However, it was not until the 13th Century until Thomas Aquinas developed its key features, that it was actually more widely recognised as a moral theory. When we focus on the recipient of the natural law, that is, us human beings, the proposition of Aquinas’s natural law theory that comes to the forefront is that the Natural law establishes the basic principles of practical rationality for human beings, and has this status by Nature. These are to be followed universally, as Cicero puts it; it is ‘one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times’.
According to Aquinas, all humans seek good and when we do wrong or evil, it is only because we are only seeking ‘apparent’ goods and not real goods. So, we could ask ourselves, how does Aquinas define a ‘real’ good? A real good is when the said ‘good’ falls under the five primary precepts. These are: self-preservation and preservation of innocents, educating children, living in society, reproducing and worshipping God. Aquinas also believed that we can use our rationality to know Natural Law.
It is inherent within our human nature, God reveals specific commands but these do not go against natural law but rather, further develop it. Aquinas said that a moral life is a life entirely followed ‘according to reason’. Aquinas allowed for the Aristotelian insight that the particulars of the situation always outstrip one’s rules, so that one will always need the moral and intellectual virtues in order to act well. But he denies that this means that there are no principles of right conduct that hold everywhere and always and some even absolutely.
The Essay on St. Thomas Aquinas: The Human Law And Natural Law Debate
Are we naturally moral creatures? Do we always act towards the common good of others? I am positive that we do not, and in fact, as much as society wants to, we go against our morals and lead with our ‘feelings’. These feelings may feel right, but it doesn’t mean they will lead you in the right path to fulfil your ultimate end, true happiness. Hitler was a passionate man driven by feelings, but ...
On Aquinas’s view, killing of the innocent is always wrong, as is lying, adultery, sodomy, and blasphemy; and that they are always wrong is a matter of natural law. Therefore, Natural law is absolute, but surely, we can ask ourselves, what about double effect? What if a dying mother had to give an abortion to preserve her life? For Aquinas, there are two key features of the natural law, features the acknowledgment of which structures his discussion of the natural law.
The first is that, when we focus on God’s role as the giver of the natural law, the natural law is just one aspect of divine providence; and so the theory of natural law is from that perspective just one part among others of the theory of divine providence. The second is that, when we focus on the human’s role as recipient of the natural law, the natural law constitutes the principles of practical rationality, those principles by which human action is to be judged as reasonable or unreasonable; and so the theory of natural law is from that perspective the preeminent part of the theory of practical rationality.
