Some Observations on Natural Law

REVISTA QUAESTIO IURIS

This paper holds that St. Thomas Aquinas' conception of natural law that was discussed in the medieval era is highly relevant in the light of the contemporary realities. Thomas Aquinas opines that natural law is the law that holds sway over every being, a law that is immutable, eternal and is expressed and experienced in and through several ways by all human beings. The thought of Aquinas on natural law sees it as having divine origin and having a teleological orientation towards the divine. Several scholars such as Hugo, Locke, Fortin have carried out diverse analysis on Aquinas' thought but this thought of this great scholar needs to be reexamined in the light of the contemporary discourse in natural law and its relations to both Divine and positive law. This research work is expository in nature and analytical in approach with primary aim of examining the thought of Aquinas on natural law.

3. Aquinas' Typology of law 4. Natural law from the scope of other scholars 5. Understanding natural law via Aquinas' idea in relation to legal philosophy 6. Reactions to Aquinas' notion of natural law 7. Evaluation/ conclusion

Against recent commentators such as Armstrong, D'Arcy, Copleston, O'Connor, Bourke, and Grisez, I argue that the logic referred to by Thomas in his "Treatise on Law" should not be understood metaphorically. Instead, it involves a chain of syllogisms, beginning with the synderesis principle, followed by primary, secondary, and tertiary principles, and ends with a practical syllogism. In showing this, I attack the view that the synderesis principle, "good ought to be done and evil avoided," is tautological. Second, I show the syllogistic relation between this and the more subordinate moral principles. Finally, I argue that the practical syllogism also involves a logical deduction, where the minor premise is a propositional attitude of perception, and the conclusion is an action which expresses a proposition. What emerges is a more precise account of how actions are related to natural law.

2023

Legis, quae nihil est aliud quam quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum commun qui curam communitatis habet, prom. 1 Properly understood, natural law is premised on the law's function within a given community. The 'marrow' that underlies this idea is that there exists a correlation between rationality and legality such that laws that are deficient in the former are necessarily deficient in the latter. 2 In his seminal Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas propounds the notion that "an unjust law is not a law", asserting that the law's principal function is to foster the common good by providing decisive reasons to act in the pursuit of that good. 3 Contemporary natural law theorists such as Mark C. Murphy have sought to temper the strictness of this dictum to mean that unjust laws or lex iniusta are necessarily legally invalid, while advocating for a connection between non-defective cases of law and reasonableness. 4 Strong and weak readings are distinguished. I will argue that the weak natural law thesis ('WNLT') suggested by Murphy challenges the positivist contention that legal validity is predicated upon its sources rather than its merits. He does so by appealing to the law's functions and conditions for defectiveness. 5 The main disadvantage of this model is that it does not appeal explicitly to the common good. My primary argument is that the WNLT is more plausible, however, it could be strengthened in one minor respect via an appeal to the 'common good.' Such an approach would enable us to assess both the conditions that underlie a law's defectiveness and the function of law.

The American Journal of Jurisprudence, 1981

hereinafter cited as FPPR. McInerny's references are to an abridged version in Anthony Kenny, ed., Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: 1970), pp. 340-382. But the abridgement is not, as McInerny assumes (McI, p.1), a "reprint" of the original article. 3. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), hereinafter cited as NLNR. 4. NLNR, p. v.

Catholic Social Science Review, 2007

J. Budziszewski has been a leading advocate for natural law theory over the past twenty years. His numerous works focus on articulating a conception of natural law rooted in the obviousness of some moral principles: "What we can't not know" as he memorably titles one of his books. This essay points out how Catholic philosophers and theologians have questioned whether faith and reason can be properly balanced in modern thought. It suggests that a Catholic natural law theory must also seek to balance faith and reason, but this poses a challenge to the obviousness of the moral principles that approaches like Budziszewski's seek.

2008

The question what is natural law provokes so many different answers as it has been recognized by many writers. It has had different meanings and has served entirely different purposes. Yet, there have been different theories on it and despite these different doctrines, it has for long been asserted that there are principles of natural law. Indeed, natural law thinking has occupied a pervasive role in the realms of ethics, politics and morality. Proponents of Natural Law generally posit that, the existence of law is based on a higher law dictated by reason. The essence of the Natural Law may be said to lie in the constant assertion that there are objective moral principles which depend upon the nature of the universe and which can be discovered by reason. Thus the Natural Law school generally posits that a law that is immoral is no law, therefore if a law is made and that law is not in accordance with the individual’s sense of morality, the individual should not obey the law. Thomas Aquinas for instance held the view that, if the king made an immoral law, the king himself by virtue of making that immoral law had become a rebel against the laws God, and therefore people had not only a right but also a duty to oppose that king. However, Finis argues that a legal system is there to further the common good. Therefore any disobedient act that tends to weaken the legal system as a whole may be unjustified. He thinks however, that sometimes a law may have to be obeyed, even if it seems immoral, because disobeying it might weaken the whole system. This digest shall include the theories of Thomas Aquinas, Lon Fuller and Finnis and the relevance or otherwise of Natural Law in contemporary legal studies.

T. Murphy (ed.), Western Jurisprudence (Dublin, Thomson Round Hall, 2004), pp. 94–125, 2004

This essay offers an account of the natural law theory of the Christian theologian, St Thomas Aquinas, and argues that both proponents and opponents of natural law tend generally to misrepresent his theory. The essay first examines pre-Thomist theology, in particular the neoplatonic and voluntarist thought of St Augustine, and contrasts this with the Christian rationalism developed subsequently by St Thomas along Aristotelian lines. Unlike St Augustine and other earlier Christian thinkers St Thomas identified four types of law — the eternal law, the divine law, the natural law, and positive, human law — and the essay sets out the nature of, as well as the inter-relationship between, each of these types. Attention is paid in particular to the role of “synderesis” in practical knowledge and reasoning, and the Thomist conception of natural law is shown to refer primarily not to any “law” that resembles a set of commands but rather to the moral experience of being human, or, to put it another way, to the responsibility intrinsic to being human.