good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided

[18] S.T. ed., Milwaukee, 1958), 4969, 88100, 120126. As to the end, Suarez completely separates the notion of it from the notion of law. 1. It is important, however, to see the precise manner in which the principle. In accordance with this inclination, those things by which human life is preserved and by which threats to life are met fall under natural law. at 117) even seems to concur in considering practical reason hypothetical apart from an act of will, but Bourke places the will act in God rather than in our own decision as Nielsen does. These four initial arguments serve only to clarify the issue to be resolved in the response which follows. 2, c. Fr. Law makes human life possible. Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. We at least can indicate a few significant passages. Throughout history man has been tempted to suppose that wrong action is wholly outside the field of rational control, that it has no principle in practical reason. Moreover, because the end proposed by the utilitarians is only a psychic state and because utilitarians also hold a mechanistic theory of causality, utilitarianism denies that any kind of action is intrinsically good or bad. In the first paragraph Aquinas restates the analogy between precepts of natural law and first principles of theoretical reason. [30] Ibid. But in this discussion I have been using the word intelligibility (ratio) which Aquinas uses both in this paragraph and later in the response. This is why Aquinas thinks Natural Law is so important. cit. In accordance with this inclination, those things by which human life is preserved and by which threats to life are met fall under natural law. Not merely morally good acts, but such substantive goods as self-preservation, the life and education of children, and knowledge. Natural law does not direct man to his supernatural end; in fact, it is precisely because it is inadequate to do so that divine law is needed as a supplement. Sertillanges also tries to understand the principle as if it were a theoretical truth equivalent to an identity statement. The first paragraph implies that only self-evident principles of practical reason belong to natural law; Aquinas is using natural law here in its least extensive sense. On the one hand, the causality of God is not a principle evident to us. The leverage reason gets on these possibilities is expressed in the basic substantive principles of natural law. To the first argument, based on the premises that law itself is a precept and that natural law is one, Aquinas answers that the many precepts of the natural law are unified. The seventh and last paragraph of Aquinass response is very rich and interesting, but the details of its content are outside the scope of this paper. Sertillanges also tries to understand the principle as if it were a theoretical truth equivalent to an identity statement. The objective dimension of the reality of beings that we know in knowing this principle is simply the definiteness that is involved in their very objectivity, a definiteness that makes a demand on the intellect knowing them, the very least demandto think consistently of them.[16]. Nor does he merely insert another bin between the two, as Kant did when he invented the synthetic a priori. ad 3; q. On the other hand, a principle is not useful as a starting point of inquiry and as a limit of proof unless its underivability is known. DO GOOD AND AVOID EVIL 1. However, Aquinas does not present natural law as if it were an object known or to be known; rather, he considers the precepts of practical reason themselves to be natural law. Mardonnet-Moos, Paris, 19291947), bk. For example, man has a natural inclination to this, that he might know the truth concerning God, and to this, that he might live in society. (Ibid. The difference between the two points of view is no mystery. 94, a. [56], The good which is the subject matter of practical reason is an objective possibility, and it could be contemplated. We may imagine an intelligibility as an intellect-sized bite of reality, a bite not necessarily completely digested by the mind. Epicurus defined two types of pleasure: the first being the satisfying of a desire, for example, eating something. We tend to substitute the more familiar application for the less familiar principle in itself. supra note 40, at 147155. But must every end involve good? To recognize this distinction is not to deny that law can be expressed in imperative form. Let us imagine a teaspoonful of sugar held over a cup of hot coffee. At any rate Nielsens implicit supposition that the natural law for Aquinas must be formally identical with the eternal law is in conflict with Aquinass notion of participation according to which the participation is never formally identical with that in which it participates. Moral action, and that upon which it immediately bears, can be directed to ulterior goods, and for this very reason moral action cannot be the absolutely ultimate end. Now since any object of practical reason first must be understood as an object of tendency, practical reasons first step in effecting conformity with itself is to direct the doing of works in pursuit of an end. Nature is not natural law; nature is the given from which man develops and from which arise tendencies of ranks corresponding to its distinct strata. God is to be praised, and Satan is to be condemned. These same difficulties underlie Maritains effort to treat the primary precept as a truth necessary by virtue of the predicates inclusion of the intelligibility of the subject rather than the reverse. Some interpreters mistakenly ask whether the word good in the first principle has a transcendental or an ethical sense. Verse Concepts. However, Aquinas explicitly distinguishes between an imperative and a precept expressed in gerundive form. But if these must be distinguished, the end is rather in what is attained than in its attainment. This illation is intelligible to anyone except a positivist, but it is of no help in explaining the origin of moral judgments. B. Schuster, S.J., . 12. [22] From this argument we see that the notion of end is fundamental to Aquinass conception of law, and the priority of end among principles of action is the most basic reason why law belongs to reason. [41] Among the ends toward which the precepts of the natural law direct, then, moral value has a place. In neither aspect is the end fundamental. 2, d. 39, q. However, Aquinas actually says: Et ideo primum principium in ratione practica est quod fundatur supra rationem boni, quae est, Bonum est quod omnia appetunt S.T., 1-2, q. The basic precepts of natural law are no less part of the minds original equipment than are the evident principles of theoretical knowledge. This desire leads them to forget that they are dealing with a precept, and so they try to treat the first principle of practical reason as if it were theoretical. 1, lect. They wish to show that the first principle really is a truth, that it really is self-evident. cit. B. Schuster, S.J., Von den ethischen Prinzipien: Eine Thomasstudie zu S. Using the primary principle, reason reflects on experience in which the natural inclinations are found pointing to goods appropriate to themselves. At the beginning of his treatise on law, Aquinas refers to his previous discussion of the imperative. Most people were silent. Aquinas says that the fundamental principle of the natural law is that good is to be done and evil avoided (ST IaIIae 94, 2). No, he thinks of the subject and the predicate as complementary aspects of a unified knowledge of a single objective dimension of the reality known. Question 94 is divided into six articles, each of which presents a position on a single issue concerning the law of nature. His response is that since precepts oblige, they are concerned with duties, and duties derive from the requirements of an end. Lottin notices this point. Even so accurate a commentator as Stevens introduces the inclination of the will as a ground for the prescriptive force of the first principle. The formula. In accordance with this inclination, those things are said to be of natural law which nature teaches all animals, among which are the union of male and female, the raising of children, and the like. 47, a. He imagines a certain "Antipraxis" who denies the first principle in practical reason, to wit, that "good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided." Antipraxis therefore maintains that it is possible to pursue an object without considering it under a positive aspect. To such criticism it is no answer to argue that empiricism makes an unnatural cleavage between facts and values. This point is merely lexicographical, yet it has caused some confusionfor instance, concerning the relationship between natural law and the law of nations, for sometimes Aquinas contradistinguishes the two while sometimes he includes the law of nations in natural law. The Influence of the Scottish Enlightenment. Obligation is a strictly derivative concept, with its origin in ends and the requirements set by ends. [28] Super Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi in St. Thomas, Opera, ed. To such criticism it is no answer to argue that empiricism makes an unnatural cleavage between facts and values. But these references should not be given too much weight, since they refer to the article previously cited in which the distinction is made explicitly. Maritain recognizes that is to be cannot be derived from the meaning of good by analysis. Aquinas mentions this point in at least two places. The good which is the end is the principle of moral value, and at least in some respects this principle transcends its consequence, just as being in a certain respect is a principle (of beings) that transcends even the most fundamental category of beings. [13] Thus Aquinas remarks (S.T. 2; S.T. The pursuit of the good which is the end is primary; the doing of the good which is the means is subordinate. 100, a. In fact, several authors to whom Lottin refers seem to think of natural law as a principle of choice; and if the good and evil referred to in their definitions are properly objects of choice, then it is clear that their understanding of natural law is limited to its bearing upon moral good and evilthe value immanent in actionand that they simply have no idea of the relevance of good as enda principle of action that transcends action. 1-2, q. Significant in these formulations are the that which (ce qui) and the double is, for these expressions mark the removal of gerundive force from the principal verb of the sentence. He judged rule by the few rich (oligarchy) and the many poor (democracy) as "bad" governments. Perhaps even more surprising is another respect in which the first practical principle as Aquinas sees it has a broader scope than is usually realized. If every active principle acts on account of an end, so the anthropomorphic argument goes, then it must act for the sake of a goal, just as men do when they act with a purpose in view. Precisely because man knows the intelligibility of end and the proportion of his work to end. But the principle of contradiction can have its liberalizing effect on thought only if we do not mistakenly identify being with a certain kind of beingthe move which would establish the first principle as a deductive premise. that the precept of charity is self-evident to human reason, either by nature or by faith, since a. knowledge of God sufficient to form the natural law precept of charity can come from either natural knowledge or divine revelation. Aquinass understanding of the first principle of practical reason avoids the dilemma of these contrary positions. cit. In the fifth paragraph Aquinas enunciates the first principle of practical reason and indicates the way in which other evident precepts of the law of nature are founded on it. Only after practical reason thinks does the object of its thought begin to be a reality. [63] Human and divine law are in fact not merely prescriptive but also imperative, and when precepts of the law of nature were incorporated into the divine law they became imperatives whose violation is contrary to the divine will as well as to right reason. In practical knowledge, on the other hand, the knower arrives at the destination first; and what is known will be altered as a result of having been thought about, since the known must conform to the mind of the knower. A good part of Thomas's output, in effect, aims at doing these three things, and this obviously justifies its broad use of philosophical argumentation. 6. 1, c. Those who misunderstand Aquinass theory often seem to assume, as if it were obvious, that law is a transient action of an efficient cause physically moving passive objects; for Aquinas, law always belongs to reason, is never considered an efficient cause, and cannot possibly terminate in motion. The true understanding of the first principle of practical reason suggests on the contrary that the alternative to moral goodness is an arbitrary restriction upon the human goods which can be attained by reasonable direction of life. Lottin proposed a theory of the relationship between the primary principle and the self-evident principles founded on it. It must be so, since the good pursued by practical reason is an objective of human action. In this more familiar formulation it is clearer that the principle is based upon being and nonbeing, for it is obvious that what the principle excludes is the identification of being with nonbeing. It is not merely the meaning with which a word is used, for someone may use a word, such as rust, and use it correctly, without understanding all that is included in its intelligibility. From mans point of view, the principles of natural law are neither received from without nor posited by his own choice; they are naturally and necessarily known, and a knowledge of God is by no means a condition for forming self-evident principles, unless those principles happen to be ones that especially concern God. 91, a. Act according to the precepts of the state, and never against. Practical principles do not become practical, although they do become more significant for us, if we believe that God wills them. Now what is an intelligibility? This fact has helped to mislead many into supposing that natural law must be understood as a divine imperative. Neuf leons sur les notions premires de la philosophie morale (Paris, 1951), 158160. Mans lowliness is shown by the very weakness of reasons first principle; by itself this precept cannot guide action, and the instigation of natural inclination and the inspiration of faith are needed to develop an adequate law for human life. 1. This transcendence of the goodness of the end over the goodness of moral action has its ultimate metaphysical foundation in this, that the end of each creatures action can be an end for it only by being a participation in divine goodness. To the third argument, that law belongs to reason and that reason is one, Aquinas responds that reason indeed is one in itself, and yet that natural law contains many precepts because reason directs everything which concerns man, who is complex. 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