In this section I wish to show both that the first principle does not have primarily imperative force and that it is really prescriptive. [74] The mere fact of decision, or the mere fact of feeling one of the sentiments invoked by Hume, is no more a basis for ought than is any other is. Hume misses his own pointthat ought cannot be derivedand Nielsen follows his master. The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1-2, Question 94, Article 2. Natural Law Forum 10, no. Posthumous Character: He died 14 years before the Fall of Jurassic World. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. cit. Moreover, the fact that the precepts of natural law are viewed as self-evident principles of practical reason excludes Maritains account of our knowledge of them. No, Aquinas considers practical reason to be the mind playing a certain role, or functioning in a certain capacity, the capacity in which it is directed to a work. Direction to work is intrinsic to the mind in this capacity; direction qualifies the very functioning of the mind. We may say that the will naturally desires happiness, but this is simply to say that man cannot but desire the attainment of that good, whatever it may be, for which he is acting as an ultimate end. [26] He remarks that the habit of these ends is synderesis, which is the habit of the principles of the natural law. An active principle is going to bring about something or other, or else it would not be an active principle at all. Since from this perspective the good is defined as an end to be pursued, while evil is defined as what is contrary to that end, reason naturally sees as good and therefore to be pursued all those things to which man has a natural inclination, while it sees the contraries of these things as evil and therefore to be avoided. Th., I-II, q. "Good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided" is as axiomatic to practical reason as the laws of logic are to speculative reason. The mistaken interpretation offers as a principle: Do good. Practical reason is mind directed to direct and it directs as it can. If some practical principle is hypothetical because there is an alternative to it, only a practical principle (and ultimately a nonhypothetical practical principle) can foreclose the rational alternative. But the first principle all the while exercises its unobtrusive control, for it drives the mind on toward judgment, never permitting it to settle into inconsistent muddle. as Aquinas states it, is: Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. 94, a. 91, a. Aquinas knew this, and his theory of natural law takes it for granted. Although arguments based on what the text does not say are dangerous, it is worth noticing that Aquinas does not define law as an imperative for the common good, as he easily could have done if that were his notion, but as an ordinance of reason for the common good etc. Grisez 1965): only action that can be understood as conforming with this principle, as carried out under the idea that good is to be sought and bad . There is one obvious difference between the two formulae, Do good and avoid evil, and Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. That difference is the omission of pursuit from the one, the inclusion of it in the other. To such criticism it is no answer to argue that empiricism makes an unnatural cleavage between facts and values. Thus the intelligibility includes the meaning with which a word is used, but it also includes whatever increment of meaning the same word would have in the same use if what is denoted by the word were more perfectly known. a. I-II, 94, 2). at q. 2, c. Fr. Even so accurate a commentator as Stevens introduces the inclination of the will as a ground for the prescriptive force of the first principle. cit. Hence he denies that it is a habit, although he grants that it can be possessed habitually, for one has these principles even when he is not thinking of them. [69] The precepts of natural law, at least the first principle of practical reason, must be antecedent to all acts of our will. In fact, it refers primarily to the end which is not limited to moral value. This early treatment of natural law is saturated with the notion of end. Good is to be Pursued and Evil Avoided: How a Natural Law Approach to Christian Bioethics can Miss Both Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 22, Issue 2, 1 August 2016, Pages 186-212, https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbw004 Published: 02 June 2016 PDF Split View Cite Permissions Share Even so accurate a commentator as Stevens introduces the inclination of the will as a ground for the prescriptive force of the first principle. Thus in experience we have a basis upon which reason can form patterns of action that will further or frustrate the inclinations we feel. But why does reason take these goods as its own? But these references should not be given too much weight, since they refer to the article previously cited in which the distinction is made explicitly. In accordance with this inclination, those things relating to an inclination of this sort fall under natural law. Objectum intellectus practici est bonum ordinabile ad opus, sub ratione veri. The first kind of pleasure is a "moving . Practical reason naturally understands these precepts to be human goods. The true understanding of the first principle of practical reason suggests on the contrary that the alternative to moral goodness is an arbitrary restriction upon the human goods which can be attained by reasonable direction of life. He considers the goodness and badness with which natural law is concerned to be the moral value of acts in comparison with human nature, and he thinks of the natural law itself as a divine precept that makes it possible for acts to have. Aquinas thinks of law as a set of principles of practical reason related to actions themselves just as the principles of theoretical reason are related to conclusions. 57, aa. [72] I have tried above to explain how Aquinas understands tendency toward good and orientation toward end as a dimension of all action. Sertillanges, for example, apparently was influenced by Lottin when he remarked that the good in the formulations of the first principle is a pure form, as Kant would say.[77] Stevens also seems to have come under the influence, as when he states, The first judgment, it may be noted, is first not as a first, explicit psychologically perceived judgment, but as the basic form of all practical judgments.[78]. At the beginning of his treatise on law, Aquinas refers to his previous discussion of the imperative. Obviously no one could ask it who did not hold that natural law consists of precepts, and even those who took this position would not ask about the unity or multiplicity of precepts unless they saw some significance in responding one way or the other. See Walter Farrell, O.P., The Natural Moral Law according to St. Thomas and Suarez (Ditchling, 1930), 103155. Experience can be understood and truth can be known about the things of experience, but understanding and truth attain a dimension of reality that is not actually contained within experience, although experience touches the surface of the same reality. Good is not merely a generic expression for whatever anyone may happen to want,[50] for if this were the case there would not be a single first principle but as many first principles as there are basic commitments, and each first principle would provide the major premise for a different system of rules. This point is merely lexicographical, yet it has caused some confusionfor instance, concerning the relationship between natural law and the law of nations, for sometimes Aquinas contradistinguishes the two while sometimes he includes the law of nations in natural law. Hence he denies that it is a habit, although he grants that it can be possessed habitually, for one. Multiple-Choice. [23] What is noteworthy here is Aquinass assumption that the first principle of practical reason is the last end. Thus, the predicate belongs to the intelligibility of the subject does not mean that one element of a complex meaning is to be found among others within the complex. a. the same as gluttony. 47, a. He manages to treat the issue of the unity or multiplicity of precepts without actually stating the primary precept. 2, and applies in rejecting the position that natural law is a habit in q. Aquinas, of course, never takes a utilitarian view of the value of moral action. [These pertain uniquely to the rational faculty.] A few people laughed, a few people cried. The first precept of natural law is that good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. Although Bourke is right in noticing that Nielsens difficulties partly arise from his positivism, I think Bourke is mistaken in supposing that a more adequate metaphysics could bridge the gap between theory and practice. Because such principles are not equally applicable to all contents of experience, even though they can be falsified by none, we can at least imagine them not to be true. Within experience we have tendencies which make themselves felt; they point their way toward appropriate objects. On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, The good deeds a man has done before defend him.". In the second paragraph of the response Aquinas clarifies the meaning of self-evident. His purpose is not to postulate a peculiar meaning for self-evident in terms of which the basic precepts of natural law might be self-evident although no one in fact knew them. If practical reason ignored what is given in experience, it would have no power to direct, for what-is-to-be cannot come from nothing. The mistaken interpretation inevitably falls into circularity; Aquinass real position shows where moral reasoning can begin, for it works from transmoral principles of moral action. Solubility is true of the sugar. C. Pera, P. Mure, P. Garamello (Turin, 1961), 3: ch. An object of consideration ordinarily belongs to the world of experience, and all the aspects of our knowledge of that object are grounded in that experience. Yet to someone who does not know the intelligibility of the subject, such a proposition will not be self-evident. It is the mind charting what is to be, not merely recording what already is. [57] In libros ethicorum ad Nichomachum, lib. 94, a. The failure to keep this distinction in mind can lead to chaos in normative ethics. Thus natural law has many precepts which are unified in this, that all of these precepts are ordered to practical reasons achievement of its own end, the direction of action toward end. Man discovers this imperative in his conscience; it is like an inscription written there by the hand of God. He judged rule by the few rich (oligarchy) and the many poor (democracy) as "bad" governments. [54] The first principles of practical reason are a source not only for judgments of conscience but even for judgments of prudence; while the former can remain merely speculative and ineffectual, the latter are the very structure of virtuous action.[55]. As a disregard of the principle of contradiction makes discourse disintegrate into nonsense, so a disregard of the first principle of practical reason would make action dissolve into chaotic behavior. Among his formulations are: That which is to be done is to be done, and: The good is an end worth pursuing. Sertillanges, op. Suitability of action is not to a static nature, but to the ends toward which nature inclines. The fact that the mind cannot but form the primary precept and cannot think practically except in accordance with it does not mean that the precept exercises its control covertly. The good which is the end is the principle of moral value, and at least in some respects this principle transcends its consequence, just as being in a certain respect is a principle (of beings) that transcends even the most fundamental category of beings. Similarly, actual being does not eliminate unrealized possibilities by demanding that they be not only self-consistent but also consistent with what already is; rather, it is partly by this demand that actual being grounds possibility. [64] Every participation is really distinct from that in which it participatesa principle evidently applicable in this case, for the eternal law is God while the law of nature is a set of precepts. Aquinas assumes no a priori forms of practical reason. Some interpreters mistakenly ask whether the word good in the first principle has a transcendental or an ethical sense. nonconceptual, nonrational knowledge by inclination or connaturality. 1-2, q. by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. Consequently, the first principle in the practical reason is one founded on the nature of good, viz., that good is that which all things seek after. Hence first principles must be supplemented by other principles and by a sound reasoning process if correct conclusions are to be reached. The failure to keep this distinction in mind can lead to chaos in normative ethics. Reason does not regulate action by itself, as if the mere ability to reason were a norm. Hence I shall begin by emphasizing the practical character of the principle, and then I shall proceed to clarify its lack of imperative force. Thus actions are considered good or bad only by virtue of extrinsic consequences. At first it appears, he says, simply as a truth, a translation into moral language of the principle of identity. The natural law, nevertheless, is one because each object of inclination obtains its role in practical reasons legislation only insofar as it is subject to practical reasons way of determining actionby prescribing how ends are to be attained. The difference between the two points of view is no mystery. Is to be is the copula of the first practical principle, not its predicate; the gerundive is the mode rather than the matter of law. If some practical principle is hypothetical because there is an alternative to it, only a practical principle (and ultimately a nonhypothetical practical principle) can foreclose the rational alternative. Without such a foundation God might compel behavior but he could never direct human action. The kits jeopardize people's privacy, physical health, and financial well-being. The object of the practical intellect is not merely the actions men perform, but the. 3, c; q. This is exactly the mistake Suarez makes when he explains natural law as the natural goodness or badness of actions plus preceptive divine law. Act according to the precepts of the state, and never against. Rather, Aquinas proceeds on the supposition that meanings derive from things known and that experienced things themselves contain a certain degree of intelligible necessity.[14]. 95, a. The difference between the two formulations is only in the content considered, not at all in the mode of discourse. 4, d. 33, q. The first article raises the issue: Whether natural law is a habit. Aquinas holds that natural law consists of precepts of reason, which are analogous to propositions of theoretical knowledge.