Thomas Aquinas - Law, Morality and Politics - Essay Example

Many elements of the world view that underlies todays political s and democratic practices are a result of a long chain of developments inhistory of thought within the field of the political philosophy. In this regard, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), one of the prominent Italian thinkers of the Middle Ages during which the ground was laid for the upcoming early modern period with its upsurge in political philosophy, presents a very indicative example when an issue that constitutes one of the most hotly debated political problems nowadays was equally important for this medieval philosopher. This critical issue revolves around the problem of human freedom, or lack of it, in the most general sense, and in a practical relation to the social organisation as well. Of course, we must be aware of the limitations inherent to attempts to compare attitudes towards such a complex philosophical problem between its modern interpretations and the views of almost a millennium ago, as even the revolutionary thinkers were embedded in the historical context of their time, with its dogmatic and world outlook influences. However, despite influences on Aquinas from the political climate of that time, we can perhaps find out the essence of his view on the mentioned problem that still would be relevant for our todays situation. Thomas Aquinas lived at a pivotal period for the Western philosophy when the return of the Aristotelianism combined with scholasticism to reignite debates about the correlation between reason and faith. Aquinas became fully acquainted with this school of philosophy after he joined the Dominican Order and for several years studied with Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), a scholastic philosopher who worked on restating of the Aristotelian heritage. This acquaintance of Aquinas is considered to be the most significant influence on his world view, which turned him into an erudite scholar devoted to the Aristotelian method (McInerny, 1992, p. 16). In general, Scholastics of that time promoted empiricism and voiced support for policies and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. They stood in opposition to Christian mysticism as well as to concepts of dualism of mind and of the evil nature of the world promoted earlier by Plato and St. Augustine (McGrade, 2003, pp. 33-34). What interests us in relation to the problem that we have raised is Aquinas' theory of natural law. To better understand this theory, it must be pointed out that Aquinas views philosophy as a general term which relates to a set of sciences. To diverse philosophical fields Aquinas ascribes the following due order for their study: logic, mathematics, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysics, which is the apex of philosophical study. Aquinas' theory of natural law concerns moral philosophy, for which the notion of the human good is central. Aquinas sees a difference between acts of a man and human acts, as the former acts can be also seen in non-human agents, while human acts stem from knowledge and will and always aim at a known good. But Aquinas points out that as a certain good is not the same as the goodness itself, then what holds together all the human actions is what he terms as the overarching goodness which is the ultimate end. Therefore, any human action is directed towards the ultimate end (Lisska, 1998, pp. 132-133). Now that we have uncovered the basic ground of the morality for Aquinas, we can better understand his views towards what he called the natural law. In fact, what forms the essence of the natural law moral theory is the view that morality stems from the nature of the world and of the human beings. For Aquinas, main morality-generating principle of human nature is its rationality, for instance manifested in human pursuit of a certain good, which underlies any moral law. Therefore, as humans are born rational, it is morally right to behave in correspondence with our rational nature. In this way Aquinas connects moral laws with the human nature and this connection forms the basis of the "natural law", that now can be seen as the due involvement of humans in the postulated higher eternal law, which in its turn governs the nature of an eternal universe. Importantly, while the rest of finite creatures are such that their good lies in their unconscious fulfilment of their nature, a human being is conscious of the good and can freely pursue it. At the same time humans are not free to choose their good as such but are free only to choose whether to follow or not this true end. Building on this, Aquinas views the natural law as the basis for the main principles of practical reasoning. To exemplify what it means, he reminds about the basic elements of reasoning as such, when some concepts and judgements precede all others. Aquinas says that our basic concept is that of being, and that our basic judgement is that one cannot deny and confirm the same thing. All other concepts that we produce are specific examples of what exists. Already Aristotle has remarked that children tend to call all women mother and all men father, so that those terms become generic. This proves that we presuppose that what is generically described is an instance of being. Therefore, the concept of being is prior not because it is conceived independently from its particular manifestation, but because some concrete examples of being are perceived, which at least implies that something is existent. Similarly, our basic judgement of lack of inner contradiction is manifested in humans already in the very early age, so that it becomes embedded in all our other concrete judgements. Drawing parallels with such basic elements of thinking, Aquinas connects his understanding of the natural law with the practical realm, where there is also a basic concept represented by the good, akin to the concept of being in the theoretical realm. The good signifies that which is pursued as a source of fulfilment, so the first rational practical judgement becomes to pursue the good and to avoid evil. All other practical judgements emanate from this basic one and therefore contain it. The natural law, in its turn, consists of this basic judgement and some other most general judgements that cannot be disputed, and that form the natural human good to which we are inclined, like existence, food, family, etc. At this point we should mention that there is another aspect of the natural law theory which deals with the correlation between morality and law. From this point of view, there is no clear difference between norms of law and moral notions, and laws draw their authority not from some prior human agreement, but are logically related to natural moral norms. Simply put, some standards are obligatory because of their moral truthfulness, even though there is no particular convention that legitimised them. Such an idea of interdependence between notions of law and morality is also called the Overlap Thesis (Finnis, 1980, p.351). In this regard, Aquinas is also a law theorist, because for him laws, established within human societies, can be legitimate only if they correspond to the natural law. On the contrary, an unjust law is actually not a law. Such an idea that a norm that does not correspond to the natural law is not legitimate constitutes the basic ground of conceptual naturalism. Building on the mentioned aspects of Aquinas political philosophy, let us finally try to summarise how he allows for human freedom within his structure of law. From the philosophic point of view, Aquinas view of rationality as the part of our nature which we cannot freely choose, but which we can freely pursue can be classified as pertaining to compatibilism, a view that champions the lack of contradiction between the causal roots of human actions and elements of freedom in them, as long as an agent is not constrained in his pursuing of the goals he or she has set, even though unfreely. From the point of view of political philosophy, the sphere of philosophical interests of Aquinas can be related to the general distinguishing between negative and positive aspects of the term 'liberty'. In this light, negative liberty is considered to represent a mere absence of obstacles that would prevent an agent from an action (even if it is itself not a free one) and positive liberty requires the presence of control over ones own destiny and of ones own interests (MacCallum, 1967). Now, in this regard views of Aquinas can be associated with both approaches. He refers to negative liberty in his attitude to the human laws, which for him must not prevent people from being able to pursue the human good, the condition that underlies the norm of morality. On the other hand, in respect to human ability to choose whether to actually follow the good, Aquinas touches upon the field of concern of positive liberty theories. References: Aquinas, Thomas. On Law, Morality and Politics. Hackett Publishing Company, 1988. Finnis, John. Natural Law and Natural Rights. Oxford University Press, 1980. Lisska, Anthony J. Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law: An Analytical Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 1998. MacCallum, Gerald C. Jr. "Negative and Positive Freedom." Philosophical Review, vol. 76 (1967): 312-34. McGrade, A. S. (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2003. McInerny, Ralph M. Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice. The Catholic University of America Press, 1992. Read More