Natural Law

What is Natural Law?

A normative ethical theory that focuses on duty and rules that govern how a person ought to behave

Who proposed Natural Law?

Italian theologian St Thomas Aquinas in his works ‘Summa Theologica’

What are Aquinas’ four tiers of law?

A hierarchy of law with 4 levels: eternal law, divine law, natural law and human law

What are each of these?

Eternal law = God’s created plan that directs the whole of creation towards its final purpose

Divine law = the rules given to humanity through God’s special revelation

Natural law = the first principle for working out what is good and bad through recta-ratio (Latin for reasoning)

Human law = rules made for civil communities which adapts as society changes 

How did Aquinas argue Natural Law is derived from rational thought?

Conscience is not the voice of God or an intuition, but rather the process of recta-ratio that allows a moral agent to understand what is good 

How is Natural Law based on a belief in a divine creator?

For Aquinas, everything in existence was created by God and the telos of humans is to achieve beatific vision (fellowship with God) achieved fully within the afterlife

How is Natural Law a form of moral absolutism with both deontological and teleological aspects?

Deontological - the goodness of an action is based on some quality of the action itself & it’s the moral agent’s duty to perform

Absolutist in there being precepts that cannot be broken

Teleological - theory relies on the idea of fulfilling human purpose of beatific vision

What is synderesis rule?

The natural desire of humans to do good and avoid evil

What are the 5 primary precepts Aquinas identifies?

Preserve life, reproduce, educate, worship God and life in an ordered society

What are these primary precepts?

Self-evident which can be understood by an individual’s educated mind and from which all moral behaviour can be derived

What are Aquinas’ secondary precepts?

Rules that unlike the universal and absolute primary precepts can change according to the needs of society & specifics of a situation

The primary precepts are inviolable, this means…

secondary precepts that violate a primary precept cannot be formulated e.g any act that prevents reproduction through sexual intercourse = wrong

What are the 3 revealed virtues?

Faith, hope and love revealed through scripture e.g 1 Corinthians 13

Theocentric (directed towards God) & cannot be achieved without Him

How does Aquinas define each virtue?

Faith = to believe in God despite the lack of empirical evidence of His existence

Hope = looking forward to eternal life with God in Heaven

Love = wishing good for other people without concern for the self

What is evidence for these 3 revealed virtues?

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

What are the 4 cardinal virtues?

Prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance discoverable through reason & practiced to become part of human nature

How does Aquinas define these virtues?

Prudence = the ability to make reasoned judgements that direct human acts towards their telos (Latin for end goal)

Justice = action to be taken to ensure all people are treated fairly

Fortitude = courage, a virtuous person must have the strength of mind to follow right reason

Temperance = the caution a person requires to make a considered, thoughtful choice

What are internal and external acts?

Internal = the intention of performing an act

External = the outward action that the moral agent performs

What is an example of an external act that may be intrinsically good but performed with an evil intention?

Doing charity work to boast

The end doesn’t justify the means, hence…

the intention is important because it is part of the action and it must always be aimed towards God

What does Aquinas say about this?

“But if the will be good from its intention of the end, this is not enough to make the external action good.”