Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of Natural Law

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3.1 Basic image to explain Natural Law

By way of beginning I shall use an extremely crude analogy, but one that, because of its simplicity, may do more than a more sophisticated account to make its point. Manufactured products, whether simple or more complicated, are as often as not accompanied, when they are bought, by the maker’s instructions or rules of how to use them. These rules are not arbitrary fiats of the manufacturer which might be entirely different from what they are. They tell the buyer how to get the best out of the product; if it is used in such and such a way, it will last, and perform its function well; if used in some other way, it will be broken, or give indifferent service.

What the manufacturer is doing is to tell the buyer what he knows of the nature of his product. Admittedly, we have here to do with an artifact, and the maker’s knowledge is based on his having designed the product for a purpose. But his rules do not reflect this knowledge alone; they are to some extent based also on the knowledge he has of the materials used – they will stand up to certain usages while to others they will not.There is some sense in which the rules listed by the maker are not simply written on his paper list of instructions. They reflect what may be said to be built into the products. In this sense they are the “rules” or “laws” of its very make-up; the “rules” of its nature.

Nor is it even necessary that a list of instructions should be provided. It would theoretically be possible for the buyer to examine the thing, take it to pieces and reassemble it, and arrive at the same set of rules; he would then have read them off the product itself.All this provides an analogy, though only a partial one, to natural law. Instead of manufacturers’ products, we have to do with human beings.

3.2 Natural Law means our reason studying how nature works

There could, theoretically, be issued with every human baby rules for his/her proper “use” – describing the way he/she is to be used to get the best out of him/her, to see that, as a human being, he/she finds proper fulfilment. But in fact, of course, no list of rules is issued. It is left for people to discover for themselves the “rules” built into their nature as human beings, to discover how to use themselves if they are to get the best out of themselves and find their proper human fulfilment. And by natural law is meant not these “rules” as built into them (my use throughout of inverted commas has been intentional, to call attention to the fact that such “rules” are scarcely properly so called) but these “rules” as recognized by people on reflection upon what it is to be human and to find human fulfilment.3.3 Natural Law is reason assessing nature within the total human contextHere it is important to insist that “to be human” must be understood in the total human context. Arguments for something’s being in accordance with or against the natural law often enough appear to forget this. One example may illustrate this point. What Dr. Rock (note 18) cites as “a typical statement of the conventional Catholic position” runs as follows:

“The reason why the artificial practice of birth control is immoral is written into the very nature of the sexual organs and the marital act itself. The sex organs were made by God to reproduce the human race. Only when husband and wife unite naturally is the union of sperm possible. Therefore the primary purpose of the marital act is the conception of human life.” (note 19) Apart from a good many things wrong with this argument as it stands, and the fact that if it proves anything it proves too much for it would be equally applicable to birth control applied to animals, the whole approach appears to me wrong. For it seems to suppose that by a simple inspection of physical organs, rules can be reached for human behaviour. But man is not simply a complex of organs. “Human beings define themselves in relation to the world, and in relation to those around them.” (note 20)

To discover what it is to be human and to achieve properly human fulfilment, account must be taken of the human being not simply as a biological object, not even simply biologically (which would introduce a whole consideration of his ecology), but in the specifically human dimension in which he/she enters into communication with others at a human level. “Natural” to human beings is that which constitutes them not merely in isolation, but in relation to the whole world-for-humans which they create around themselves (the highly artificial world of civilization), and in relation to other persons who stand not simply as objects but as other subjects around them. This is a point to which we shall have occasion later to return. It needs here to be made very forcefully because of the frequency with which it is overlooked in natural law arguments.

3.4 Natural Law is human reason not a ‘rule of nature’

When we insisted earlier that the natural law is not to be taken as referring to the “rules” built into a man’s make-up, but to his recognition of these “rules”, we touched, in fact, upon the difference between the natural law and what may be called “the laws of nature (if we may use the latter expression in a rather restricted sense). We may say that the “rules” built into the make-up of things – whether of inanimate objects, plants, animals, human beings – constitute in each the “law” of their nature. But only in human beings, with their capacity to reflect upon and know themselves, can there be any question of natural law, the recognition for themselves of how they are to act; and only in their case, with their freedom of action, can there be a responsible following or deviation from the “rules” of his nature (and even this only to a limited extent).

Intermediate observation

sIt will now be seen more clearly why it was possible to say that the concept of natural law is not dependent on the existence of God. For whether a human being comes from the hand of a Creator or not he/she must be said to have some particular make-up. It will also be seen in what sense, and in what sense alone, the natural law is the law of God. It is only to the extent that God has made the creature, and made it carrying within itself the “rules” of its make-up. So far as the natural law is a faithful recognition of these rules, it is the faithful reflection of the designs of God, or, as Aquinas says, a participation in the eternal law, which is the ordering wisdom of God.

The analogy so far pursued is however a very insufficient one. We must now take account of two objections that may be made to it.The first is that it would be very odd to say that a maker’s instructions were in any usual sense obligatory. However threatening the form of words he may use (‘Don’t do this, Do this’, etc.), all they amount to is this: ‘if you wish to get the best service out of this product, act in such and such a way’. Such rules are, in the last analysis, descriptive rather than prescriptive.The second objection to the account of natural law so far given is that whereas the natural law has traditionally been taken to be permanent and immutable, it may very plausibly be argued that human nature (prescinding anyway from the difficulty that the concept of nature presents to the contemporary mind) is in constant process of development according to his cultural evolution.

3.5 In Natural Law the first principle is the inclination to do good, specific conclusions are actions

I can do no more than sketch an outline of an answer to these objections. Certainly, in regard to the first, I do not wish to say that the natural law for man is simply to take the form: ‘if you wish to get the best out of yourself, act thus’. To say this would be in fact to reduce “ought” to “is”, the moral judgment to a matter of fact.When St Thomas Aquinas speaks of law, he speaks of it as a dictamen practicae rationis, a dictate of the practical reason. And he constantly draws a parallel between the working of the practical reason and that of the theoretic or speculative reason. As in theoretical reasoning we reach conclusions from premises, or what he calls first principles, so do we reach by practical reason conclusions from first principles. The conclusions of practical reasoning are for him decision as to action; the first principles by which we reach such conclusions constitute for him the natural law, or the precepts of the natural law.

Now, though this parallel is in many ways illuminating, it may be misleading if we draw it too closely. It is tempting to think of the process of practical reason going roughly as follows: “the good is always to be done; but such and such is good; therefore such and such is to be done.” But where this, I think, is mistaken is that it turns practical reasoning into just another piece of theory. And from this we can be saved if we notice that Aquinas elsewhere refers to the “conclusions” of the practical reason as actions – not just as decisions to act, still less as conclusions about what ought to be done. He speaks, also, of the first principle of practical reasoning, as the end (finis) itself.

What I wish to suggest is that if we are to understand him aright, the process of practical reasoning is not simply a parallel to theoretic reasoning with only the difference that it is concerned with things to be done. Rather, to put it extravagantly, it is “a piece of doing” – the outcome is action, while the initial principle is the bent (the inclination) of the will to the good, to its end or finis. We do not start upon this process by a theoretic statement that the good is to be done, but by the will’s “going for” the good. It is true that the “bent” of the will to the good is within the perspective of a cognitive recognition, for it is not a blind impulse but consciously orientated to the good recognized as such; and it is true that given this conscious bent, the reason further intervenes to intimate that such and such conduct is in fact recognizably good.

But the initial dynamism of the will’s “bent” to the good carries right through the process. Thus the “conclusion” is not a theoretic conclusion about what is to be done; rather that initial “bent” of the will to good, instructed by the reason’s intimation of what is good, carries through then and there to action, or at the least to a decision which is to be understood as already an inception of action rather than a piece of theory.Now what this implies is that the “ought” judgment never reduces to a simple “is” assertion, and that basically there is an initial obligation arising from our natural bent to good (natural not in any sense contrasted with rational, for it is not blindly impulsive, but natural in the sense of being an ineluctable tendency of our human make-up). And, in fact, Aquinas does insist that though the precepts of natural law are matters of reason, they take place always within the dynamism of the will and are shot through with its force.(note 26)This is why the “rules” built into human nature, unlike those in any other being, provide the basis for the obligatory character of natural law. It is not a question of “if you will achieve your end, you should do this”, but “you are bent necessarily upon your end, and this you must do as the means you recognize”.

‘Theoretic reason’ means the mind focusing on finding out what is true and what is not true. ‘Practical reason’ means the mind focusing on action: what ought to be done and what not.

3.6 The basic impulse of Natural Law is that good needs to be done, evil avoided

The parallel that we have been discussing between the principles of reasoning in the theoretic order and those in the practical order lends itself to another observation.When Aquinas speaks of principles in the theoretic order he does so with considerable ambiguity.

* At times he speaks as if such principles were the premises in a piece of reasoning.
* But at other times his first principles are such as the principle of contradiction, of excluded middle, etc. Now from such principles it is impossible to derive any argument. The truth is that by first principles he may mean the fundamental axioms in any given field of enquiry.
* But at other times he means principles immanent to the whole process of reasoning – not premises in an argument, but the structure without which no argument would be coherent – not axioms but rules of thought.

Now rules one cannot get on without, and, to the extent that one is rational, one cannot be without. But the principles which constitute the premises of an argument, axioms, are a matter either of prescription or of notification from experience.There is a parallel to this ambiguity in Aquinas’ account of natural law in terms of practical reasoning. When he speaks of it as constituting the first principles of practical reasoning he seems at times to think of it as comprising the rules without which no such “reasoning”, or, in the light of what we have said, no such piece of action, can get under way – the purely formal rules therein involved. It is in this sense that the first principle of all is that the good is to be done, evil avoided (and in all that follows it is necessary to take these rather intellectualist expressions as referring not to a theoretic judgment, but a shorthand expression to refer to the dynamic bent of the will under the guidance of understanding to which we have already referred).

Thus it is that Aquinas can speak of “the light of natural reason, by which we distinguish good and evil (qui discernimus quid sit bonum et malum), which belongs to natural law”, and can write, “The first principle of practical reason is founded on the notion of the good, the notion which is that the good is that which all have an inclination to (appetunt). The first precept of the law is therefore this: the good is to be done and pursued, the evil avoided.” In other words, the basic rule of morality consists in the discrimination of good from evil; and without this there can be no decisions as to conduct nor any obligation attaching to them, any more than in the theoretic order there can be any possibility of reaching conclusions without accepting the rules of reasoning. At this basic level it makes sense to say that no man can be without knowledge of the natural law. It is highly doubtful whether any human being (whatever his outward profession) can ever be denuded of this radical sense of right and wrong, or devoid of the urge to pursue that which presents itself to him in the guise of good, or avoid that which appears as evil. And if there were such a person, he/she would forfeit his/her claim to being human, and be, in the moral order, what in the order of theoretic truth is a lunatic, or an infant (and even lunatics and infants have at least the radical capacity for, in the one case, acceptance of the rules of reasoning, and in the other, discrimination between good and evil).

3.7 The “first principles” of Natural Law – on preserving life, bodily health and pursuing reason – which derive from the basic impulse and experience are general, not specific

But so far we remain at the purely formal level; from the rules of reasoning, or the rules of morality, no conclusions and no decisions can be elicited. These rules need to operate in a given content, and the most general content is supplied by “first principles” taken in the sense of axioms. Such axioms, apart from the case of purely formal sciences where they may be prescribed, are discovered in experience. And thus it is that Aquinas will speak of the natural law as comprising, besides its purely formal rules, the broad recognition, based upon experience (of the most general sort) of particular heads of goods. Such recognition constitutes the principles of natural law in the second sense of “first principles”. These primitive recognitions of, and urges to, particular goods he classifies under three heads which we may call the good of individual survival, biological good, and the good of human communication.

“* First, there is in human beings an inclination to good according to the nature which they have in common with all substances . . . in accordance with this inclination everything by which the life of a human being is preserved, and its opposite held in check, pertains to the natural law.
* Second, there is in human beings an inclination to things which concern them more specifically according to the nature which they share with other animals: and it is in virtue of this inclination that those things which nature has taught to all animals are said to be of the natural law; such as the intercourse of male and female, the education of offspring, and so on.
* Thirdly, there is in human beings an inclination to good according to the nature of reason, which is special to them; thus human beings have a natural inclination to know the truth, and to live in society: and so whatever pertains to this inclination pertains to the natural law.” (note 29) Upon these urges or primary recognitions of quite general goods in the concrete, the good is now no longer apprehended purely formally), one cannot, I think, immediately base principles such as “Thou shalt not commit suicide”, “Thou shalt not practice birth control”, “Thou shalt not lie”, and so on, but rather upon principles of the form “some arrangements should be made for the preservation of life”, “some for the organization of the family”, “some for the organization of society”, in each case leaving it open to further experience and enquiry what the arrangements are to be. Or, as Eric d’Arcy puts it, (note 30) the primary precepts of the natural law are not of the form “adultery is wrong, murder is wrong”, but of the form “sexuality demands some form of regulation”, “there is a difference between killing a rabbit and killing a man”. And when this is understood, it becomes much more plausible to say that such primary precepts of the natural law “are everywhere identical, immutable and ineradicable”.(note 31)

3.8 Natural Law comprises also specific conclusions deriving from the first principles, conclusions about which there can be confusion

But if this is the only content of the natural law, it provides us with singularly little guidance in human conduct, even though already what it does is not negligible, since it provides us in principle with the basic possibility of examining and justifying human decisions and conduct instead of leaving us to suppose that they are matters about which there can be no argument, and for which there can be no criterion of obligation. However, St Thomas goes further than this. He thinks that from these quite general precepts we may derive others by way of conclusions. (note 32) And if it seems that we have lost sight, now, of his description of the natural law as consisting of the principles of practical reasoning to exchange it for something that comprises also conclusions, we should remember that principles have to be thought of relatively to conclusions, as it were on a sliding scale. What is a conclusion in relation to higher principles may be itself a principle in relation to conclusions to be drawn from it.

The natural law has different levels; basically it consists of those highest principles which are simply given and indemonstrable – whether as the rules of moral conduct or as the primary axioms of an entirely general moral awareness; but it comprises also anything which may be derived, by way of conclusion, from such axioms, and which may serve in turn as principles in reaching individual decisions as to conduct. In this way, the natural law is indefinitely extendable, as we come into fuller and fuller possession of what we see to be derivable from the original premises. But, and it is important to notice this, such development is not to be had without constant reference to a wider and more sensitive assessment of experience; nor is it to be had without danger of making mistakes, and without exacting enquiry.

The process of practical reasoning is no more infallible, and no surer of its results, nor is it any more ready-made, than the parallel process of theoretic reasoning whereby we attempt to reach speculative truths. If, in pursuing more and more detailed conclusions within the body of natural law, we find greater and greater confusion and disagreement, we should be no more disconcerted at this than we are when we find ourselves beset by perplexities in the pursuit of truth. But, just as our pursuit of truth is not to be abandoned as an impossibility and a futile waste of time merely because we find it difficult to establish what is the truth, so our accommodation to the requirements of natural law is not to be given up or seen as useless merely because we find it impossible in practice to reach agreement. Truth is not less truth, and an ideal to be sought, for its not being adequately found; and the natural law is not less the law, and a court of appeal, for its not being adequately agreed.

3.9 The specific conclusions derived from Natural Law may differ from person to person according to specific circumstances

In relation to the conclusions to be drawn from the primary principles of practical reasoning the parallel with those drawn in the theoretic order may again however be misleading. Here St Thomas himself puts us on our guard:

“There is a difference between theoretic and practical reason. Theoretic reason is concerned with what is necessary, with what cannot be otherwise: truth is discovered in its special conclusions without exceptions, as it is also in its general principles. But practical reason, being concerned with human conduct, has to do with the contingent. And so, though there is a certain necessity about its general principles, the further it descends into detail, the more it may encounter exceptions. Thus in the theoretic order there is the same truth for everyone, though it may not be equally recognized by all except in its very general principles. But in the practical order there is not the same truth or practical rightness for everybody, as far as detail is concerned, but only in general principles (and even in those for whom there is the same rightness it may not be equally recognized by all).. ..
[For example] it is right for all to act according to reason. And from this it follows in detail that things borrowed should be returned to their owner. This is right for the most part (Ut in pluribus), but it can in some cases be harmful, and so against reason, as for example if what is returned comes to be used treasonably. . .

And the further one descends into details, the more does this happen. Thus the natural law in its first general principles is the same for all both as to what is right and in their recognition of it. But in relation to details which come as conclusions from those general principles, it is the same for all for the most part (both as to what is right and in their knowledge of it), but may, in some cases, admit of exception as to what is right because of particular circumstances as well as not being known to all.”(note 33)3.10 The detailed conclusions of Natural Law will change if the circumstances changeThere are two important admissions made here. First, that to maintain a theory of natural law is not to be committed to the view that everything in it must be clearly recognized by all people. St Thomas envisages failure to recognize the more detailed requirements of the law as coming not only from inability to argue straight, but also from the effects of passion, lack of culture, and bad habits. (note 34) Secondly, that what is laid down by the law has not a rigidly universal application.

All this prepares the way to our considering the second objection that we raised in connection with the analogy of the manufacturer’s list of rules. Is it not the case that human nature, upon which the whole elaborate fabric of the natural law is based, may change and develop? And may we not then say that what was once right, in changed circumstances no longer has application? I think this question has to be given rather more sympathetic consideration than Catholic tradition has been inclined to give it in the past. I have already insisted that when we consider human nature, consider what it is to be human and find human fulfilment, we must take human nature in its total dimensions. To be human involves being in a world-for-human-beings which is very largely of human beings’ own making; it is to be engaged in a world of communication, taking communication in the broadest of senses to refer not only to linguistic communication but the whole network of artificial transactions and conventions that human beings in society creates about them.

Human fulfilment is to be judged not simply in biological terms, but in terms of the full realization of an individual’s personality in relation with other persons against the background of this network of communications. That will be right for each which enables each to fulfil themselves in this dimension, and that wrong which does not. There is a sense in which the existentialist affirmation that human beings create their essence by the decisions they takes rather than that they come into the world with a ready-made essence represents a profound insight. To be forever progressing is a characteristic of human beings; the world around them is their world, the world for them, the world of their own ceaseless making and realization. (note 35) And this seems to mean two things: first, that they have always new conclusions to draw from the general principles of the natural law, as they are confronted by new situations of their own invention; and secondly that conclusions earlier drawn may, in the changed circumstances, have no further application, or only a modified application. It is not that the basic principles of natural law are subject to change; but that there can and must be new applications in detail, and that some applications that held in particular circumstances in new circumstances may no longer hold.