Discussion 8

The Fullness of Being: Thomas Aquinas and the Modern Critique of Natural Law Author(s): Michael Zuckert Source: The Review of Politics, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Winter, 2007), pp. 28-47 Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20452850 Accessed: 15-05-2017 17:56 UTC

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The Review of Politics 69 (2007), 28-47. Copyright (C University of Notre Dame DOI: 10.1017/S0034670507000307 Printed in the USA

The Fullness of Being: Thomas Aquinas and the Modern Critique of Natural Law

Michael Zuckert

Abstract: Interest in natural law theory regularly revives but the question of whether Aquinas' classic version is viable depends on whether his doctrine has the resources to respond to the classic early modem critiques that were made of it. It is argued that he does have the resources to so respond, although the response pushes the ultimate philosophic question back to the issue of the validity of his natural theology.

Natural law, apparently killed and buried more times than any of us can count, keeps returning from the dead, both in the scholarly world and in popular thinking about morality. As an example from the scholarly world, an important series reprinting all the classic-and some not so classic volumes of natural-law thinking produced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been appearing over the past several years.1 For an example from the popular world, we need look no further than the most widely rep rinted writing of the twentieth century, Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," with its unabashed appeal to natural law. Admittedly, natural-law thinking remains only one of several orientations in moral and political philosophy-but it is, nonetheless, remarkable that it recurrently reveals its power to return from what appears to be the dustbin of history. Natural-law thinking is so resilient in part because it combines in a particu

larly intimate way themes of moral and political philosophy. It is, of course, first and foremost, a moral theory, a theory of moral duty, but it is at the same time a theory of law, of what makes law law and gives it its binding force. Thus, natural-law thinking mediates between these two spheres, the

moral and legal-political, so puzzlingly related to each other. The classic form of natural-law thinking remains, despite many critiques

and alterations, that of Thomas Aquinas as developed in his Summa Theologiae's so-called Treatise on Law. Aquinas's version is, undoubtedly, of historical importance, but despite various revivals it remains somewhat marginal. For evidence of its fate, let us look at four texts from the Anglo-American legal tradition, two historical and two contemporary.

1Knud Haakonsen, Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics (Indianapolis: Libery Fund, 2003).

28

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THE FULLNESS OF BEING 29

Let us first take one of the relatively early great treatises on English law, the Doctor and Student of Christopher St. Germain, a sixteenth-century text seeking to investigate "the very grounds of the law of England." The doctor, clearly a student of Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Laws, lays out "four distinct kinds of law," his typology taken directly from the Summa and presented often in Aquinas's very language.3 Roughly two centuries later, another great text on the common law

appeared, which, like St. Germain's, attempted to construe English law in the context of "law in general." William Blackstone's rendition of that theme bore little resemblance to that of St. Germain, however. There is no hint of Aquinas in Blackstone. That is to say, between St. Germain and Blackstone, Aquinas seems to have lost his authority for philosophers of law. Although there are Thomists today-even in the field of philosophy of

law-Aquinas has not regained the authority he possessed earlier. Ronald Dworkin, perhaps the leading legal philosopher of our day, strenuously opposes the legal positivists who themselves oppose the natural-law thinking of the Thomist (or of any other sort). Yet it is not easy to confuse Dworkinism with Thomism. Dworkin attempts to restore a conception of law as norma tively grounded, or rather as necessarily normative and not positivist in character. He, nonetheless, takes a doggedly non-Thomist path to his conclusions.4 The apparent exception that proves the rule, I think, is the so-called new

natural law theory as developed by Germain Grisez and John Finnis. They claim to be developing normative theory-roughly of the natural-law sort-but both by their own admission and the consensus of other scholars, it deviates in important ways from classical Thomism.5 Thus Thomistic natural law may have been-indubitably was-historically significant, but that does not mean that it remains an active force, either historically or normatively. None of this is to deny that there are active, committed Thomists around

today. Indeed, there are, but Thomism is not a position that, at this

2Christopher St. German, St. German's Doctor and Student (London: Seiden Society, 1974), 1.1.

3St. German, 1. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (S.T.) (Garden City, New York: Image Books 1969), 1-2 QQ 91-95; cf. Michael Zuckert, Launching Liberalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002).

4E.g., Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977); Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).

5See, e.g., Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999), 31; Jean Porter, Nature as Reason (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2005), 38-39; 130 n. 101; Fulvio di Blasi, God and Natural Law (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 2006), 3, 13, 17, 40, 61-64. Francis Oakley, Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights (New York: Continuum, 2005), 20-21.

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30 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

moment, has a central role in Anglo-American legal philosophy or in legal practice. Recall the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas for the U.S. Supreme Court some years ago during which he was greatly taken to task by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and by opinion leaders in the general public for having made some natural-law noises in earlier speeches or articles. Clarence Thomas himself backed away from his natural law statements, and since he has been on the Supreme Court, he has been extremely cautious in appealing to natural law.

I

Two cataclysmic events occurred between St. Germain and Blackstone that together are largely responsible for the dislodgment of Thomistic natural law from the position of practical and theoretical preeminence it once enjoyed. The first was the Reformation, which, in itself, had somewhat ambig uous results for natural-law thinking; not all Reformation thinkers were unmitigatedly opposed to natural-law theory. The great English theologian Richard Hooker remained very close to the Thomistic theory of natural law. On the other hand, however, Martin Luther was quite hostile to Thomism, to Aristotle, and to the style of ethical thinking embodied in natural law. John Calvin stood somewhere between Luther and Hooker in his attitude toward natural law, but the great emphasis within Protestantism on faith, grace, and active divine providentialism pushed Protestantism, in a general way, away from the older natural law.

The other major event was the emergence in the seventeenth century of the new philosophy, associated closely with the new physics of Copernicus and especially Galileo, and the new political and moral philosophy of Machiavelli. The practitioners of the new philosophy were more unambigu ously opposed to the old philosophy, including the old natural law, than the reformers were. This is not to say they turned away from natural law; in many ways, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a heyday for natural-law thinking, but it is natural law in a different mode than the Thomist. Thus, important thinkers like Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, and John Locke arose, all of whom developed natural-law theories of a distinctly non-Thomistic character.6

If we wish to account for the shift that occurred in legal thinking from St. Germain to Blackstone and beyond, we need to look to the twin cataclysms of the era. Blackstone is clearly a natural-law thinker-the opening chapter of his famed Commentaries on the Laws of England is titled "Of Law in General," and it contains a natural law doctrine. In place of Aquinas, however, we find Locke and Lockean thinking to be central. By the time of Blackstone, Locke

6For fuller discussion, see Michael Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

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had replaced Aquinas in England and in quite a few other places as the auth ority on the law of nature and the nature of law. Locke and his fellow devotees of the new philosophy had rejected, more or less root and branch, the scholas tic philosophy and with it the old natural law. That rejection stands behind the loss of historical and normative power of Thomistic natural law in the modem world.

My task in this paper is to re-open an investigation into the grounds and adequacy of that rejection. Despite appealing in one place to the authority of Aquinas, Locke mounts a major critique of Thomistic natural-law theory in his long unpublished Questions Concerning the Law of Nature and in his chef d'oeuvre, The Essay Concerning Human Understanding. One might take the entirety of the Lockean philosophic project to be an attack on the Thomist philosophy, but I intend to focus my attention on one part of Locke's critique in particular. Locke's Questions, apparently originally pre sented as lectures at Oxford in the early 1660s, is in form a series of questions, like the scholastic "disputed questions." Locke gives definitive answers-yes or no -to all the questions he poses, but provides explanations or defenses of his answers only some of the time. Of the eleven questions that he poses, he provides full explanations for eight. Intriguingly, the question most relevant to his stance toward Thomistic natural law is the central sixth question, one of those to which he gives a one word answer only and no full explanation. "Can the law of nature be known from the natural inclination of man?" His answer is "No."

The significance of this answer is often overlooked in the literature on Locke, but it does not require very much familiarity with the Treatise on Law of Aquinas to appreciate the bearing of Locke's answer. According to Aquinas, the goods, the pursuit of which is ordained by the natural law, are grasped by reason as "those things to which man has a natural inclination."7 That is to say, Aquinas answers Locke's question in the affirma tive, directly contrary to Locke. Moreover, this difference between them is not over a small matter; it concerns the center of the natural-law doctrine, the source of our knowledge of the natural law and the contents of its demands. To disagree with Aquinas on this issue is ipso facto to commit Locke to an entirely different philosophy of the natural law.

It is, therefore, all the more puzzling that Locke leaves this question without a full explanation and defense. It is also all the more difficult to judge whether Locke has a well-considered and sufficient reason for his altogether different take on natural law. Although I am not prepared to present an explanation for Locke's failure to provide a full accounting for his answer to his sixth query, I do believe we can piece out the reasoning according to which he turns away from the Thomistic position from other parts of his Questions, and from book 1 of the Essay.

7Thomas Aquinas, S.T. 1-2 94.2 resp.

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Locke's most decisive reason for rejecting the Thomist doctrine stems from his very different understanding of what the natural inclinations actually lean toward. "Those who have no other guide than nature herself, among whom the dictates of nature are least corrupted by positive regulation concerning morals, live ignorant of any law, as if they needed to take no account at all of what is right and virtuous." Among these natural peoples, "there appear not even the slightest trace of piety, gentleness, good faith, chastity, and other virtues, but they spend their lives wretchedly in rapine, theft, debauch ery, and murder."8 In question 11, Locke responds to those, like Aquinas, who "seek the principles of morals and the rule of life from the natural appetites and inclinations of men."9 Although Locke explicitly addresses thinkers other than Aquinas, the position described is Aquinas's. Locke finds this a defective approach, because if this is the ground for the law, that is, for the duties of human life, then "the condition of human life is such that it would not be lawful for a man to yield anything of his own right or to benefit another without the certain expectation of profit."l0 The point of Locke's rebuttal in his Questions Concerning the Law of Nature is that the natural inclinations cannot be the bases of a natural moral law of the type Aquinas propounds because the natural inclinations impel toward one's own profit, advantage, or benefit only. Or the natural inclinations of human beings as we actually experience them impel as much toward those selfish and (at best) amoral ends as toward moral ends (virtue, piety, and especially justice). Such is the lesson Locke draws from his observations of human customs and human history. The natural inclinations are self-regarding and, thus cannot be the source of the social virtues Aquinas identifies as man dated by the natural law. Locke is not contesting (at this point, at least) what Aquinas believes morality requires of us, but he is contesting the Thomist view that the natural inclinations tend toward or mark out those virtues. If the law of nature provides for the sorts of things Aquinas says it does, the natural inclinations cannot be the source of its precepts.11 Locke's skeptical view about the natural inclinations was not a mere youth

ful infatuation. In the great work of his maturity, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke reiterated the identical view. "Principles of action indeed there are lodged in Men's appetites, but these are so far from being ... Moral Principles, that if they were left to their full swing, they would carry men to the overturning of" all morality.12 Locke affirms that there are "natural inclinations," but they are not moral in character, that is, they do not

8John Locke, Questions Concerning the Law of Nature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), fol. 42. 9Locke, fol. 116. 10Locke, fol. 116. nCf. Zuckert, 201-3. 12John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Penguin, 1997),

1.3.13.

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THE FULLNESS OF BEING 33

point toward a moral law of nature, such as Aquinas grounds in these incli nations. Locke is saying that if we take up Aquinas's invitation to take our bear ings by the natural inclinations, if we look at men as they are and the inclinations as they are, we arrive at a very different conclusion from Aquinas. Aquinas, in a sense, anticipates Locke's point when he raises as an objection

to his own doctrine the problem posed by "the multiplicity of the parts of human nature." Within human nature is the "concupiscible," which, accord ing to the thesis about the natural inclinations, would "appear to belong to the natural law." 13 That is, if the natural inclinations point to the precepts of the natural law, then the concupiscent desires, greed and the like, would seem necessarily to belong to the natural law and to mandate duties of the sort Locke mentioned. Aquinas parries the problem of the concupiscible desires by refusing to identify these as the natural inclinations of which he speaks. Not all the inclinations we observe empirically deserve the name "natural." The concupiscible desires become part of the natural law only by being ordered, governed, or "regulated by reason" taking its bearings by the genu inely natural inclinations. Inclinations of that sort are not natural in the required sense.14 Aquinas, as is well known, deploys a teleological notion of nature. Nature

has tendencies or ends. Not all the objects of the desires are natural. Ultimately, Locke is driven toward his manner of treating the natural incli nations not only by his observations of the inclinations at work, but also by his adoption of a conception of nature according to which "in her working nature is the same and uniform."15 Nature is pure immanence-what works everywhere in the same manner. Nature is the manifold of effective causes. Yet we can put Locke's point somewhat less cosmically as well, in the form of some questions: If we start with the world as we see it, how do we come to privilege certain inclinations over others, or certain putative ends (some of the possible effects out of the manifold of possible effects) over others? Locke is asking, in effect, is not the teleology of the inclinations as invoked by Aquinas arbitrary? Does the Thomistic argument not give the illusion of succeeding only by implicitly appealing to moral criteria (e.g., the need for justice), which we know or accept for some other reason and then illicitly attach the moral ends to the natural inclinations?

II

Does Aquinas have any resources with which to reply to the Lockean critique? Can he show that his identification of the ends of the natural inclinations is not arbitrary and imposed on the real data of nature?

13S.T. I-II 94. 2 obj. 2. US.T. II 94.2 obj. 2 ad. 2. 15Locke, fol. 40.

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As with many other matters of great importance (e.g., the existence of God), Aquinas treats the relation between the inclinations and the natural law in a discussion of great brevity and concision. The core of it takes up no more than a few pages of question 94, article 2. We must begin with the immediate context of that discussion. The natural law, says Aquinas, is the way in which rational beings share in the eternal law. The eternal law governs all beings, but only rational beings participate through knowledge and will, reflecting the far more complex capacities of rational beings. As Aquinas puts it, "The effect of [God's] rule [via the eternal law] is differently manifested in different things according to their different natures. There are some things produced by God that have intelligence and bear his likeness and represent his image. Hence they are not only directed but also direct their own actions to their proper ends." 16 The natural law is, thus, not univer sal, but the inclinations are, for the eternal law governs all, in the first instance through natural inclinations implanted in beings. Aquinas then comes to the central question of the content and basis for

knowledge of the natural law in what might appear to be an odd context. In the second article of the question on natural law, he inquires whether there is more than one natural law precept. It is not immediately apparent why this is an important question. The question is further complicated when Aquinas answers it in a somewhat equivocal way: There are many precepts of the natural law, but they all "flow from" or are "reduce[ed] to" one first precept and, thus, in a certain sense, there is one.17 Therefore, the question about the number of precepts of natural law seems

directed toward calling the attention of the reader to the relations between the first and the other precepts -in particular to the way in which the others are grounded in the first, thus being both separate from and one with it. There is, perhaps, also another reason for Aquinas to raise the question, a reason that emerges in his first objection and in his reply to it. If, as Aquinas says, he has established earlier,18 that law is a kind of precept or command, it would seem to follow that if there is more than one precept, there is more than one natural law. But this is a conclusion he resists.19 He never speaks of natural laws in the plural, but only of the natural law when he speaks of natural law in the sense of the Treatise on Law.20 (Other writers who have spoken of natural law are not always insistent on the unity of natural law and do not show the same reluc tance to speak of laws in the plural.) There are perhaps two reasons for his quiet insistence on the unity of

natural law. First, natural law is the command that tells a person what is to

16Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, (S.C.G.) (3.1 Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). Cf. S.T I-II 91.2 (resp.).

17S.T I-II 94.2 ad. 1, 2.

18E.g. S.T. I-II 90.4 (resp.); 92.2. 19S.T I-II 94.2 obj. 20Cf.esp. ST. I-II 5.5 resp.

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THE FULLNESS OF BEING 35

be done. In any given instance, it is singular in that it issues in one command. Therefore, it is right to speak of the law as such as singular. To speak of it in the plural might suggest that there are several, perhaps conflicting, natural law commands relevant to some particular situation. Second, and I suspect more important, Aquinas holds to the singularity of

the natural law because he sees it as a form of the eternal law, which he has clear reason to think of as one. The eternal law is the one order God has set for the universe. It is "nothing other than the idea of divine wisdom insofar as it is directive of all acts and movements." It is "the highest idea existing in God." It is one singular order and one singular idea.21 The natural law not a separate or different law from the eternal law, but the mode in which the one eternal law exists for rational beings-is, therefore, also one.22

III

How, then, are we to understand Aquinas's claim that the other precepts "flow from" or are "reduce[ed] to" the first precept? Such language might suggest that the other precepts flow from the first precept in the mode of deri vation, as a geometric theorem flows or derives from an axiom. But that seems to be wrong, for Aquinas insists that the precepts-all the precepts-of the natural law are "self-evident principles." That claim prods him to digress slightly to discuss the "two ways" of self-evidence. A proposition may be self evident in itself (if "its predicate is of the definition of its subject"), or it may be self-evident to "us," that is, recognized to be self-evident. It is theoretically possible, then, that there are self-evident propositions not known to be such to anybody (e.g., before philosophy came on the scene and clarified such things as definition, subject, object, and so on). There may also be self-evident prop ositions differentially known to be such: only the wise may understand that "it is self-evident that [an angel] is not circumscriptively in place." However, there are some "axioms or propositions self-evident to all," and these are those whose "terms are known to everyone." "Every whole is greater than its parts" is the example he cites.

These universally known and self-evident axioms are relevant for natural law. This phenomenon would seem to be necessary, for if the natural law is binding on all, it must be promulgated to all. There are many such self-evident principles that are understood by everybody. There is a certain order to them, however, such that there is a first principle of both the reason per se and of the practical reason, that is, reason as guide or propoun der of action to be taken.23 The first self-evident axiom or "indemonstrable principle" is the so-called law of contradiction: "You cannot simultaneously

21S.T I-II 93.1.

22S.T. I-II 91.2 esp. resp. and ad. 2. 23See S.T. 179.11.

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36 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

affirm and deny something."24 Strictly parallel to this fact is "the first prin ciple of practical reason": "The good is that which all things strive for." Aquinas moves from that observation to the first precept of the law: "Good should [is to] be done and evil avoided," in which precept "are grounded ... all other precepts of the law of nature."25 There are, it must be said, many puzzling features and tantalizing ques

tions raised by this brief discussion. The questions most in need of address are the following:

(1) In what way are the two first principles self-evident? (2) How is it that all other principles are grounded in the first principle of

reason? (3) How does Aquinas move from the first principle of the practical reason

to the first precept of the natural law? (4) How is it that all other precepts of the natural law are grounded in the

first precept?

The only way to sort all this out is to begin by noticing that there are three or perhaps four different items in play:

(1) propositions: these are those things that are, strictly speaking, self-evident;

(2) terms: propositions are composed of terms; (3) things: terms name things, which are grasped; (4) precepts are clearly related to the first principle of practical reason, but

they are not, strictly speaking, propositions, but rather commands.

For the two first principles to be self-evident to everybody, two conditions must be met:

(1) their predicates must be the definitions of their subjects, and (2) the terms of which the proposition is composed must be known to

everybody.

Without much analysis, Aquinas affirms that both conditions are met for both first principles. The term that is the subject of the first proposition is "being," the understanding of which Aquinas affirms to be universal in a double sense: it is included in whatever else one grasps, and it is grasped by all. If one grasps anything at all, one grasps it as a being, a mode or action of being.

24It is striking that Aquinas presents here a very simplified, and, as stated, inadequate version of the principle. See Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's

Metaphysics, (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1995), IV lesson 6.600. 25S.T. I-II 94.2 (resp.)

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THE FULLNESS OF BEING 37

Being as such is implicit in any being or mode of being. Armed with that insight, Aquinas affirms the principle of contradiction to be self-evident. To affirm something is to affirm its being, that is, its being as it is; to deny is to deny its being, that is, its being as it is.26 If one understands the term, being, which one perforce does if one is affirming or denying anything, then it is clear that the first principle as identified by Aquinas is self-evident, that is, true by virtue of the relation of the terms (affirm, deny, something) in the proposition. The context of Aquinas's first principles points to the most pressing of the

various questions raised by his brief but helpful discussion of the first prin ciple of reason simpliciter. The context is set by the apparently odd fact that Aquinas turns to the topic of topics with regard to the natural law, that is, the precepts of the natural law, in an article devoted to the question, is there only one or are there more than one such precepts? That question appar ently is meant to bring us into the presence of a subsequent question. What is the relation between the first precept of the natural law and the other precepts, which are said to be grounded in the first one? As it happens, the first principle of reason has an identical relation to other principles of reason, the understanding of which almost certainly can aid in understanding the relation among the precepts of the natural law in which we are at present most interested.

Aquinas's most complete explanation of the relation between the first prin ciple of reason and all others comes not in the Summa but in his Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. That discussion is clearly linked to the passages of natural law in the Summa, for Aquinas traces the same connection between this principle and all others and even uses the same example (the whole and its parts) to illustrate his point. "The intellect," he tells us, "has two oper ations, one by which it knows quiddities which is called the understanding of indivisibles," that is, individual entities or beings, "and another by which it combines and separates [in propositions]. In the first operation the first thing that the intellect conceives is being, and in this operation nothing else can be conceived unless being is understood."27 That is to say, no being can be conceived without conceiving it as being; therefore, being must be under stood in order for any being to be understood. Being is not a proposition and, therefore, not a principle. But the first prin

ciple of the reason-it is impossible for a thing both to be and not be at the same time-depends on the understanding of being (just as the principle "every whole is greater than one of its parts" depends on the understanding of "whole" and "part"). Thus, this principle is by nature also the first in the second operation of the intellect, the act of combining and separating. That

26See Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1005b 8-1006a 18 (Griunell, Lowa, Peripatetic Press, 197).

27See Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, IV, lesson 6.

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38 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

is to say, the first principle is, as we have seen Aquinas put it in the Summa, self-evident, depending on the meaning of being, and this first principle is, in turn, the ground for all other propositions, that is, acts of combining and separating. "No one," he goes on to say, "can understand anything by [the operation of combining and separating] unless this [first] principle is under stood. For just as a whole and its parts are understood only by understanding being, in a similar way the principle that every whole is greater than one of its parts is understood only if the firmest principle," that is, the first principle of reason, "is understood."28 The entities or terms "whole" and "part" cannot be understood without a prior understanding of being, for they are beings. On that model the first principle must be understood in order to affirm any prop osition. To say "the whole is greater than any of its parts" makes sense only if it is impossible for a thing both to be and not be at the same time. If the latter were not understood, then the whole could be at once greater and lesser than one of its parts. Aquinas captures the function of the first principle in making understanding of all propositions possible when he refers to the former in this context as "the firmest principle"; its firmness, its fixedness, is what allows for the meaning and thereby the possibility of the proposition. The point of this discussion, of course, is to help elucidate the nature of the

precepts of the natural law. The explanation Aquinas gives of the precepts of the law is both more complex and more difficult because it is more ambiguous and, therefore, elusive. It is more complex because there is an additional conceptual distinction at work when Aquinas sets up a series of parallels or equivalences between the realm of speculative reason and that of practical reason:

Speculative reason being Practical reason good

(first principle): "You cannot simultaneously affirm and deny something."

(first principle): "Good is that which all things strive for."

But in the case of the practical reason, he introduces the additional notion of a first precept of the law of nature (good should be done and pursued and evil avoided) in which all the other precepts of the natural law are grounded. Thus, we must understand in turn

(1) the notion good, (2) the way in which the first principle of practical reason is grounded, (3) the link between the first principle of practical reason and the first

precept of the natural law, and (4) the way the first precept grounds all other precepts of the law.

28See Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, IV, lesson 6.605.

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THE FULLNESS OF BEING 39

The first principle of the practical reason, he has assured us, is self-evident in just the same way as the first principle of speculative reason is. That means, the predicate is of the definition of its subject. The first principle of the prac tical reason can, indeed, be understood to be self-evident in this sense, though in a deeply ambiguous way. The good is that which all things strive for. This may be understood in both a subjectivist and an objectivist manner, parallel to the ambiguity expressed in Plato's Euthypho regarding what the gods love. Do the gods love what is good because it is good prior to and independently of their loving it, or is it good because they love it?29 The first alternative is what I am calling the "objectivist," the second, the "subjectivist" version of the relation between love or desire, on the one hand, and the good, on the other. Is the object striven for good because it is striven for, or is it striven for because it is good, independent of its being striven for (subjective and objective, respectively)? Aquinas, without hesitation, reads the relation between good and desire in

the objectivist manner. In part, he does so because he has the authority of Aristotle behind him.30 At just this point, a difference between Aquinas and his modern critics comes to the fore, for the moderns, like Locke, endorse the subjectivist version of the relation between desire and the good. Locke's answer is based on reasons similar to those according to which he rejected Aquinas's notion that the precepts of the natural law are known from natural inclination. What men actually desire is called by them "good," but from the perspective of morality or other objective notions of good, it is often manifestly not so. True good must be grounded elsewhere than in desire per se; indeed, the task of moral education and political life for moderns like Locke is to find ways to coordinate desire and the good. Aquinas is, again, far from oblivious to the problem posed by Locke's

reasoning on the relation between the good and desire. As he says in his Commentary on the Ethics:

There is no problem from the fact that some men desire evil. For they desire evil only under the aspect of good, that is, insofar as they think it good. Hence their intention primarily aims at good and only incidentally touches on evil.31

Aquinas salvages the objectivist thesis by introducing the notion of error; not all desires as we experience or observe them are fully or properly natural in that their true object is often mistaken. To claims such as this, of course, Locke and the other moderns object. The desired is just what it is; its object is just what it is. A crack addict craves cocaine, but this is hardly

29Plato, Euthyphro (London: Bristol Classical, 1991). 30Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926), 1094,

a2, 1-3, 18-22; Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1993), I Lect. 1, 9-11; lecture 2, 19-22. 31 Aquinas, Commentary on Ethics, 1, lect. 1, 10.

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40 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

to desire the good in the objectivist sense. Aquinas's distinction between correct and mistaken desire is parallel to, if not quite identical to, an argument we pointed out earlier according to which he attempts, in effect, to take account of the facts on the basis of which Locke turned away from the natural inclinations (or desires). Both Thomistic rejoinders put on his shoulders the same burden, however, which is to find a reliable way to dis tinguish ordered from disordered inclinations, true from mistaken desires.32 One track along which he attempts to accomplish that task is to set the

phenomena of human desire and human action into the much broader context of all natural motion. This move, while promising in many ways, is also problematic, for it introduces a host of further questions, which escape the confines of his treatment of the natural law. Of more immediate interest, it introduces a systematic and potentially problematic equivocation in his treatment of human action. Let us recall how he introduces the first principle of practical reason:

Just as being is the first thing grasped simply speaking, so the good is the first thing grasped by practical reason which is ordered to action, for every agent acts for the sake of an end, which has the character of a good. Therefore, the first principle of practical reason is grounded in the notion of good: the good is that which all things seek.

The equivocation to which I refer is the following. On the one hand, he is speaking of the practical reason, which perforce pertains only to rational beings. But in the very same context, indeed in the very same sentence, he speaks of every agent, which in this context does not seem to be limited to rational agents, for in the formulation of the first principle he speaks of the good as that which all things strive for.33 That Aquinas intends all things in a truly universal way-that is, as referring to all things and not limited to all rational beings-is made clear in his Commentary on the Ethics. Here, he takes a similar Aristotelian passage, which when most naturally read is limited to human agents, and gives it a universal meaning.

The saying ". . . what all desire" is to be understood not only of those who knowingly seek good but also of beings lacking knowledge. These things by a natural desire tend to good, not as knowing the good, but because they are moved to it by something cognitive, that is, under the direction of the divine intellect in the way an arrow speeds toward a target by the aim of the archer. This very tendency to good is the desiring of good. Hence, he says, all beings desire good insofar as they tend to good.34

The universalizing interpretation is almost surely false to Aristotle's text, for Aristotle begins by speaking of human arts and human actions, which,

32See e.g., S.T I.78;l ad. 3. 33cf. S.c.g. Ill 2. 34Aquinas, Commentary on Eth., 1, lect. 1, 11.

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as intentional actions, surely do posit some good as the end of action. That observation justifies the conclusion that good is what all desire if all means all men. It does not justify the related claim about all beings. Aquinas's interpretation makes Aristotle's claim equivocal and philosophically suspect. His own version in Summa Theologiae has the same equivocation he imports into Aristotle. Aquinas is speaking of practical reason, that is, the agent rationality of rational agents, and in that context the observation that rational agents act for some good is precisely the same as the observation with which Aristotle opens the Ethics. Furthermore, it has the same evidence justifying the conclusion Aristotle drew: good is what all rational agents seek. But in that form, the principle is open to the subjectivist interpretation as readily as to the objectivist. Aquinas definitively forecloses the subjectivist in reading: all things are guided to the good as the object of their motions and strivings. However, he has no right to this conclusion on the basis of observations about the practical reason in action; it does not follow from a phenomenology of human action. To say that the argument as presented thus far in the Summa is not valid is,

of course, not to say that Aquinas's position is simply unsupportable. He has two avenues open to him to make it good. One is a broader and separate argu ment to establish directly what he seems illicitly to conclude from the experi ence of human action, that is, to establish that all beings strive for an end, that is, for their good. With independent proof for that he can assimilate human action to his knowledge of all being. This is, indeed, what he attempts elsewhere.35

I do not propose to follow out the complex and difficult questions raised by his universal teleology. The difficulties point, I think, to the significance of the other path Aquinas attempts in order to justify his adoption of the objectivist version of the desire/good nexus. I might better put this in the form of a question: Can Aquinas get to his conclusions via an analysis of the desires or inclinations themselves? This, I believe, is what he is attempting to do in the sequel in Q 94. If this strategy works, he may have a response to the modem reservation about his natural-law doctrine relatively independent of his broader teleological philosophy of nature. The task, then, is to explicate the first principle of the practical reason as a

self-evident truth known to everyone. Aquinas's point is easy to see: when we call something "good," when it is a matter for action, we mean nothing other than what is sought in action, or worth seeking in action. Alternatively, those things we seek in action we call "good." We do not say, "I seek x because it is bad." What we seek is comprehended as good, that is, as something sought or to be sought. In this first principle, there is no restriction to good as moral good.

35See Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3.

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At this point, instead of moving directly from the first principle of the prac tical reason to other such principles on the model of the parallel argument regarding the speculative reason, Aquinas instead moves to the first precept of the natural law. The difference between the first principle of the practical reason and the first precept of the natural law is reminiscent of the Is-Ought distinction as developed by David Hume. The first principle of practical reason is stated in the indicative mood: it states a matter of fact, an Is. The first precept of natural law is stated as an ought: "bonum est facien dum et prosequendam"; it does not state a fact but a precept, an Ought. The precept of the natural law is, in other words, suitable in form to be a legal pro nouncement. The first principle is not, for the first principle does not embody the chief characteristic of law that Aquinas identifies, its binding or obligatory character.36 It is precisely here that the difference between Aristotle's and Aquinas's moral philosophies manifests itself. The first principle of practical reason is clearly an adaptation of an Aristotelian theme, but there is nothing like the first precept in the Greek philosopher's ethical thinking. This merely pinpoints the fact that Aristotle is not a theorist of natural law. How, then, does Aquinas move from the first principle of practical reason

to the first precept of natural law? Puzzling as that move may seem to us, he does not see it as difficult, for he treats it as straightforward and clear: "[T]his therefore is the first precept of the law" (hoc est ergo primum praeceptum legis) he says immediately. The best way to understand Aquinas's transition from the first principle to the first precept is by taking "Good" as that which all things strive for firmly in the objectivist sense, and recognizing, further, the possibility of error in our actual desiring. The first precept tells us to strive for that which is really, actually good, not what is merely apparently good. The precept is possible because the real good is the real or actual object of our striving; it is necessary because we do not unerringly strive for the actual good. Were there no disparity between the real and apparent good, it would make no sense for there to be such a precept, but given that disparity, the existence of the precept makes sense. In one clear sense, then, the natural law has but one precept - seek the (real)

good. But it also has many precepts, because the real good has many elements or actions to it. Within each real good sought lies the first precept, just as within any affirmation or denial lies the first principle of the speculative reason. But why has Aquinas thrown the relation between the first and other precepts of the natural law into such high relief by organizing this article around the question of the number of precepts? The answer is evident and revealing. It brings out the central point about the natural law, the necessity of the objectivist interpretation of the first principle of the practical reason, and the central fact of the moral life: the disparity, or poten tial disparity, between the real good and the good one (thinks one) seeks. This

36S.T. I-II 90.1 (resp.) Cf. also 90.2 (ad.2).

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is the fact of facts that accounts for the experience of the moral life that we have-that there is something right, something we should be doing that is not necessarily the same as what we want to do. That is to say, the experience of an ought. Aquinas's way of bringing us to the content of the natural law via the question about the number of its precepts also brings into focus the task of the discussion of natural inclinations, which is, after all, where this discussion is going. Aquinas shows us what he must reveal in his presentation of the natural inclinations-that the objectivist reading of the first practical principle is both viable and correct. That is to say, Aquinas sets his own task to be to give the very answer needed to respond to the Lockean challenge.

IV

Aquinas has three closely related tasks in his presentation of natural inclinations and the additional precepts of the natural law:

(1) he needs to be able to specify which inclinations are natural; (2) he needs to identify the proper or natural objects of the natural incli

nations; and (3) he needs to make good his objectivist interpretation of the first principle

of the practical reason and, thus, of the first precept of the natural law.

He approaches his complex task by emphasizing the ordering in the natural inclinations. Aquinas orients himself to the natural inclinations by identifying the nature or essence of man - man is the rational animal - and unpacking the elements of that essence. That is the insight that provides the first key to the decisive passage.

In man there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the nature he has in common with all substances.... Secondly, there is in man an inclination to things that pertain to him more specially, according to the nature he has in common with other animals.... Thirdly, there is in

man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him.37

The three inclinations Aquinas identifies correspond to the three aspects of human essence. As the rational animal, man is a substance, that is, a being. Man, too, is a being among beings, as Aquinas emphasized in his discussion of the first principle of the speculative reason. As rational animal, man is, second, an animal. Finally, man the rational animal has a nature pertaining to his rationality. As the speciating quality, this is the aspect Aquinas particu larly emphasizes as proper to man. Among other things, the brute fact of the

37S.T. I-II 44.2 (resp.).

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natural law itself corresponds to the rational nature of man, for he is the being who participates in the eternal law through his rational nature. Aquinas may agree with Locke about the character of empirically observed

human desire, but he approaches the inclinations in a quite nonempirical and, thus, non-Lockean manner-through essence. Human nature is constituted by all three levels of human essence. Accordingly, there must be more than one precept of the natural law, that is, of the law of man's nature. But this identification of essence does not at first appear to get us very far

toward meeting the three tasks Aquinas faces. How can we move from essence thus understood to the identification of the inclinations that are truly natural and the true natural objects of these inclinations? To each element of human essence corresponds an inclination or set of inclinations, the object of which Aquinas also identifies:

(1) "Inasmuch as every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according to its nature. And according to this inclination those things through which human life is preserved belong to the natural law."38 All beings incline to stay in being-the reason that beings persist in being and do not blink away. But they do so only according to their natures. This qualification both complicates the point greatly and pro vides the only means by which Aquinas can even begin to save the phenomena. True it is that beings-many beings anyway-do persist in being and thus might be said to have an inclination to do so. Nonetheless, this is far from true universally. Indeed, it is much closer to being universally false. Aquinas can be forgiven for not taking account of subatomic particles, which go out of existence in a nano second, but he did know of substances like fire, whose nature it is to consume themselves and go out of being. Indeed, all animate beings, of which man is one, persist in being only for a time. From the perspective of ever-lastingness, the being of a man is hardly more than the being of a meson. Can it truly be said, then, that all beings have an inclination to the preservation of their being? Only if we take very seriously Aquinas's important qualification: according to its nature. It is the nature of mesons to go out of existence almost instantaneously, of fire to consume itself, of man to last his three-score years and ten, more or less.

(2) "In virtue of this inclination [man shares with all animals], those things are said to belong to the natural law, which nature has taught to all animals, such as sexual intercourse, education of off-spring and so forth."39 The inclination in question here is identical to what one of the important Roman law texts identified with the natural law simplici ter. The inclination shared with all animals is an inclination not to

38S.T. I-II 94.2 (resp.). 39S.T. I-II 94.2 (resp.).

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preservation of the individual but to preservation of the species. The individual has a very limited duration in being; the species, as Aquinas saw it, was not eternal (as in Aristotle) but coeval with the created world. "There is in all animals a natural appetite to leave after them another being like themselves, so that in this manner, through gen eration, that cannot be preserved numerically the same is preserved according to its species."40 This inclination toward species preservation is a remedy for the limited persistence of individuals. It extends the natural-law mandate for being beyond the mortality of individuals.

(3) "There is in man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him: thus man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society. Accordingly, whatever things look to this inclination belong to natural law, as that a man should avoid ignorance, that he should not offend others among whom one has to live, and other such things, which look to this inclination.",41 Human reason points to both knowledge of God and life in society as destinations for man. Reason aims at truth, and God is truth. "The end and good of the intellect is truth. Therefore the ultimate end of the whole man and of all his actions and desires is to know the first truth; namely God."42 Knowledge of God is the peak or end of reason as speculative reason. Society is the product of reason as practical reason.43 Society is the result of the "ordering of men" by the practical reason.44 Society, according to Aquinas, always (even in a prelapsarian state) has a relation of ordering, that is, of dominium (lord ship).45 The social association of ruler and subject "stems from nature for the sake of preservation; for nature aims not only at generation but also at the preservation of the things generated."46 Likewise, the highest form of society, the city, "is originally made for the sake of living, namely that men might find sufficiently that from which they might be able to live; but from its existence it comes about that men not only live but that they live well, in so far as by the laws of the city the life of men is ordered to the virtues."47 But "all acts of virtue are of the natural law."48 Therefore, the natural-law inclination to society recapitulates the natural-law inclinations per se.

40Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Politics, (Toronto: St. Michael's College, 1988), I Lesson 1, 18. 41 S.T. I-II 94.2 (resp.). 42S.g.c. 111.25. 43Aquinas, Commentary on Politics, Proem, 2, 6. ^Aquinas, Commentary on Politics, Proem, 2, 4. 45S.T. 1.96.4.

46Aquinas, Commentary on Politics, 1, lecture 1,19. 47Aquinas, Commentary on Politics, 1, lecture 1, 31. 48S.T I-II.94.3.

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As the second level inclination to species existence extends the first level inclination to individual existence, so the third level inclination to society extends individual existence. In the first instance, it does so not so much in a temporal as in a spatial dimension. Through the rational inclination to society larger (social) existences are formed and then given the means of persisting over time. This third level inclination, too, is thus an inclination toward being. There is, it should be clear, a pattern to the way Aquinas identifies the

natural inclinations and their proper objects. The common theme is being and preservation: lastingness in being of the individual substance as substance, of the species as species, of the natural beings as beings ordered through reason. Society is the transindividual form of being at the level of rationality; the species is the transindividual form of being at the animalistic level. The apparent exception to this pattern, in point of fact, is no exception, but provides the key to understanding and grounding the ordering. The apparent exception is the inclination to truth, that is, to knowledge of God. God is the being whose essence is identical to his existence, whose being is necessary and eternal. God is the being of beings. The natural inclinations are those inclinations that incline the beings to being, as suited to their nature, including their nature as potential beings. The natural inclinations can be identified as natural because of their imitation of or tendency toward God, the eternal being, the being whose being is the fullness of being and the fulfillment of beings. The inclinations that are the truly natural inclinations are those that embody the truth that "God is the ultimate end of everything."49 The authentic or natural ends of those inclinations are those that reflect the fullness of being that is God.50 Lying behind Aquinas's identification of the natural inclinations and their

objects, therefore, is his doctrine of God. Those who argue that God is indis pensable for the Thomist doctrine of natural law are perfectly correct. Armed with his conception of God as fullness of being, Aquinas can answer the modern objection, for he can, indeed, sort the natural inclinations or desires so that he can conclude that the inclinations Locke and the other moderns point to as destructive to society and morality (and individual thriving as well) are not, in fact, natural, but disordered. Ordered desires or natural incli nations are just those that strive toward the true (objective) good, being. Those that do not are obviously disordered. Knowledge of the essence of man, coupled with knowledge of God, arms Aquinas with the wherewithal to secure himself from the modern critique, by allowing him the distance he needs from empirical reality. It is not as though the inclinations identified by Aquinas as natural have no empirical existence. The natural inclinations, as he identifies them, have an immanent presence. Nonetheless, at the level

49S.c.g. 111.25. 50On God as fullness of being, see esp. S.T. I.2.3.; esp. fourth proof; S.T. HI.18.1,2.

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of empirical reality in se the phenomena do not sort themselves so neatly as the natural law scheme requires that they should. As we have already observed, Aquinas concedes that the given empirical situation gives much ground for the kind of critique Locke raises. Aquinas does, indeed, have much to say against the major lines of modern

philosophic critique of natural law, but, alas, this is not the last word. He wards off the modem critique via connecting, or rather reading, human incli nations in the light of his concept of God. He succeeds in shifting the burden of the case for natural law from the primary seat of the engagement with the modems (the natural inclinations) to a secondary but yet more major issue: the God-conception which Aquinas deploys. I conclude, therefore, not with a conclusion, but with a question: Can Aquinas's God-conception hold up against the profound questioning of natural theology, which characterizes modem philosophy as much as does doubt about the Thomistic theory of the natural inclinations?

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