LIMITS: A WAY TO FULLFILMENT

Philosophical elements for a realistic morality of perfection from Aquinas and John Paul II

Marcelo Olmedo

Principles of Christian Moral life I

Rev. Cajetan Cuddy, OP.

Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception

Washington, DC

11/29/2021
Introduction

We live within a society that has empowered freedom as an absolute: “Certain currents of

modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an

absolute, which would then be the source of values.”.1 To be free whatever it matters is a

common concern of our post-modern time.

A proof of this are all the cultural and social battles trying to preserve the apparently common

right to do and think “whatever anyone wants”, and the minimum attempt to put any kind of limit

it’s seen as repressive or violent. People desires as Jean Paul Sartre 2 also claims: a “360 grades

freedom”, an absolute freedom, free of any kinds of limits and laws.

Just to mention one of many examples. Sigmund Freud, in his famous work Civilization and its

discontents3, says that every man has that impulse for pleasure as infinite. But if he tried to

satisfy it, he would obviously collide with others, and it would be his destruction. So, it has to be

limited, but that limit is always repressive and implies less pleasure. Civilization, which

represents all the limitation of these impulses, is repressing more and more. Civilization must

advance, because if not, we perish. With technology we are living more and more, but as the

civilization advances, discontent also advances (that's why the title of the book). With time we

are more and more repressed, and our most intimate desires are met less and less.

Is every limit or law repressive? Trying to briefly refresh this relation between law, freedom, and

personal growth from Aquinas and John Paul II is what I would like to deepen in this paper,

1
John Paull II, The Splendor of Truth (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2003), 48.
2
Cfr.Jean-Paul Sartre and Philip Mairet, Existentialism and Humanism (Brooklyn, NY: Haskell House Publishers Ltd.,
1977).
3
Cfr. Sigmund Freud and James Strachey, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
2010), accessed November 27, 2021.
specially addressing the concept of laws and limits a something positive to achieve our moral

perfection.

TWO PROBLEMS

Where does this vision of limits and laws as negative came from? I would like to present two

reasons from what we have red in Veritatis Splendor and from our moral’s classes.

1. Wrong concept of freedom:

2. Nominalism as understood of negation of the reality of real essences.

1- The concept of freedom which many people follow is called “freedom of indifference”

which states that somebody is freer when he does not have to choose something because

choosing something implies leaving behind other options. Freedom, for them is being

free of, which is a first step of freedom, but they make this very first step the final end of

freedom. For them, freedom is not something that develops while exercising it but

something that has to be kept and save.

Most of the post-modern authors follow this understanding of the concept of freedom and

the influence in our society is just there. Jean Paul Sartre is one of the biggest expositors

of it. He used to say the maxim "everything is allowed" (famous phrase of Ivan

Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s work 4). However, this phrase usually changes in most

profound philosophers into “therefore, nothing is allowed”.

4
Cfr. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Everyman’s library
70 (New York: Knopf, 1992)
 The realists say that a mistake is a truth that “went short “. Therefore, in this position, as

it has influenced so much in our modern culture, some truth has to be found on it.

The aspect of truth that this vision has is the very first step or aspect in our freedom

called “free will” and Aquinas says: “For reason in contingent matters may follow

opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now

particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of

reason may follow opposite courses and is not determinate to one.” 5. In this first step of

human liberty, it is remarked the openness of the human being to choose from among

many possible goods.

This a very important first step of freedom, that could be called “freedom of” referring to

the unattachment to any particular good.

Most of the philosophers and theologians which follow this view of freedom as

indeterminate, only understands it in this very first step, but forget about what is next, the

actual exercise of our freedom which is choosing, deciding, according to our end which is

received previously. Is in the use of our freedom where it grows and develops.

The second philosophical influence which has led our culture to have a wrong

misunderstanding of law and limits is Nominalism. A lot can be said about this

philosophy started by Ockham and followed by many after him.

Basically, nominalism rejects that there are common essences in reality which somebody

can knows. Things are, just because we group and name them randomly, but there is

nothing in the real being of these things which makes them be one thing or another. A

5
Saint Thomas Aquinas et al., Summa Theologiae, Latin/English edition of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas
Volume 13-20 (Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012). I II Q83,I, resp
 lion is a lion because we have named it like that, but not because there is something in

common between this lion and that lion, in philosophical terms, there is not a nature or an

essence of “lionness”.

From this point of view, now the man is the one who puts the order in reality and is the

one who decides what things are. There is an empowerment of the will, who finally is the

one who imposes the order in reality. In this erroneous view, there is nothing to

contemplate before-handed, just because there is nothing contemplable before our will

puts that order. First comes action, then contemplation.

Following this philosophy, it makes sense to state that natural law and limits are

repressive and against freedom, because there cannot be something prior to my existence,

there cannot be something which antecedes me. With the empowerment of the will comes

the empowerment of freedom as an absolute who has to decide by itself the order of

reality and therefore what is good and evil as JP states: “Human freedom would thus be

able to "create values" and would enjoy a primacy over truth, to the point that truth itself

would be considered a creation of freedom. Freedom would thus lay claim to a moral

autonomy which would actually amount to an absolute sovereignty.”6.

This position, at the beginning, sounds to be a freer one, but at the end it leads to atheism

and nihilism because the world is a unorder and evil place to live and it is not the result of

the thought and love of a Powerful God “With regard to man himself, such a concept of

autonomy produces particularly baneful effects, and eventually leads to atheism:

"Without its Creator the creature simply disappears...”7.

6
John Paull II, The Splendor of Truth, 51–52.
7
Ibid., 55.
 LAW & FREEDOM IN AQUINAS AND JPII

Aquinas, JPII and all the realist philosophers and theologians start with the point that

there is an order in reality that antecedes us, that we receive, and we do not impose. There

is something before use that we discover and therefore there is a supremacy of

contemplation rather than action.

Awe was the beginning of philosophy when people was strike and amazed by the order

of things which they could discovered by reasoning, entering in the mind of whom has

created all things. “And this takes place above all thanks to the light of natural

reason, the reflection in man of the splendor of God's countenance.” 8. Therefore,

following this realistic tradition we can answer to the false opposition of freedom and

law, limits.

Aquinas, in question number 90, talks about the essence of the law and says two

principles which characterizes it which are very luminous for this topic.

First, he says that the “law is something which pertains to reason because it commands

and forbids and only reason can do this, therefore law pertains to reason” 9. From this

affirmation, we can state that a real and good law (or limit) should be always according to

reason, they are evil, just because evil is always lacking reason.

The claim of our secularized culture that most “religious” limits and laws are always

repressive and evil, can be answered from this principle which Aquinas gives us,

especially with regards to the laws and limits which God commands us. God is LOGOS,

he has ordered and created everything (eternal law) with reason and love, which includes

8
Ibid., 58.
9
Thomas Aquinas et al., Summa Theologiae. I II,Q90,I,corpus
 us, therefore following his commands and laws it is always is reasonable, not arbitrary,

and external.

Besides, Aquinas, says: “Wherefore the very Idea of the government of things in God the

Ruler of the universe, has the nature of a law. And since the Divine Reason's conception

of things is not subject to time but is eternal, according to Prov. 8:23, therefore it is that

this kind of law must be called eternal.” 10 For Aquinas, everything that is, because of the

fact that it is participates in eternal law. The eternal law is everything.

This conception is much more encouraging than those stated before, because sees the

world as the fruit of a mind and Reason, and as a consequence, each being has its wright

place as part of the divine order (finitude), so following their limits is always good and

perfective.

In addition, our reason and consequently our freedom haven’t got to decide good and

evil, and to impose the order to reality, we need to discover it as John Paul II says: “The

man is certainly free, inasmuch as he can understand and accept God's commands. And

he possesses an extremely far-reaching freedom, since he can eat "of every tree of the

garden". But his freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the "tree of the knowledge

of good and evil", for it is called to accept the moral law given by God.” 11

Secondly, Aquinas, talking about the essence of the law says that: “Law is a rule and

measure of acts” 12
therefore, measure is something intrinsically to law. Measure is

always related with limits. With no limits, there is no measure, because we live in a finite

world.
10
Ibid.I II Q91,I,corpus
11
John Paull II, The Splendor of Truth, 51.
12
Thomas Aquinas et al., Summa Theologiae.I II, Q90,I,corpus
 If somebody wants to measure a field for a soccer court, he might have to put limits and

lines to distinguish the middle line from the sideline and from the house that is next to the

court.

In a finite world, limits and measure are necessary and are good. We need limits, they

are actually a way to perfection. The world exterminate comes from the Latin particle ex

which means “out” and the word termini which means “limit”. So, to exterminate oneself

is to take out every limit.

The law measures and rules our acts, especially according to our end. Aquinas says that

our final end is beatitude, which is God. Therefore, law and limits are necessary to

accomplish our final natural and supernatural end. Laws and limits are not something not

evil but are actually something we need to get our final end, which also means our

perfection. Laws and limits are our helpers for perfection.

As a confirmation to this, Aquinas, in Q 92, art I, questions himself whether an effect of

law is to make men good, and he answers: “The proper effect of law is to lead its

subjects to their proper virtue: and since virtue is "that which makes its subject good," it

follows that the proper effect of law is to make those to whom it is given, good, either

simply or in some particular respect.” 13

It is clear for him, that limits and laws are not

evil but necessary and good. They are a way to perfection.

Putting things together, Aquinas and John Paul II teach us that the creation is fruit of the

divine reason, and everything that is, participates on it (eternal law). The world was order

by God who puts each thing on its proper place.

13
Ibid.I II,Q92,art I,corpus
 When we follow that order, some limits and laws are given to us a way to perfect

ourselves. Therefore, when human beings freely choose those laws and limits, their

freedom is not diminished, but fulfilled and enlarged as JPII says: “God's law does not

reduce, much less do away with human freedom; rather, it protects and promotes that

freedom.” 14

From this vision, we can state that the law is not opposite to a realistic view of human

freedom. On the contrary, freedom needs to be guided to really develop, that is the reason

why John Paul II says that: “Man's freedom is not negated by his obedience to the divine

law; indeed, only through this obedience does it abide in the truth and conform to human

dignity.”15.

Conclusion

The starting points are very important in the discussion of freedom, laws, and limits. Considering

the world as something created, ordered, with meaning and sense, where every particular thing

and being has its proper place on it leads us to accept more easily limits as a proper and

14
John Paull II, The Splendor of Truth, 51.
15
Ibid., 58.
reasonable way to perfection. On the other hand, when this starting point is not there, it seems to

be much more difficult to conciliate the problem of law and freedom.

Aquinas and John Paul II are great examples of mans who had started from a realistic view of

reality and showed us it and helped us to apply those principles into a realistic moral theology.