Great Ideas of Philosophy

Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and the Theory of Natural LawScope: Thomas Aquinas is the most celebrated of the scholastic philosophers. His treatises on law would form thefoundation of critical inquiry in jurisprudence for centuries. But his “natural law” theory is also a gloss onThomistic psychology, for as he says, “If our natures were different, our duties would be different.” Thusdo we find Thomas Aquinas defining law as an ordinance of reason, promulgated by one who isresponsible for the good of the community. In other words, the Thomistic psychology is derivable from ananalysis of the form of life most able to realize human potentialities most fully. A rule of law is “natural,”then, when its aim is the provision of those basic goods that are, at once, basic and good in virtue of thenature of human nature.OutlineI. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was the great 13 th -century Dominican figure whose Scholastic philosophycontinues to dominate thought in the religious philosophy of the Catholic Church.A. Thomas was a child of privilege. His father was Count of Aquino and his mother, Theodora, Countess ofTeano. His early promise as a child schooled by the Benedictines resulted in advanced study in the liberalarts at Naples, where he committed himself to a religious vocation. By the age of 20, he was a Dominicanfriar.B. In Cologne, under the teaching of Albertus Magnus, Thomas’s full promise became apparent. He earned ateaching position at Paris, where he would also earn a doctorate. By the time of his early 30s, he was acelebrity, attracting the best students and serving as an intellectual resource to the princes of the church.C. Outside of Catholic philosophy, Aquinas is probably best known and most widely read for his treatises onnatural law. He was tutored in the law, and in the 13 th century, the European world again was in possessionof Roman law. At the same time, the church required legally trained scholars to fight the daily wars onheresies and address the complexities of relationships between the secular and clerical worlds.II. For a mind of the quality of Aquinas’s, however, law was much more than a set of procedures for settlingdisputes. It was recognized as an expression of the rational order itself and was not removed from humanpsychology, ethics, philosophy, politics, and religion. We find his most systematic treatment of law inQuestions 90 to 108 of his Summa Theologiae.A. The place to begin, however, is in the first part of the Summa Theologiae, Questions 75–89, whichsummarize his position on human nature. The format is the established one, found in Abelard’s Sic et Non.We begin with a question, whether the soul is a body, for example, then confront arguments for andagainst.1. The first objection to the proposition that the soul is a body is: “It would seem that the soul is a body,for the soul is the moving principle of the body, nor does it move unless moved.”2. Against such objections is placed the contrary position: “Augustine says that the soul is ‘simple’ incomparison with the body, inasmuch as it does not occupy space by its bulk.”3. Then, Aquinas offers his own answer, followed by statements designed to meet all the objections. Hisreply to Objection 1, for example, is: “As everything which is in motion must be moved by somethingelse, a process which cannot be prolonged indefinitely, we must allow that not every mover is moved.”4. Here, then, is the essential form of the discourse. On the question of human nature, followingAristotle, Thomas adopts the hylomorphic thesis: Man is a composite of body and soul, where the soulis “the form of the body.” Just as the process of sensation is both a power of the soul and a process thatrequires material organs, so the whole man is an enmattered being whose psychic processes arerealized through corporeal operations.B. On the question of knowledge, Aquinas distinguishes the human and divine intellect, the latter being in thevery essence of God, whereas the former is but a power or faculty of the soul.1. In this, it is included among several powers, such as sensation, appetite, and the will.28©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership