek poets, but also the elements of arithmetic, geometry and astronomy as then known. Excepting in connection with his philosophical career, few circumstances of his life are known. He served as a heavy-armed foot-soldier, at the siege of Potidaea, at the battle of Deliurn, and at Amphipolis, and his bravery and endurance were greatly extolled by his friends.

Socrates and the Study of Natural LawSocrates was most interested in the human condition and for him, the relentless examination of

human action was the most important act of philosophy he believed that if human beings were to live a good and happy life then every decision they make must be questioned, examined and criticized i.e. ask ourselves what principles we base our choices on and whether these principles should be respected. A pertinent question: what are you doing about your future? He devised a theory about how every human ought to examine their life and this was based on 4 principles:the unexamined life is not worth living- critical self- assessment of one’s purpose on earth and way in which they live is the only way one can achieve true happiness there are objective and valid principles of thought and action that apply to all men and women that must be followed if people want to be happy the truth about life and the true principles of ‘right’ thinking and actions are only found within each individual person, not in religion, tradition etc…and the only way to truth is through self-examination philosophers and teachers can help people to uncover the truth with in them through questions to begin this process of self-examination. Hence through these principles his style of philosophy was born.

dialogue, discussion between 2 people- a question is raised and through Q and A, a dialogue process, a person will achieve wisdom =

Socratic methodSome were resistant to his dialogue style i.e wealthy or politicians, people who felt that they didn’t need further wisdomHe also developed the technique of irony to get through to these people to make them see that they weren’t truly wise

Irony: a form of communication that assumes a double audience a) the superficial and a b) real audience, therefore the statement has double meaningThe real meaning of the communication is only understood by the second audience and they know that the first audience is misunderstood

What is man? Man is declared to be that creature who is constantly in search of himself—a creature who in every moment of his existence must examine and scrutinize the conditions of his existence. In this scrutiny, in this critical attitude toward human life, consists the real value of human life. ‘A life which is unexamined is not worth living.’ We may epitomize the thought of Socrates by saying that man is defined by him as that being who, when asked a rational question, can give a rational answer.

Both his knowledge and his morality are comprehended in this circle. It is by this fundamental faculty, by this faculty of giving a response to himself and to others, that man becomes a ‘responsible’ being, a moral subject."

Natural Law According to Plato

Societal Setting and Prevailing MindsetDuring the time 427-347 BC when Plato lived, Athens had several revolts and war against

neighboring cities and territories. Because of the necessity for abrupt yet consensual decisions, male Athenians would usually gather, assemble and vote directly on the issues of the day. Only adult males who had citizen mothers could participate in the Assembly. Speakers, usually with superior speaking skills or regarded debate champions, will come before the Assembly convincing the populace to vote for his cause. Suffice it to say that the Assembly often changed its policies because of the eloquence of the speaker before it.

This philosophy of Sophism, where right and wrong are determined solely by who is in power, is embraced by the power-elite of Athens. The prevailing idea was that justice is what is good for the stronger with emphasis on material values and worldly success. According to some Sophists, the most basic law of nature was that the strong wins over the weak. In this view, this law of nature quite properly overrode any law of human creation seeking to protect the weak against the strong. This doctrine is based on the idea that human society is just an extension of the animal world. In fact, irrational animal nature was used by some Sophists as a model for human behavior. This practice is opposed by Socrates and his follower Plato, clinging to the belief that it will lead to the downfall of civilization.

Another aspect of Socrates and Plato’s time was the system of pure democracy which implicates an absence of individual protections (what we may now call Bill of Rights). In a pure democracy, as shown by the Athenian Assembly, whatever the majority said prevailed, even if it meant exiling or even executing an innocent man.

Life and Methods of PlatoPlato is often described as the devoted follower and mentee of Socrates. Born from a

distinguished family in Athens, he was educated in the field of arts, mathematics, grammar, music, among others. He had travelled to Italy, Sicily, Egypt and Cyrene and returned to Athens when he was forty to organize a philosophical school he called the Academy, where Aristotle was later educated.

Plato, being a student of Socrates, was much influenced by his mentor’s way of thinking. He wrote the Republic or the "Politeía", a society ruled by philosopher-kings, where he portrayed Socrates as the protagonist conversing with several Athenians on the meaning of justice and happiness.

Plato discussed his ideas through dialogues which can be read as a conversation of arguments among men. He left to the readers the task of imagining how the characters are seated or how are they speaking or reacting by providing clues and hints throughout the dialogue. Humor and sarcasm are always part of the dialogues. He is famous for use of metaphorical references and imagery.

Man in Relation to the StateNature of man as premised by Plato is that (1) humans taken individually are not self-

sufficient, and that (2) people are naturally disposed to perform different tasks. Thus, those who are predisposed to sell become merchants while those who are born with a skill for labor become a builder, so on and so forth. Because of this dependence, man needs the state to survive. The existence of a state grows out of this nature of man. Plato believes that in order to understand the workings of the state, we must therefore understand the workings of a man’s soul; and that in order to define justice in a state, we must first define justice in a human soul.

Platonic Idea of JusticeJustice in the Soul vis-à-vis Justice in a City

Plato defined justice in the individual soul through an analogy of justice in a city. In a just city, justice takes form of just institutions and laws and just relations among the city’s residents. Its legal systems will not discriminate unfairly among citizens; nor will a small wealthy class enjoy disproportionate power. The justice of the city will consist in internal relations, whether between two individuals or between one individual or the city as a whole. So for the analogy between city and soul to work, the just soul will similarly have to be, not the soul of the one who behaves justly toward other people, but a soul that is internally constituted in some particular way. This will mean, among other things, that the human soul contains internal divisions or parts, corresponding either to the city’s individual citizens or to collections of them.

A Just Man and A Just CityJust as man possesses three kinds of motivation, he created his ideal city-state with three

classes of people. He believes that a good city structured as that which corresponds to the human soul reflects the natural laws. The three classes of people in the society are the producers, the standing army and the rulers he called philosopher-kings. The produces are the husbandmen and craftsmen, the providers for the bodily needs for which temperance or moderation is required. The standing army, is charge of the defense of the citizens, must display courage or fortitude while the rulers possess reason, wisdom and moral character. In the ideal city-state, if a ruler can create just laws, and if the warriors can carry out the orders of the rulers, and if the producers can obey this authority, then a society will be efficient, in order and just. Applied to man, a man’s soul is just when its reason rules, courageous when its spirited part acts bravely and moderate when all three parts accept the rule of restraint. Justice in the soul is achieved when each of this kind of human motivation is working harmoniously in an individual while justice in a state is achieved when each of the classes exactly discharges its proper function without interfering in the functions of the others.

The essence therefore of justice is internal cooperation and balance. In this idea of justice as concordant working of parts within the individual's own nature, the Platonic notion differs from the Scholastic, which is that justice is strictly not towards self, but towards others.

His Idea of Happiness Human happiness can result only from the fulfillment of man's real nature. A well-ordered soul,

as he calls it, will function smoothly only through the rule of its restraint function and well-trained expression of courage. And since it is the restraint part that recognizes the demands of morality, its rule within the soul will produce actions most in accord with the strictures of ethics. According to him, a well-ordered soul will be least likely people to embezzle money, rob temples, betray friends, break oaths or commit adultery or filial negligence just as a well-ordered state is that which does not abuse power, indulge in wealth, engage in corruption or discriminates between sexes. Absence of justice or imbalance of the human motivations of temperance, courage and wisdom results in the domination of the irrational desires. Control of the irrational desires creates immorality, misery in man and eventually unhappiness.

AristotleGreek Scientist and Philosopher who along with Plato, regarded as one of the most influential

pillars of philosophy in the western tradition, and determined the course of Western intellectual history.At the age of 17 Aristotle joined Plato's circle at the Academy in Athens. There he remained for

20 years, and although his respect and admiration for Plato was always great, differences developed which ultimately caused a breach.

He is often said to be the father of natural law which is due largely on the interpretations given to him by Thomas Aquinas

Aristotle and Natural LawFor Aristotle, Natural law is a discipline to which human conduct must conform in order to

realize both the individual and the common good.“It is reason unaffected by desire, or law is order, and good law is good order”

It should be noted that Man by nature is a rational being, and his reason should control his lower nature. He is also a social being which needs the society to fulfill his nature. Aristotle sits on the middle ground that man is essentially reason, and the law should also follow reason to be able to attain just acts to produce and preserve happiness in such a society.This founded Aristotle’s contribution to the roots of natural law usually takes reference to his famous work, the Rhetoric.

The Rhetoric is an ancient Greek treatise on the art of persuasion, dating from the fourth century BC. It deals with methods of persuasion, divided into those by which the speaker produces on his audience a favorable view of his own character, those by which he produces emotion, and thirdly argument, whether by means of example or of enthymeme (It then discusses style (of which the leading characteristics should be clearness and appropriateness) and arrangement). The object of this treatise is practical, how to compose a good speech.

In relating this to the point of view assessing its context, it is similar to a handbook in the act of urging and influencing which is similar to the sort of things a lawyer or prosecutor might study, in learning how it is best, to make his case and win. Basically, one of the first things on which a competent lawyer would focus, since the “law” and “legality” tend to be amorphous umbrella terms, would be to differentiate the various types of law and their ranges of applicability.

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle supplies the necessary distinctions on the outset when he distinguishes the kinds of persons subject to law – individuals and communities, and on the basis differentiates particular law from universal law.Particular law (idios) which can be written or unwritten and it is what has been defined by each people for themselves.

While universal law or common law (koinos) is according to nature, and usually unwritten understanding amongst a group of people with similar ideas of “fairness”

It is simplified by Aristotle in two kinds:Distributive justice – applied in giving honors and respects

2. Connective and equalizing or called rectifying justice – applied to voluntary contractual relationship

There is a passage in the Rhetoric that might be taken to suggest the existence of anatural, or at least “common,” law.

“Just and unjust things have been defined according to two laws and according topersons in two ways. I call one law particular (idios), the other, common(koinos): particular is what has been defined by each [people] for themselves —and this [can be] unwritten or written — while common is according to nature.For there is that which everyone somehow divines to be by nature just and unjustin common”. (R 1373b2–8)

The meaning of what Aristotle suggests here, when its context is taken in account, however, is that an appeal from the familiar law to some “higher,” more universally authoritative law may be rhetorically effective, since the “divination” of a common justice by nature renders plausible a common law that is according to nature; his purpose was not, however, to establish that such a law exists.

This does not mean that Aristotle thought there was no natural law, only that he did not intend to prove its existence it in the Rhetoric. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that Aristotle says only that the just and unjust things “have been defined” with reference to two laws.

In particular written law, Aristotle offers as examples the laws against theft mayhem and adultery, while unwritten law are those customs of approbation or disapprobation

On the subject of universal law Aristotle discusses it in a passage which is often cited as the first recognition and advocacy of natural law.

“Universal law is the law of the Nature. For there really is, as everyone to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice binding on all men, even on those who have no association or covenant with each other. It is this that Sopohocles’ Antigone clearly means when she says that the burial of Polyneices was a just act in spite of the prohibition; she means she was just by nature.”

Aristotle’s reference to a law which is “binding on all men” could be taken as appeals to recognized authorities to bolster his arguments asserting the existence of national law, apparently amounting to a prima facie defense of the concept.

In the Rhetoric, it becomes clear that although Aristotle himself may have believed in the existence of natural law, this is not the thrust of his arguments. Aristotle is not citing the example as to argue for the existence of natural law but rather as an advice to a defense lawyer on how to win the case but rather offer pointers particularly to judges and prosecutors who are faced with arguments appealing to eternal laws or exceptional cases which may invite equity decisions or judicial review, which reinterpret or modify the laws

Natural JusticeIn contrast with the Rhetoric, Aristotle does made observations about “natural justice” in his book

Nichomachean Ethics V, which approximate to the concept of natural law, but should not be confused with natural-law theory in the strict sense.

He says whilst our laws may vary culturally, natural law is independent and “unchangeable, and has the same power everywhere, just as fire burns both here and in Persia.” It would be in the sense constant, but this pronouncement is not absolute, since an individual can see a change in things recognized as just.

He argues that the term “justice” actually refers to two different but related ideas: general justice and particular justice.

When a person's actions are completely virtuous in all matters in relation to others, Aristotle calls her "just" in the sense of “general justice;” as such this idea of justice is more or less coextensive with virtue. "Particular" or "Partial justice", by contrast, is the part of "general justice" or the individual virtue that is concerned with treating others equitably. Aristotle moves from this unqualified discussion of justice to a qualified view of political justice, by which he means something close to the subject of modern jurisprudence.

In giving meaning to his meaning of natural justice, it should be kept in mind that for Aristotle, the ethics behind such is a branch of politics which also aims at people becoming good, though politics takes the perspective of a law-giver, substantially for the common good of the inhabitants of the relevant

territory, rather than in the interests of a segment of the population unfairly indifferent or hostile to the interests and wellbeing of other segments

It is an analysis of the virtue of justice, not justice in the global sense of virtuousness or righteousness, but with regard to the responsible interchange of goods in the political societyExamples made by Aristotle are the variations of wine and corn measures during his time which are everywhere equal. Also, to the standards of justice in various political constitutions which emphasize the context of commutative and distributive justice, and also rectificatory justice as indicated by prisoners bail-charges. Interesting also to note is that, by nature, a person’s right hand is stronger, yet it is possible that all men could be ambidextrous. This reference is meant to show that general rules of justice, unlike the burning characteristics of fire, admit of exceptions.

In short, natural justice in the context of Aristotle’s ethics consists of general rules for the distribution, exchange and transmission of goods based on the exigencies of human society.

Case on Aristotle’s Natural LawOposa vs Factoran (G.R. No. 101083 July 30, 1993)

FACTS: The petitioners, all minors, sought the help of the Supreme Court to order the respondent, then Secretary of DENR, to cancel all existing Timber License Agreement (TLA) in the country and to cease and desist from receiving, accepting, processing, renewing or approving new TLAs. They alleged that the massive commercial logging in the country is causing vast abuses on rainforest. They furthered the rights of their generation and the rights of the generations yet unborn to a balanced and healthful ecology.

Ratio: Deriving inspiration from the natural law tradition, the preservationists assume that the natural ecosystems are well-ordered and harmonious. All parts of the ecosystem, and especially all its biotic members, have a distinctive place in the overall scheme.

Each one contributes to the natural order in its own way. Thus, nature undisturbed is goodness preserved. Ecological problems arise when man interferes with the natural order and treat other natural objects as having value only insofar as they serve human purposes.

Finally, it is conceivable that natural human sociability itself constitutes a significant element of latent natural-theory in Aristotle. As shown, his emphasis in his work, the Politics on the fact that humans are essentially political animals and the state is thus a creation of nature itself, might be arguably interpreted as a natural law of forming and participating in cities and states. But explicitly Aristotle neither enunciates nor expands on any natural law theory in the traditional sense

1. Interpretations and methodAquinas' moral and political philosophy has to be reconstructed from his theological treatises and commentaries and his commentaries on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and the first two and half books of Aristotle's Politics. Its proper interpretation has been a matter of some difficulty from the time of his death in 1274. In recent decades the way to understand some aspects of its foundational concepts and logic has been strenuously disputed, not least among those philosophers who see it as offering a broadly sound answer to radical scepticism about value and obligation, an answer truer and more human than Kant's or Bentham's or their (in the broadest sense) successors'. A partial sample of these controversies is given in 1.1 and 1.2 below, which state the more common interpretation on two strategic issues and then elaborate objections to those interpretations. The remainder of this article then proceeds on the basis that there is merit in these objections, and that the study of Aquinas' ethics as a systematic and strictly philosophical work of practical reason (at its most general and reflective) is still in its infancy. Further textual support, from over 60 of Aquinas' works, can be found in Finnis 1998.1.1 Is the notion of “distinctive human function” foundational for Aquinas?One line of understanding is exemplified by the section on “moral doctrine” in McInerny and O'Callaghan 2005. It gives a priority to Aristotle's arguments attempting to identify a “distinctive” or “peculiarly

human” function,” arguments which proceed on the postulate that, if each kind of craft has its own characteristic function and mode of operation, so must human life as a whole have an “overall” and “distinctively characteristic” function and operatio; and the determination of this should decisively shape the whole of (the rest of) ethics and political theory. To this standard interpretation other interpreters, such as Grisez, Finnis, and Rhonheimer, object on grounds such as these:(i) Aquinas' austerely self-disciplined purposes as an Aristotelian commentator make quite insecure any assumption that he treats as fundamental to his own thinking any and every proposition which is treated by Aristotle as fundamental and expounded in Aquinas' relevant commentary without adverse comment.(ii) The “distinctive function” argument is not prominent or adduced as fundamental (or at all) in Aquinas' more free-standing treatments of morality.(iii) The argument is treated by Aquinas' commentary as yielding the conclusion that felicitas (human happiness or flourishing) consists in a complete life lived in accordance with reason and hence, by entailment, with virtue. But in the Summa Theologiae this is argued to be only an imperfect and incomplete felicitas, and the problematic character of such a concept is apparent from the Summa's definition of felicitas (and synonymously beatitudo) as perfect good and complete satisfaction of all desires.(iv) The “distinctive function” argument is inherently unsatisfying in ways that could hardly have failed to be apparent to so able a philosopher as Aquinas. (a) In Aquinas' rendering, it depends on the postulate that “nature does nothing in vain”, which in turn depends, according to Aquinas, on the premise that nature is the product of divine creative rationality, a premise which Aquinas himself argues is, though provable, by no means self-evident. (b) It seems arbitrary to assume that, if there is an appropriate function or operatio of human beings, it must be peculiar to them. For peculiarity or distinctiveness has no inherent relationship to practical fittingness, and in fact Aquinas elsewhere denies that rationality is peculiar to human beings since he holds that there are other intelligent creatures (the angels, understood to be created minds unmixed with matter, occupying what would otherwise be a surprising gap in the hierarchy of beings which ascends from the most material and inactive kinds through the vegetative kinds, the animal kinds, and the rational animal humankind, to the one utterly active and intelligent, non-dependent and uncreated divine being).(v) The root of the weakness of the “peculiar/distinctive function” argument is that it is looking in the wrong direction, towards a metaphysical proposition concerning the nature of things, instead of towards what is intelligibly good as an opportunity, perhaps even the supreme opportunity, for me and anyone like me (any human being). And it is a truly fundamental methodological axiom of Aquinas's philosophy, from beginning to end of his works, that in coming to understand the nature of a dynamic reality such as human being, one must first understand its capacities, to understand which one must first understand its act(ivities), to understand which one must first come to understand those activities' objects. But the objects of human activities are intelligible opportunities such as coming to know, being alive and healthy, being in friendship with others, and so forth – objects whose attractiveness, fittingness, opportuneness, or appropriateness is in no way dependent upon, or even much enhanced by, the thought that they are distinctively characteristic of human beings as opposed to other animals.(vi) The fact that an operatio is distinctive of human beings does not entail that that operatio is truly valuable, still less that it is obligatory, or that it is more valuable than alternative and incompatible ways or objectives of acting. For a premise containing no evaluative or normative term cannot entail a conclusion including such a term. If, on the other hand, the postulate that a certain operatio is the proper (or even a proper) function of human beings is asserted to be itself evaluative and/or normative rather than, or as well as, factual/descriptive, then some account is needed of the postulate's source or justification (or self-evidence?). Aquinas has a fairly careful account of the self-evidence of a number of foundational evaluative and normative principles, but only one or two of them are said by him to point to kinds of operatio distinctive of human beings; two of the foundational principles are explicitly said by him to direct to goods that are not peculiar to human beings.(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).

1.2 Is the identification of “man's last end” foundational for Aquinas?Along with very many other Thomistic commentators, McInerny and O'Callaghan 2005 and Celano 2003 treat Aquinas' moral philosophy as founded, like his moral theology, upon his determination of what felicitas (= perfecta beatitudo and Aristotle's eudaimonia) truly is, a determination made in the opening quaestiones of the Second Part of his Summa Theologiae, where he elaborately argues that complete beatitudo or felicitas consists in an uninterruptible vision of God (and, in God, of the other truths we naturally desire to know), something possible for us only in a life – in many respects another life -- after death. But it is possible to regard Aquinas' argument in those quaestiones as dictated by the needs of a specifically theological pedagogy, as open to telling objections, and as detachable from (or at least as methodologically posterior to) the working and sound foundations of his moral philosophy and his treatment of specific moral issues – detachable, that is to say, in a way that Aquinas would not need to regard as inappropriate in the different context of today's discourse. This article will treat Aquinas' ethics and political theory as detachable from his theology of life's ultimate point, and will take seriously his emphatic and reiterated thesis that, apart from the divinely given and super-natural opportunity of perfecta beatitudo (a gift about which philosophy as such knows nothing), the only ultimate end and beatitudo (fulfillment) for human beings is living in a completely reasonable, morally excellent (virtuosus) way. That thesis entails that philosophy's main account of morality need and should contain no claim about what perfect happiness consists in.Despite surface appearances, Aquinas is conscious of Aristotle's failure to settle whether it is contemplation or political praxis that is the essence of human fulfillment. He therefore attempts, more intently than Aristotle did in any surviving work, to identify what the first principles of ethics and politics are, and to do so without any premises or presuppositions about a unitary “last end of human existence”.Moreover, when Aquinas does refer to beatitudo as fundamental to identifying the principles of practical reason and the natural (because reasonable) moral law, he in the same breath emphasizes that this is not to be thought of as the happiness of the deliberating and acting individual alone, but rather as the common flourishing of the community, ultimately the whole community of humankind:The ultimate end of human life is felicitas or beatitudo… So the main concern of law [including the natural (moral) law] must be with directing towards beatitudo. Again, since every part stands to the whole as incomplete stands to complete, and individual human beings are each parts of a complete community, law's appropriate concern is necessarily with directing towards common felicitas … that is, to common good. (ST I-II q. 90 a. 2.)The “complete community” mentioned here is the political community, with its laws, but the proposition implicitly refers also to the community of all rational creatures, to whose common good morality (the moral law) directs us.

1.2.1 Philosophy and theology in Aquinas' theory of morality and politicsDetaching Aquinas' philosophy from his theology is compatible with distinctions he firmly delineates at the beginning of his two mature theological syntheses, the Summa contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologiae. (i) There are truths, he says, which are accessible to natural reason, that is, to ordinary experience (including the specialized observations of natural scientists), insight, and reflection; and these include practical truths about good and evil, right and wrong. (ii) Many of those truths of natural reason are confirmed, and even clarified, by divine revelation, that is, the propositions communicated directly or inferentially in the life and works of Christ, as transmitted by his immediate followers and prepared for in the Jewish scriptures accepted by those followers as revelatory. (iii) Some of the truths divinely revealed could not have been discovered by natural, philosophical reason, even though, once accepted, their

content and significance can be illuminated by the philosophically ordered reflection which he calls theology.The philosophical positions in ethics and politics (including law) that are explored in this article belong to categories (i) and (ii). The moral and political norms stated, for example, in the biblical Decalogue are, in Aquinas' view, all knowable independently of that revelation, which confirms and perhaps clarifies them. But the propositions that he holds about what the true last end or ultimate destiny of human beings actually is belong to category (iii) and cannot be affirmed on any philosophical basis, even though philosophy, he thinks, can demonstrate that they are neither incoherent nor contrary to any proposition which philosophy shows must be affirmed.

2. Practical reason's first principlesIntelligence and reason are not two powers; “reason” and “reasoning” in a narrow sense can be regarded as the extension of one's “intelligence” (one's capacity for intelligent insight into the data of experience) into the propositional work of reasoning towards judgment, and “reason” (ratio) in a broader sense refers to this whole capacity, only analytically divisible into aspects or phases. So too, practical reason is not a distinct power. Rather, one's capacity to think about the way things are can be (and naturally, that is effortlessly and normally, is) “extended” (Aquinas's metaphor) to thinking intelligently and making reasonable and true judgments about what to do. Thinking and judging of the latter kind is practical, that is, intends to terminate in choice and action (in Greek praxis, in Latin actio). “Practical reason” sometimes refers (i) directly to such thinking, sometimes (ii) to the propositional content or structure which such thinking has when it is done well – and thus to the propositions that pick out what kinds of action one ought to be judging pursuit-worthy, undesirable, right, wrong, etc. – and sometimes (iii) to the capacity to engage in such thinking by understanding and being guided by such propositions.

2.1 Precondition: capacity for self-determination by free choicesPractical reason's central activity is deliberation about what to do. One would have no need to deliberate unless one were confronted by alternative attractive possibilities for action (kinds of opportunity) between which one must choose (in the sense that one cannot do both at the same time, if at all) and can choose. The standards that one comes to understand to be the appropriate guides for one's deliberation, choice and action give such guidance, not by predicting what one will do, but by directing what one should do. (The “should” here may but need not be moral.) There could be no normativity, no practical (choice-guiding) directiveness, unless free choices were really possible.Aquinas's position is not that all our activities are freely chosen: there are indeed “acts of the human person”, perhaps quite frequent, which are not “human acts” in the central sense (freely chosen) but rather spontaneous and undeliberated. Nor is it that chosen acts must be immediately preceded by choice: many of one's acts are the carrying out of choices which were made in the past and need not be now renewed or repeated since no alternative option appears attractive. It is that one can be and often is in such a position that, confronted by two or more attractive possibilities (including perhaps the option of “doing nothing”), there is nothing either within or outside one's personal constitution that determines (settles) one's choice, other than the choosing: Mal. q. 6. This conception of free choice (liberum arbitrium or libera electio) is much stronger than Aristotle's, on whose conception free choices are free only from external determining factors. Aquinas' conception of free choice is also incompatible with modern notions of soft determinism, or the supposed compatibility of human responsibility (and of the sense [self-understanding] that one is freely choosing) with determination of every event by laws (e.g. physical) of nature. Aquinas understands the freedom of our free choices to be a reality as primary and metaphysically and conceptually irreducible as the reality of physical laws, and he puts all his reflections on morality and practical reason under the heading of “mastery over one's own acts” (ST I-II, prologue).He is also insistent that if there were no such freedom and self-determination, there could be no responsibility (fault, merit, etc.), and no sense or content to any ought (normativity) such as ethics is concerned with.

2.1.1 Choice, intention and act-descriptionsAquinas pulls together into a powerful (though confusingly expounded) synthesis a long tradition of analysis of the elements of understanding (reason) and intelligent response (will) that constitute deliberation, choice, and execution of choice: ST I-II qq. 6-17. The analysis shows the centrality of intention in the assessment of options and actions. In a narrow sense of the word, intention is always of ends and choice is of means; but since every means (save the means most proximate to sheer trying or exertion) is also an end relative to a more proximate means, what is chosen when one adopts one of two or more proposals (for one's action) that one has shaped in one's deliberation is rightly, though more broadly, said to be what one intends, what one does intentionally or with intent(ion), and so forth. An act(ion) is paradigmatically what it is intended to be; that is, its morally primary description – prior to any moral evaluation or predicate -- is the description it had in the deliberation by which one shaped the proposal to act thus. Aquinas's way of saying this is: acts are specified by – have their specific character from -- their objects, where “objects” has the focal meaning of proximate end as envisaged by the deliberating and acting person. Of course, the behavior involved in that act can be given other descriptions in the light of conventions of description, or expectations and responsibilities, and so forth, and one or other these descriptions may be given priority by law, custom, or some other special interest or perspective. But it is primarily on acts qua intended, or on the acts (e.g. of taking care) that one ought to have intended, that ethical standards (moral principles and precepts) bear. To repeat: in the preceding sentence “intended” is used in the broad sense; Aquinas sometimes employs it this way (e.g. ST II-II q. 64 a. 7), though in his official synthesis the word is used in the narrower sense to signify the ( further) intention with which the act's object was chosen – object being the most proximate of one's (broad sense) intentions.This understanding of human action has often been misappropriated by interpreters who have assumed that when Aquinas says that acts are wrongful by reason of their “undue matter” (indebita materia), he refers to an item of behavior specifiable by its physical characteristics and causal structure. So, for example, direct killing of the innocent is taken to refer to behavior whose causally immediate effect is killing, or which has its lethal effect before it has its intended good effect. But this is incompatible with Aquinas' fundamental and consistent positions about human action. The “matter” of a morally significant act is, for him, its immediate object under the description it has in one's deliberation: Mal. q. 7 a. 1; q. 2 a. 4 ad 5; a. 6; a. 7 ad 8. It is, in other words, not an item of behavior considered not in its observable physicality as such, but rather one's behavior as one's objective (or the most proximate of one's objectives), that is, as one envisages it, adopts it by choice, and causes it by one's effort to do so. The most objective account of human action is provided by the account that is most subjective. This sound account will, however, set aside any distorted act-descriptions that one may offer others, or even oneself, as rationalizations and exculpations of one's choice and act, but that do not correspond to what really made the option attractive, as end or as means, and so was treated, in one's actual course of deliberation, as one's reason for acting as one did. The immediately and foreseen lethal effect of an act of self-defense may genuinely be a side-effect of one's choosing to stop the attack by the only available efficacious means (ST II-II q. 64 a. 7), or it may be one's precise object (and the “matter” of one's choice and act) because one's (further) intent was to take lethal revenge on an old enemy, or to deter potential assailants by the prospect of their death, or to win a reward. Behaviorally identical items of behavior may thus be very different human acts, discernible only by knowing the acting person's reasons for acting.

2.2 Context: the open horizon of human life as a wholeEthical standards, for which practical reason's first principles provide the foundations or sources, concern actions as choosable and self-determining. They are thus to be distinguished clearly, as Aristotle already emphasized, from standards which are practical, rational, and normative in a different way, namely the technical or technological standards internal to every art, craft, or other system for mastering matter. Aquinas locates the significant and irreducible difference between ethics and all these forms of “art” in three features: (i) Moral thought, even when most unselfishly concerned with helping others through the good effects of physical effort and causality, is fundamentally concerned with the problem of bringing

order into one's own will, action, and character, rather than the problem of how to bring order into the world beyond one's will. (ii) Correspondingly, the effects of morally significant free choices (good or evil) are in the first instance intransitive (effects on the will and character of the acting person. Only secondarily are they transitive effects on the world, even when that person's intentions are focused, as they normally should be, on the benefits of those external effects. (iii) Whereas every art and technique has a more or less limited objective (end) which can be accomplished by skillful deployment of the art, moral thought has in view an unlimited and common (shared) horizon or point, that of “human life as a whole [finis communis totius humanae vitae]” (ST I-II q. 21 a. 2 ad 2), for each of one's morally significant choices (for good or evil) is a choice to devote a part of one's single life to a purpose which could have been any of the whole open-ended range of purposes open to human pursuit for the sake of benefiting all or any human being(s).

2.3 At the origin of OughtPractical reason, in Aquinas' view, has both one absolutely first principle and many truly first principles: ST I-II q. 94 a. 2. The absolutely first principle is formal and in a sense contentless. Like the logical principle of non-contradiction which controls all rational thought, it expresses, one might say, the pressure of reason and is so far from being empty of significance and force that its form may be regarded as the frame, and its normativity the source, for all the normativity of the substantive first principles and of the moral principles which are inferable from them. Aquinas articulates it as “Good is to be pursued and done, and bad avoided” (ibid.).This has often been truncated to (i) “Good is to be done, and evil avoided” or even, more drastically, (iia) “Do good and avoid evil” or yet more drastically (iib) “Avoid evil and seek the good”. But Grisez 1963 gave reason to think these abbreviations both exegetically and philosophically unsound. The first practical principle is not a command or imperative as (ii) would have it, nor is it a moral principle as all these formulae suggest by omitting “to be pursued” (see 2.7 below). Both in grammar and in propositional content, the principle's gerundive “is-to-be” is neither imperative nor predictive, but rationally directive – an ought -- in the way that gets its fully developed and central sense and normativity in the more specified ought of moral standards.Against a Kantian or neo-Kantian primacy or ultimacy of “structures of mind”, Aquinas would say that just as the pressure of reason articulated in the principle of non-contradiction has its source in the structure of reality – in the real opposition between being and not being -- so the source of the equivalently first practical principle is the real desirability of intelligible goods, and the true undesirability of what is not good.

2.4 First principles of practical reasonIf Plato and Aristotle fail to articulate substantive first principles of practical reason, and if Kant overlooks them in favor of the quasi-Humeian notions of motivation that dominate ethics during the Enlightenment (and ever since), the articulation of such principles by Aquinas deserves attention.

2.4.1 First principles are insights into the data of experience and understood possibilityEach of the several substantive first principles of practical reason picks out and directs one towards a distinct intelligible good which, in line with the primariness of the principle identifying it, can be called “basic” (not a term used by Aquinas). Aquinas regards each of the first practical principles as self-evident (per se notum: known through itself) and undeduced (primum and indemonstrabile). He does not, however, mean that they are data-less “intuitions”; even the indemonstrable first principles in any field of human knowledge are knowable only by insight (intellectus) into data of experience (here, of causality and inclination).Moreover, when describing the first practical principles as self-evident, Aquinas emphasises that self-evidence is relative: what is not obvious to some will be self-evident to those who have more ample experience and a better understanding of other aspects of the matter. And we should expect our

understanding of first principles to grow as we come to understand more about the objects to which they refer and direct (e.g. knowledge, human life, marriage, etc.).

2.4.2 Their Oughts are not inferred from any IsAquinas's repeated affirmation that practical reason's first principles are undeduced refutes the common accusation or assumption that his ethics invalidly attempts to deduce or infer ought from is, for his affirmation entails that the sources of all relevant oughts cannot be deduced from any is. There remain, however, a number of contemporary Thomists who deny that such a deduction or inference need be fallacious, and regard Aquinas as postulating some such deduction or inference. They are challenged., however, by others (such as Rhonheimer, Boyle, and Finnis) who, while sharing the view that his ethics is in these respects fundamentally sound, deny that Aquinas attempted or postulated any such deduction or inference, and ask for some demonstration (i) that he did and (ii) that he or anyone else could make such a deduction or inference.These critics reinforce their denial by pointing out that in his prologue to his commentary on Aristotle's Ethics, Aquinas teaches that knowledge of things that are what they are independently of our thought (i.e. of nature) is fundamentally distinct both from logic and from practical knowledge, one of whose two species is philosophia moralis (whose first principles or fundamental oughts are under discussion here)

2.4.3 A sample first principle: Knowledge is pursuit-worthyAquinas neglects to spell out how these first principles come to be understood. But he holds that they are understood and accepted by everyone who has enough experience to understand their terms. The process of coming to understand a first practical principle may be exemplified as follows, in relation to the basic good of knowledge. As a child one experiences the inclination to ask questions, and to greet apparently satisfactory answers with satisfaction and failure to answer as a disappointment. At some point one comes to understand -- has the insight -- that such answers are instances of a quite general standing possibility, namely knowledge, coming to know and overcoming ignorance. By a distinct though often well nigh simultaneous further insight one comes to understand that this – knowledge -- is not merely a possibility but also a good [bonum], that is to say an opportunity, a benefit, something desirable as a kind of improvement (a perfectio) of one's or anyone's condition, and as to be pursued.

2.5 The other basic goodsThe basic human goods which first practical principles identify and direct us to are identified by Aquinas as (i) life, (ii) “marriage between man and woman and bringing up of children [coniunctio maris et feminae et educatio liberorum]” (not at all reducible to “procreation”), (iii) knowledge, (iv) living in fellowship (societas and amicitia) with others, (v) practical reasonableness (bonum rationis) itself, and (vi) knowing and relating appropriately to the transcendent cause of all being, value, normativity and efficacious action. (ST I-II q. 94 aa. 2 & 3). His lists are always explicitly open-ended. They sketch the outlines and elements of the flourishing of the human persons in whom they can be actualized. Even complete fulfillment – the beatitudo perfecta that Aquinas places firmly outside our natural capacities and this mortal life – could not be regarded as a further good, but rather as a synthesis and heightened actualization of these basic goods in the manner appropriate to a form of life free from both immaturity (and other incidents of procreation) and decay.Similarly, as is entailed by the epistemological principle that nature is known by capacities, capacities by acts, and acts by their objects (see 1.1(v) above), these basic goods, being the basic objects of will and free action, are the outline of human nature. The is of an adequate account of human nature is dependent upon prior grasp of the oughts of practical reason's first, good-identifying principles, even though that prior grasp was made possible by that partial understanding of human nature which comes with an understanding of certain lines of causality and possibility. But defending the epistemological priority of the intelligible objects of will in explanations of practical reason does not entail (cf. McInerny 1992) any denial of the metaphysical priority of the naturally given facts about the human makeup.

2.6 Known by (or from) inclination?Many modern accounts of Aquinas' theory of natural law give explanatory primacy to the naturalness of the inclinations (to live, to know, etc.) that correspond to these basic goods. But others regard this as a fundamental misunderstanding of Aquinas' conception of will, and of the epistemological relationship between nature and reason. Will is for him intelligent response to intelligible good: one's will is “in” one's reason [voluntas in ratione]. He makes it very explicit both that human actions are rightly said to be natural (in the morally relevant sense of “natural”) when and because they are intelligent and reasonable (ST I-II q. 71 a. 2), and that there are inclinations which are natural, in the sense that they are commonly found or characterize some or even most individuals, yet are unnatural because lacking any intelligibly good object. So explanatory priority must be accorded to the basic human goods themselves, and to the self-evident desirability which makes each of them the object of an inclination in the will of anyone sufficiently intelligent and mature to understand their goodness (that is, the way they make human beings more fulfilled, more “perfect” [complete]). An inclination of that kind is relevant in practical reason because its object is desirable, and desirable because it would contribute to anyone's flourishing. To say this is not to say that our natural inclinations to what contributes to our flourishing are mere accident.

2.7 Only incipiently moralMany nineteenth- and early twentieth century accounts of Aquinas took it that the first principles of practical reason, which he regularly calls first principles of natural law or natural right, are moral principles picking out kinds of human act as to be done (e.g. alms-giving to the poor) or not done (e.g. murder, adultery), in the manner of the Commandments. But though there are a few passages in which Aquinas himself speaks in that way, they can be read down so as to make them consistent with the more strategic passages in which he speaks of such moral principles or norms as “derived” conclusions from first principles. (See also 3.3 below.) Even immoral people so blinded by culture or disposition that they do not make these inferences nevertheless can and normally do understand the first principles of practical reason and are guided by them, though imperfectly, in their deliberations.Against Kant's assumption that, since the ends toward which one wishes to act are subjective because given (as Hume proposed) by one's subrational desires, practical reason's function is to limit and channel one's pursuit of those ends, Aquinas considers that practical reason's first and fundamental operation is not limiting, confining or negative but rather facilitating and positive: finding and constructing intelligible ends to be pursued (prosequenda), that give intelligent point to our behavior.The thesis that the first practical principles are only incipiently moral should not be confused with the widespread modern opinion that practical reason's default position is self-interest or “prudential” reason, so that there is a puzzle about how one transits from this to morality. In Aquinas' classical view, one's reason (as distinct from some of one's customs) naturally understands the primary or basic goods as good for anyone, and further understands that it is good to participate in the many forms of friendship which require that one set aside all merely emotionally motivated self-preference.

3. Moral principlesThe discerning, inferring and elaborating of moral principles is a task for practical reasonableness. The judgments one makes in doing this are together called one's conscience, in a sense prior to the sense in which conscience is the judgments one passes or could pass on one's own acts considered retrospectively. Someone whose conscience is sound has in place the basic elements of sound judgment and practical reasonableness, that is of the intellectual and moral virtue which Aquinas calls prudentia. Full prudentia requires that one put one's sound judgment into effect all the way down, i.e. into the particulars of choice and action in the face of temptations to unreasonable but perhaps not unintelligent alternatives.

3.1 ConscienceConscience in Aquinas' view is not a special power or presence within us, but is our practical intelligence at work, primarily in the form of a stock of judgments about the reasonableness (rightness) or unreasonableness (wrongness) of kinds of action (kinds of option). Since each such judgment is of the

form “[It is true that] action of the kind phi is always [or generally] wrong [or: is generally to be done, etc.]” or “phi is [always] [or: generally] required [or forbidden] by reason”, it must be the case – as Aquinas stresses very forcefully – that one's conscience is binding upon oneself even when it is utterly mistaken and directs or licenses awful misdeeds. For since it is logically impossible that one could be aware that one's present judgment of conscience is mistaken, setting oneself against one's own firm judgment of conscience is setting oneself against the goods of truth and reasonableness, and that cannot fail to be wrong: ST I-II q. 19 a. 5; Ver. q. 17 a. 4. The fact that, if one has formed one's judgment corruptly, one will also be acting wrongly if one follows it (ST I-II q. 19 a. 6) does not affect the obligatoriness (for oneself) of one's conscience. This teaching about conscience was rather novel in his day and to this day is often misrepresented or misapplied as a kind of relativism or subjectivism. But it is actually an implication of Aquinas' clarity about the implications of regarding moral judgments as true (or false) and of thus rejecting subjectivism and relativism.

3.2 The supreme moral principleAquinas is regrettably inexplicit about how the first practical principles yield moral principles, precepts or rules that have the combined generality and specificity of the precepts found in the portion of the biblical Decalogue (Exod. 20.1-17; Deut. 5.6-21) traditionally called moral (the last seven precepts, e.g. parents should be reverenced, murder is wrong, adultery is wrong, etc.). But a reconstruction of his scattered statements makes it clear enough that in his view a first implication of the array of first principles, each directing us to goods actualisable as much in others as in oneself, is this: that one should love one's neighbor as oneself.Since he considers this principle, like the set of first principles mentioned in I-II q. 94 a. 2, to be self-evident (per se notum), he must regard the principle of love-of-neighbor-as-self not so much as an inference from, or even specification of, but rather a redescriptive summary of that set. This in turn suggests the further reflection that the first principles, and the goods (bona) to which they direct us, are transparent, so to speak, for the flesh-and-blood persons in whom they are and can be instantiated. Moreover, it may be thought that the primary moral principle of love of neighbor as oneself is another reason to doubt (despite appearances) the strategic role of eudemonism in his ethics. Aristotelianising interpretations of Aquinas' ethics normally make central the notion of fulfillment, understood (it seems) as the fulfillment of the deliberating and acting person – to which the requirement of neighbor love does not have a perspicuous relationship. Grisez and others, on the other hand, take it that the role of fulfillment (eudaimonia, beatitudo) in ethical thought's unfolding from the first principles of practical reason is best captured by a “master moral principle” close though perhaps not identical to Aquinas's supreme moral principle: that all one's acts of will be open to integral human fulfillment, that is to the fulfillment of all human persons and communities now and in future.The supreme moral principle of love of neighbor as self has, Aquinas thinks, an immediately proximate specification in the Golden Rule: Others are to be treated by me as I would wish them to treat me. The tight relation between the love principle and the Golden Rule suggests that love and justice, though analytically distinguishable, certainly cannot be contrasted as other and other. “Neighbor” excludes no human being anywhere, insofar as anyone could be benefited by one's choices and actions. To love someone is essentially to will that person's good. The reasonable priorities among all these persons as objects of one's love, goodwill and care are discussed by Aquinas both as an “order of love(s)” [ordo amoris] and as a matter of right and justice.

3.2.1 The fuller version: the place of the transcendentSince Aquinas thinks that the existence and providence of God, as the transcendent source of all persons and benefits, is certain, his usual statement of the master moral principle affirms that one should love God and one's-neighbor-as-oneself. But since he accepts that the existence of God is not self-evident, he can allow that the more strictly self-evident form of the master moral principle refers only to love of human persons (self and neighbors). He would add that, once the existence and nature of God is accepted, as it philosophically should be, the rational requirement of loving God, and thus the fuller version of the

master moral principle, is self-evident. He also holds that one does not offend against this requirement of loving God except by making choices contrary to human good, that is, to love of self or neighbor: Summa contra Gentiles III c. 122 n. 2.

3.3 Moral precepts are further specifications of this master principle and its immediate specificationsAll moral principles and norms, Aquinas thinks, can be inferred -- as either implicit in, or “referable to” as conclusions from -- the moral first principle of love of neighbor as self: ST I-II q. 99 a. 1 ad 2 with q. 91 a. 4c and q. 100 a. 2 ad 2; q. 100 aa. 3 and 11c. But he never displays an example or schema of these deduction-like inferences. Consequently, as noted in 2.7 above, his would-be successors have sometimes proposed that moral principles and norms have the self-evidence of first principles, and sometimes, equally desperately, have offered premises which, though suggested by some of Aquinas's argumentation or remarks, are incoherent with his general theory – e.g. that natural functions are not to be frustrated.The main lines of Aquinas' theory of moral principles strongly suggest that moral norms (precepts, standards) are specifications of “Good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided”, specifications which so direct choice and action that each of the primary goods (elements of human fulfillment) will be respected and promoted to the extent required by the good of practical reasonableness (bonum rationis). And what practical reasonableness requires seems to be that each of the basic human goods be treated as what it truly is: a basic reason for action amongst other basic reasons whose integral directiveness is not to be cut down or deflected by subrational passions. The principle of love of neighbor as self and the Golden Rule immediately pick out one element in that integral directiveness. The other framework moral rules give moral direction by stating ways in which more or less specific types of choice are immediately or mediately contrary to some basic good. This appears to be Aquinas's implicit method, as illustrated below (3.4).An adequate exposition and defence of the moral norms upheld by Aquinas requires a critique, only hints for which can be found in his work, of theories which claim that choice can and should rationally be guided by a utilitarian, consequentialist or proportionalist master principle calling for maximizing of overall net good (or, some say, incompatibly, for minimizing net evils). In developments of Aquinas's moral theory such as are proposed by Grisez and Finnis, that critique is treated as an indispensable preliminary to any reflective non-question-begging identification of the route from first principles to specific moral norms.

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS AND HIS CONCEPT OF NATURAL LAW

I. LIFE, EDUCATION AND THE NATURAL CAUSES OF HIS GREAT THINKING

Thomas was born in 1125 to an aristocratic family in Roccasecca. At the age of five, he was entered at the Monte Cassino monastery where his studies began. Though little is known of his studies in Montecassino, it is deemed—based on the monastic shaping then prevailing—that it is at this early point that Thomas studied the liberal arts which stretches back to the 6 th century. However, because the monastery became a battle site, Thomas had to transfer to the University of Naples where he came into contact with the “new” Aristotle and with the Order of Preachers or Dominicans, a mendicant order.

Despite his family’s disapproval and protests, Thomas eventually went north to study and became a Dominican. After such stint, Thomas returned to Paris where he completed his studies, became a Master and for three years occupied one of the Dominican chairs in the Faculty of Theology, spending the next ten years in various places in Italy before being called back to Paris to confront the controversy variously called Latin Averroism and Heterodox Aristotelianism.i In 1274, on his way to the Council of Lyon, he fell ill and died.

i

II. NATURAL CAUSES

The following are factors to the intellectual shaping of the great St. Thomas Aquinas from which we may also deduce a background of his concepts of things such as the natural law, among others.

1. As a foundation, he was a “witty child and had received a good soul. From the beginning he manifested precocious and extraordinary talent and thoughtfulness beyond his years.ii

2. His education was such that great things might have been expected of him. His training at Monte Cassino, at Naples, Paris, and Cologne was the best the thirteenth century could give, and the century was the age of golden education. That it afforded excellent opportunities for forming great philosophers and theologians is evident from St. Thomas’ contemporise like Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon, to name a few.iii

3. The books that exercised the greatest influence on his mind were the Bible, the Decrees of the councils and of the popes, the works of the Fathers, Greek and Latin, especially of St. Augustine, the “Sentences” of Peter Lombard, the writings of the philosophers, especially of Plato, Aristotle, and Boethius.

4. It not unreasonably supposed that he learned the Sacred Books by heart while he was imprisoned in the Castle of San Giovanni. Like St. Dominic, he had a special love for the Epistles of St. Paul, on which he wrote commentaries.

5. Deep reverence for the Faith, as made known by tradition, characterizes all his writings. The Consuetudo Ecclesiae—the practice of the Church—should prevail over the authority of any doctor.

NATURAL LAW

CONCEPT – IN GENERAL:

“All things partake somewhat of the eternal law, insofar as, namely, from its being imprinted upon them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends. Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to divine providence in a more excellent way, insofar as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident for itself and for others. Wherefore it has a share of the eternal reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end, and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law.”iv

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Aquinas’ definition of natural law is distinct for its incorporation of the eternal law, which is hinged mostly to God as the Creator. As one would expect from his education and leanings, he bases his doctrine of the natural law on his understanding of God, his relation to His creation and vice versa.

In asking whether there is an eternal law, he begins by stating a general definition of all law: Law is a dictate of reason from the ruler for the community he rules. This dictate of reason is first and foremost within the reason or intellect of the ruler. It is the idea of what should be done to insure the well-ordered functioning of whatever community the ruler has care for. (It is a fundamental tenet of Aquinas’ political theory that rulers rule for the sake of the governed, i.e. for the good and well-being of those subject to the ruler.) Since he has elsewhere shown that God rules the world with his reason (since he is the cause of its being), Aquinas concludes that God has in His intellect an idea by which He governs the world. This idea, in God, for the governance of things is the eternal law.

Aquinas worked out this understanding of the eternal law to formulate his concept of natural law. First, he submits that a law, in general, is “not only in the reason of the ruler, but may also be in the thing that is ruled.” In the case of the Eternal Law (where the Creator is the ruler and the creations are ruled), such reason has been imprinted on us through our nature or essence. Since things act according to their nature, they derive their proper acts and ends (final cause) according to the law that is written into their nature. Everything in nature, insofar as they reflect the order by which God directs them through their nature for their own benefit, reflects the Eternal law in their own natures.

“THE NATURAL INCLINATION OF HUMANS TO ACHIEVE THEIR PROPER END THROUGH REASON AND FREE WILL IS THE NATURAL LAW.”

As applied to human beings, the Natural Law is said to require greater precision because human beings possess both reason and free will. By nature, humans can act freely, which, more often than not, is in pursuance of our proper acts and end, that is, our final causes. Human beings use natural reason to discover what is best for us and in what ways we may best achieve our proper ends. As such, we use our very own nature to extend human participation in the Eternal Law, whereby we act through reasons which must be in conformity with the Natural Law to discern what is good and what is not. Human beings were created in such a way that they would discover by reason what their purpose for living is, by virtue of the belief that all natural things are created for specific purposes based on their very nature. It is upon knowing these purposes that we, human beings, are likely to achieve our natural ends, from which we earn human happiness.

Other precepts of St. Thomas Aquinas’ concept of Natural Law are: that we are commanded to preserve ourselves in being; to take care of our life and transmit that life to the next generation; to rear and care for offspring; fulfil activities that are unique of humans, i.e. knowledge and love, and in a state that is also natural to human persons, i.e. society. The Natural Law also commands us to develop our rational and moral capacities by growing in the virtues of intellect (prudence, art and science) and will (justice, courage, temperance). Natural law also commands those things that make for the harmonious functioning of society. Human nature also shows us what is most distinct upon us, that we are destined to know and love an infinite being, God.

NATURAL LAW—IN A RELATED JURISPRUDENCE

PEOPLE VS. TEODORO DE LA CRUZ y TOJOS, ET AL.(G.R. No. L-52, February 21, 1946)

The facts of the case reveal that the appellant was charged and convicted of robbing a drug store with three other men armed with revolvers. The malefactors were able to get a considerable amount of money and a pair of earrings with diamonds, all located in one of the kitchen drawers. The court delved into the appellant’s identity who denied having participated in the commission of the crime, submitting

that he earns a living by selling breads, shoes, pomade, and other things in the market, and even admitted that he gambles. The analysis of the testimonies though, convinced the court that appellant was conclusively identified as one of the robbers.

Discussion of the decision of the case reveals the application of St. Thomas Aquinas’ concept of natural law, in whether or not the appellant’s conviction must be reversed based on the circumstances of his identity. The second to the last paragraph of the decision reads:

“xxx Saint Thomas Aquinas maintained that the appropriation of others’ goods which they (the owners) do not need, if made in obedience to extreme necessity, does NOT constitute robbery. He declared that the superfluous things in the possession of some persons, by natural law, are goods for the maintenance of the poor. Evident and urgent necessity makes the one who appropriates the goods of another for the maintenance of his own life the legal owner of said goods. (Summa Theologica, 2d part, Question LXVI, Art. VII). To strengthen his position, he quoted from Saint Ambrose the following: ‘The bread you are retaining belongs to the hungry; the cloth you are keeping aside belongs to the naked; the money you are hiding underground is for the redemption and absolution of the unfortunate.’”

Taking such in view, the appellant’s conviction was affirmed, as it was not shown that he robbed because he was compelled by pressing necessities, but by following impulses of moral perversity.

Thomas Hobbes’ Political ThoughtThe Philosophical Project

Hobbes sought to discover rational principles for the construction of a civil polity that would not be subject to destruction from within. Having lived through the period of political disintegration culminating in the English Civil War, he came to the view that the burdens of even the most oppressive government are “scarce sensible, in respect of the miseries, and horrible calamities, that accompany a Civill Warre”. Because virtually any government would be better than a civil war, and, according to Hobbes's analysis, all but absolute governments are systematically prone to dissolution into civil war, people ought to submit themselves to an absolute political authority. Continued stability will require that they also refrain from the sorts of actions that might undermine such a regime. For example, subjects should not dispute the sovereign power and under no circumstances should they rebel. In general, Hobbes aimed to demonstrate the reciprocal relationship between political obedience and peace.

The State of NatureTo establish these conclusions, Hobbes invites us to consider what life would be like in a state of

nature, that is, a condition without government. Perhaps we would imagine that people might fare best in such a state, where each decides for herself how to act, and is judge, jury and executioner in her own case whenever disputes arise—and that at any rate, this state is the appropriate baseline against which to judge the justifiability of political arrangements. Hobbes terms this situation “the condition of mere nature”, a state of perfectly private judgment, in which there is no agency with recognized authority to arbitrate disputes and effective power to enforce its decisions.

Hobbes's near descendant, John Locke, insisted in his Second Treatise of Government that the state of nature was indeed to be preferred to subjection to the arbitrary power of an absolute sovereign. But Hobbes famously argued that such a “dissolute condition of masterlesse men, without subjection to Lawes, and a coercive Power to tye their hands from rapine, and revenge” would make impossible all of the basic security upon which comfortable, sociable, civilized life depends. There would be “no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; and which is worst of all, continually fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, pore, nasty, brutish, and short.” If this is the state of nature, people

have strong reasons to avoid it, which can be done only by submitting to some mutually recognized public authority, for “so long a man is in the condition of mere nature, (which is a condition of war,) as private appetite is the measure of good and evil.”

Although many readers have criticized Hobbes's state of nature as unduly pessimistic, he constructs it from a number of individually plausible empirical and normative assumptions. He assumes that people are sufficiently similar in their mental and physical attributes that no one is invulnerable nor can expect to be able to dominate the others. Hobbes assumes that people generally “shun death”, and that the desire to preserve their own lives is very strong in most people. While people have local affections, their benevolence is limited, and they have a tendency to partiality. Concerned that others should agree with their own high opinions of themselves, people are sensitive to slights. They make evaluative judgments, but often use seemingly impersonal terms like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to stand for their own personal preferences. They are curious about the causes of events, and anxious about their futures; according to Hobbes, these characteristics incline people to adopt religious beliefs, although the content of those beliefs will differ depending upon the sort of religious education one has happened to receive.With respect to normative assumptions, Hobbes ascribes to each person in the state of nature a liberty right to preserve herself, which he terms “the right of nature”. This is the right to do whatever one sincerely judges needful for one's preservation; yet because it is at least possible that virtually anything might be judged necessary for one's preservation, this theoretically limited right of nature becomes in practice an unlimited right to potentially anything, or, as Hobbes puts it, a right “to all things”. Hobbes further assumes as a principle of practical rationality, that people should adopt what they see to be the necessary means to their most important ends.

The State of Nature is a State of WarTaken together, these plausible descriptive and normative assumptions yield a state of nature

potentially fraught with divisive struggle. The right of each to all things invites serious conflict, especially if there is competition for resources, as there will surely be over at least scarce goods such as the most desirable lands, spouses, etc. People will quite naturally fear that others may (citing the right of nature) invade them, and may rationally plan to strike first as an anticipatory defense. Moreover, that minority of prideful or “vain-glorious” persons who take pleasure in exercising power over others will naturally elicit preemptive defensive responses from others. Conflict will be further fueled by disagreement in religious views, in moral judgments, and over matters as mundane as what goods one actually needs, and what respect one properly merits. Hobbes imagines a state of nature in which each person is free to decide for herself what she needs, what she's owed, what's respectful, right, pious, prudent, and also free to decide all of these questions for the behavior of everyone else as well, and to act on her judgments as she thinks best, enforcing her views where she can. In this situation where there is no common authority to resolve these many and serious disputes, we can easily imagine with Hobbes that the state of nature would become a “state of war”, even worse, a war of “all against all”.

Further Questions about the State of NatureIn response to the natural question whether humanity ever was generally in any such state of

nature, Hobbes gives three examples of putative states of nature. First, he notes that all sovereigns are in this state with respect to one another. This claim has made Hobbes the representative example of a “realist” in international relations. Second, he opined that many now civilized peoples were formerly in that state, and some few peoples—the savages of 17th C. America, for instance—were still to his day in the state of nature. Third and most significantly, Hobbes asserts that the state of nature will be easily recognized by those whose formerly peaceful states have collapsed into civil war. While the state of nature's condition of perfectly private judgment is an abstraction, something resembling it too closely for comfort remains a perpetually present possibility, to be feared, and avoided.Do the other assumptions of Hobbes's philosophy license the existence of this imagined state of isolated individuals pursuing their private judgments? Probably not, since, as feminist critics among others have noted, children are by Hobbes's theory assumed to have undertaken an obligation of obedience to their

parents in exchange for nurturing, and so the primitive units in the state of nature will include families ordered by internal obligations, as well as individuals. The bonds of affection, sexual affinity, and friendship—as well as of clan membership and shared religious belief—may further decrease the accuracy of any purely individualistic model of the state of nature. This concession need not impugn Hobbes's analysis of conflict in the state of nature, since it may turn out that competition, diffidence and glory-seeking are disastrous sources of conflicts among small groups just as much as they are among individuals. Still, commentators seeking to answer the question how precisely we should understand Hobbes's state of nature are investigating the degree to which Hobbes imagines that to be a condition of interaction among isolated individuals.

Another important open question is that of what, exactly, it is about human beings that makes it the case (supposing Hobbes is right) that our communal life is prone to disaster when we are left to interact according only to our own individual judgments. Perhaps, while people do wish to act for their own best long-term interest, they are shortsighted, and so indulge their current interests without properly considering the effects of their current behavior on their long-term interest. This would be a type of failure of rationality. Alternative, it may be that people in the state of nature are fully rational, but are trapped in a situation that makes it individually rational for each to act in a way that is sub-optimal for all, perhaps finding themselves in the familiar ‘prisoner's dilemma’ of game theory. Or again, it may be that Hobbes's state of nature would be peaceful but for the presence of persons (just a few, or perhaps all, to some degree) whose passions overrule their calmer judgments; who are prideful, spiteful, partial, envious, jealous, and in other ways prone to behave in ways that lead to war. Such an account would understand irrational human passions to be the source of conflict. Which, if any, of these accounts adequately answers to Hobbes's text is a matter of continuing debate among Hobbes scholars. Game theorists have been particularly active in these debates, experimenting with different models for the state of nature and the conflict it engenders.

The Laws of NatureHobbes argues that the state of nature is a miserable state of war in which none of our important

human ends are reliably realizable. Happily, human nature also provides resources to escape this miserable condition. Hobbes argues that each of us, as a rational being, can see that a war of all against all is inimical to the satisfaction of her interests, and so can agree that “peace is good, and therefore also the way or means of peace are good”. Humans will recognize as imperatives the injunction to seek peace, and to do those things necessary to secure it, when they can do so safely. Hobbes calls these practical imperatives “Lawes of Nature”, the sum of which is not to treat others in ways we would not have them treat us. These “precepts”, “conclusions” or “theorems” of reason are “eternal and immutable”, always commanding our assent even when they may not safely be acted upon. They forbid many familiar vices such as iniquity, cruelty, and ingratitude. Although commentators do not agree on whether these laws should be regarded as mere precepts of prudence, or rather as divine commands, or moral imperatives of some other sort, all agree that Hobbes understands them to direct people to submit to political authority. They tell us to seek peace with willing others by laying down part of our “right to all things”, by mutually covenanting to submit to the authority of a sovereign, and further direct us to keep that covenant establishing sovereignty.

Establishing Sovereign AuthorityWhen people mutually covenant each to the others to obey a common authority, they have

established what Hobbes calls “sovereignty by institution”. When, threatened by a conqueror, they covenant for protection by promising obedience, they have established “sovereignty by acquisition”. These are equally legitimate ways of establishing sovereignty, according to Hobbes, and their underlying motivation is the same—namely fear—whether of one's fellows or of a conqueror. The social covenant involves both the renunciation or transfer of right and the authorization of the sovereign power. Political legitimacy depends not on how a government came to power, but only on whether it can effectively protects those who have consented to obey it; political obligation ends when protection ceases.