Aristotle God

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Aquinas and Natural Law Ethics

• Aristotle God

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Ockham
Al-Farabi
Avicenna
Averroes
Anselm
1287-1347 AD
870-950 CE
980-1037 CE
1126-1198 CE
1038-1109 AD
900
1300
Al- Kindi
Al-Ghazali
Aquinas
Maimonides
801-873 CE
1058-1111 CE
1225-1274 AD
1138-1204 AD
All images link to scholarly articles
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Thomas Aquinas

• Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
• Aquinas was dubbed the dumb ox by his fellow
  students, for being large and quiet. He was
  apparently quiet because he was busy thinking he
  became the Catholic churchs top theologian, a
  title he still holds today, without dispute.

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Major Work

• Aquinass major work, the Summa Theologica, is
  divided into 4 parts.
• Prima Pars (1st Part) Existence and Nature of God
• Prima Secundae (1st Part of the 2nd Part)
  Happiness, Psychology, Virtues, Law (Human,
  Natural, Divine)
• Secunda Secundae (2nd Part of the 2nd Part) The
  virtues in detail
• Tertia Pars (3rd Part) Christian Doctrine

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Aquinas and Aristotle

• During the Middle Ages, many of Aristotles works
  were lost to Western Europe, beginning in the
  first few centuries AD.
• Aquinas merged Aristotle with Christianity after
  the recovery of his philosophy via Muslim
  scholars in the 12th and 13th century.
• The purposiveness or end-directedness of
  nature in Aristotle is identified by Aquinas with
  Gods purposes.

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Natural Law

• Gods commands determine what is lawful in
  Natural Law.
• Viewed from Gods perspective, humans participate
  in the Eternal Law, which is Gods eternal plan
  A law is a rule of action put in place by
  someone who has care of the community Mark
  Murphy

• Human nature determines what is natural in
  Natural Law.
• Viewed from the human perspective, the principles
  of natural law are knowable by human nature and
  are structured to aid in furthering individual
  and communal goods.

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Normative Theory

• Aquinass first principle of morality is
• Good should be done, and evil avoided
• We are by nature inclined toward the Good,
  according to Aquinas, but we cannot pursue the
  good directly because it is abstractwe must
  pursue concrete goods which we know immediately,
  by inclination. Those goods are
• Preservation of life
• Procreation
• Knowledge
• Society
• Reasonable Conduct

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Normative Theory

• Aquinas, then, has a value-based ethical theory.
  The rightness or wrongness of particular actions
  is determined by how those actions further or
  frustrate the goods.
• Certain ways of acting are intrinsically flawed
  or unreasonable responses to these human goods.
• Like Aristotle, Aquinas seems sure there can be
  no formula provided to determine what action is
  right or wrong in all particular cases.
• Prudence (practical wisdom) is required for the
  most part, if not always, to determine if a given
  act is intrinsically flawed or not.

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Intrinsically Flawed Action

• Murphy provides a nice account of how acts can be
  intrinsically flawed or unreasonable
• Aquinas does not obviously identify some master
  principle that one can use to determine whether
  an act is intrinsically flawed though he does
  indicate where to look -- we are to look at the
  features that individuate acts, such as their
  objects , their ends , their circumstances ,
  and so forth. An act might be flawed through a
  mismatch of object and end -- that is, between
  the immediate aim of the action and its more
  distant point. If one were, for example, to
  regulate one's pursuit of a greater good in light
  of a lesser good -- if, for example, one were to
  seek friendship with God for the sake of mere
  bodily survival rather than vice versa -- that
  would count as an unreasonable act. An act might
  be flawed through the circumstances while one is
  bound to profess one's belief in God, there are
  certain circumstances in which it is
  inappropriate to do so. An act might be flawed
  merely through its intention to direct oneself
  against a good -- as in murder , and lying ,
  and blasphemy -- is always to act in an
  unfitting way. Mark Murphy http//plato.stanford
  .edu/entries/natural-law-ethics/

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Fit with Utilitarians and Kantians

• Is an action ever intrinsically flawed because it
  fails to maximize goodness? Murphy, again
• His natural law view understands principles of
  right to be grounded in principles of good on
  this Aquinas sides with utilitarians, and
  consequentialists generally, against Kantians. 
  But Aquinas would deny that the principles of the
  right enjoin us to maximize the good -- while he
  allows that considerations of the greater good
  have a role in practical reasoning, action can be
  irremediably flawed merely through (e.g.) badness
  of intention, flawed such that no good
  consequences that flow from the action would be
  sufficient to justify it -- and in this Aquinas
  sides with the Kantians against the utilitarians
  and consequentialists of other stripes. Mark
  Murphy http//plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-l
  aw-ethics/

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Fit with Aristotle

• Must prudence determine the right action in every
  situation, or are there at least some universal
  general rules that are always valid or correct?
• And while Aquinas is in some ways Aristotelian,
  and recognizes that virtue will always be
  required in order to hit the mark in a situation
  of choice, he rejects the view commonly ascribed
  to Aristotle (for doubts that it is Aristotle's
  view see Irwin 2000) that there are no
  universally true general principles of right.
  Mark Murphy http//plato.stanford.edu/entries/nat
  ural-law-ethics/

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Photo Credits

• Title Slide Library, St. Pauls College,
  Washington, D.C. http//www.flickr.com/photos/lric
  ecsp/2365699386

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3 Slides on the Metaphysics of Goodness
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Plato On the Nature of The Good
Analogy of the Sun
The Sun
The Good
is that makes to the through the power of by
providing
an intelligible object objects intelligible soul u
nderstanding truth
a visible object objects visible eye sight light
The tree above is the visible object, the Forms
(Universals) are the intelligible objects that
the Good shines on. Both the Sun and the Good
create their objects.
http//www.boisestate.edu/people/troark/didactics/
ancient/materials/Line_Sun.pdf
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Aristotle On the Nature of The Good
The Good
as a transcendental property
Substance Quality Place Position
Action
Quantity Relation Time Possession
Passion
Socrates
is white
is in Athens
is seated
is speaking
is a friend to Plato
is one
it is noon
has a toga
is being spoken to
Is it odd that good can be predicated in any of
the 10 categories?
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Aquinas On the Nature of The Good
God Being The Good Angels Humans Animals Plant
s Rocks Mud Nothingness
The Great Chain of Being
Actuality
Potentiality
Aquinas gets the chain from Plotinus (his
student, Porphyry), Augustine, Boethius,
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and others, and
adds to it
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Ontological Proof of Gods Existence
Suppose there are 4 modes of existence 1.
Necessary 2. Actual 3. Possible 4.
Impossible If a perfect being is possible, it
must be actual, because it's more perfect to be
actual than just possible. The argument
succeeds. But there's more if a perfect being
is actual, it must be necessary, for the same
reason ... it's more perfect to be necessary than
just actual. SO ... a necessary being that is
all good, all powerful, and all knowing, exists.
Necessary beings can have no cause of their
existence (except trivially themselves), and so
it is confusion to ask who made God. God actually
explains the existence of himself and everything
else.
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Objections to the Argument
Objection But is existence a real predicate? A
feature a thing may have or lack? Response It
isn't claimed that there is a possible perfect
being. It's just pointed out that a perfect being
is possible, or perfect being is contradiction
free. Think of it this way there are red
things. For them to exist, there did not have to
be possible red things capable of having or
lacking the property existence. 'What it is to
be red', though, had to predate red things. What
it is to be a perfect being predates, logically,
but not temporally, a perfect being. The argument
is one of reason, not causation. Does that make
sense? There's nothing contradictory about a
perfect being if that being is a person (personal
qualities admit of perfection, unlike physical
qualities ... no such thing as a perfect island,
for instance, because you can always add another
nice palm tree or nubian maiden ... but personal
qualities, like knowledge, power, and goodness,
have intrinsic maxima ... they have upper limits
which, when met, yield perfection of that
quality.