St Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition
T. Murphy (ed.), Western Jurisprudence (Dublin, Thomson Round Hall, 2004), pp. 94–125
32 Pages Posted: 7 Nov 2014 Last revised: 22 Nov 2014
Date Written: 2004
Abstract
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.
Keywords: St Thomas Aquinas, St Augustine, neoplatonism, Christian rationalism, Summa Theologiae, natural law, synderesis
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