10.

Principles of Practical Knowledge

The Concept of the Natural Law

Lex naturalis, or “natural law,” is an expression that has many meanings. It is important to
know the context in which it is used to know its precise meaning. In the Scholastic doctrine of
the lex naturalis there are at least two traditions that have merged: the ancient Roman tradition of
the jurists and their ius naturale, especially Ulpian,1 as well as the Christian theology of “law”
which is in part biblical, and in part based on the Augustinian doctrine of the eternal law, lex
aeterna. This latter Judeo-Christian tradition is decisive for the lex naturalis terminology.2
In the Summa Theologiae Thomas turns his attention to the specifically theological question
about the law only after he has already treated human actions, their specification, and moral
qualification through the reason: only after he has treated “good” and “evil” in human actions,
the emotions (or “passions”), and the moral virtues, using Aristotelian categories as much as
possible to say everything essential on the subject. When taking up this theological question he
begins with his reception of the Augustinian concept of the eternal law: the ratio of the divine
mind, the plan according to which all created being is ordered to its end.
“Law” in general is more precisely defined by Thomas as “a rule and measure, according to
which someone is led to action or is kept from acting”; it “obliges to action”; it is “the measure
of human actions”; “first principle of human actions”; something that “pertains to reason”;
something that “is constituted through an act of the reason”; laws are “universal propositions of
the practical reason pertaining to actions.” The reason that is meant here is the reason that moves,
because it itself is moved by the will, that is, it is embedded in appetition. The concept of the law
thus satisfies all the essential requirements of an ordering established by practical reason and is
defined, finally, as an ordering of reason, ordinatio rationis.3
And now the question arises: Is there also an ordinatio rationis, an ordering or guidance by
reason toward the good, that is “natural” to man—that belongs to him “by nature”—and in this
sense can be called a natural law? This means: Is there a practical reasoning that comes to be by
nature in the human being, which can show the way to the good, independently of the divine or
human lawmaker giving a law? Such a “law” would then be neither a divine nor a human
positive law, but also not simply “nature” (since this as such does not constitute an ordinatio
rationis). It would not be a “law of nature” nor a “natural regulation.” Instead, it would be
something that “by nature” has the character of a law, that is, of an ordering of reason toward the
good. Yes, says Thomas, there is such a thing: it is nothing other than an ordering that the
practical reason of the acting subject “by nature” establishes in human inclinations and actions
through its own preceptive (i.e., guiding) acts.

1
How little, in fact, Thomas’s concept of the natural law was influenced by Ulpian’s ius natural or (to put it another
way) how much Thomas’s teaching transformed Ulpian’s, is shown by W. E. May, “The Meaning and Nature of the
Natural Law in Thomas Aquinas,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 22 (1977): 168–89.
2
Cf. for the evolution of the Thomistic concept of the lex naturalis from its specification through the Augustinian
lex aeterna to the Aristotelian doctrine of virtue, G. Abbà, Lex et virtus. Studi sull’ evolutzione della dottrina morale
di san Tommaso d’Aquino (Rome: LAS, 1983).
3
All these definitions of law in general can be found in I-II, Q. 90, a. 1, corpus, as well as ad 2 and ad 3.

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 As soon as it has been said that the “natural law” is the practical reasoning of the human
being establishing order within human inclinations and actions it starts to become clear that in
the context of a purely philosophical ethics, the term “law,” at least in this connection, is
redundant when understood precisely.
The category of the lex naturalis really involves nothing new that would need to be added to
the doctrine of the standard-giving role of reason; rather, it leads, for Thomas, back to the
doctrine of the practical reason, to the doctrine of human actions, and of the determination of
good and bad through reason; to the anthropology of reason, will, and sense appetition, and to
the doctrine of moral virtue.
The only thing that is new here is just the integration of this doctrine into the context of a
Christian theology of law.
“Lex naturalis,” then, means the same thing as the principles of the practical reason, based
on which the appetitive goal seeking of moral virtue is guided by reason. The “natural law” is a
“law” of practical reason, and that means it is a law in relation to human appetitions and actions
based on the knowledge of the difference between “good” and “bad,” as measured and governed
through the practical reason of the human being. Consequently, from this point forward, it will
be enough to speak of the practical principles or of the natural principles of the moral virtues
instead of “the natural law.”
Knowledge of the Moral Law

How can we ever know “What is man?” In order to know what man is, it is not enough to
know what people actually do, what they actually strive for and consider good, or under what
natural and social conditions as catalogued by the natural and social sciences their actions
unfold. To know what man is, we must know what is good for man, or what one rationally seeks
as good.
But we can only know that when we know that man in fact seeks what is rationally known
by nature as “good.” Consequently, a purely theoretical, external study of the human being
cannot tell us more than what we could know about him independently of the acts of his practical
reason: such that he belongs to the class of mammals or that he is very weak in instincts. By
simply knowing that man is a mammal or that he has very weak instincts, we cannot derive any
normative rule from this knowledge.
Even the fact that we know we are “rational mammals” only comes from the experience that
we have of our own rationality. And that we are mammals who are always seeking what we
understand as good based on reason, again, we only know because we have our own experience
of our acts of practical reasoning. And we know these acts because we know their content (their
object). And this object is, in general, the good. A derivation of the principles of praxis from the
knowledge of “what man is” or his nature would be reasoning that leads nowhere.
It also corresponds to our experience that the acts of the practical reason have their own
starting point and are not “derivations” or “applications” of theoretical judgments about “what
man is.” Earlier we saw that from the knowledge that we are beings that need to be nourished by
food to survive, we could not derive that “it is now ‘good’ to nourish oneself” (i.e., in the sense
of a judgment “p is good,” “p should be done,” which moves to action). Because we could only
do this to the extent that we knew that it is “good” to survive.

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 And further: that “it is good for me” to survive. But how do we know that? And how could
we establish that? We know it, ultimately, only because and insofar as we actually do seek (or
strive for) survival as good for us, and not on the basis of some deliberation whether it is good
now to do it, or whether we should choose to do it, but simply we know it “by nature.” And
therefore, the reason grasps this striving as “good” and it will be striven for by the will as a good
in the order of reason (bonum rationis).
But that is not a justification of the goodness of surviving. Its goodness is rather the very
first thing that is grasped by the reason in this case and—as something “reasonable by nature”—
it is therefore the basis of all further justification.
Only a thoroughgoing “naturalist” philosophy would mistake attention to the fact of
appetition as part of a “justification” for the goodness of an action. Such a “naturalist” position
would say that we necessarily follow our drives, and whatever the drive directs us to do we call
“good.” But if that was alone the criterion of “good,” there would be no morality, but only the
natural sciences and various scientific techniques for the optimal direction of drives.
From the moral standpoint, it can be a very bad thing to just allow oneself to be led by one’s
drives! The natural fact as such is no criterion for the moral good. Only a judgment of the reason,
“p is good,” in relation to this fact can constitute the “good for man.” We must have already
grasped the good as good objectified by the reason to be able to assess the natural fact, whether it
is truly good or bad. And this means we must already know “what is good for man” in order to
be able to rightly interpret ourselves and to understand “what man is.”
The First Principle of Practical Reason

The practical judgment “p is good” is a judgment in the context of an appetition. And since
practical reason is reason embedded in striving, it must also possess its own starting point that is
not to be reduced to any other judgments. What is this starting point?
The practical reason must therefore have its own starting point. Its first principle is not based
on the structure of being, but on that of the good.4 This reason of goodness, ratio boni is as
follows: “The good is that for which all things strive.”5 Practical reason is constituted through
striving. The first thing that any reason that is practical grasps is something “seek-able.” And this
is objectified as a “good.” The concept of the good is indeed nothing other than the concept of
what correlates to a striving or seeking and insofar as it is such a correlate.
And likewise there is something that is opposed to the striving, something we shun or flee
away from, and to this the striving relates by way of aversion, avoidance, or flight. We call this
evil (or bad). On the basis of this foundational structure of “good” and “evil” is formulated the
first principle of the practical reason (which Thomas in this context, of course, calls the “first
command” [praeceptum] of the natural law): “Good is to be done and pursued, and evil to be
avoided” (bonum est faciendum et persequendum, et malum vitandum).6

4
For the following, cf. I-II, q. 94, a. 2. See also G. Grisez, “The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary
on the Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, a. 2,” Natural Law Forum 10 (1965): 168–201. A somewhat abbreviated
version is available in A. Kenny, ed., Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (South Bend, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1976), 340–82.
5
Cf. EN I, 1 (1094a 3).
6
I-II, q. 94, a. 2.

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 What is decisive about willing ‘p’ is that it leads to doing ‘p,’ and that “doing p” is in fact
something more than “willing p.” And it is the same way with the first principle of practical
reason. Namely, it leads us to do good or to avoid evil. It is the fundamental action-grounding
judgment as such. It constitutes the practical rule that is already the moral rule.
The first principle of practical reason moves to action. It is an imperium or praeceptum, a
command or a precept. This is because action only comes to be under the quality of “good” or
“evil,” and insofar as this difference belongs to the process of appetition. The first principle of
the practical reason lies implicitly at the foundation of every subsequent judgment of the kind “p
is good,” “p is to be done” (or “p is bad,” “p is not to be done”): it is, in the truest sense, the first
and fundamental principle of praxis.
Now, let us know something very important: the first principle of practical reason, as all
subsequent principles of action, is the principle of praxis and not of ethics. This might sound
strange but what we mean is that it is the principle of action of a concrete acting subject, and not
the principle of discourse about praxis, which is what we mean by ethics—a discourse about
norms conducted by philosophers of ethics. It is the principle that lies at the basis of all rational
human action and forms its inner intelligible dynamism.
Practical principles are not principles of reflection or thought, but are moving principles and
principles of action. Practical reason and its principles are, first of all, not “ethics” or a
“discourse about norms,” but rather the reasoned insights of the acting subject, him- or herself.
This goes as well for practical principles in general or the lex naturalis: here, too, it is not a
question of statements about praxis in the mode of reflection, but rather the immediately action-
causing practical judgments of a universal kind that constitute the human being as a moral
subject who in his acting is beholden to the difference between good and evil. Practical
principles are consequently not really “norms” to which practical knowledge must attend, but
genuine achievements of practical knowing by the acting subject, which then subsequently can
become the foundation and standard for “moral norms.” Once we reflect on the reasons, the
principles that guide our actions, we can formulate our discourse about them and also formulate
rules and norms.