mod 6 natural law ethics

M6. LECTURE

Natural Law Ethics or Christian Ethics is formulated by Thomas Aquinas (1225, 1274), a Dominican monk. Called the Angelic Doctor, Aquinas is considered to be the greatest philosopher and theologian of the Catholic Church. His major works Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles serve as the most authoritative source of Christian dogma. Aquinas derives much of his thoughts from his predecessors, the Fathers of the church and the ancient Greek philosophers. His originality, however, is his comprehensive synthesis of the past doctrines and their creative integration to theology.

Aquinas lived during the medieval period when Scholasticism was the predominant philosophy. His ideas were products of the scholastic line of thinking which asserts the supremacy of faith over reason. So it was said that “Philosophy is a handmaid of Theology.” Natural Law Ethics, therefore, has to be understood from the perspective of theological reflections. The ethics by Aquinas is an interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of morality as flowing from human rational nature. This is the point why it is customarily said in the history of philosophy that the thoughts of these two great philosophers are theoretically intertwined. In general, Natural Law Ethics views morality to be a product of obedience to a divine, moral law inherent in human nature.

LAW

Law is a fact of everyday experiences. There are laws in the Ten Commandments, in the Bill of Rights, in the theories of natural sciences, in the rules of games, in traffic lights, in parental admonitions. They are expressed in propositions in the forms of precepts, codes, commands, prohibitions, prescriptions or imperatives.

Law is described by Aquinas as a rule because it commands and prohibits, and a measure as it sets standard of actions. By definition, law is “the ordinance of reason designed for the common good and promulgated by one who has charge of the society.” Law aims towards order. It is designed and executed by the authority for the general welfare of the community. Law is promulgated as it is made known to the subjects.

There are three kinds of law: (1) Eternal law is made by God though his omnipotence for all things and promulgated by dispositions ordained to them. (2) Natural law is the moral law made by God through his goodness for man as rational creatures and made known by human nature. (3) Positive law is the civil law made by men in the society through political legislation for themselves and promulgated by public pronouncements.

NATURAL LAW AND MORALITY

In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas demonstrates four ways of understanding the implications of natural law to the moral nature of man.

Firstly, natural is opposed to artificial. The etymology of the word natural is from the Latin natus, a participle conjugated from the infinitive verb nasci which means “to be born”.

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Natural means something inborn, an original determination in a thing. Artificial refers to something new or modified out of the original. As natural intelligence is for human brain, artificial intelligence is for computer. Natural law, therefore, is the law innate in man. It is stumped in him by his very own nature as human. And as a moral law, it commands him to do good and to avoid evil. Hence, good is perfective of human nature, while evil is destructive of it. The more man does good, the more he becomes human, and the more he does evil, the more he turns out to be artificial, that is, less human. This view is similar to the Ethics of Self-Realization by Aristotle.

Secondly, natural law is derived from the nature of man. Nature is the essence in the level of operation. Essence is the manner of being or the determining aspect of what makes a thing a particular kind of thing that it is. “Operation follows being,” which means that a thing can only do what it is ordained by its essence to do. Man essentially is rational. Thus, his nature is the operation of rationality which is thinking. The object of thinking is the truth. There is a law within us ordering us to uphold the truth and shun those which diverge from truth. So it is commanded that “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” The acts of lying, cheating and corruption are intrinsically evil because they are against the rational nature of man who tends towards the truth. Honest act is good because it sustains the truth.

Thirdly, natural law is derived from the natural inclinations of man as an organism. Like ordinary animals, we have natural tendency towards self-preservation. We are commanded by this inclination to do things which uphold life and to avoid those which endanger life like murder and abortion. We also share with ordinary animals some instincts like the rearing of offspring and reproduction. Even birds nestle their young. That we take care of our children is commanded of us by our parental instincts. Sexual acts culminated for procreation is inherently good as they spring out of our inclination for the propagation of species, but those done for the sake only of pleasure are bad because they do not conform to procreative purpose. It is for this same reason that artificial contraception is wrong. Due to faculty of reason, man tends towards the accumulation of knowledge concerning God, thus knowing and loving God is ordered of us by natural law. As social animals, we interact with our own kind in the community. It is inherent in us to do things we like others do to us. Hence, there is a law imprinted in our nature not to steal the property of others or do them harm.

Lastly, natural law is derived from eternal law. It is “a participation of eternal law by which rational creatures are naturally inclined to the mode of acting and end proper to them.” God governs all things by providence. Divine providence is the influence of God by means of which he directs all things to their proper ends. The operation of divine providence is the eternal law, defined as “the ordinance of God by which all things are disposed and directed towards the ends proper to them.”

Things are subject to eternal law in two ways. First, irrational creatures partake of the eternal law by action and passion. The planet Earth is subject to eternal law by its action of revolving around the sun. Dogs obey the eternal law by its passion as it barks every time it smells a stranger. Second, things are subject to eternal law by knowledge, that is by knowing the operation of this law as it exists in things. Since only rational creatures, such as men, know and will, they are those who participate by knowledge. We do not merely obey the law, but we are also aware of it. We partake by action as our bodies are subject to the law of gravity like other physical

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objects. We partake by passion as we are irritated same as ordinary animals. And we partake by knowledge as we know what is good and evil by our rational nature.

Now, among all others, the rational creature is subject to divine providence in a more excellent way, in so far as it partakes of the share of providence by being provident both for itself and for others. Therefore, it has a share of eternal reason, whereby it has natural inclination to its proper act and end. And the participation of the eternal law in the rational creatures is called natural law.

As irrational things are not aware of their proper acts and ends because they obey blindly the divine providence, we learn to be provident for ourselves. Through our own knowledge of good and evil provided by the natural law within us, we as rational beings personally direct our acts to the end destined for us by God.

Natural law is the way for man to reach the end proper to him. The last end that man has to attain is giving glory to God. Such glorification is not for God because He is absolutely perfect and sufficient in Himself, rather it is for man so that he may share in God’s glory And, since God is good, it follows that man ought to do good to be able to glorify Him. Man is ordained by his own nature to do good acts that would bring him ultimately to the glory of God.

OBLIGATION

Moral obligation is “the necessity, imposed by God and manifested to man, of performing and refraining from acts which inevitably conduce to or hinder the attainment of the absolutely ultimate end of man.” As a necessity, obligation is the relation between two terms: the person’s freewill that enables him to decide for the commission or omission of an act, and the act itself whether it is to be done or not as a means towards attaining the final end.

The most universal expression of moral obligation is the imperative “Do good and avoid evil.” We are obliged to do good and avoid evil so that we may live according to our rational nature. We must live rationally because God commands it by natural law. And God so commands it because it leads us to His glory, our final end.

Natural law morally obliges our will to do good and avoid evil, but our actions are not in any way determined by it. By freewill, we can decide for our own acts and do whatever we choose to do. Because we can obey or disobey the law, there is a need for sanction.

SANCTION

Sanction refers to the reception by the person of reward for doing good or imposition to him of punishment for doing evil. There is need for sanction so that the prescriptions of natural law may be fulfilled. Moral obligation alone does not guarantee obedience to the law. Sanctions strengthen its binding power. Rewards are incentives for observing the law and punishments are deterrent for violating it. Sanction is also essential to moral judgment in view of the moral concept of justice. From Latin justus that means worthy, justice refers to the principle of giving a person what he deserves to receive. The righteous deserves reward, while the wicked, punishment. If good

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were not to be rewarded and evil not to be punished, then justice is denied, and there is no point for distinguishing between right and wrong!

The temporal sanction is given by the earthly society where people are acknowledged for doing right, and criminals are imprisoned for illegal acts. Since the last end that man has to achieve is the glorification of God, the eternal sanction consists of ultimate reward for the righteous which is the beatitude or his possession of God in the state of supreme happiness. While the ultimate punishment for the wicked is his condemnation to eternal misery.

CONSCIENCE

If we are morally obliged by our nature to do good and avoid evil, then how do we know the good we ought to do, and the evil we ought to avoid in particular conditions? For Aquinas, the way to the actual knowledge of morality is conscience. The word comes from the Latin “cum alio scientia” that means “with knowledge of something”. Metaphorically, conscience is said to be “the voice of God” or the “other self”.

The theory of Natural Law Ethics fundamentally rests on the concept of conscience, so that it is also called Ethics of Conscience. As natural law is the objective rule of morality based on God’s determination of the human nature, conscience is the subjective norm of morality by means of which an individual learns the particular precepts of natural law.

Conscience is “the judgment of practical reason deciding upon an act as good so as to be done, or evil so as to be avoided.” The operation of reason is practical because it is concerned not with speculation but with action. The practical reason decides as to the rightness of the act, then commands the will to action; or as to its wrongness, then commands the will to refrain from action.

Conscience affects the well-being of the person as moral agent. The positive effect of conscience is fulfillment which is the person’s feeling of joy for having done good. The negative effect is guilt which brings the person a sense of anxiety for having done evil. These two are the sanctions subjective to the person, and his inner voice for moral obligation.

Actual human experiences demonstrate the effects of conscience. We observe that inside us lies an innate impulse towards moral judgment. Giving alms to a beggar in a random act of kindness brings an spontaneous joy in our hearts. This positive feeling is the way by which our conscience tells us that what we have done is good and we are to be rewarded for it. Taking money from another person’s purse hurts as inside for which we say “Nakaka-guilty naman!” It is our conscience that operates informing us of our wrong conduct. Or a murderer could not peacefully sleep at night, being disturbed by a “voice” from within him. Some criminals even personally confessed their offenses having been bothered by their conscience.

Individuals with right conscience perform correct ethical evaluation. The exercise of right conscience is an act of reasoning from implicit syllogism. Practical reason undergoes formal deduction from universal principle to consider the morality of a particular act in a particular situation. The universal principle is “Do good and avoid evil.” The judgment of conscience determines by reason the moral values of a particular act and decides whether to do the act or not,

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then the will gets the body into doing the act or refraining from doing it. Ethical reasoning by right conscience may be expressed in formal syllogism:

Universal Principle Intermediate Principle Particular Act

Ethical judgement

Universal Principle Intermediate Principle Particular Act

Ethical judgement

Do good.

Returning a lost property is good. This act is returning a lost property. Therefore, I ought to do this act.

Avoid evil.

Cheating is evil

This act is cheating.

Therefore, I ought not to do this act.

The formation of right conscience requires training both the intellect and the will through the constant practice of virtue so that the act of practical judgment becomes instantaneous in a person as it already becomes natural for him.