St Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas Legal Philosophy

Life and Biography • Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 at Roccasecca. At the age of five, he was entered at Montecassino where his studies began. At age nineteen, Thomas joined the Dominican Order. • Thomas was a theologian and a Scholastic philosopher. • It was in Rome that Thomas began his most famous work, Summa Theologica. • Fifty years after the death of Thomas, on 18 July 1323, Pope John XXII, seated in Avignon, pronounced Thomas a saint.

Summa Theologica • The Summa Theologica (Compendium of Theology or Theological Compendium) or simply the Summa, written 1265–1274 is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas. • The Summa's topics follow a cycle: the existence of God; Creation of Man; Man's purpose; Christ; the Sacraments; and back to God. • It has 3 major parts: God, Ethics and Christ.

• The Summa is composed of three major parts, each of which deals with a major subsection of Christian theology. • First Part (in Latin, Prima Pars): God's existence and nature; the creation of the world; angels; the nature of man • Second Part: – First part of the Second Part (Prima Secundae, often abbreviated Part I-II): general principles of morality (including a theory of law) – Second part of the Second Part (Secunda Secundae, or Part II-II): morality in particular, including individual virtues and vices • Third Part (Tertia Pars): the person and work of Christ, who is the way of man to God; the sacraments; the end of the world. Aquinas left this part unfinished.

• The Summa Theologica is meant to summarize the history of the cosmos and provide an outline for the meaning of life itself. • This order is cyclical. It begins with God and his existence. The entire first part of the Summa deals with God and his creation, which reaches its zenith in man. The First Part therefore ends with the treatise on man. • The second part of the Summa deals with man's purpose (the meaning of life), which is happiness. The ethics detailed in this part summarize the ethics which man must follow to reach his intended destiny.

• Since no man on his own can truly live the perfect ethical life (and therefore reach God), it was necessary that a perfect man bridge the gap between God and man. Thus God became man. The third part of the Summa, therefore, deals with the life of Christ. • In order to follow the way prescribed by this perfect man, in order to live with God's grace (which is necessary for man's salvation), the Sacraments have been provided; the final part of the Summa considers the Sacraments.

• The entire Summa can be summarized roughly in this chart:

Law Law is a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act or is restrained from acting. Thomism recognizes four different species of law. which he defines as "an ordinance of reason

for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated": 1. Eternal law, which is "the type of Divine Wisdom, as directing all actions and movements;“

2. Divine law, which are moral imperatives specifically given through revelation. 3. Natural law, "whereby each one knows, and is conscious of, what is good and what is evil," which is the rational being's participation in the eternal law 4. Human or temporal law, laws made by humans by necessity

Aquinas bases his doctrine on the natural law, as one would expect, on his understanding of God and His relation to His creation. He grounds his theory of natural law in the notion of an eternal law (in God). In asking whether there is an eternal law, he begins by stating a general definition of all law: Law is a dictate of reason from the ruler for the community he rules. This dictate of reason is first and foremost within the reason or intellect of the ruler. It is the idea of what should be done to insure the well ordered functioning of whatever community the ruler has care for. (for the good and well-being of those subject to the ruler.) Since he has elsewhere shown that God rules the world with his reason (since he is the cause of its being) Aquinas concludes that God has in His intellect an idea by which He governs the world. This Idea, in God, for the governance of things is the eternal law.

Next, Aquinas asks whether there is in us a natural law. First, he makes a distinction: A law is not only in the reason of a ruler, but may also be in the thing that is ruled. In the case of the Eternal Law, the things of creation that are ruled by that Law have it imprinted on the them through their nature or essence. Since things act according to their nature, they derive their proper acts and ends according to the law that is written into their nature. Everything in nature, insofar as they reflects the order by which God directs them through their nature for their own benefit, reflects the Eternal Law in their own natures.

The Natural Law, as applied to the case of human beings, requires greater precision because of the fact that we have reason and free will. It is the our nature humans to act freely (i.e. to be provident for ourselves and others) by being inclined toward our proper acts and end. That is, we human beings must exercise our natural reason to discover what is best for us in order to achieve the end to which their nature inclines. Furthermore, we must exercise our freedom, by choosing what reason determines to naturally suited to us, i.e. what is best for our nature. The natural inclination of humans to achieve their proper end through reason and free will is the natural law. Formally defined, the Natural Law is humans' participation in the Eternal Law, through reason and will. Humans actively participate in the eternal law of God (the governance of the world) by using reason in conformity with the Natural Law to discern what is good and evil.

In applying this universal notion of Natural Law to the human person, one first must decide what it is that God has ordained human nature to be inclined toward. Since each thing has a nature given it by God, and each thing has a natural end, so there is a fulfillment to human activity of living. When a person discovers by reason what the purpose of living is, he or she discover his or her natural end is. Accepting the medieval dictum "happiness is what all desire" a person is happy when he or she achieves this natural end.

Aquinas distinguishes different levels of precepts or commands that the Natural Law entails. The most universal is the command "Good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided." This applies to everything and everyone, so much so that some consider it to be more of a description or definition of what we mean by "good." For these philosophers, a thing is "good" just in case it is pursued or done by someone. Aquinas would agree with this to a certain extent; but he would say that that is a definition of an apparent good. Thus, this position of Aquinas has a certain phenomenological appeal: a person does anything and everything he or she does only because that thing at least "appears" to be good. Even when I choose something that I know is bad for myself, I nevertheless chooses it under some aspect of good, i.e. as some kind of good.

Example: I know the cake is fattening, but I don't choose to eat it as fattening. I do, however, choose to eat it as tasty (which is an apparent, though not a true, good).

The Natural Law commands us to develop our rational and moral capacities by growing in the virtues of intellect (prudence, art, and science) and will (justice, courage, temperance). Natural law also commands those things that make for the harmonious functioning of society ("Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal.") Human nature also shows that each of us have a destiny beyond this world, too. Man's infinite capacity to know and love shows that he is destined to know and love an infinite being, God.

All of these levels of precepts so far outlined are only the most basic. "The good is to be done and pursued and evil is to be avoided" is not very helpful for making actual choices. Therefore, Aquinas believes that one needs one's reason to be perfected by the virtues, especially prudence, in order to discover precepts of the Natural Law that are more proximate to the choices that one has to make on a day to day basis.

The Thomistic notion of Natural Law has its roots, then, in a quite basic understanding of the universe as caused and cared for by God, and the basic notion of what a law is. It is a fairly sophisticated notion by which to ground the legitimacy of human law in something more universal than the mere agreement and decree of legislators. Yet, it allows that what the Natural Law commands or allows is not perfectly obvious when one gets to the proximate level of commanding or forbidding specific acts. It grounds the notion that there are some things that are wrong, always and everywhere, i.e. "crimes against humanity," while avoiding the obvious difficulties of claiming that this is determined by any sort of human consensus. Nevertheless, it still sees the interplay of people in social and rational discourse as necessary to determine what in particular the Natural Law requires.

Law is framed as a rule or measure of human acts. It should be possible both according to nature, and according to the customs of the country. The natural law is a participation in the eternal law only which the human law falls short of the eternal law. Laws framed by man are either just or unjust. If they are just, they have the binding power in conscience. If laws may be unjust through being opposed to the Divine good: such as idolatry or anything contrary to the Divine law, laws of this kind must not be observed, because, as stated in Acts, we ought to obey God rather than man.

Comments by Jacques Maritain on St. Thomas Aquinas By church law and intellectual tradition, St. Thomas Aquinas has become the most important single authority on the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, and his influence has always been strongly felt outside of his church as well. Theology makes use of philosophy and illuminates it by judging it in its own light.

The Angelic Doctor shows us the direct road, reminds us that order dwells in the heart of holy love, and that if in God subsisting Love proceeds form the Father and the uncreated Word, love in our case also must proceed from truth and pass through the lake of the Word. He reminds as also that there is only one effective and authentic way of loving our brethren and that is to love them with that same charity which makes us first love God above all.

The reason is that St. Thomas succeeded in constructing a philosophical and theological wisdom so elevated in immateriality that it is really free of every particularization of race or environment. Thomist philosophy itself is a progressive and assimilative philosophy, a missionary philosophy, a philosophy constantly at the service of primary Truth.

For a Revival of Natural Law Doctrine in Philippine Jurisprudence By: Jorge R. Coquia “We do not know where we are going, but we are on the way.” The statement practically summarizes the present way of legal and official thinking in the Philippines. There has been a sudden increase of law schools, but a meager few have ever attempted seriously what legal philosophy they should stress to students. Law teachers have told their students that concepts of natural law are unattainable antiquated and dead.

No other philosophy of law has so much molded and shaped civilization as has natural law. This natural law philosophy is based on the law of the needs of man as a rational being. It was during the Middle Ages that the conception of natural law as a code of human rights first took real substance and importance. In Coke’s classic Calvin’s case, he said: “The law of nature is that whch god at the time of creation of man infused into his heart for his preservation and direction and this is the eternal law…called also the law of nature.”

There is no denying of the fact that in each attempt to enunciate a new philosophy of law, human experience has led to insoluble difficulties and to inescapable inadequacies. The ideological conflicts in our times have forced the return to the natural law way of thinking thus giving truth to what Gilson once said that “the natural law buries its own undertakers.”