55 Am. J. Juris.

41 American Journal of Jurisprudence 2010 Article *41 NATURAL LAW AS A WORK OF REASON: UNDERSTANDING THE METAPHYSICS OF PARTICIPATED THEONOMY

Martin Rhonheimer Copyright (c) 2010 University of Notre Dame; Martin Rhonheimer I. Introduction: the Best of the Natural Law Tradition The document The Search for Universal Ethics: A New Look at Natural Law, presented in 2008 by the International Theological Commission (ITC), advocates building a universal ethics on a specific natural law tradition which has its origin in a civilization permeated by Christian values. [FN1] At first glance, this project seems rather paradoxical. The ITC document (henceforth referred to as SUE) is, however, extremely helpful for resolving this seeming paradox. Referring to the best of the natural law tradition, culminating in Thomas Aquinas, it opens the perspective of an ethics that can both (1) reasonably claim to be accepted by any person of sound judgment, and (2) explain why it actually is not, or cannot be, accepted by some persons (because of dispositional reasons intrinsic to the person, or as a result of extrinsic, cultural causes). To correctly understand this, we have to consider what seems to me a key affirmation of SUE: contrary to pre-modern and modern voluntarism, law must be understood as a work of reason and an expression of wisdom, and this understanding is classically expressed in Thomas Aquinas's general conception of law which also applies to the natural law (SUE, No. 30). Taking up the theme from SUE, I therefore wish to expound in what follows the importance of understanding law as a work of reason, the significance of this understanding for the concept of natural law, and its centrality in Thomas Aquinas's account of natural law. Along with this, I will critically discuss an alternative view of natural law proposed by some contemporary *42 Thomists, which disregards this important feature of Thomistic natural law teaching and, thus, seems to me to miss its point. II. Law and Natural Law as Something Pertaining to Reason

The term natural law, used in moral philosophy, is rather tricky and easily misleading. It can be, and actually often is, falsely understood in the sense of nature as a law, that is, as a set of structures, patterns or the intrinsic teleology inherent in nature, considered to be normative-a law-for human actions. This, however, is not the way in which Aquinas in his moral theory uses the term natural law (or law of nature). To use the term in this way is an anachronism which has its origin in the typical modern manner the natural sciences talk about natural laws (as the law of gravitation, the laws of inheritance, the the law of entropy, and similar natural laws). This modern, scientific discourse about natural laws, arising in the 17th and 18th centuries, was inspired by the pre-Christian identification of natural law with the cosmic order by the Stoics, found also in Roman jurisprudence. [FN2] In the Middle Ages, however, the term natural law was definitely not used in this sense. As a consequence of the Christian transformation of the concept by the Fathers of the Church, it came to belong exclusively to the realm of human agency. Its meaning, eventually dominating medieval moral philosophy and theology, was originally shaped by the Canon lawyers of the early High Middle Ages; it converged with the meaning of the term ius naturale (natural right) which had a clear moral connotation. So, the juridical meaning of natural right and natural law could easily be introduced into moral philosophy and moral theology, which in fact happened during the 12th and 13th centuries. Now, the important point is: unlike ancient Roman jurisprudence, the medieval canon lawyers' discourse about law-including natural ius-was not a discourse about nature, but about natural reason. They considered law to be a specific kind of actualization or performance of human reason and, thus, something essentially pertaining to it. Aquinas's doctrine on natural law is fully dependent on this tradition. A mere glance at his famous general definition of law at the beginning of the treatise on law of his Summa Theologiae manifests it: Law is a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act or is restrained from acting: for lex [law] is derived from ligare [to bind], *43 because it binds one to act. Now the rule and measure of human acts is the reason, which is the first principle of human acts, as is evident from what has been stated above; since it belongs to the reason to direct to the end, which is the first principle in all matters of action, according to the Philosopher. Now that which is the principle in any genus, is the rule and measure of that genus: for instance, unity in the genus of numbers, and the first movement in the genus of movements. Consequently it follows that law is something pertaining to reason. [FN3] This definition of law as an ordinance of reason (ordinatio rationis) and something pertaining to reason (aliquid rationis) is also crucial for understanding the term natural law as used by Thomas Aquinas. Natural law as well is something pertaining to reason, namely to a reason which is natural, that is, which itself in a way belongs to the order of nature. Natural reason is created reason, and more specifically, human reason insofar as it acts with the spontaneity and necessity of nature. As a law, the natural law is as natural to human persons as their reason is natural to them. This is why the encyclical Veritatis splendor says that the natural law is called the natural law . . . not in the way this term is referred to irrational beings but because the reason which promulgates it is proper to human nature. [FN4] Natural law is called natural, first, because it is not divinely revealed through an explicit act of revelation added to creation. Secondly, it is called natural because it is not posited or invented by human beings (it is not human or civil law). It is, thus, called natural law because, independently from any supernatural revelation or human position, it is naturally

present and effectual through each human person's own and natural cognitive equipment. As such it indicates in a preceptive and compelling way the good we have to do and the evil we have to avoid. In his perhaps most succinct definition of natural law, Aquinas therefore writes that the law of nature [lex naturae] is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation. [FN5] In the final sentence of his most succinct exposition of what he understands by natural law, presented in his Summa Theologiae (I-II, q. 91 a. 2), Aquinas famously states that what is called the natural law is nothing *44 other than the participation of the eternal law in the rational creature. In the course of the article, he describes natural law as the natural reason's capacity of discerning good from evil, a divine light which through creation has become part of human nature. For this, Aquinas quotes Psalm 4:6: Many say, Who showeth us the good? The Psalmist's answer is: The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us. Thomas continues, thus implying that the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine light. [FN6] According to Aquinas, therefore, natural law is essentially the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil; like any law, natural law is, therefore, aliquid rationis, something pertaining to reason, [FN7] aliquid per rationem constitutum, [FN8] something established by reason, and, thus, like a proposition, an opus rationis, a work of reason. [FN9] It is such a work of reason not only in the sense that it is the work of Divine reason and wisdom which created the rational creature; but also because it is itself a work of created human reason: properly an ordinance (ordinatio) of human reason. To be truly both law and natural, this law must be something formulated or-as Veritatis splendor sayspromulgated by human reason. At the same time, in a higher metaphysical perspective which considers the first cause, it is equally and originally to be understood as an effect of divine wisdom, which, however, comes to bear through a created, natural and secondary cause: human reason. In human reason's truth-attaining judgments the divine wisdom is participated and reveals itself in the created order of secondary causes. III. The Divine Logos in the Human Soul: the Patristic Tradition This understanding of natural law is rooted in the Christian tradition preceding Aquinas. The Fathers of the Church overcame the one-sidedness of the stoic conception of natural law as reason inserted in nature, which is often erroneously held to be the blueprint for later, Christian natural law thinking. [FN10] Admittedly, the Stoics were the first to conceive of natural law *45 as a universal ethical standard, and in this respect they prepared the soil on which the Christian germ of natural law thinking could grow. Stoic natural law, however, was conceived as being identical with the eternal law of the cosmos, and as immanent to it. As SUE rightly points out, the Fathers of the Church do not adopt purely and simply the stoic doctrine, but modify and develop it. The most important factor in the Patristic shift from nature to reason is the Christian idea that the human person-not the cosmos as a whole-is the bearer of the imago Dei, that man is created in the image of God. It is not simply nature-nature in the sense of our bodily, material nature, of the nature which surrounds us and of the cosmos we all belong towhich is the bearer of the divine logos, but first of all and in a privileged way the human person who, though belonging to nature and the cosmos, has the capacity of intellectually understanding and rationally relating to it. Assuming a broader theological view, SUE grounds this

anthropology in a Christological perspective: To behave in a manner in conformity with reason means to follow the orientations that Christ, as the divine Logos, has placed, by way of the logoi spermatikoi in the human reason. To act contrary to reason is a disturbance of these orientations (No. 26). The most pertinent affirmation in support of this view is the famous and historically most influential passage from Saint Augustine's early De libero arbitrio-not mentioned in SUE-where he affirms that the moral life is based on the impression in us of the knowledge of the eternal law (aeternae legis notio, quae impressa nobis est). [FN11] This is the specific Christian perspective which we eventually find magisterially expounded in Aquinas: the natural moral law is essentially a cognitive power impressed in the human soul by the work of the Divine creator: it is a participation in the divine Logos, the very impression of this Logos, in our intellect and, thus, participation of the knowledge of the eternal law through the created reason of the human person. The natural moral law is, as SUE by recalling the teaching of the encyclical Veritatis splendor emphasizes, truly participated theonomy. Natural law, thus, essentially belongs to knowledge. It is a specific, that is, a natural and most basic form of moral knowledge. It is the preceptive knowledge, understanding, or discernment of good and evil as it naturally-and this means: spontaneously and necessarily-unfolds by the acts of human reason. Natural law, therefore, is a set of normative, preceptive or *46 practically compelling judgments or propositions which are naturally known. [FN12] This is why St. Ambrose of Milan-paraphrasing St. Paul's famous affirmation in his letter to the Romans-asserts that independently from the mosaic law, the pagans also possess a natural knowledge, a natural way of discernment and understanding of what is good and evil; Ambrose calls this natural knowledge the word of God written into our hearts. And he continues: [f]or this reason the ideas of good and evil have sprung up in us, whereby we understand by nature (naturaliter) that what is evil must be avoided, and equally by nature we know that there has been prescribed for us what is good. [FN13] Hence, the natural law is rooted in human reason's natural capacity of discerning good and evil. Natural law is not simply something known by reason-a natural set of ends or teleological patterns-but it is rather the practical, preceptive knowledge itself: practical judgments concerning good and evil generated and formulated by human reason. Hence, formally speaking-that is, indicating the essence-natural law is not an order of nature, but rather a natural order of understanding or discernment concerning what is good and evil, an order of understanding rooted in a power which is the imprint of divine reason in the soul of the rational creature. It is this tradition which was-after centuries of degeneration of ecclesiastical studies-retrieved and re-elaborated by the high medieval Church lawyers in the newly founded university law schools, mainly at Bologna. They were the immediate predecessors of the theological and philosophical tradition which eventually led to Aquinas. *47 IV. Canon Law, Philosophy and Theology Before Aquinas: Ius Naturale/Natural Law as the Dictates of Natural Reason The patristic doctrine of natural law actually reappears in the works of the so-called Decretistscommentators of the Decretum Gratianum-in the 12th century in the form of the juridical concept of natural right (ius naturale). Most interestingly the Decretists understood natural ius not only as subjective rights, but primarily as a cognitive moral capacity of the human person. [FN14] In searching to elaborate an adequate concept of natural ius, appropriate to the Christian

understanding of the person as created in the image of God, they continue the patristic shift from nature to reason. So Rufinus, rejecting Ulpian's definition of natural law as what nature has taught to all animals, seamlessly connects to Saint Ambrose's view on the pagan's natural knowledge of good and evil: Natural ius is a certain force instilled in every human creature by nature to do good and avoid the opposite. It therefore consists, Rufinus says, essentially in a set of commands, prohibitions and demonstrations. [FN15] Rufinus thereby opened the way to a concept of natural law and natural right specific to human beings, who are rational animals. [FN16] Huguccio of Pisa-commonly held to be the greatest of all the Decretists-called ius naturale, in its primary sense reason, namely a natural force of the soul. With this, he typically turned away from the nature of things, the concept used by the antique Roman jurists to designate natural law. As Brian Tierney puts it, ius naturale was thought of as an attribute of individual persons . . . associated with human rationality. [FN17] Almost a century before Aquinas started teaching and writing, philosophers and theologians had generally been adopting this vision which was so firmly rooted in the patristic tradition. [FN18] The most prominent theologian to retrieve the patristic and earlier canonistic tradition, thereby becoming for Aquinas a principal point of reference, was William of Auxerre, a secular cleric and, as Aquinas was later, Master of Theology at the University of Paris. He was strongly influenced by Aristotle's theory of *48 scientific knowledge in the Posterior Analytics. [FN19] William conceived the natural law (ius naturae) as precepts of natural reason. Natural reason provides to deliberation the self-evident practical principles (principia agenda per se nota), which, so he says, are to deliberate reason what the natural principles of speculation are to speculative reasoning. [FN20] After him, it was Philip the Chancellor who talked about natura ut ratio (nature as reason), seeing in the natural law first of all an act of the naturale iudicatorium of reason. [FN21] The early Dominican masters (Hugues de Saint-Cher and Roland of Cremona) followed the path of William of Auxerre. So, Guerric of Saint Quentin defined natural law as a judgment of reason, which is not actual, but natural (sententia rationis, non actualis, sed naturalis). [FN22] Albert the Great adopts the terminology of Philippe the Chancellor, calling natural law natura ut ratio, nature as reason. [FN23] Similarly most Franciscan masters-with the exception of Saint Bonaventure who continues to be faithful to Ulpian's definition, among others-also followed the same tradition. For the Franciscan Jean de la Rochelle, natural law is the cognitive capacity and its principles: they are, he writes, to the eternal law like the imprint is to the seal (an idea springing from Saint Augustine's De Trinitate, quoted in SUE, note 31). The great Alexander of Hales, finally, defines the natural law, in its most formal and proper sense, as a natural dictate of reason (naturale dictamen rationis). [FN24] Alexander, as it is known, was held by Aquinas in the highest esteem. Therefore, there is nothing strange, revolutionary or surprising about the fact that Aquinas calls the natural law, along with every kind of law, a work of reason. At his time, this was already a currently held doctrine, firmly rooted in tradition. [FN25] Yet-and I wish to strongly emphasize this-to say that natural law is essentially the work of reason, a naturale dictamen rationis and as such something constituted by reason, means to speak of *49 the natural law in the most formal way. It is not sufficient for explaining the material contents of natural law, and how exactly this constitution of the natural law through natural reason takes place-two questions which are often confused by scholars who correctly intend to emphasize the ontological foundation of natural law in human nature. [FN26] Only the formal consideration of natural law, however, provides the decisive outlook, helping us not to seek the natural law somewhere where no law in the proper and most formal sense can be found: in nature as such, in natural

inclinations, natural teleology or natural ends. In other words, even though the material contents of natural law-what it prescribes and directs to-is ontologically grounded and even in a sense predetermined by human nature, and, as we will see, has very much to do with the natural inclinations, their intrinsic teleology and their ends, the natural law itself-formally considered-is not an ontological given, but a cognitive reality unfolding through human natural reason: it is a set of practical judgments or preceptive discernments regarding the good to do and the evil to avoid. Failing to make the distinction between formal and material consideration of the natural [FN27] law is the cause of enormous and ongoing confusion. V. What Is Participated Theonomy? A Fallacy and Its Refutation To emphasize that natural law is properly a work of reason is not smuggling into the teaching of Aquinas a modern conception of practical reason and natural law. The opposite is true. The typically modern conception is precisely to deny that law-any law-is essentially a work of reason. As SUE rightly points out (Nr. 30-33), the modern way is to understand law as a work not of reason, but of the will (as for the nominalists, Hobbes and Kant), or else to identify it with an absolute and normative order of intelligible essences accessible to reason, based on a *50 essentialist belief in an immutable and ahistorical human nature (modern rationalism). In opposition to modern voluntarism, but influenced by modern rationalism, some schools of neo-scholastic Thomism have also contended-and some Thomists mainly in the Anglo-Saxon world still contend-that the natural law is essentially something in nature, that is, a natural teleological order, existing previously to the exercise of human knowledge, an order of ends which is, as a preexisting natural and objective reality, known by theoretical reason and only afterwards applied to practical reasoning and practically followed. Such a view, however, is in its basic setting more modern than traditional. It actually leaves behind the original Christian tradition of natural law as it is found in the Fathers and in medieval canon law, moral philosophy and theology. It instead draws on a scientistic understanding of law (as causal structures, goal-directed patterns and normative regularities), combines this with kind of a technological understanding of human agency (the application of speculatively known laws to the realm of practice), and then grounds the whole in a theological background theory which, by interpreting nature as the effect of divine wisdom (the eternal law), has the task to explain why one ought to follow these laws of nature. Such a typically modern view, however, which is presumably also influenced by the tradition originated by the Spanish philosopher and theologian Francisco Suarez in the 16th century and some commentators of Aquinas contemporary with him, is alien to a medieval thinker. It is most certainly not the view of Thomas Aquinas which, as we will see, is much more straightforward, and also more profound, both metaphysically and ethically. As mentioned before, Aquinas conceives of the natural law as real law, that is, as something pertaining to reason, a work of (human) reason, something which is law as a created reality, participated in and owned by the rational creature. Natural law is therefore not tantamount to natural order plus the divine origin of this order plus the divine precept to follow it, but it is itself a precept-or a set of precepts-of human reason itself-in Aquinas's terminology: an ordinatio rationis and a dictamen rationis of natural reason-which for this very reason has the character of law. Natural law, thus, does not reproduce an order of nature, but rather an order of reason (ordo rationis) which is natural for man, that is, coextensive with the order of the virtues (ordo virtutum). This order of reason and of the moral virtues is the true expression of what corresponds to human nature, indicating its proper perfection. As such a created, participated,

and fully natural reality, the natural law is exactly, as Aquinas says, nothing other than the participation of the eternal law in the rational creature. It can thus *51 be spoken of in terms of participated theonomy. But notice that for the rational creature to really participate in a law (namely, the eternal law of God) does not simply and only mean to be subject to this law, or to come to know the law and then to apply it to concrete acts. It means, instead, to formally possess and even in a way to be the law; this means to possess the very reason which properly is the law because it formulates the law, promulgates it and imposes it through reason's own obliging force. [FN28] This is precisely what Aquinas explains in his Summa Theologiae, mainly in the two key articles 1-2, q. 91, a. 2 and q. 94, a. 2. Unfortunately, these two articles are often read in a one-sided way, picking out of them only one single aspect while disregarding others; this reading therefore misses the whole of the doctrine and its metaphysical depth-grammar. Most typically and frequently, the famous final sentence of q. 91, a. 2 (the natural law is nothing other than the participation of the eternal law in the rational creature) is often falsely understood as the proper definition of natural law, which, however, it is not. It actually is only a summarizing and concluding sentence, indicating the source and origin of the natural law in the eternal law of God, and indicating that the natural law is a special kind of participation of this eternal law: the participation typical for rational creatures. This text does not, however, indicate what this participation properly consists in, that is, the very essence and the task of the natural law. This has been previously explained in the entire corpus of the article and, after having quoted Psalm 4 (see above), culminates in the much more revealing sentence: the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine light. [FN29] Perhaps the final sentence of 1-2, q. 91, a. 2 is so often falsely held to be the true definition of natural law because one thinks it most important to emphasize that the natural law is nothing other than the eternal law of God and thus entirely theonomous, that is, not created or invented by human reason, but springing from God's eternal wisdom to which human beings are subject. This, of course, is absolutely true. It is not helpful, however, for understanding what natural law consists in as a law which is natural essentially, nor is it helpful for understanding how it works and which is its proper function in human moral life. To stress only the theonomous character of natural law means risking to loose from one's sight *52 that the existence of natural law actually involves participated theonomy. It is the eternal law, but not as it is in God's mind, but as it is in the rational creature. In searching the true essence and mode of working of the natural law, we are not so much concerned where it comes from, but what it is as a created reality in nature. This leads us to pay attention not only to what Aquinas says in the final sentence of the article, but also to what he says in the sentence immediately preceding it, namely that natural law is really an imprint on us of the Divine light, that is, a real participation of the eternal law-of divine ordering reason-and thus a self-standing created normative reality with its own essence and ontological consistency. This essence consists in being properly law-ordering reason-as well: the ordinatio of human reason. As a secondary cause and thus part of the created order of nature, human reason naturally discerns good from evil, and this precisely without explicitly referring to its being grounded in the creative wisdom of God (even if the natural law finally directs human actions to God; but this is another question, not the one about what natural law formally is). Therefore, the reference to theonomy does not add anything to the concept of the very essence of natural law as a created, natural reality. Paradoxically and ironically, by disregarding the very participation of theonomy in the human

mind, precisely those scholars who so much emphasize the roots of the moral order in ontology overlook perhaps the most important, and for human persons the most specific part of this ontology: natural reason itself as the imprint on us of the Divine light. This leads them to a truncated conception of natural law. When-in order to highlight the divine origin of natural law in the eternal law-Steven Long, for example, quotes 1-2, 91, 2 (natural law is nothing other than a participation of the eternal law in the rational creature) by emphatically emphasizing the phrase is nothing other than, [FN30] he makes the mistake of not quoting with at least equal emphasis what Aquinas says here and in various other texts about the very essence of the natural law, confirming therewith the core doctrine of 1-2, 91, 2: the law of nature is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. [FN31] By omitting this second aspect-the very definition of the essence of natural law-Long implicitly suggests that we cannot understand the way a created reality-a secondary cause-works without including a *53 reference to God as its primary cause. Philosophically speaking, however, this is a capital error. As Anthony Lisska has rightly pointed out, Aquinas's theory of natural law is based on the premise that it is possible to elucidate the concept of essence of human nature . . . without an appeal to the Divine Mind and that a human knower can be aware of an essence without a direct reference to the eternal law. Aquinas includes the divine mind . . . only because it provides the ultimate explanation for his ontology. [FN32] The natural law is an intelligible ontological reality belonging to the created order (the human person); to grasp the very essence of this reality and thus to define it, no reference to God as its Creator or its primary cause is necessary. This is why the proper definition of natural law is: the law of nature is nothing other than the light of understanding [infused in us by God], whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided (I have put the phrase infused in us by God into parenthesis, because it is not necessary for the definition of the essence of natural law, just as the creation by God of the spiritual soul is not to be included into the definition of the essence of the spiritual soul, or the creation of nature by God into the definition of nature). For the rational creature, thus, natural law as a participation of the eternal law means to possess the very light of reason which actively orders one's acts to the good and is, thus, a true participation of God's providence. Natural law is not simply an object of the human intellect to be known, but something which is itself the work of this created intellect: it is properly and formally law, and as such opus rationis. Natural law is part of the cognitive equipment of the human person, so that the very essence of natural law, and the focal meaning of the term natural law, is not to be found in the last sentence of 1-2, 91, 2, but-to repeat it once more-in the preceding ones, briefly summarized in the most formal and focal definition of natural law as the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil. [FN33] *54 VI. The Parallelism of Theoretical and Practical Reason SUE does not fall into the one-sidedness of the just criticized alternative view which might be characterized-perhaps simplifying too much-as naturalistic or ontologistic, because it disregards the cognitive character of natural law. SUE rather provides us with a succinct and balanced exposition of the main features of the Thomistic doctrine. Thereby the cognitiveepistemological (formal) aspects of natural law, its (material) ontological grounding and its posterior (metaphysical) interpretation are harmoniously integrated. Most importantly, SUE correctly situates the origin of the natural law, its proper seat, in man's cognitive interiority,

that is, in his genuine moral experience, based on an interior call to do good which originally and spontaneously has its root in practical reason: He [man] discovers that he is fundamentally a moral being, capable of perceiving and of expressing the call that, as we saw, is found within all cultures: to do good and avoid evil. On this precept are based all the other precepts of the natural law (I-II, 94, 2). This first precept is known naturally, immediately, with the practical reason, just as the principle of noncontradiction (the intellect cannot simultaneously and in the same respect affirm and deny the same thing of one subject), which is at the base of all speculative reasoning, is gathered intuitively, naturally, with the theoretical reason, when the subject comprehends the sense of the terms employed. (SUE Nr. 39, emphasis added) This is, briefly summarized, Aquinas's teaching of 1-2, q. 94, a. 2. SUE continues that by this knowledge through practical reason of the first principle of the moral life, which is the first precept of natural law we find ourselves immediately in the sphere of morality (40). Exactly this is the reason why the doctrine, mentioned in the above quotation, of the parallelism of theoretical and practical reason-i.e., of their both having their own starting points-is of such crucial importance. [FN34] The first notions *55 of morality and the very constitution of the acting subject as a moral subject are not derived from theoretical knowledge; they spring naturally and immediately from basic insights of practical reason. Practical reason is reason embedded in the appetitive dynamics of the natural inclinations; it is in the natural dynamics of the inclinations where the source of its activity is to be found. This is why the first notions of the good as moral and thus practical values are not derived from any previous knowledge or principle (otherwise they were not principles). Of course, this insight of practical reason-acts of understanding the goods involved in the natural inclinations-is authentic intellectual knowledge because it is formed by judgments of the one and unique human intellect which by its nature is orientated towards intelligible truth. In this sense, practical insight into the moral good is also speculative (but not theoretical, because the goal of this intellection is not knowledge, but action). [FN35] These acts of practical understanding can be called speculative insofar as they really are directed to grasping aspects of reality-mainly the reality that we are ourselves, as constantly striving after some good, and the goods themselves as the goals of this striving. Thomistic practical reason is not Kantian practical reason, which is essentially constructivist and, according to the maxim sic volo, sic iubeo (thus I wish, so I command), eventually turns out to be nothing other than a will independent from all, in Kant's terminology, empirical constraints. [FN36] According to Aquinas, practical reason is rather itself an extension of the one and unique intellective power of the human soul directed to the knowledge of truth [FN37]-it understands the good to be done qua truth [FN38]-an extension which naturally and spontaneously takes place when the intellect is directed to/dealing with/embedded in the striving part of the soul, [FN39] first *56 of all and fundamentally, in the so called natural inclinations. The practical intellect naturally grasps the goals of these inclinations as intelligible goods to be pursued (and their opposite as evils to be avoided), so that whatever practical reason naturally apprehends as human goods [or evils], pertain to the precepts of the natural law as things to be done or to be avoided. [FN40] This does not mean that the theoretical and the practical intellect are two entirely different kinds of knowledge or that they are directed to entirely disparate domains. Nor does it mean that, before the intellect becomes practical, no previous knowledge is needed which itself is not practical; nor is it to deny an absolute priority of the theoretical intellect, that is, the

intellect's being theoretical before becoming practical (if this is denied, also Aquinas's teaching about the intellect becoming practical per extensionem would be denied [FN41]). Nor does it mean that for practical reason brute facts are irrelevant. [FN42] Practical reason proceeds as a practical syllogism in which only the major premise and the conclusion are practical, while the minor premise is some sense perception or a judgment of theoretical reason. [FN43] Therefore, practical reason is constantly intertwined with acts of sense perception and of theoretical reason. What the parallelism of theoretical and practical reason does mean, therefore, is not that practical reason is a power of the soul different or independent from the power which gives rise to theoretical knowledge; there is only one single intellectual potency in the human soul. This parallelism means that the principles of practical reason are not derived from previous judgments of theoretical reason, and it means that qua practical they have their own starting point. The doctrine of the parallelism of theoretical and practical intellect is thus a doctrine about the non*57 derivability of a kind of judgment (practical judgments qua practical) from another kind of judgment (theoretical judgments). [FN44] This is also why Aquinas's view of natural law is completely immune against the so called naturalistic fallacy. When reason becomes practical, and insofar as it becomes practical, the starting point is not some theoretical judgment, but a proper and genuinely practical judgment concerning the good to be pursued and the evil to be avoided. As Jan Aertsen puts it: When we consider the good theoretically, we consider it under the aspect of true. So we can define good and reflect on its ratio. When we consider good practically, we consider it insofar as it is the end of an action. Good is then considered as good and is manifested in its practical character. The good to be done is the human good. [FN45] This is not to deny, however, that the practical intellect's consideration of the good is also about truth. According to Aquinas, good is something true, otherwise it would not be intelligible . . . so the object of the practical intellect is good directed to the operation, and under the aspect of truth. For the practical intellect knows truth, just as the speculative, but it directs the known truth to operation. [FN46] The point, however, is that practical considerations cannot be derived from exclusively theoretical ones. Without a practical premise starting the practical reasoning, or at least preceding the theoretical judgments involved in practical thinking, nothing practical can follow, because nothing practical-no choice and no action-can possibly follow from a syllogism starting from, and containing only, theoretical propositions. Such reasoning would always remain in the logic of theory-its end would be knowing-and never enter into the logic of the practical, the end of which is operation. [FN47] Now, the very first practical premises or principles, which constitute human beings as both practical and moral subjects, are nothing other than the first precepts of natural law. Again: natural law is not an object of theoretical knowledge which is subsequently applied to practice; natural law is originally the practical reason which makes us pursue good and avoid evil. *58 VII. Understanding Practical Reason as Moral Reason, and the Source of Moral Obligation Why is it so important to emphasize this parallelism of theoretical and practical reason? It is important because only by understanding the free-standing origin of the process of practical reason is one able to also understand why practical reason is essentially moral reason. Moral reason is reason prescribing that one do good and avoid evil. Moral reason also generates the moral ought or moral obligation. Thus, being essentially moral reason, practical reason constitutes the acting subject as a moral subject. [FN48] This is also the way to understand what the natural law formally, that is, essentially is and what the conditions of its proper functioning

are. The theoretical intellect, knowing good only as a kind of being but not as something good to pursue and to do, is also unable to say something about the good we ought to do (and the evil we ought to avoid). Let me try to explain this with an example. A judgment about the goodness of a watch we see in a shop window tells us nothing about whether it is good to buy it, or to steal it. Neither does the ontological goodness and dignity of a human being decide whether it is good-lawful or unlawful, morally right or immoral-to kill that being or not (even though, unlike the crushing of, say, an earthworm, it will cause a strong presumption that we ought not to kill it, and we regret much more that some human being is killed by an earthquake than thousands of earthworms). Just as moral goodness cannot be derived from ontological goodness, also moral, practical judgments cannot be derived from theoretical propositions about goodness. Ontological and moral goodness are not convertible. [FN49] From the contemplation of the beauty of a watch nothing immediately follows for the order of doing-unless, by desire, reason becomes practical and now looks at the watch as a practical good, i.e., as the end of some action and a matter of choice. Even though no desire for the watch would have been aroused without the first contemplative admiration of its beauty, the practical judgment it is good to buy it or to steal it cannot be derived in any way, not even via application, from the theoretical judgment this is a most beautiful watch. What is needed is the beginning of an entirely new *59 process of reason in the order of desire. This is the process of practical reason which starts, e.g., with the judgment I want to have this watch (which is not derivable from the judgment this is a most beautiful watch). The judgment I want to have this watch is the practical judgment possessing this watch for me is a good here and now to pursue: it's not a judgment about the (ontological, including the aesthetic) goodness of the watch, but about the goodness of having, possessing it, which can originate a subsequent practical judgment about the goodness of, for example, buying or stealing the watch. Yet, this practical judgment would not be possible if it were not under the guidance of the first principle of practical reason the good must be pursued and done, evil avoided (both for the buyer and the thief, the watch, or better: the possession of the watch, is judged to be a good to be pursued). Theoretical knowledge, thus, refers to good in its ontological, not in its practical dimension. Everything is good insofar as it is. Originally, however, as such and by itself alone, theoretical reason cannot say anything about the good which we ought to pursue and by which we are perfected. Theoretical knowledge can do this only once practical reason has disclosed the order of the moral good-an order which through practical reason is formulated as natural law-by subsequently reflecting on this basic moral experience opened by the practical intellect, which reflecting leads to a full understanding of human nature. Only by this posterior-theoreticalreflective process and final metaphysical justification, can the natural law be understood in its ultimate meaning (see for this SUE, 61-62) as an original and non-derived given in moral experience. This is why the disclosing of basic human goods through practical reason is a way to understand human nature, whereas a reflection of human nature that brackets reason does not help us to understand basic human goods. [FN50] This reflection on practical reason leads also to a coherent doctrine or account of natural law. Now, in order to prevent another fatal confusion, a warning must be issued: natural law itself is not the same thing as an account of it; equally one has to distinguish between natural law and doctrine of natural law. So Ralph McInerny judiciously remarked that [t]he theory or account of natural law is not identical with what it is a theory or account of. If I should say that natural

law consists of the first self-evident principles of practical reasoning or, alternatively, that natural *60 law is the peculiarly human participation in divine law, I am, in both cases, offering an account. But one can know the precepts of natural law without being able to understand either one of those accounts. They come later. They presuppose what they are about. [FN51] The confusion between what natural law is and what can and should be included into an account of it, is rather frequent. [FN52] Natural law, as I have argued, is an anthropological reality, an order and preceptive kind of natural moral knowledge, a cognitive moral power in every human person, as well as the principles formulated by the judgments of this power. These principles are properly the principles of moral discourse, naturally generated by practical reason. As far as he goes, Ralph McInerny is correct: The set of the principles of moral discourse is what Aquinas means by natural law. [FN53] Practical knowledge is not something added to natural law, but natural law is itself a kind of exercise of the practical reason (or result of this exercise), respectively its propositional content (practical principles or precepts regarding the good to be done and the evil to be avoided). As SUE points out The spontaneous acquisition of fundamental ethical values, which are expressed in the precepts of the natural law, constitutes the point of departure of the process that then leads the moral subject to the judgment of conscience. (emphasis added). So natural law is not identical with natural law doctrine. Natural law precisely is not an account of nature or of natural teleology in terms of law and moral obligation, but something much more profound: as said above, natural law is an anthropological reality, a cognitive power in the human soul, a kind of basic natural moral knowledge which provides practical reason its first direction to the end, the human good. [FN54] The reason Aquinas gives for this is interesting. It answers to the objection that since, unlike brute animals which are directed to the end by nature and natural desire, human beings attain their end through reason and will, consequently *61 human beings are not directed by any natural law. Aquinas replies that for human beings it is also true that every act of reason and will is based on that which is according to nature (derivatur in nobis ab eo quod est secundum naturam). And he continues: for every act of reasoning is based on principles that are known naturally (omnis ratiocinatio derivatur a principiis naturaliter notis), and every act of appetite in respect of the means is derived from the natural appetite in respect of the last end (derivatur a naturali appetitu ultimi finis). Accordingly the first direction of our acts to their end must be in virtue of the natural law (oportet quod prima directio actuum nostrorum ad finem, fiat per legem naturalem). [FN55] For practical reason to be based on that which is according to nature thus means for it to be based on principles that are known naturally. Analogously, for the single acts of the will (which refer to the means, that is to choice) to be according to nature signifies to be derived from the natural appetite in respect of the last end, an appetite following of course what is naturally known. So we see again the nature, which is at the basis of the natural law, and on which concrete moral reasoning is based, is not something previous to the exercise of practical reason, but precisely the principles that are known naturally (as explained in S.T., 1-2, q. 94, a. 2). Thus, nature here is something given in and with some natural form of exercise of reason. Natural law derives from natural knowledge of the good or the end; it therefore is not previous to this knowledge. The difficulty some authors have in distinguishing between natural law and account (or doctrine) of natural law seems therefore to spring from their holding that natural law, as an order of natural ends or teleology, is first and originally an object of theoretical reason, and only

afterwards applied to practical thinking; and from their simultaneously failing to notice that natural law originally belongs to practical reason, and that only subsequently, by way of reflection on the original moral experience provided by practical reason, it becomes an object also for theoretical reason and eventually a doctrine. According to Aquinas's conception, therefore, natural law is a reality in the human soul, a cognitive and appetitive reality all human beings share by their very nature, even though they do not hold or even know any doctrine of natural law. This is perhaps the main reason why natural law in fact is not only a, but the only possible basis of a universal ethics: because it is not a philosophical doctrine or interpretation of nature-an object of theoretical reason, a theory held by philosophers and theologians-but an *62 anthropological reality, something belonging to human nature, a cognitive reality inserted in the human soul which unfolds precisely through the first and spontaneous judgments of practical reason itself. Natural law actually is an existing reality. As SUE (Nr. 36) rightly points out, some behaviors are universally recognized as objects of reprobation: murder, theft, lying, wrath, greed, avarice . . . . These appear as attacks on the dignity of the human person and on the just requirements of life in society. One is justified therefore in seeing, in such consensus, a manifestation of that which, behind diverse cultures, is the human in the human being, namely the human nature. But at the same time, one must admit that such accord on the moral quality of certain behaviors coexists with a great variety of explanatory theories. [FN56] So, even if a philosophically (metaphysically) valid and complete theory of natural law requires (among other things) reference to its being a participation of the eternal law (including divine wisdom and providence), the natural law itself as the basic and natural form of preceptive moral knowledge existing in the human soul does not need such an explicit reference to come into existence and to be effective. Even though the ordering of one's acts to God as the supreme good of human life is actually part of the precepts of natural law, and thus belongs to its integrity, this does not mean that only through the explicit reference to God as the lawgiver is the natural law constituted as a law, that is as a morally binding form of practical precepts which order human acts to their due good. At least Thomistically speaking, in order to understand that what natural reason commands as good to be pursued, actually ought to be pursued (and its opposite avoided), no explicit reference to God as the source of this ought is needed (even though, in some circumstance and as a an additional motive to do what reason commands, the explicit reference to God as the source of human reason's authority can be helpful and even decisive). What explains the origin of the moral ought and obligation, however, is precisely the autopossession of God's providence through the naturally and spontaneously preceptive acts of practical reason. The 16th century Jesuit philosopher and theologian Francisco Suarez, and with him a broad current of Catholic theology in the past, have *63 explained the origin of the experience of moral obligation in terms of understanding what is naturally fitting to human beings as commanded by God as the author of nature. Contrary to this, Aquinas holds that right from the beginning with the first precept of natural law One must do good and avoid evil, which is also the first principle of practical reason, all the subsequent precepts of natural law-they being dictates of reason regarding the good to be done-precisely oblige. They are, as Aquinas says, binding; this is why they are properly law. For the precepts of natural law to oblige, nothing must be thought or known about God. As SUE asserts, the moral good determined by reason imposes itself on the subject. It ought to be accomplished. It has a character of obligation of law.

[FN57] To understand the kind of moral obligation springing from natural law, we thus need not explicitly add the reference to a Divine lawgiver. Hence, though the reference to God as the source of all obligation-and of the obliging force of reason-belongs to an account of natural law, it is not part of natural law's own preceptive logic. In natural law-and this is precisely because it is both natural and law-what formulates and imposes the law and thus obliges is human reason. [FN58] No additional reflection on God as the origin of what human reason dictates as good to be pursued is required. This is why, when talking about the moral precepts of the Ancient Law, Aquinas states that they derive their binding force from the dictate of reason itself, because natural reason dictates that something ought to be done or to be avoided. These are called moral precepts: since human morals are based on reason. [FN59] He even adds that reason, which is the principle of morals, holds the same position, in man, with regard to things that concern him, as a prince or judge holds in the state. [FN60] This is fully consistent with Aquinas's general definition of law at S.T., 1-2, 90, 1, quoted above. Where there is a law, there is obligation, because to oblige-to bind-belongs to the very essence and definition of law and is the proper task of reason. [FN61] *64 VIII. The Ontological Basis of the Precepts of Natural Law: the Natural Inclinations Recalling the differentiation between formal and material consideration of the natural law, the formal consideration of it that has been outlined so far is not yet, of course, a complete account of natural law. I understand the concerns of those who emphasize that natural law essentially has to be understood as an order of good which has an immutable ontological foundation [FN62] and that it depends on a given natural teleology that is not the product of human reason but the work of the divine creator, a teleology which is naturally given and in which the rational creature therefore participates only passively. Nevertheless, as I have mentioned above, those who advance this concern usually confuse the question about what natural law formally and essentially is with the question about what it materially contains and how this content is determined. In order to safeguard the objective ontological basis of natural law-and of morals in general-and to prevent subjectivism, rooted, as they suspect, in practical reason, they promote the idea, that natural law is something existing previous to the exercise of practical reason, and therefore also something totally different from it. Steven Long, therefore, says that natural law is not merely the product of practical reason but the precondition of its right exercise. [FN63] This is certainly true for the relation between natural law and deliberate reason (on the level of prudence), which deals with concrete actions to be performed here and now; natural law precisely provides the principles for deliberate practical reason-and choice-and is therefore a precondition of its right exercise, that is, of prudence as recta ratio agibilium. [FN64] What I have called the alternative view, however, fails to understand what natural law itself formally and essentially is as an anthropological and cognitive reality. Considered in this way, natural law is not a given set of natural ends or teleological patterns, but the naturally and thus necessarily and spontaneously formulated precepts or dictamina of *65 human practical reason itself, and thus the very principles for any subsequent exercise of practical reason. Hence, to say that natural law is generally and as such a precondition of the right exercise of practical reason means to miss the very point of what natural law essentially is: the most basic, that is, the natural exercise of practical reason (and precisely for this reason, not subjectivist, but objective and truth-attaining). Long's formulation of the view that he intends to oppose to (. . . is not merely the product of practical reason) is thus misleading. Those who follow Aquinas's

doctrine that, as every kind of law, the natural law is formally a work of reason, do not consider the natural law to be produced-in the sense of created or constructed-by practical reason, but rather to be naturally, that is, spontaneously and necessarily, disclosed and formulated by it (constituted, using Aquinas's terminology). This happens-as Aquinas explains in S.T., 1-2, q. 94, a. 2.-when practical reason intellectually grasps the intelligible goods inherent in the natural inclinations and thereby performs judgments like such and such good must be pursued and done, and such and such evil avoided (notice again 1-2, 94, 2: all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance). The natural law is not the ensemble of natural inclinations, nor the goods involved in them, but reason's natural apprehension of these goods and the precepts naturally dictated in consequence, which are under the form of (such and such) good must be done, (such and such) evil is to be avoided. This is not the production of an order of ends, but a process of knowledge, of intellectual discovery, embedded in the multifarious dynamics of desire for the good caused by the natural inclinations. The intellect is light (lumen), not a productive will. Nothing is produced, but something is seen and understood and, then, under the compelling force of the first principle good is to be pursued . . . also prescribed (ordained, dictated . . .), effectively pursued and done (or avoided). In other words, the good involved in the natural inclinations is seen and understood in a practical way, that is, in a way which leads to pursuing the goods understood, and to avoiding what opposes them. Therefore it seems to me unfortunate to say, as Long does, that the prior knowledge of the right end is a precondition for actively participating in the divine government of our own actions. [FN65] This active participation in divine providence is rather practical reason's natural knowledge of the ends itself; for it is precisely through these acts of understanding, that the eternal *66 law comes to be known and is put into effect. We genuinely know these ends through the first, naturally performed judgments of practical reason which formulate what we call the natural law. So, I of course agree that before acting rightly we must grasp the right end. However, the end is first and originally grasped precisely by practical reason, and this grasp is nothing other than what Aquinas calls the constitution of the natural law. This becomes even clearer, I think, when Aquinas talks about the promulgation of the natural law. As any law, he holds, to be really law also the natural law must be promulgated. Now, if what I have called the alternative interpretation were true, Aquinas would tell us something like: the natural law is promulgated by the act of the creation of human nature, of its teleological structure-the structure of ends-namely of the natural inclinations, that is, by the creation of all through which human beings passively participate the eternal law. Now Aquinas says something totally different and much simpler, namely: The natural law is promulgated by the very fact that God instilled it into man's mind so as to be known by him naturally. [FN66] This means that the natural law is promulgated precisely by creating the cognitive power in the rational creature's soul, thus conferring on human beings the capacity of naturally knowing it, and becomes effective through the very natural acts of practical reason which formulate (or constitute) the natural law. It is peculiar to this act of promulgation that it does not cause the law to be therepromulgated-previously to the exercise of this human cognitive power, but that the very natural law comes into being, as a law, and is known as such precisely in and through the acts of this cognitive power, that is, through the natural knowledge by practical reason of the good to be pursued and the evil to be avoided. There is thus a peculiar interaction between (divine) promulgation and (human) knowledge of the natural law (in the case of positive law, the

promulgation of a law is simply previous to and independent from its knowledge by those who are subject to it, while in the case of natural law promulgation and knowledge of the law are connected and in a way interdependent and even identical). Secondly, and most importantly, to become aware of the promulgation of natural law, there is no need to know something about God, having instilled this law in our mind to be naturally known; the promulgation is realized precisely by the very process of naturally coming to understand the natural law by natural reason. Consider again the definition of natural law from the Prologue of the Commentary on the Decalogue, mentioned at the beginning: the law of *67 nature is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation. This means that the natural law is (1) the light of understanding good and evil (infused by God at creation), and (2) this understanding itself and the precepts generated by it. This implies, however, that the promulgation of the natural law occurs only through our naturally understanding what must be done and what must be avoided, that is, through the acts of practical reason. This is again the structure of participation, so completely ignored in its metaphysical profundity by those who hold the alternative view, discussed above. Participation of the eternal law means that God promulgates the natural law by inserting in our soul a participation of the very power which is at the origin of the eternal law, that is, a participation in divine reason. The natural law is really law because in the rational creature the eternal law is formally and actively participated. So Aquinas asserts that the rational creature has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its due [debitum] act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. [FN67] Not surprisingly, Aquinas adds that in virtue of this participation, the natural law is not a law different from the eternal law, but one and the same law. [FN68] Hence, those who are so much at pains to safeguard the ontological basis of natural law-driven by the entirely justified and laudable concern of averting the danger of moral subjectivismcompletely overlook both the metaphysical profundity and the conceptual simplicity and straightforwardness of Aquinas's doctrine of natural law. Unilaterally focused on grounding natural law in being, ontology, and on theoretical reason, they do not recognize the real metaphysical nature and profundity of Aquinas's doctrine of natural law precisely as participated theonomy. That natural law is truly a work of reason-of human, natural reason-actually is the most significant part of the metaphysical structure of natural law and the very point of Aquinas's account of it. For him, natural law clearly is not a set of natural ends or teleologies, nor is it the natural inclinations as such, but a dictate of human reason, or better: a set of such dictates. In human reason-in the human intellect-the imprint of Divine reason is to be found, and natural law, thus, is the disclosure of the eternal *68 law, preexisting in Divine reason, through a created, natural cause: human reason. Arrived at this point, however, an obvious question is how practical reason comes to discern good and evil. Practical reason unfolds its knowledge of the goods in and through the natural inclinations. An account of natural law as a work of reason does not forget what Steven Longadopting a terminology which I originally used in my Natural Law and Practical Reason [FN69]calls the passive participation of the eternal law. The natural inclinations precisely are an expression of this passive participation (see S.T., 1-2, 91, 2). This participation, however, does not constitute what is properly called a law; it is therefore called law only in an analogical sense, that is, by similitude. [FN70] True enough, Aquinas actually admits speaking of law in

the sense of what is measured and ruled. He adds: In this way, law is in all those things that are inclined to something by reason of some law: so that any inclination arising from a law may be called a law, not essentially but by participation as it were. Essentially, however, the law is found in that which measures and rules: and since this is proper to reason, it follows that, in this way, law is in the reason alone. [FN71] Now, referred to its prime cause, natural law is of course law by participation, because it is a participation of the eternal law. As natural law, however, that is, as a created reality in the human soul, it is not law only by participation (in an improper way), but essentially: it owns all the characteristics which belong to the essence of law. This exactly is the point of Aquinas's doctrine of natural law. So, again, if we speak about natural law formally-assigning its essence-we have to say that it is something pertaining to reason. To natural law, therefore, applies what obtains for law generally: [H]ence we find in the practical reason something that holds the same position in regard to operations, as, in the speculative intellect, the proposition holds in regard to conclusions. Such like universal propositions of the practical intellect that are directed to actions have the nature of law. [FN72] The repeated reference to Question 90 on law in general when talking about natural law *69 makes it clear, that this is the notion of law which Aquinas also uses when he is talking of natural law. Thus, Ralph McInerny is correctly that [t]he sense that natural has in natural law always includes reason. This entails that the inclinations Thomas lists in IaIIae.94.2 are only the basis of precepts of natural law and not in themselves precepts. [FN73] Man has in his non-rational natural inclinations the passive mode of participating the eternal law in common with the nonrational creatures (Aquinas calls it participation per modum principii motivi, by way of a principle of motion, which he opposes to a participation per modum cognitionis, by way of knowledge, that includes also possessing the very notio legis aeternae, the notion of eternal law [FN74]). Yet, as Aquinas tells us the natural inclinations adequately manifest the human goods they aim at only through their being understood and ordered by reason. [FN75] On the other side, reason without the natural inclinations-reason, the human intellect generally, without a natural res, naturally given reality-would be unable to understand anything. It would be simply like a light shining into the void and, thus, enlightening and making seen absolutely nothing. Human reason, the discursive human intellect, is not creative reason, but reason embedded in nature and dependent on natural objects. [FN76] The natural inclinations, respectively the goods they aim at, are such objects. The reason which has its starting point in understanding these goods is immediately practical by the very fact of being reason embedded in striving for the good (thus, it is not practical because it produces its object, but because it is intellect integrated in and moved by desire, that is, *70 an exercise of reason of the kind which Aquinas calls imperium, command [FN77]). At the same time, practical reason integrates these goods into the complex whole of the human person as bodily-spiritual unity: though none of these basic human goods is derived from another, they are understood by reason as a hierarchy of goals. And this means: reason interprets the natural inclinations. Only as understood and ordered by reason do they belong to the natural law and are they morally normative. [FN78] This, of course, is a circular process in which, although practical reason is the starting point, the same and unique human intellect-subsequently-also theoretically reflects on natural moral experience of the good, coming thereby to its deeper understanding, an understanding which in turn becomes again practical through its application to the sphere of practice. [FN79]

Now, from all this derives a crucially important consequence for ethics: there is no morally valid argument simply drawn from natural teleology as such. Just as the natural law is not identical with simple natural teleology or a natural structure of ends, but only this teleology and these ends insofar they are understood and ordered by reason, so too a natural law-argument can never simply rely on nature, but only on nature as understood and interpreted by human reason. At this point, for some the warning bell of subjectivism tolls. Yet, the fear is not justified, because we are dealing here with truth-attaining natural reason, not a constructivist and in this sense subjectivist reason. And we are assuming an anthropology of the human person as a substantial unity of body and spiritual soul (I will come back to this directly). The lesson to be learned, however, is that ethics, including an ethics based on natural law, must always refer to reasons. Nature can be a reason, but a further reason is needed to show that nature in such and such case actually is a reason (and not only a reason whatsoever for acting, but *71 also a moral reason for acting or refraining from it). [FN80] This shows the necessary differentiation between moral ontology and moral epistemology, a distinction often ignored. The grave consequences for normative ethics of failing to recognize the importance of this difference cannot be discussed here in detail. [FN81] Notice that an account of natural law as presented in these pages actually is a piece of metaphysics, and of metaphysically grounded anthropology. It truly forms part of metaphysics, which, dealing with the human person, fully includes what is-in Aristotelian terminology-the highest part of the human soul: its rationality. It is a metaphysics and anthropology which does not exclude from nature the spiritual part of the human person. It adequately sees the human person as a body, or an animal, whose principle of life or substantial form, however, is a spiritual soul and which, therefore, is a substantial unity of body and spirit. Here nature is neither the body nor the soul alone, but the union of both, the animal rationale. In such a compound, the body only reveals its truth and moral normativity through the spirit, while the spirit can attain truth only through the body (or never disregarding the body). If someone would, unjustly, call such a view Kantian-incredible as it seems, it really happened [FN82]-I would call his view, of course inadequately as well, but in just symmetry, behaviorist and materialist. The metaphysical structure of Aquinas's doctrine of natural law as a participation of the eternal law in the rational creature-as participated *72 theonomy-adequately presupposes and reflects what SUE calls in a general way the idea that nature is for man the bearer of an ethical message and establishes an implicit moral norm which human reason actualizes (SUE, 64-75). This involves therefore the reasoned conviction that there exists a harmony between the three substances which are God, man, and nature. In this perspective, the world was perceived as an intelligible whole, united by the common reference of the beings that compose it to a divine founding principle, to a Logos (SUE, Nr. 69). But SUE emphasizes that not every creature participates in this Logos in the same manner. Man, since he is defined by reason or logos, participates in it in an eminent manner. By reason he is able to freely interiorize the divine intentions manifested in the nature of things. He formulates them under the form of a moral law that inspires and orders his own action. In this perspective, man is not the other in relation to nature. On the contrary, he establishes with the cosmos a bond of familiarity based on a common participation in the divine Logos. (SUE, Nr. 70; emphasis added)

For rightly understanding this, and Aquinas's teaching on natural law, it is crucial not to exclude reason from nature, or to oppose the former to the latter. By saying that man is not the other in relation to nature, the human person is not reduced to (irrational) nature, but the spiritual or rational part of his being is included in the natural. So, the natural is not, in the case of man, equal to the pre-rational. This is the whole point of Aquinas's doctrine on natural law (and, as it is easily seen, a real antithesis to the typically Kantian dichotomy of nature and reason, nature and freedom [FN83]). Therefore, SUE provides us an authentic Thomistic way to understand this doctrine. Key for this understanding is that, although natural law is a work of reason, this is a reason embedded in the dynamics of the natural inclinations of an essentially bodily-spiritual being, the human person. [FN84] Hence, Person is not opposed to nature (SUE, 68). There is no human freedom and no exercise of human reason which is not freedom and reason of a bodily constituted being. In the term human nature, nature connotes both the body and the spirit which is its substantial form. Therefore it would be wrong to reduce, as some interpreters of Aquinas inspired by Kant have tried to do, the natural law to the command of acting in a rational manner, i.e., to applying to the totality of behaviors a univocal ideal of rationality *73 generated by practical reason alone (SUE, No. 79, note 75). [FN85] This would, the document continues, be tantamount to wrongly identifying the rationality of the natural law with the rationality of reason alone. As I have stressed elsewhere against such Kantian interpretations, it is impossible to understand the unfolding of practical reason as natural law independently from the dynamics and teleology of the natural inclinations which partly spring from the pre-rational level of human nature. There can be no actualization of reason-no knowledge-without an intelligible object. Thus, SUE rightly states the complete picture without falling into one-sidedness: The doctrine of the natural moral law should therefore affirm the central role of reason in the actualization of a properly human plan of life, and at the same time the consistency and the proper meaning of natural pre-rational dynamisms [FN86] (emphasis added). On the other side, however, SUE, as quoted above, states that it is man who formulates the divine intentions manifested in the nature of things . . . under the form of a moral law. The natural moral law is constituted (or formulated) as law by human reason. Nothing pre-rational or non-rational can be properly called a law and thus impose moral obligation (to assert the opposite would be naturalism or physicalism). IX. Natural Law and the Fallen Condition of Mankind: Natural Law and the Moral Virtues Such an account of natural law does not fail to take into account the fallen condition of humankind. Although this is a specific theological issue, known exclusively through divine revelation, the knowledge of the fallen nature is not proper to reason enlightened by revelation. The human nature studied by Aristotle and all the great philosophers, is exactly human nature in its fallen condition (and not some fictitious natura pura which does not exist and never has existed, though being a metaphysical possibility). Yet, not knowing the cause of the present state of human nature, and unassisted by revelation, philosophers studying human nature necessarily will reach at least incomplete if not entirely mistaken anthropological and ethical conclusions. This is because, although the philosopher knows the reality of fallen nature, he does not know it as fallen-that is, the real cause and *74 reason of its present condition-and this is why unassisted by faith his views about the real possibilities of human perfection and corresponding moral requirements will be necessarily flawed (e. g., reductionist, cynical, materialistic, too pessimistic, or unrealistically optimistic or even promising earthly paradise). Yet, such flawed anthropologies

and ethics are themselves an expression of the human condition after the fall and, as such, interesting objects of philosophical and theological analysis because they are helpful to better understand the condition of human nature after the fall. It is precisely the concept of natural law as a work of reason which is able to explain, why also natural law can and actually does fail and in this also is an expression of the fallen condition of human nature. Why is this so? It is so, because the exercise of human reason depends partly on extrinsic cultural factors (prejudices, habits, identities and corresponding psychological constraints), but even more, and most importantly, on inner dispositions of the subject. Precisely because natural law as a cognitive reality is the most basic part of moral knowledge, both its epistemic constitution-its knowledge-and its effectiveness in influencing and guiding moral reasoning and subsequent choice depend on all those factors which can interfere with the correct working of reason. Positively formulated, because it is only the virtuous person who by the right disposition of his emotions and affectivity is fully reasonable, it is also only the virtuous person in whom the natural law fully obtains and is effective. In fact, the principles of practical reason which are the precepts of natural law are the same as the ends of the moral virtues. Only through the harmonious disposition between reason, will and emotions, is human reason really the leading part in the human soul. This Aristotelian doctrine is entirely integrated into Aquinas's own moral theory. [FN87] Besides the loss of sanctifying grace, the main effect of original sin is precisely the loss of this inner harmony between reason, will and the emotions (or passions), a loss which is theologically called the wounds of nature (vulnera naturae). These wounds, which philosophically speaking are completely natural deficiencies, given with the nature of a spiritual-bodily being-they are, similar to mortality, wounds only considered with respect to the state of original justice before the fall [FN88]-are healed precisely by the acquisition of the four cardinal virtues. Notice that the human (the moral) virtues are not natural, but acquired (or else infused); they are not given with the *75 essential being of man, nor are they included in his nature, but belong to the moral perfection added to its essential being and to nature (they are according to nature, because they are perfections of nature). [FN89] On the other side, it is by lack of moral virtue or by the opposite habit, vice, that the natural law loses its vigor, can be obscured and-except regarding the very first precepts-even deleted from the human soul. This is human nature left to itself (natura sibi relicta [FN90]), the same human nature which is the subject matter of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and for whose defective and morally unstable condition exist entirely natural causes which only by revelation are known to be the consequence of an original fall and a punishment. Therefore-and this is crucial-by sin, not only the knowledge of natural law is obscured, while the natural law itself, understood as a natural order of teleology preexisting any form of human knowledge, would remain intact. Natural law being something pertaining to reason and a work of reason, through the obscuring and misguiding of human reason, it is rather natural law itself which is obstructed and obscured, its commanding force weakened and partly rendered ineffectual. This is so, because, to say it once more, the natural law is not something previous to, or a precondition of, the exercise of human reason, but precisely a work of this very reason. This is why Aquinas talks about the abolition and the deletion, not only of the knowledge of the natural law, but of the natural law itself from the human heart (a corde hominis). It is not only the knowledge of a law which fails, but, as a result of the obscuration of reason, the law itself as a reality in the human soul that at least partly disappears. [FN91] Natural law primarily is not an object of moral knowledge, but, as we have seen, it is itself a kind of moral knowledgea practical, preceptive, commanding type of knowledge-whose integrity is negatively affected by

sin (and vice) or disordered passions, and, conversely, empowered by doing what is good and moral virtue. This is why one has to stress again and again that the natural law does not belong to nature simply as an object of our knowledge. Natural law is a *76 part of the nature we are ourselves, that is of our subjectivity as persons equipped with the capacity of moral knowledge, and as moral agents. Natural law is an anthropological reality, constituting the human person as a moral subject. Natural law, moreover, is the kind of moral knowledge which establishes and guarantees the truth of human subjectivity and practical reason down to its most concrete judgments concerning what has to be done here and now. Natural law is, thus, the guiding principle and ultimate moral reference point for the virtue of prudence, a reference point every human being has in his heart. Keeping in our mind the whole picture of human reason, natural law, moral knowledge and moral virtue-and their opposite: the obscuring of moral knowledge through sin, namely pride, emotional disorder and consequent vice-we can understand what it means both to participate in the eternal law/in divine providence, and how this participation can come to be defective, and even nearly entirely corrupted. So we come full circle. Natural law as a work of reason naturally carried out in every human person can obtain its force and effectiveness as a basis for universal ethics only in the measure in which it is seen in the context of inner reform: the struggle for acquiring the perfection of moral virtue. As SUE (No. 55) points out, this not only applies to the acting person generally, but also to the moral philosopher (and theologian) himself, because one cannot elaborate a morality based on the natural law without also reflecting on the interior dispositions or virtue that render the moralist able to elaborate an adequate norm of action. This is even more true for the subject personally engaged in action, who must formulate a judgment of conscience. It is not strange, then, that today one assists in the rebirth of a morals of the virtues' inspired by the Aristotelian tradition. [FN92] A natural law ethics is truly called to be universal, because it is the ethics which correspond to the logos inherent in human nature and a true expression of basic reasonableness. As such a doctrine, it is originally Christian, because it was Christianity-prepared by Jewish-biblical revelation and Greek philosophy-which introduced into history the idea of man created in the image of God and everything that this entails. Yet, a natural law ethics will always remain controversial and disputed, because of the present condition of mankind-philosophically speaking: because of the condition of human nature-which is marked by the loss of those perfections which guarantee the perfect working of human reason and lend to the precepts of natural law their full reasonableness (a loss only in theological perspective, comparing with the state of original justice, because it actually is plainly natural). Here we arrive at the last word of the *77 philosopher. The theologian will proceed in showing how precisely through redemption and the grace of Christ, human reason is saved and the full reasonableness and, hence, effectiveness of the natural law reestablished. Stressing the rational character of natural law is thus not a plea for a purely secularist morality, but rather the justification of what I have called a specifically Christian humanism. [FN93] With this, I think, the paradox mentioned at the beginning of this essay is resolved, although the resolution contains an unexpected new paradox: to be the basis for a really universal ethics, natural law needs the complement of Christian revelation and faith. [FN94] As such, however, it is more than a natural law ethics. This paradox, I think, cannot be solved otherwise than by admitting that only in the context of Christian faith and a morality centered in the imitation of

Christ can the natural law possibly possess its full value and directing force-something the Catholic Church has constantly taught through the ages. [FN1]. The official English version of this text is to be published in International Theological Commission Document on Natural Law, edited by John Berkman and William C. Mattison III (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). This volume also contains a much condensed version of the present essay. Since the official English translation has not yet been published, quotations of the document here are taken from the excellent unofficial translation by Joseph Bolin (revision March 25, 2010), published online: www.pathsoflove.com/universal-ethics-natural-law.html. [FN2]. See Michael Hampe, Eine kleine Geschichte des Naturgesetzbegriffs [A Brief History of the Concept of Natural Law] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007). [FN3]. [FN4]. Summa John theologiae Paul II, (S.T.), Encyclical 1-2, q. 90, a.1 (emphasis Splendor, added). no. 42.

Letter,

Veritatis

[FN5]. [L]ex naturae . . . nihil aliud est nisi lumen intellectus insitum nobis a Deo, per quod cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum. Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione. In duo praecepta caritatis et in decem legis praecepta expositio, Prologus I. This text is several times referred to by the encyclical Veritatis splendor (most importantly in No. 40). [FN6]. [FN7]. [FN8]. [FN9]. S.T., S.T., 1-2, 1-2, S.T., q. 91, q. a. 90, 1-2, 2c. a. See 1; q. also q. Veritatis 91, 94, splendor a. 2, a. No. ad 42. 3. 1. Ibid.

[FN10]. See also my The Cognitive Structure of the Natural Law and the Truth of Subjectivity, in The Thomist, 67 (2003): 1-44; reprinted as Chapter 7 in my The Perspective of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy, edited with an introduction by William F. Murphy, Jr. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008). [FN11]. De libero arbitrio 1.6.51.; cf. also De Trinitate 14.15.

[FN12]. See e. g. S.T., 1-2, q. 58 a. 4: Per intellectum enim cognoscuntur principia naturaliter nota, tam in speculativis quam in operativis. Unde sicut recta ratio in speculativis, inquantum procedit ex principiis naturaliter cognitis, praesupponit intellectum principiorum; ita etiam prudentia, quae est recta ratio agibilium; and Super Sent., lib. 2 d. 39 q. 2 a. 2 ad 2: [Q]uia in ratione est aliquid naturaliter cognitum quasi principium indemonstrabile in operabilibus, quod se habet per modum finis; Q. disp. de Virtutibus, q. 1, a. 8: quaedam statim a principio naturaliter homini innotescunt absque studio et inquisitione: et huiusmodi sunt principia prima, non solum in speculativis, ut: omne totum est maius sua parte, et similia; sed etiam in operativis, ut: malum esse fugiendum, et huiusmodi. Haec autem naturaliter nota, sunt principia totius cognitionis sequentis.

[FN13]. [O]piniones queaedam nobis boni et mali pullulaverunt, dum id quod malum est naturaliter intellegimus esse vitandum et id quod bonum est naturaliter nobis intellegimus esse praeceptum. St. Ambrose, De Paradiso, 8.39, in Sancti Ambrosii Episcopi Mediolanensis Opera (Tutte le Opere di Sant'Ambrogio, ed. bilingue), 2/I, ed. Carolus Schenkl, introduction, translation, notes and indexes, P. Siniscalco (Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana; Rome: Citta Nuova Editrice, 1984), 98-99. [FN14]. See for this the landmark studies by Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights. Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law 1150-1625 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), especially 58-69. [FN15]. Ibid., 62.

[FN16]. Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe si cles, vol. 2, pt. 1 (Louvain: Abbaye du Mon Cesar; Gembloux: J. Duculot, 1948): 73f. [FN17]. Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, 64-65.

[FN18]. See for the following: Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe si cles, vol. 2, referred to above. [FN19]. See. Michael Wittmann, Die Ethik des Hl. Thomas von Aquin (M nchen: Max Hueber Verlag, 1933), 329; Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe si cles, vol. 2: 75-77. [FN20]. [FN21]. [FN22]. [FN23]. [FN24]. Ibid., Lottin, Ibid. Ibid. 76. 76. 85. Ibid. 86-90.

[FN25]. While there are scholars who argue for searching for the authentic meaning of Aquinas's moral theory in the texts of his later commentators-some of which, mainly Cajetan, may be useful and enlightening for determinate points-it seems to me much more logical and according to the normal standards of exegesis, to argue first from the texts of the author at hand, and including the tradition by which they are preceded and to which they therefore belong, which normally contains the sources the text to be interpreted draws upon. [FN26]. For example Steven A. Long, Natural Law or Autonomous Practical Reason: Problems for the New Natural Law Theory, in St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by John Goyette, Mark S. Latkovic, and Richard S. Myers (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 165-93. See also Long's

article Reproductive Technologies and the Natural Law, National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 2 (2002): 221-28. Another author supporting this view is Luis Cortest, The Disfigured Face. Traditional Natural Law and its Encounter with Modernity, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 15. [FN27]. It is the confusion of moral ontology and moral epistemology, a confusion which also explains why most criticisms, e.g., of the so called New Natural Law Theory (Grisez-Finnis)which is not my understanding of natural law-miss the point and often lead to unjust accusations of subjectivism. [FN28]. Notice that whoever does not follow the dictates of his own reason is said to act against conscience and is afterwards typically haunted by remorse of conscience, that is a sense of culpability and blame. [FN29]. See on this my Review of Jean Porter's Nature as Reason, reprinted as Chapter 10 in my The Perspective of the Acting Person, especially pp. 288-92. [FN30]. Long, Natural Law or Autonomous Practical Reason, 185; 191, etc. The emphasis is in the original. [FN31]. In duo praecepta caritatis et in decem legis praecepta expositio, Prologus I (quoted above). [FN32]. Anthony J. Lisska, Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 106. See for this also Wolfgang Kluxen, Philosophische Ethik bei Thomas von Aquin [Philosophical Ethics in Thomas Aquinas] (originally: Mainz: Matthias-Gr newald-Verlag, 1964; here referred to according to the second and third edition: Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1980 and 1998), 197-201; 233-37. [FN33]. This was taught by Leo XIII. in his encyclical Libertas praestantissimum, referred to also in the encyclical Veritatis splendor, No. 55: the natural law . . . is none other than human reason itself which commands us to do good und counsels us not to sin. It is, as the encyclical says, a prescription of human reason which, however, is the voice and the interpreter of some higher reason, that is Divine reason, from which human reason receives its binding force; from this follows, that the natural law is itself the eternal law, implanted in beings endowed with reason (emphasis not as in the original). The same doctrine can be found in many classical manuals of moral theology, mainly of the Dominican School and faithful to Aquinas, as, e.g., B. H. Merkelbach, Summa Theologiae moralis ad mentem D. Thomae et ad normam iuris novi, vol. 1, (Paris: Desclee, 1931, 1938): 227: in actu primo (. . .) considerata lex naturalis est lumen rationis naturalis quo discernere valemus quid sit bonum faciendum vel malum vitandum; quod lumen ostendit bonitatem et malitiam et regula est nostrorum actuum, in quantum est a lumine divino derivatum et impressio est divini luminis in nobis. In actu secundo considerata, lex est actuale dictamen seu iudicium rationis, praescribens modo generali quid sit bonum faciendum, quid malum vitandum . . . . [FN34]. This parallelism is emphasized not only by the Grisez-Finnis school (with which I

agree mainly in some basic methodological aspects), but also by important critics of this school, like Kevin L. Flannery; see his Acts amid Precepts: The Aristotelian Logical Structure of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001). The parallelism of theoretical and practical reason was most importantly and influentially proven to be part of Aquinas's moral theory by Wolfgang Kluxen, Philosophische Ethik bei Thomas von Aquin. [FN35]. See In De Anima, 3, 15 (ed. by A. M. Pirotta [Turin: Marietti, 1959], 821): [intellectus] speculativus speculatur veritatem, non propter aliquid aliud, sed propter seipsum tantum, practicus autem speculatur veritatem propter operationem (emphasis added). [FN36]. Kant refers to this maxim in his Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 27. [FN37]. See S.T., 1, q. 79, a. 11: intellectus per extensionem fit [FN38]. Ibid., ad 2: bonum ordinabile ad opus, sub practicus. veri.

ratione

[FN39]. In De Anima, 315: Quia enim ipsum appetibile, quod est primum consideratum ab intellectu practico, movet, propter hoc dicitur intellectus practicus movere, quia scilicet eius principium, quod est appetibile, movet (emphasis added). For comments on this passage see my The Perspective of the Acting Person, 111f.; Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000; originally published in German in 1987 as Natur als Grundlage der Moral), 24f.; and Praktische Vernunft und Vern nftigkeit der Praxis: Handlungstheorie bei Thomas von Aquin in ihrer Entstehung aus dem Problemkontext der aristotelischen Ethik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), 507-15. [FN40]. S.T., 1-2, 94, 2, quoted also in SUE, note 45.

[FN41]. This was usefully remarked by Jan A. Aertsen, Thomas Aquinas on the Good: The Relation between Metaphysics and Ethics, in Aquinas's Moral Theory. Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzman, ed. by Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 235-53, at 250. [FN42]. See for such a-in my view unjustified-criticism Ralph McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 188. [FN43]. See Chapter 9 of my The Perspective of the Acting Person (especially 270-73), and The Perspective of Morality: Philosophical Foundations of Thomistic Virtue Ethics (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), III, 3. [FN44]. Curiously enough, this is also acknowledged by Lawrence Dewan when he speaks of the first principles of natural law and somewhat reluctantly admits that they are not inferred, because they are described as known immediately when one understands the terms. See his St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the Moral Order, in L. Dewan O.P, Wisdom, Law, and

Virtue. Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 199-212, at 203. [FN45]. Jan A. Aertsen, Thomas Aquinas on the Good, 253. Luis Cortest, who on page 15 of his The Disfigured Face, refers to this article by Aertsen, overlooks this basic meaning of the parallelism between the theoretical and the practical intellect as it is also confirmed by Aertsen. [FN46]. S.T., 1, q. 79, a. 11, ad 2.

[FN47]. I have tried to explain this more in detail in my The Perspective of Morality, III, 3. [FN48]. This is true also for the first principle of practical reason which precisely expresses this constitution of the acting subject as moral subject. In my view, the moral nature of the first principle of practical reason is mistakenly denied by the New Natural Law Theory. The implications of this denial are relevant from a metaphysical and an anthropological point of view. It is not possible, however, to discuss this here further. [FN49]. See Jan A. Aertsen,Thomas Aquinas on the God, 246; he refers to Aquinas's De malo, q. 2, a. 5 ad 2, but see also De Veritate, q. 21, a. 5, which is no less clear on this point. [FN50]. On this the basic methodological issues I very much agree with and am indebted to John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 34; and his Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1983), 20-23. See also Finnis's Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998), 90-94. [FN51]. Ralph McInerny, Preface to Virtue's End. God in the Moral Philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas, edited by Fulvio Di Blasi, Joshua P. Hochschild and Jeffrey Langan (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2008), vii. [FN52]. See, e. g., Steven Long, Natural Law or Autonomous Practical Reason, 185 (emphasis added): But the natural law is nothing other than a rational participation of the eternal law, which is to say, that those who do not center their account of moral law on the ordinance of God do not according to St. Thomas Aquinas so much as possess a doctrine of natural law (emphasis added). [FN53]. Ralph McInerny, Ethics, in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. by Norman Kretzman and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 196-216, at 210. [FN54]. S.T., 1-2, q. 91, a. 2 ad 2 (the first direction of our acts to their end must needs be in virtue of the natural law). [FN55]. Ibid.

[FN56]. I have written something similar in my The Cognitive Structure of the Natural Law and

the Truth of Subjectivity, The Thomist 67 (2003): 1-44, reprinted as chapter 7 in my The Perspective of the Acting Person, 158-94, at 190, where I have emphasized that the presence of natural law and its working is an obvious fact, because [w]ithout the effective presence of the natural law in the hearts of men . . . the very notions of adultery, murder, lying, theft, etc., all of which imply that a person possesses a concept of justice, which itself is a work of the natural law, would not be possible. [FN57]. I think this is very well reflected in Thomas Hibbs, A Rhetoric of Motives: Thomas on Obligation as Rational Persuasion, The Thomist 54 (1990): 293-309. As Hibbs argues, the obligation imposed by reason is not coercive, but rather persuasive; it is the persuasion of the good. [FN58]. I have entered into more detail on this question in my L'azione umana e Dio: autonomia e teonomia morale in San Tommaso d'Aquino, in L'azione, fonte di novita. Teoria dell'azione e compimento della persona: ermeneutiche a confronto, edited by J. J. Perez-Soba and E. Stefanyan (Siena: Cantagalli, 2010), 187-231. [FN59]. [FN60]. S.T., 1-2, Ibid., q. 104, ad. a. 1. 3.

[FN61]. Anthony Lisska, in his Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law, 108f., is fundamentally right on this point, although he seems to overlook that the notion of obligation-which, perhaps influenced by G. E. M. Anscombe's famous essay, Modern Moral Philosophy, he calls a modern concept-is part of the very definition of law given by Aquinas. It is not the notion of (moral) obligation, which is modern, but its place as something separated from, or additional to, the experience of the intrinsic reasonableness of the good. [FN62]. [FN63]. Luis Long, Cortest, Reproductive The Technologies Disfigured and the Natural Face, Law, 15. 221.

[FN64]. That this is precisely the point of Aquinas's idea of natural law insofar it is a doctrine about the principles of prudence, is the central thesis of my Praktische Vernunft und Vern nftigkeit der Praxis. Handlungstheorie bei Thomas von Aquin in ihrer Entstehung aus dem Problemkontext der aristotelischen Ethik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), especially 403-592; see also my The Perspective of Morality, Chapter V. [FN65]. Ibid, 222.

[FN66]. S.T., 1-2, q. 90, a. 4 ad 1: promulgatio legis naturae est ex hoc ipso quod Deus eam mentibus hominum inseruit naturaliter cognoscendam. [FN67]. S.T., 1-2, q. 91. a. 2. About the centrality of Aquinas's doctrine on the participation of divine reason and the intellect as participated light see my Natural Law and Practical Reason, 257-67 (and the references).

[FN68]. [FN69]. Chapter

Ibid., 2, 66-68;

a. chapter 5,

1. 246.

[FN70]. S.T., 1-2, 91, 2 ad 3: But because the rational creature partakes thereof [of Eternal Reason] in an intellectual and rational manner, therefore the participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is properly called a law, since a law is something pertaining to reason, as stated above. Irrational creatures, however, do not partake thereof in a rational manner, wherefore it cannot be called a law, except by way of similitude. (unde non potest dici lex nisi per similitudinem). [FN71]. [FN72]. S.T., 1-2, Ibid., q. 90, a. ad 1, ad 1. 2.

[FN73]. Ralph McInerny, On Knowing Natural Law, in The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. by Leo J. Elders and Klaus Hedwig (Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1984), 13360, at 140. See also Russell Hittinger, The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a PostChristian World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003), 97: Thomas is very careful never to say that nature is a law, or to say that law is in nature in a proper sense of the term. Natural, Hittinger emphasizes, refers to the fact that it is by the natural power of reason that we partake of the law and that by mode of promulgation the law is instilled or indicted in us so as to be known naturally. I do not, however, understand why Hittinger rejects the idea that the precepts of natural law are also the principles of practical reason (98). [FN74]. S.T., 1-2, q. 93, a.6. See for this also the landmark study by Giuseppe Abba, Lex et virtus: Studi sull'evoluzione della dottrina morale di san Tommaso d'Aquino (Rome: LAS, 1983), 258-61. [FN75]. S.T., 1-2, 94, 2, ad 2: omnes inclinationes quarumcumque partium humanae naturae . . . secundum quod regulantur ratione, pertinent ad legem naturalem . . . . [FN76]. I have extensively argued against the idea of natural law as expression of creative reason in my Natural Law and Practical Reason, mainly Chapter 5 (especially 244-56), where I also emphasize the importance of the passive participation of the eternal law in the natural inclinations. [FN77]. S.T., 1-2, q. 17, a.1: . . . command is an act of the reason, presupposing an act of the will, in virtue of which the reason, by its command, moves (the power) to the execution of the act. This concords with what is said in the treatise about law (ibid. q. 90, a. 1 ad 3): Reason has its power of moving from the will, as stated above [q. 17, a. 1]: for it is due to the fact that one wills the end, that the reason issues its commands as regards things ordained to the end. [FN78]. I agree with Long's criticism of the denial of an order among the different goods and ends of natural inclinations, as argued for in the New Natural Law Theory. That the basic

human goods are all basic, that is, that none is derived from another but all immediately known, does not imply that there is no possible hierarchy among them. This is evidenced by a posterior metaphysical interpretation. The New Natural Law Theory is, I agree, metaphysically deficient. But this does not diminish the worth of some of its other features. [FN79]. For more detail on this see my Natural Law and Practical Reason, 22-42. [FN80]. This is also correctly seen by Steven Brock who, when defending the idea that a physical nature can in the constitution of a moral act and its object in a way play a formal role, nevertheless emphasizes that if indeed a physical nature can play this role, it will only be insofar as the role is conferred upon it by reason. Reason is the first formal principle of human acts. All others depend on it (Steven L. Brock, Veritatis Splendor 78, St.Thomas, and (Not Merely) Physical Objects of Moral Acts in Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 6, No. 1 [2008], 1-62; 15). I, however, doubt whether something other than reason can play a properly formal role as a principle of human acts. I would rather say that physical nature sometimes plays the role of a necessary presupposition for the order of reason, in the sense of what Aquinas calls materia debita. [FN81]. See for this Chapter 6 of my The Perspective of the Acting Person, 133-40; and my forthcoming Natural Law and Moral Reasoning: Understanding the Human Person as Created in the Image of God. [FN82]. The first to call my account of natural law Kantian was Leo Elders, who even contended that the term practical intellect was alien to Aquinas and typically Kantian! See my Natural Law and Practical Reason, Postscript the English Edition, 559f. Recently the charge has been raised by Matthew Levering in his Natural Law and Natural Inclinations: Rhonheimer, Pinckaers, McAleer, The Thomist 70 (2006): 155-70, republished as chapter 3 of his book Biblical Natural Law: A Theocentric and Teleological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). [FN83]. On this see Hibbs, A Rhetoric of Motives: Thomas on Obligation as Rational Persuasion. [FN84]. See my Natural Law and Practical Reason, 95-103.

[FN85]. Most influential advocates of such a view have been Franz B ckle, Ludger Honnefelder and Georg Wieland. For a criticism of these views see my Natural Law and Practical Reason; and Chapter 5 of my The Perspective of the Acting Person. [FN86]. Which come to bear especially, as is noted in the sequel (No. 80) on the traditional doctrine of sins against nature. See for this also my extensive treatment in Natural Law and Practical Reason, 94-109; and The Perspective of the Acting Person, Chapter 6. [FN87]. I have tried to show this in detail in my Praktische Vernunft und Vern nftigkeit der Praxis.

[FN88]. For this see S.T., 1-2, q. 85 a. 3; Super Sent., lib. 2 d. 30 q. 1 a. 1 ad 3; ibid., d. 31 q. 1 a. 2 ad 3; ibid. d. 33 q. 2 a. 1. [FN89]. See De Veritate, q. 21, a. 5.

[FN90]. S.T., 1-2, q. 17 a. 9 ad 3; Super Sent., lib. 2 d. 30 q. 1 a. 1; Quaestio disputata De Anima, a. 8. [FN91]. See S.T., 1-2, q. 94, a. 6. It is abolished either by not being applied to concrete acts, orregarding the secondary precepts-by being literally deleted: But as to the other, i.e., the secondary precepts, the natural law can be blotted out [deleri] from the human heart, either by evil persuasions, just as speculative matters errors occur in respect of necessary conclusions; or by vicious customs and corrupt habits, as among some men, theft, and even unnatural vices, as the Apostle states (Romans 1), were not esteemed sinful. [FN92]. See for my own contribution to this task my The Perspective of Morality. [FN93]. On this see my Is Christian Morality Reasonable? On the Difference between Secular und Christian Humanism, Annales Theologici 15 (2001): 529-49 and reprinted as Chapter 1 of my The Perspective of the Acting Person. [FN94]. Besides the essay cited in the preceding note, see also the text of my presentation Faith, Secularity, & the Experience of the World, at the Conference The Nature of Experience: Issues in Culture, Science, and Theology (Dec. 2009), sponsored by the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America (forthcoming in Communio).

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