Ethics

Foundations of Moral Valuation

Chapter III:
Natural Law
 Table of Contents
Chapter III: Natural Law
• Thomas Aquinas
• The Greek Heritage
• The Essence and Varieties of Law
Chapter Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able
to:
• Recognize how Thomas Aquinas made use of ancient
Greek concepts to provide a rational grounding to an
ethical theory based on the Christian faith;
• Identify the natural law in distinction from, but also
in relation to, the other types of law mentioned by
Aquinas: eternal law, human law, and divine law; and
• Apply the precepts of the natural law to
contemporary moral concerns.
INTRODUCTION
In October 2016, newspapers reported that Pantaleon Alvarez,
Speaker of the House of Representatives, was intending to draft a bill
which would amend the country’s Family Code, thereby allowing for
the legalization of same-sex unions. This would result in the possibility
of two men together or two women together being identified as a
couple with rights guaranteed and protected by the law. However, as
one newspaper report revealed, even before anything could be
formally proposed, other fellow legislators had already expressed to
the media their refusal to support any such initiative.
The reasons given in the news article vary, ranging from the
opinion that seeing two men kiss is unsightly, to the statement that
there is something “irregular” about belonging to the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) community, and to the judgment that
two people of the same sex being together is unnatural.
 We are used to hearing people justify something by making the
appeal that what they maintain is what is “natural,” and therefore
acceptable. Likewise, people would judge something as unacceptable
on the basis that it is supposedly “unnatural.”
In order to proceed, it is therefore necessary to ask: “What do the
words natural and unnatural mean?” Sometimes, the word “natural”
seems to be used to refer to some kind of intuition that a person has,
one which is so apparently true to him that it is unquestioned.
In this chapter we explore how Thomas Aquinas provides this,
emphasizing the capacity for reason as what is essential in our human
nature. This understanding of human nature anchored on our capacity
for reason will become the basis of the natural law theory, a theory
which will provide us a unique way of determining the moral status of
our actions.
The Summa Theologiae or
Summa Theologica, often
referred to simply as the
Summa, is the best-
known work of Thomas
Aquinas, a scholastic
theologian and Doctor of
the Church.
 The Summa Theologica,
as its title indicates, is a
“theological summary.” It
seeks to describe the
relationship between God
and man and to explain
how man’s reconciliation
with the Divine is made
possible at all through
Christ
 Thomas Aquinas was an Italian
Dominican friar, philosopher,
Catholic priest, and Doctor of the
Church. An immensely influential
philosopher, theologian, and
jurist in the tradition of
scholasticism, he is also known
within the latter as the Doctor
Angelicus, the Doctor Communis,
and the Doctor Universalis.
PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS
Heraclitus
Parmenides
Thales of Melitus
Anaximander
Democritus
Pythagoras
Empedocles
Anaximenes of Miletus
Anaxagoras
Zeno
Xenophanes
Protagoras
POPULAR PHILOSOPHERS
THOMAS AQUINAS
SOCRATES
PLATO
ARISTOTLE
RENE DESCARTES
MICHEL FOUCAULT
DAVID HUME
IMMANUEL KANT
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
JONH LOCKE
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
KARL MARX
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THOMAS AQUINAS
The Context of the Christian Story
• The fundamental truth maintained and elaborated by Aquinas
in all his works is the promise right at the center of the
Christian faith: that we are created by God in order to
ultimately return to Him (Summa Theologiae).
• There are three parts to this voluminous work. The second
part deals with man or the dynamic of human life. This is
characterized by our pursuit of happiness, which we should
realize rests ultimately not on any particular good thing that is
created by God, but in the highest good which is God Himself.
• In other words, salvation is only possible through the
presence of God’s grace and that grace has become perfectly
incarnate in the person of Jesus.
The Context of Aquina’s Ethics
• The Christian life is about developing the capacities given
to us by God into a disposition of virtue inclined toward
the good.
• For Aquinas, there is a sense of right and wrong in us that
we are obliged to obey (conscience). However, he also
adds that this sense of right and wrong must be
informed, guided, and ultimately grounded in an
objective basis for morality.
• Given the problems of this simplistic approach to ethics
of the divine command theory, we can contrast how the
moral theory of Aquinas requires the judicious use of
reason. In doing so, one’s sense of right and wrong would
be grounded on something stable: human nature itself.
THE GREEK HERITAGE
Neoplatonic Good
• In the hands of the Neoplatonists, Plato’s idea of the
good, which is the source of all beings, becomes
identified with the One and the Beautiful. This is the
ultimate reality which is the oneness that will give rise to
the multiplicity of everything else in the cosmos. All
these beings have a single goal, which is to return to that
unity.
• Through Neoplatonists like Plotinus, the Platonic idea of
the good would continue well into the Christian Middle
Ages, inspiring later thinkers and allowing it to be
thought anew in a more personal way as a creative and
loving God.
Aristotelian Being and Becoming
• Any being, according to Aristotle, can be said to have four
causes – material, formal, efficient, and final.
• We recognize that any being we can see around is corporeal,
possessed of a certain materiality or physical “stuff.” We can
refer to this as the material cause.
• The “shape” that makes a being a particular kind can be called
its form. Thus, each being also has a formal cause.
• There is something which brings about the presence of
another being. This can be referred to as the efficient cause.
• The sense of end or “that for the sake of which” a thing is
done is the final cause. A being has an apparent end or goal.
Synthesis
• The idea of a transcendent good prior to all being resurfaces
in Aquinas in the form of the good and loving God, who is
Himself the fullness of being and of goodness; as Aquinas puts
it, God is that which essentially is and is essentially good.
• However, while beings are good because they are created by
God, the goodness possessed by being remains imperfect.
• Given that we are beings with a capacity for reason, our way
of reaching God is by knowing and loving Him.
• Under the governance of the Divine, beings are directed as to
how their acts are to lead them to their end, which is to
return to Him.
THE ESSENCE AND VARIETIES
OF LAW
Essence
• In thinking about what is good for us, it is also quite possible
that we end up thinking exclusively of our own good. Aquinas
reminds us that this will not do; we cannot simply act in
pursuit of our own ends or good without any regard for other
people’s ends or good. Since we belong to a community, we
have to consider what is good for the community as well as
our own good. This can be called the common good.
• A law, therefore, is concerned with the common good. In a
way, making of a law belongs either to the whole people or to
a public person who has care for the common good or is
tasked with the concern for the good of the community or of
the whole people.
Varieties
Aquinas points out that while reflecting on our human nature
will provide us the precepts of the natural law, these are
quite general and would have to be made more specific, and
at the same time more concrete in the actual operation of
human acts. For this reason, there is also human law.
Natural Law
• It is that 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.
• In Common with Other Beings
Human beings, are both unique and at the same time
participating in the community of the rest of creation. Our
presence in the rest of creation does not only mean that we
interact with creatures that are not human, but that there is
also in our nature something that shares in the nature of
other beings.
• In Common with Other Animals
Aquinas then goes on to say that there is in our human
nature, common with other animals, a desire that has to do
with sexual intercourse and the care of one’s offspring.
Uniquely Human
We have an inclination to do good according to the nature of
our reason. With this, we have a natural inclination to know
the truth about God and to live in society.
DISCUSSION POINTS
1. Are there other ways that the word “natural”
is used to justify a particular way of
behaving? How do these approaches
compare to the theory of Aquinas?
2. Can you think of human laws that are proper
extensions of the natural law? Explain how
this is so. Can you think of other human laws
that violate the natural law? Explain how this
is so.
PROCESSING QUESTIONS
1. Are there current scientific developments—
for example, in biology—that challenge the
understanding of nature presented by
Aquinas?
2. Is it possible to maintain a natural law theory
without believing in the divine source? Why
or why not?
LESSON SUMMARY
In this chapter,
• We have seen how a natural law theory is instrumental
to an ethics that is rooted in the Christian faith.
• In elaborating this, we explored how Aquinas had
synthesized concepts of the ancient Greeks to put
forward an intellectual grounding that can overcome
the limitations of a simplistic divine command theory.
• We are provided an objective basis for ethics: our own
natural inclinations. Since these are given by God, they
provide us the path toward our perfection.
• Our natural inclinations enumerated by Aquinas
include the desire to preserve our being, the sexual act
and its fecundity, and our use of reason.