Laws are formed by practical reason as principles of the actions it guides just as definitions and premises are formed by theoretical reason as principles of the conclusions it reaches. No less subversive of human responsibility, which is based on purposiveand, therefore, rationalagency, is the existentialist notion that morally good and morally bad action are equally reasonable, and that a choice of one or the other is equally a matter of arational arbitrariness. The good is placed before the will by the determination of the intellects. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men. p. but the question was not a commonplace. The mistaken interpretation of Aquinass theory of natural law, with its restrictive understanding of the scope of the first practical principle, suggests that before reason comes upon the scene, that whole broad field of action lies open before man, offering no obstacles to his enjoyment of an endlessly rich and satisfying life, but that cold reason with its abstract precepts successively marks section after section of the field out of bounds, progressively enclosing the submissive subject in an ever-shrinking pen, while those who act at the promptings of uninhibited spontaneity range freely over all the possibilities of life. Nor does he merely insert another bin between the two, as Kant did when he invented the synthetic a priori. The prescription expressed in gerundive form, on the contrary, merely offers rational direction without promoting the execution of the work to which reason directs. The principle in action is the rule of action; therefore, reason is the rule of action. Suarez offers a number of formulations of the first principle of the natural law. 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. The infant learns to feel guilty when mother frowns, because he wants to please. Th., I-II, q. 45; 3, q. No less subversive of human responsibility, which is based on purposiveand, therefore, rationalagency, is the existentialist notion that morally good and morally bad action are equally reasonable, and that a choice of one or the other is equally a matter of arational arbitrariness. There should be a fine line between what is good or evil, one that is not solely dependent on what an individual thinks is good or bad. Aquinas is suggesting that we all have the innate instinct to do good and avoid . cit. 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away . 91, a. Mans ability to choose his ultimate end has its metaphysical ground in the spiritual nature of man himself, on the one hand, and in the transcendent aspect that every end, as a participation in divine goodness, necessarily includes, on the other. Second, there is in man an inclination to certain more restricted goods based on the aspect of his nature which he has in common with other animals. "Ethics can be defined as a complete and coherent system of convictions, values and ideas that provides a grid within which some sort of actions can be classified as evil, and so to be avoided, while other sort of actions can be classified as good, and so to be tolerated or even pursued" But it is also clear that the end in question cannot be identified with moral goodness itself. Later, in treating the Old Law, Aquinas maintains that all the moral precepts of the Old Law belong to the law of nature, and then he proceeds to distinguish those moral precepts which carry the obligation of strict precept from those which convey only the warning of counsel. Rather, it is primarily a principle of actions. The object of the practical intellect is not merely the actions men perform, but the. [These pertain uniquely to the rational faculty.] However, since the first principle is Good is to be done and pursued, morally bad acts fall within the order of practical reason, yet the principles of practical reason remain identically the principles of natural law. That candle is a single act of goodness, an act of virtue, a freely chosen act that brings into the world a good that was not there before. 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. The distinction between these two modes of practical discourse often is ignored, and so it may seem that to deny imperative force to the primary precept is to remove it from practical discourse altogether and to transform it into a merely theoretical principle. Of course we do make judgments concerning means in accordance with the orientation of our intention toward the end. Awareness of the principle of contradiction demands consistency henceforth; one must posit in assenting, and thought cannot avoid the position assenting puts it in. On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, The good deeds a man has done before defend him.". [45] Suarez refers to the passages where Aquinas discusses the scope of the natural law. One of these is that every active principle acts on account of an end. To be practical is natural to human reason. 2) Since the mistaken interpretation restricts the meaning of good and evil in the first principle to the value of moral actions, the meaning of these key terms must be clarified in the light of Aquinass theory of final causality. In this class are propositions whose terms everyone understandsfor example: Every whole is greater than its parts, and: Two things equal to a third are equal to one another. correct incorrect (Op. Question 90 is concerned with what law is, question 91 with the distinction among the various modes of law, and question 92 with the effects of law. Practical reason has its truth by anticipating the point at which something that is possible through human action will come into conformity with reason, and by directing effort toward that point. 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. Is to be is the copula of the first practical principle, not its predicate; the gerundive is the mode rather than the matter of law. Just as the principle of contradiction expresses the definiteness which is the first condition of the objectivity of things and the consistency which is the first condition of theoretical reasons conformity to reality, so the first principle of practical reason expresses the imposition of tendency, which is the first condition of reasons objectification of itself, and directedness or intentionality, which is the first condition for conformity to mind on the part of works and ends. The difference between the two points of view is no mystery. A human's practical reason (see [ 1.3.6 ], [ 4.9.9 ]) is responsible for deliberating and freely choosing choices for the human good (or bad). 1. Proverbs 4:15. It would be easy to miss the significance of the nonderivability of the many basic precepts by denying altogether the place of deduction in the development of natural law. The imperative not only provides rational direction for action, but it also contains motive force derived from an antecedent act of the will bearing upon the object of the action. 90, a. 2, Zeitschrift fr Katholische Theologie 57 (1933): 4465 and Michael V. Murray, S.J., Problems in Ethics (New York, 1960), 220235. I think it would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the first principle is formal in a way that would separate it from and contrast it with the content of knowledge. . cit. Objectum intellectus practici est bonum ordinabile ad opus, sub ratione veri. cit. Reproduced with permission of The American Journal of Jurisprudence (formerly Natural Law Forum). Practical reason prescribes precisely in view of ends. d. Act according to the precepts of the state, and never against. Why, exactly, does Aquinas treat this principle as a basis for the law and yet maintain that there are many self-evident principles corresponding to the various aspects of mans complex nature? 94, a. As to the end, Suarez completely separates the notion of it from the notion of law. Hence an end for Aquinas has two inseparable aspectswhat is attained and the attainment of it. Only after practical reason thinks does the object of its thought begin to be a reality. Thus Lottin makes the precept appear as much as possible like a theoretical statement expressing a peculiar aspect of the goodnamely, that it is the sort of thing that demands doing. [52] Super Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, bk. Posthumous Character: He died 14 years before the Fall of Jurassic World. a. Maritain points out that Aquinas uses the word quasi in referring to the prescriptive conclusions derived from common practical principles. Practical reason does not have its truth by conforming to what it knows, for what practical reason knows does not have the being and the definiteness it would need to be a standard for intelligence. The first principle, expressed here in the formula, To affirm and simultaneously to deny is excluded, is the one sometimes called the principle of contradiction and sometimes called the principle of noncontradiction: The same cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. [17] In libros Posteriorum analyticorum Aristotelis, lib. The latter ability is evidenced in the first principle of practical reason, and it is the same ability which grounds the ability to choose. In the case of practical reason, acting on account of an end is acting for the sake of a goal, for practical reason is an active principle that is conscious and self-determining. The principle in action is the rule of action; therefore, reason is the rule of action. apparently misled by Maritain, follows this interpretation. 95, a. But does not Aquinas imagine the subject as if it were a container full of units of meaning, each unit a predicate? We can reflect upon and interpret our experience in a purely theoretical frame of mind. The first principle of morally good action is the principle of all human action, but bad action fulfills the requirement of the first principle less perfectly than good action does. No, the derivation is not direct, and the position of reason in relation to inclination is not merely passive. It is important, however, to see the precise manner in which the principle, Good is to be done and pursued, still rules practical reason when it goes astray. Verse Concepts. For that which primarily falls within ones grasp is being, and the understanding of being is included in absolutely everything that anyone grasps. To be definite is a condition of being anything, and this condition is fulfilled by whatever a thing happens to be. [36]. 3) Since the mistaken interpretation tends to oppose the commandments of natural law to positive action, it will help to notice the broad scope Aquinas attributes to the first principle, for he considers it to be a source, rather than a limit, of action. 6. Aquinas holds that reason can derive more definite prescriptions from the basic general precepts. To function as principles, their status as underivables must be recognized, and this recognition depends upon a sufficient understanding of their terms, i.e., of the intelligibilities signified by those terms. Aquinas recognizes a variety of natural inclinations, including one to act in a rational way. Humans are teleologically inclined to do what is good for us by our nature. The will necessarily tends to a single ultimate end, but it does not necessarily tend to any definite good as an ultimate end. [11] A careful reading of this paragraph also excludes another interpretation of Aquinass theory of natural lawthat proposed by Jacques Maritain. [82] Gerard Smith, S.J., & Lottie H. Kendzierski, The Philosophy of Beino: Metaphysics (New York, 1961), 1: 28, make the most of such dialectic in order to show the transcendence of being over essence. The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1-2, Question 94, Article 2, [Grisez, Germain. from which experience is considered. Lottin informs us that already with Stephen of Tournai, around 1160, there is a definition of natural law as an innate principle for doing good and avoiding evil. 57, aa. A formula of the first judgment of practical reason might be That which is good, is goodi.e., desirable, or The good is that which is to be done, the evil is that which is to be avoided. Odon Lottin, O.S.B., Principes de morale (Louvain, 1946), 1: 22, 122. 100, a. The first primary precept is that good is to be pursued and done and evil avoided. Nevertheless, it is like a transcendental in its reference to all human goods, for the pursuit of no one of them is the unique condition for human operation, just as no particular essence is the unique condition for being. 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. Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. See. As we have seen, it is a self-evident principle in which reason prescribes the first condition of its own practical office. a. the same as gluttony. as Aquinas states it, is: Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. Verse Concepts. Rather, it is primarily a principle of actions. is the most complete expression in English of Maritains recent view. Good things don't just happen automatically; they are created because the people of God diligently seek what is good. Later in the same work Aquinas explicitly formulates the notion of the law of nature for the first time in his writings. Maritain attributes our knowledge of definite prescriptions of natural law to. Mardonnet-Moos, Paris, 19291947), bk. This view implies that human action ultimately is irrational, and it is at odds with the distinction between theoretical and practical reason. Of course, so far as grammar alone is concerned, the gerundive form can be employed to express an imperative. The fourth reason is that, in defining his own professional occupation, Thomas adopted the term sapiens or "wise man." . If some practical principle is hypothetical because there is an alternative to it, only a practical principle (and ultimately a nonhypothetical practical principle) can foreclose the rational alternative. 47, a. Neuf leons sur les notions premires de la philosophie morale (Paris, 1951), 158160. cit. [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. From the outset, Aquinas speaks of precepts in the plural. [65] Moreover, Aquinas simply does not understand the eternal law itself as if it were an imposition of the divine will upon creation;[66] and even if he did understand it in this way, no such imposition would count for human judgment except in virtue of a practical principle to the effect that the divine will deserves to be followed. This law has as its first and general principle, "to do good and to avoid evil". 6. [63] Ibid. Laws are formed by practical reason as principles of the actions it guides just as definitions and premises are formed by theoretical reason as principles of the conclusions it reaches. One of these is that differences between practical judgments must have an intelligible basisthe requirement that provides the principle for the generalization argument and for Kantian ethics. 5)It follows that the first principle of practical reason, is one founded on the intelligibility of goodthat is: Good is what each thing tends toward. On the other hand, the intelligibility does not include all that belongs to things denoted by the word, since it belongs to one bit of rust to be on my cars left rear fender, but this is not included in the intelligibility of rust. It is this later resolution that I am supposing here. See Lottin, op. Yet the first principle of practical reason does provide a basic requirement for action merely by prescribing that it be intentional, and it is in the light of this requirement that the objects of all the inclinations are understood as human goods and established as objectives for rational pursuit. They wish to show that the first principle really is a truth, that it really is self-evident. At any rate this is Aquinass theory. 13, a. [33] Hence the principles of natural law, in their expression of ends, transcend moral good and evil as the end transcends means and obstacles. We can know what is good by investigating our natural (rational) inclinations. In fact, it refers primarily to the end which is not limited to moral value. Aquinas expresses the objective aspect of self-evidence by saying that the predicate of a self-evident principle belongs to the intelligibility of the subject, and he expresses the subjective aspect of self-evidence in the requirement that this intelligibility not be unknown. The other misunderstanding is common to mathematically minded rationalists, who project the timelessness and changelessness of formal system onto reality, and to empiricists, who react to rationalism without criticizing its fundamental assumptions. In an interesting passage in an article attacking what he mistakenly considered to be Aquinass theory of natural law, Kai Nielsen discussed this point at some length. Even for purely theoretical knowledge, to know is a fulfillment reached by a development through which one comes to share in a spiritual way the characteristics and reality of the world which is known. The first primary precept is that good is to be pursued and done and evil avoided. Multiple-Choice. This fact has helped to mislead many into supposing that natural law must be understood as a divine imperative. [15] On ratio see Andre Haven, S.J., LIntentionnel selon Saint Thomas (2nd ed., Bruges, Bruxelles, Paris, 1954), 175194. Thus in experience we have a basis upon which reason can form patterns of action that will further or frustrate the inclinations we feel. These inclinations are part of ourselves, and so their objects are human goods. [84] Yet mans ability to choose the ultimate concrete end for which he shall act does not arise from any absurdity in human nature and its situation. They wish to show that the first principle really is a truth, that it really is self-evident. In other words, in Suarezs mind Aquinas only meant to say of the inclinations that they are subject to natural law. Some interpreters mistakenly ask whether the word good in the first principle has a transcendental or an ethical sense. This early treatment of natural law is saturated with the notion of end. Since the ultimate end is a common good, law must be ordained to the common good. 100, a. Why are the principles of practical reason called natural law? To begin with, Aquinas specifically denies that the ultimate end of man could consist in morally good action. De legibus, II.8.2. However, Aquinas explicitly distinguishes between an imperative and a precept expressed in gerundive form. The first principle may not be known with genetic priority, as a premise, but it is still first known. Aquinas says that the fundamental principle of the natural law is that good is to be done and evil avoided (ST IaIIae 94, 2). 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. 57, aa. [40] Although too long a task to be undertaken here, a full comparison of Aquinass position to that of Suarez would help to clarify the present point. No, Aquinas considers practical reason to be the mind playing a certain role, or functioning in a certain capacity, the capacity in which it is directed to a work. Direction to work is intrinsic to the mind in this capacity; direction qualifies the very functioning of the mind. 2). The goodness of God is the absolutely ultimate final cause, just as the power of God is the absolutely ultimate efficient cause. 7) First, there is in man an inclination based on the aspect of his nature which he has in common with all substancesthat is, that everything tends according to its own nature to preserve its own being. In fact, Aquinas does not mention inclinations in connection with the derived precepts, which are the ones Maritain wants to explain. Now if practical reason is the mind functioning as a principle of action, it is subject to all the conditions necessary for every active principle. Here Aquinas indicates how the complexity of human nature gives rise to a multiplicity of inclinations, and these to a multiplicity of precepts. He does not accept the dichotomy between mind and material reality that is implicit in the analytic-synthetic distinction. (Ibid. One reason is our tendency to reject pleasure as a moral good. [34] Summa contra gentiles 3: chs. Evil is not explained ultimately by opposition to law, but opposition to law by unsuitability of action to end. A formula of the first judgment of practical reason might be That which is good, is good, desirable, or The good is that which is to be done, the evil is that which is to be avoided., 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. Reason is doing its own work when it prescribes just as when it affirms or denies. The Latin verb translated as "do" is the verb "facere," which can also be . Man cannot begin to act as man without law. The rule of action binds; therefore, reason binds. Good is to be Pursued and Evil Avoided: How a Natural Law Approach to Christian Bioethics can Miss Both - 24 Hours access EUR 37.00 GBP 33.00 USD $40.00 Rental This article is also available for rental through DeepDyve. 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. But more important for our present purpose is that this distinction indicates that the good which is to be done and pursued should not be thought of as exclusively the good of moral action. As Suarez sees it, the inclinations are not principles in accordance with which reason forms the principles of natural law; they are only the matter with which the natural law is concerned. Hence the primary indemonstrable principle is: But just as being is the first thing to fall within the unrestricted grasp of the mind, so good is the first thing to fall within the grasp of practical reasonthat is, reason directed to a workfor every active principle acts on account of an end, and end includes the intelligibility of good. The rule of action binds; therefore, reason binds. In forming this first precept practical reason performs its most basic task, for it simply determines that whatever it shall think about must at least be set on the way to somethingas it must be if reason is to be able to think of it practically. When he realized that the visitor bore ill will, he tracked the aura." "He caught up with it on White Water Island, but then the evil aura disappeared. Rather, he means the principles of practical inquiry which also are the limits of practical argumenta set of underivable principles for practical reason. Utilitarianism is an inadequate ethical theory partly because it overly restricts natural inclination, for it assumes that mans sole determinate inclination is in regard to pleasure and pain. These goods are not primarily works that are to be done. Something similar holds with regard to the first practical principle. formally identical with that in which it participates. One whose practical premise is, Pleasure is to be pursued, might reach the conclusion, Adultery ought to be avoided, without this prohibition becoming a principle of his action. [2] Although verbally this formula is only slightly different from that of the command, Do good and avoid evil, I shall try to show that the two formulae differ considerably in meaning and that they belong in different theoretical contexts. The intellect is not theoretical by nature and practical only by education. Practical reasons task is to direct its object toward the point at which it will attain the fullness of realization that is conceived by the mind before it is delivered into the world. Good in the first principle, since it refers primarily to the end, includes within its scope not only what is absolutely necessary but also what is helpful, and the opposed evil includes more than the perfect contrary of the good. This interpretation simply ignores the important role we have seen Aquinas assign the inclinations in the formation of natural law. Good is not merely a generic expression for whatever anyone may happen to want,[50] for if this were the case there would not be a single first principle but as many first principles as there are basic commitments, and each first principle would provide the major premise for a different system of rules. Who believed that the following statement is built into every human being: "Good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided." Aristotle Whose idea was the "golden mean"? b. Desires are to be fulfilled, and pain is to be avoided. Copyright 2023 The Witherspoon Institute. Hence he denies that it is a habit, although he grants that it can be possessed habitually, for one. Of our intention toward the end which is not explained ultimately by opposition to law, but.. Accordance with the distinction between theoretical and practical reason the outset, Aquinas explicitly distinguishes an! Instinct to good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided good and to avoid evil & quot ; instinct to do good and to avoid evil quot. Upon and interpret our experience in a purely theoretical frame of mind he wants to.. He does not necessarily tend to any definite good as an ultimate end as its first and general,! Jacques Maritain alone is concerned, the derivation is not direct, and is... 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