Aquinas's Natural Law

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Curious_Hobbit

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(I put this in the moral theology section, but no one responded)

Can someone refer me to some good sources to better understand Aquinas’s natural law? I’ve read his views on sex, contraception, etc and from that point they seem to make good sense. I just need to read a good explanation of it because my immediate thought is " Is walking on your hands immoral because they were not made for walking?" or “is using your nose to rest your glasses on immoral because your nose was not meant for that?”

Can someone clear up these little details for me and refer me to some good reading on the subject? Thanks!
 
Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide by Ed Feser is a pretty good place to start.

It is contrary to natural purpose not in a way other than the natural purpose, so walking on your hands is still ok but crushing your hands in a vice would would be bad.
 
There’s a good article on natural law theory at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

St Thomas’s idea about why walking on your hands is not evil is found in the Summa Contra Gentiles III, 122. In a nutshell, his answer is that walking on your hands and other minor deviant activities don’t do much harm to the human good, so they are permissible, while, by contrast, misusing the generative organs gravely harms the human good by, so to speak, attacking the power of the human species to propagate itself. I’m totally with you if you don’t find his solution satisfying. It seems to me Thomas would have done better to have focussed from the first on the harm done to the human good without taking the, as it turned out, pointless detour through unnatural uses of the body.

Peace.
 
as far as i can tell this natural law notion is nothing more than trying to divine supernatural intent.

in practice it just means that you just project whatever religious view you have on the state of nature and then claim that nature itself demands that everyone conform to your religious view.
 
Rocinante said:
as far as i can tell this natural law notion is nothing more than trying to divine supernatural intent.

in practice it just means that you just project whatever religious view you have on the state of nature and then claim that nature itself demands that everyone conform to your religious view.
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Why would you think that?
 
Rocinante said:
as far as i can tell this natural law notion is nothing more than trying to divine supernatural intent.

in practice it just means that you just project whatever religious view you have on the state of nature and then claim that nature itself demands that everyone conform to your religious view.
Click to expand...
That’s not true at all. If I were an atheist I’d still believe in the natural law and all of the things it entails. In fact, I’ve found that, from a natural law standpoint, I can argue for ethical positions with no mention of God or Christianity.
 
Rocinante said:
as far as i can tell this natural law notion is nothing more than trying to divine supernatural intent.

in practice it just means that you just project whatever religious view you have on the state of nature and then claim that nature itself demands that everyone conform to your religious view.
Click to expand...
Not at all because the Natural Law mentions nothing about God.

One does not need to believe in God to know that murder and rape are wrong on various levels. This is due to Natural Law, ingrained in every human being and only forgotten when a corrupt society indoctrinates us otherwise.
 
MarianD said:
Not at all because the Natural Law mentions nothing about God.

One does not need to believe in God to know that murder and rape are wrong on various levels. This is due to Natural Law, ingrained in every human being and only forgotten when a corrupt society indoctrinates us otherwise.
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Murder and rape are wrong because of God. If He didn’t create the world then murder and rape are only wrong if you wish to make it wrong and have the strength to enforce it. This is the basis for the Pope’s dictatorship part of the “Dictatorship of Relativism”. There would only be human law if God had no laws properly natural and divine.

Aquinas states that It is therefore evident that the natural law is nothing else than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law. and By the natural law the eternal law is participated proportionately to the capacity of human nature. But to his supernatural end man needs to be directed in a yet higher way. Hence the additional law given by God, whereby man shares more perfectly in the eternal law.
 
awatkins69 said:
That’s not true at all. If I were an atheist I’d still believe in the natural law and all of the things it entails. In fact, I’ve found that, from a natural law standpoint, I can argue for ethical positions with no mention of God or Christianity.
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i can also argue for my ethical positions with no mention of god or christianity. but i can’t see how it could ever help to say something ought not be done or ought to be done because it is natural. descriptions of what nature is like can’t tell us what ought to be. for example, biologists will tell you that rape is quite natural.
 
Everybody’s right (except, but don’t take this wrong way, Rocinante). In terms of the order of being and how one thing’s existing depends on another’s, the natural law depends on God. At the same time, in terms of the order of knowledge and how one thing’s being known depends on another’s, the natural law does not directly depend on God. So an atheist could certainly know the natural law, but he or she would be up a creek in trying to provide an ultimate explanation for it.

On what Rocinante said, though, I certainly sympathize. By and large, the main use of natural law language has been to condemn particular classes of sexual behaviors, most often through the unconvincing assertion that the sexual organs were intended for one use rather than another, and this line of argument for sure has the potential to make natural law seem like an attempt to guess at Providence’s intentions and then to impose that guess on others. One way to dispel that impression would be study how natural law applies to other issues such as usury or lying while ignoring its application to sexual issues.
 
chrysostim83 said:
Everybody’s right (except, but don’t take this wrong way, Rocinante). In terms of the order of being and how one thing’s existing depends on another’s, the natural law depends on God. At the same time, in terms of the order of knowledge and how one thing’s being known depends on another’s, the natural law does not directly depend on God. So an atheist could certainly know the natural law, but he or she would be up a creek in trying to provide an ultimate explanation for it.
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an explanation for morality? that is simple. there are behaviors, intentions, attitudes, etc. that lead people to increased well-being and others that lead to suffering and death. no great mystery to be solved here.

what remains is the problem of determining what specific behaviors, practices, intentions, are good and bad. to continue to increase our knowledge about morality as we have learned about everything else over the past five hundred years, we will continue to use our best practices of inquiry, in other words, science, for determining how to increase well-being. morality is in this sense entirely natural.
chrysostim83 said:
On what Rocinante said, though, I certainly sympathize. By and large, the main use of natural law language has been to condemn particular classes of sexual behaviors, most often through the unconvincing assertion that the sexual organs were intended for one use rather than another, and this line of argument for sure has the potential to make natural law seem like an attempt to guess at Providence’s intentions and then to impose that guess on others. One way to dispel that impression would be study how natural law applies to other issues such as usury or lying while ignoring its application to sexual issues.
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that’s right, and such arguments against homosexuality are entirely unconvincing to me.
 
awatkins69 said:
That’s not true at all. If I were an atheist I’d still believe in the natural law and all of the things it entails. In fact, I’ve found that, from a natural law standpoint, I can argue for ethical positions with no mention of God or Christianity.
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Awatkins, But doesn’t aquinas’s natural law assume that God created us with these bodies and he intended us to use them in a way that is in accordance with our nature?

I’m just confused about Natural law. It seems convincing until you think of things like the mouth. I suppose the purpose of the human mouth is to eat, breathe, and talk so is it moral for humans to kiss each other? I wish I could get a clear definitive understanding of it, but I only read vague allusions to Aquinas’s natural law from time to time.

Can someone give me some issues other than sex that Aquinas uses the natural law? I would like to get a good understanding of it.
 
Rocinante said:
an explanation for morality? that is simple. there are behaviors, intentions, attitudes, etc. that lead people to increased well-being and others that lead to suffering and death -therefore there is morality, i.e., people are moral beings]. no great mystery to be solved here.
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So this should be simple too, shouldn’t it?: there are behaviors, intentions, attitudes, etc. that lead lions/whales/crocodiles/starfish/etc. to increased well-being and others that lead to suffering and death -therefore there is morality, i.e., lions/whales/crocodiles/starfish/etc. are moral beings. But obviously the existence of life and death, flourishing and languishing, is not a sufficient condition for morality - right?
that’s right, and such arguments against homosexuality are entirely unconvincing to me.
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before jumping to conclusions about what is or is not convincing moral argument, I think you need to get a better grasp of the fundamental nature of morality.
 
Curious_Hobbit said:
Awatkins, But doesn’t aquinas’s natural law assume that God created us with these bodies and he intended us to use them in a way that is in accordance with our nature?

I’m just confused about Natural law. It seems convincing until you think of things like the mouth. I suppose the purpose of the human mouth is to eat, breathe, and talk so is it moral for humans to kiss each other? I wish I could get a clear definitive understanding of it, but I only read vague allusions to Aquinas’s natural law from time to time.
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Anything that does not hinder our flourishing is permissible. Thus eating, breathing, talking, kissing are all intrinsically permissible. At the same time they can all be immoral if done in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with the wrong person, etc. Natural law applies to all these things. The notion that it is mainly about sex is completely wrong.
Can someone give me some issues other than sex that Aquinas uses the natural law? I would like to get a good understanding of it.
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E.g., piety - justice towards God. Aquinas teaches we have a natural duty, as a matter of justice, to worship God. This is our first natural duty (just as it is the first - or first three - of the ten commandments) and it subsumes all others.
 
Betterave said:
So this should be simple too, shouldn’t it?: there are behaviors, intentions, attitudes, etc. that lead lions/whales/crocodiles/starfish/etc. to increased well-being and others that lead to suffering and death -therefore there is morality, i.e., lions/whales/crocodiles/starfish/etc. are moral beings. But obviously the existence of life and death, flourishing and languishing, is not a sufficient condition for morality - right?
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i thought it went without saying that when we talk about morality we are talking about what we human beings ought to do to maximize wellbeing rather than what rocks, trees, and starfish ought to do to maximize wellbeing.
 
Rocinante said:
i thought it went without saying that when we talk about morality we are talking about what we human beings ought to do to maximize wellbeing rather than what rocks, trees, and starfish ought to do to maximize wellbeing.
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That’s true (except that rocks certainly can’t suffer and die, I should think!), and that’s my point: your explanation of morality was simple, but too simple, since it didn’t explain this obvious fact which, as you correctly note, “goes without saying.” It seems to me that a good explanation shouldn’t leave such an obvious fact completely unexplained.

An analogy: I could try to explain the troubles many frog species are currently having by noting that it often happens that a species of animal dies off or even dies out, so obviously that is what is happening to many species of frogs. But that’s a pretty lame explanation, right? I haven’t even begun to address the specific issue which calls for explanation.
 
Betterave said:
That’s true, and that’s my point: your explanation of morality was simple, but too simple, since it didn’t explain this obvious fact which, as you correctly note, “goes without saying.”
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i wasn’t asked for a definition of morality. i was asked for a basis for it.

at any rate, at least we got that cleared up and have said the things that go without saying.
 
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