## 1. Interpretations and method



Aquinas' moral and political philosophy has to be reconstructed
from his theological treatises and commentaries and his commentaries
on Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics* and the first two and
half books of Aristotle's *Politics.* Its proper
interpretation has been a matter of some difficulty from the time of
his death in 1274. In recent decades the way to understand some
aspects of its foundational concepts and logic has been strenuously
disputed, not least among those philosophers who see it as offering a
broadly sound answer to radical scepticism about value and obligation,
an answer truer and more human than Kant's or Bentham's or
their (in the broadest sense) successors'. A partial sample of
these controversies is given in 1.1 and 1.2 below, which state the
more common interpretation on two strategic issues and then elaborate
objections to those interpretations. The remainder of this article
then proceeds on the basis that there is merit in these objections,
and that the study of Aquinas' ethics as a systematic and
strictly philosophical work of practical reason (at its most general
and reflective) is still in its infancy. Further textual support, from
over 60 of Aquinas' works, can be found in Finnis 1998.
Criticisms of the interpretation of Aquinas' theory that is
proposed in that work can be found in Paterson 2006, Wheatley 2015,
Long 2004, and earlier in Lisska 1998 and McInerny 1997. These works
argue in various ways that that interpretation denies or neglects the
metaphysical foundations of the principles of practical reason that it
offers to identify. Support, in general, for the approach in this
article will be found in Rhonheimer 2012 and 2000. The first issue
underlying this debate is whether the order of inquiry and coming to
know (the epistemological order) is the same as the order of
metaphysical dependence. The second issue is whether we can settle the
first issue by using the epistemological axiom that we come to an
(ultimately metaphysical) understanding of dynamic natures by
understanding capacities through their actuations - which, in
turn, we come to understand by understanding their objects. Does or
does not that axiom entail that understanding of objects such as the
intelligible goods (the objects of acts of will) precedes an adequate
knowledge of nature, notwithstanding that (as is agreed on all sides)
in the metaphysical order of intrinsic dependence such objects could
not be willed or attained but for the given nature of (in this case)
the human person?


### 1.1 Is the notion of "distinctive human function" foundational for Aquinas?



One line of understanding is exemplified by the section on
"moral doctrine" in McInerny and O'Callaghan 2005.
It gives a priority to Aristotle's arguments attempting to
identify a "distinctive" or "peculiarly human"
function, arguments which proceed on the postulate that, if each kind
of craft has its own characteristic function and mode of operation, so
must human life as a whole have an "overall" and
"distinctively characteristic" function and
*operatio*; and the determination of this should decisively
shape the whole of (the rest of) ethics and political theory. To this
standard interpretation other interpreters, such as Grisez, Finnis,
and Rhonheimer, object on grounds such as these:



(i) Aquinas' austerely self-disciplined purposes as an
Aristotelian commentator make quite insecure any assumption that he
treats as fundamental to his own thinking any and every proposition
which is treated by Aristotle as fundamental and expounded in
Aquinas' relevant commentary without adverse comment.



(ii) The "*distinctive function*" argument is not
prominent or adduced as fundamental (or at all) in Aquinas' more
free-standing treatments of morality.



(iii) The argument is treated by Aquinas' commentary as yielding
the conclusion that *felicitas* (human happiness or
flourishing) consists in a complete life lived in accordance with
reason and hence, by entailment, with virtue. But in the *Summa
Theologiae* this is argued to be only an imperfect and incomplete
*felicitas*, and the problematic character of such a concept is
apparent from the *Summa*'s definition of
*felicitas* (and synonymously *beatitudo*) as perfect
good and complete satisfaction of all desires.



(iv) The "distinctive function" argument is inherently
unsatisfying in ways that could hardly have failed to be apparent to
so able a philosopher as Aquinas. (a) In Aquinas' rendering, it
depends on the postulate that "nature does nothing in
vain", which in turn depends, according to Aquinas, on the
premise that nature is the product of divine creative rationality, a
premise which Aquinas himself argues is, though provable, by no means
self-evident. (b) It seems arbitrary to assume that, if there is an
appropriate function or *operatio* of human beings, it must be
peculiar to them. For peculiarity or distinctiveness has no inherent
relationship to practical fittingness, and in fact Aquinas elsewhere
denies that rationality is peculiar to human beings since he holds
that there are other intelligent creatures (the angels, understood to
be created minds unmixed with matter, occupying what would otherwise
be a surprising gap in the hierarchy of beings which ascends from the
most material and inactive kinds through the vegetative kinds, the
animal kinds, and the rational animal humankind, to the one utterly
active and intelligent, non-dependent and uncreated divine being).



(v) The root of the weakness of the "peculiar/distinctive
function" argument is that it is looking in the wrong direction,
towards a metaphysical proposition concerning the nature of things,
instead of towards what is intelligibly good as an opportunity,
perhaps even the supreme opportunity, for me and anyone like me (any
human being). And it is a truly fundamental methodological axiom of
Aquinas's philosophy, from beginning to end of his works, that
in coming to understand the nature of a dynamic reality such as human
being, one must first understand its capacities, to understand which
one must first understand its act(ivities), to understand which one
must first come to understand those activities' objects. But the
objects of human activities are intelligible opportunities such as
coming to know, being alive and healthy, being in friendship with
others, and so forth - objects whose attractiveness,
fittingness, opportuneness, or appropriateness is in no way dependent
upon, or even much enhanced by, the thought that they are
distinctively characteristic of human beings as opposed to other
animals.



(vi) The fact that an *operatio* is distinctive of human beings
does not entail that that *operatio* is truly valuable, still
less that it is obligatory, or that it is more valuable than
alternative and incompatible ways or objectives of acting. For a
premise containing no evaluative or normative term cannot entail a
conclusion including such a term. If, on the other hand, the postulate
that a certain *operatio* is the proper (or even a proper)
function of human beings is asserted to be itself evaluative and/or
normative rather than, or as well as, factual/descriptive, then some
account is needed of the postulate's source or justification (or
self-evidence?). Aquinas has a fairly careful account of the
self-evidence of a number of foundational evaluative and normative
principles, but only one or two of them are said by him to point to
kinds of *operatio* distinctive of human beings; two of the
foundational principles are explicitly said by him to direct to goods
that are *not* peculiar to human beings.



(vii) The analogy comparing one's life as a whole to arts and
crafts, each with its own distinctive function, *operatio*,
seems weak, questionable and indeed question-begging. For life as a
whole is open-ended both in having no knowable duration (see 2.2.
below) and in requiring judgment about the choice-worthiness of ends
as well as means and techniques (see 4.4.1. below). Moreover, Aquinas
like Aristotle regularly insists on the irreducibility of the
distinction or distinctions between, on the one hand, *ars* or
*factio* (arts, crafts, techniques) and *actio* (the
precise subject-matter of morality and morally significant
choices).


### 1.2 Is the identification of "man's last end" foundational for Aquinas?



Along with very many other Thomistic commentators, McInerny and
O'Callaghan 2005 and Celano 2003 treat Aquinas' moral
philosophy as founded, like his moral theology, upon his determination
of what *felicitas* (= *perfecta beatitudo* and
Aristotle's *eudaimonia*) truly is, a determination made
in the opening *quaestiones* of the Second Part of his
*Summa Theologiae*, where he elaborately argues that complete
*beatitudo* or *felicitas* consists in an
uninterruptible vision of God (and, in God, of the other truths we
naturally desire to know), something possible for us only in a life
- in many respects another life - after death. But it is
possible to regard Aquinas' argument in those
*quaestiones* as dictated by the needs of a specifically
theological pedagogy, as open to telling objections, and as detachable
from (or at least as methodologically posterior to) the working and
sound foundations of his moral philosophy and his treatment of
specific moral issues - detachable, that is to say, in a way
that Aquinas would not need to regard as inappropriate in the
different context of today's discourse. This article will treat
Aquinas' ethics and political theory as detachable from his
theology of life's ultimate point, and will take seriously his
emphatic and reiterated thesis that, apart from the divinely given and
super-natural opportunity of *perfecta beatitudo* (a gift about
which philosophy as such knows nothing), the only ultimate end and
*beatitudo* (fulfillment) for human beings is living in a
completely reasonable, morally excellent (*virtuosus*) way.
That thesis entails that philosophy's main account of morality
need and should contain no claim about what perfect happiness consists
in.



Despite surface appearances, Aquinas is conscious of Aristotle's
failure to settle whether it is contemplation or political
*praxis* that is the essence of human fulfillment. He therefore
attempts, more intently than Aristotle did in any surviving work, to
identify what the first principles of ethics and politics are, and to
do so without any premises or presuppositions about a unitary
"last end of human existence".



Moreover, when Aquinas does refer to *beatitudo* as fundamental
to identifying the principles of practical reason and the natural
(because reasonable) moral law, he in the same breath emphasizes that
this is not to be thought of as the happiness of the deliberating and
acting individual alone, but rather as the *common* flourishing
of the community, ultimately the whole community of humankind:



The ultimate end of human life is *felicitas* or
*beatitudo*... So the main concern of law [including the
natural (moral) law] must be with directing towards
*beatitudo*. Again, since every part stands to the whole as
incomplete stands to complete, and individual human beings are each
parts of a complete community, law's appropriate concern is
necessarily with directing towards common *felicitas* ...
that is, to *common* good. (*ST* I-II q. 90 a. 2.)



The "complete community" mentioned here is the political
community, with its laws, but the proposition implicitly refers also
to the community of all rational creatures, to whose common good
morality (the moral law) directs us.


#### 1.2.1 Philosophy and theology in Aquinas' theory of morality and politics



Detaching Aquinas' philosophy from his theology is compatible
with distinctions he firmly delineates at the beginning of his two
mature theological syntheses, the *Summa contra Gentiles* and
the *Summa Theologiae*. (i) There are truths, he says, which
are accessible to natural reason, that is, to ordinary experience
(including the specialized observations of natural scientists),
insight, and reflection; and these include practical truths about good
and evil, right and wrong. (ii) Many of those truths of natural reason
are confirmed, and even clarified, by divine revelation, that is, the
propositions communicated directly or inferentially in the life and
works of Christ, as transmitted by his immediate followers and
prepared for in the Jewish scriptures accepted by those followers as
revelatory. (iii) Some of the truths divinely revealed could not have
been discovered by natural, philosophical reason, even though, once
accepted, their content and significance can be illuminated by the
philosophically ordered reflection which he calls theology.



The philosophical positions in ethics and politics (including law)
that are explored in this article belong to categories (i) and (ii).
The moral and political norms stated, for example, in the biblical
Decalogue are, in Aquinas' view, all knowable independently of
that revelation, which confirms and perhaps clarifies them. But the
propositions that he holds about what the true last end or ultimate
destiny of human beings actually is belong to category (iii) and
cannot be affirmed on any philosophical basis, even though philosophy,
he thinks, can demonstrate that they are neither incoherent nor
contrary to any proposition which philosophy shows must be
affirmed.


## 2. Practical reason's first principles



Intelligence and reason are not two powers; "reason" and
"reasoning" in a narrow sense can be regarded as the
extension of one's "intelligence" (one's
capacity for intelligent insight into the data of experience) into the
propositional work of reasoning towards judgment, and
"reason" (*ratio*) in a broader sense refers to
this whole capacity, only analytically divisible into aspects or
phases. So too, practical reason is not a distinct power. Rather,
one's capacity to think about *the way things are* can be
(and naturally, that is effortlessly and normally, is)
"extended" (Aquinas' metaphor) to thinking
intelligently and making reasonable and true judgments about *what
to do*. Thinking and judging of the latter kind is practical, that
is, intends to terminate in choice and action (in Greek
*praxis*, in Latin *actio*). "Practical
reason" sometimes refers (i) directly to such thinking,
sometimes (ii) to the propositional content or structure which such
thinking has when it is done well - and thus to the propositions
that pick out what kinds of action one ought to be judging
pursuit-worthy, undesirable, right, wrong, etc. - and sometimes
(iii) to the capacity to engage in such thinking by understanding such
propositions and being guided by them.


### 2.1 Precondition: capacity for self-determination by free choices



Practical reason's central activity is deliberation about what
to do. One would have no need to deliberate unless one were confronted
by alternative attractive possibilities for action (kinds of
opportunity) between which one must choose (in the sense that one
cannot do both at the same time, if at all) and can choose. The
standards that one comes to understand to be the appropriate guides
for one's deliberation, choice and action give such guidance,
not by predicting what one *will* do, but by directing what one
should do. (The "should" here may but need not be moral.)
There could be no normativity, no practical (choice-guiding)
directiveness, unless free choices were really possible.



Aquinas's position is not that all our activities are freely
chosen: there are indeed "acts of the human person",
perhaps quite frequent, which are not "human acts" in the
central sense (freely chosen) but rather spontaneous and
undeliberated. Nor is it that chosen acts must be immediately preceded
by choice: many of one's acts are the carrying out of choices
which were made in the past and need not be now renewed or repeated
since no alternative option appears attractive. It is that one can be
and often is in such a position that, confronted by two or more
attractive possibilities (including perhaps the option of "doing
nothing"), there is nothing either within or outside one's
personal constitution that determines (settles) one's choice,
other than the choosing: *Mal*. q. 6. This conception of free
choice (*liberum arbitrium* or *libera electio*) is much
stronger than Aristotle's, on whose conception free choices are
free only from *external* determining factors. Aquinas'
conception of free choice is also incompatible with modern notions of
soft determinism, or the supposed compatibility of human
responsibility (and of the *sense* [self-understanding] that
one is freely choosing) with determination of every event by laws
(e.g. physical) of nature. Aquinas understands the freedom of our free
choices to be a reality as primary and metaphysically and conceptually
irreducible as the reality of physical laws, and he puts all his
reflections on morality and practical reason under the heading of
"mastery over one's own acts" (*ST* I-II,
prologue).



He is also insistent that if there were no such freedom and
self-determination, there could be no responsibility (fault, merit,
etc.), and no sense or content to any *ought* (normativity)
such as ethics is concerned with.


#### 2.1.1 Choice, intention and act-descriptions



Aquinas pulls together into a powerful (though confusingly expounded)
synthesis a long tradition of analysis of the elements of
understanding (reason) and intelligent response (will) that constitute
deliberation, choice, and execution of choice: *ST* I-II qq.
6-17. The analysis shows the centrality of intention in the
assessment of options and actions. In a narrow sense of the word,
*intention* is always of ends and *choice* is of means;
but since every means (save the means most proximate to sheer trying
or exertion) is also an end relative to a more proximate means, what
is chosen when one adopts one of two or more proposals (for
one's action) that one has shaped in one's deliberation is
rightly, though more broadly, said to be what one intends, what one
does intentionally or with intent(ion), and so forth. An act(ion) is
paradigmatically what it is intended to be; that is, its morally
primary description - prior to any moral evaluation or predicate
- is the description it had in the deliberation by which one
shaped the proposal to act *thus*. Aquinas' way of saying
this is: *acts are specified by - have their specific
character from - their objects*, where "objects"
has the focal meaning of proximate end as envisaged by the
deliberating and acting person. Of course, the behavior involved in
that act can be given other descriptions in the light of conventions
of description, or expectations and responsibilities, and so forth,
and one or other these descriptions may be given priority by law,
custom, or some other special interest or perspective. But it is
primarily on acts *qua* intended, or on the acts (e.g. of
taking care) that one ought to have intended, that ethical standards
(moral principles and precepts) bear. To repeat: in the preceding
sentence "intended" is used in the broad sense; Aquinas
sometimes employs it this way (e.g. *ST* II-II q. 64 a. 7),
though in his official synthesis the word is used in the narrower
sense to signify the (*further*) intention with which the
act's object was chosen - object being the most proximate
of one's (broad sense) intentions.



This understanding of human action has often been misappropriated by
interpreters who have assumed that when Aquinas says that acts are
wrongful by reason of their "undue matter" (*indebita
materia*), he refers to an item of behavior specifiable by its
physical characteristics and causal structure. So, for example,
*direct killing* *of the innocent* is taken to refer to
behavior whose causally immediate effect is killing, or which has its
lethal effect before it has its intended good effect. But this is
incompatible with Aquinas' fundamental and consistent positions
about human action. The "matter" of a morally significant
act is, for him, its immediate object under the description it has in
one's deliberation: *Mal*. q. 7 a. 1; q. 2 a. 4 ad 5; a.
6; a. 7 ad 8. It is, in other words, not an item of behavior
considered in its observable physicality as such, but rather
one's behavior as one's objective (or the most proximate
of one's objectives), that is, as one envisages it, adopts it by
choice, and causes it by one's effort to do so. The most
objective account of human action is provided by the account that is
most subjective. This sound account will, however, set aside any
distorted act-descriptions that one may offer others, or even oneself,
as rationalizations and exculpations of one's choice and act,
but that do not correspond to what really made the option attractive,
as end or as means, and so was treated, in one's actual course
of deliberation, as one's reason for acting as one did. The
immediately and foreseen lethal effect of an act of self-defense may
genuinely be a side-effect of one's choosing to stop the attack
by the only available efficacious means (*ST* II-II q. 64 a.
7), or it may be one's precise object (and the
"matter" of one's choice and act) because
one's (further) intent was to take lethal revenge on an old
enemy, or to deter potential assailants by the prospect of their
death, or to win a reward. Behaviorally identical items of behavior
may thus be very different human acts, discernible only by knowing the
acting person's reasons for acting.


### 2.2 Context: the open horizon of human life as a whole



Ethical standards, for which practical reason's first principles
provide the foundations or sources, concern actions as choosable and
self-determining. They are thus to be distinguished clearly, as
Aristotle already emphasized, from standards which are practical,
rational, and normative in a different way, namely the technical or
technological standards internal to every art, craft, or other system
for mastering matter. Aquinas locates the significant and irreducible
difference between ethics and all these forms of "art" in
three features: (i) Moral thought, even when most unselfishly
concerned with helping others through the good effects of physical
effort and causality, is fundamentally concerned with the problem of
bringing order into one's own will, action, and character,
rather than the problem of how to bring order into the world beyond
one's will. (ii) Correspondingly, the effects of morally
significant free choices (good or evil) are in the first instance
intransitive (i.e., effects on the will and character of the acting
person). Only secondarily are they transitive effects on the world,
even when that person's intentions are focused, as they normally
should be, on the benefits of those external effects. (iii) Whereas
every art and technique has a more or less limited objective (end)
which can be accomplished by skillful deployment of the art, moral
thought has in view an unlimited and common (shared) horizon or point,
that of "human life as a whole [*finis communis totius
humanae vitae*]" (*ST* I-II q. 21 a. 2 ad 2), for
each of one's morally significant choices (for good or evil) is
a choice to devote a part of one's single life to a purpose
which could have been any of the whole open-ended range of purposes
open to human pursuit for the sake of benefiting all or any human
being(s).


### 2.3 At the origin of *Ought*



Practical reason, in Aquinas' view, has both one absolutely
first principle and many truly first principles: *ST* I-II q.
94 a. 2. The absolutely first principle is formal and in a sense
contentless. Like the logical principle of non-contradiction which
controls all rational thought, it expresses, one might say, the
pressure of reason and is so far from being empty of significance and
force that its form may be regarded as the frame, and its normativity
the source, for all the normativity of the substantive first
principles and of the moral principles which are inferable from them.
Aquinas articulates it as "Good is to be done and pursued, and
bad avoided" (ibid.).



This has often been truncated to (i) "Good is to be done, and
evil avoided" or even, more drastically, (iia) "Do good
and avoid evil" or yet more drastically (iib) "Avoid evil
and seek the good". But Grisez 1963 gave reason to think these
abbreviations both exegetically and philosophically unsound. The first
practical principle is not a command or imperative as (ii) would have
it, nor is it a moral principle as all these formulae suggest by
omitting "to be pursued" (see 2.7 below). Both in grammar
and in propositional content, the principle's gerundive
"is-to-be" is neither imperative nor predictive, but
rationally directive - an *ought* - in the way that
gets its fully developed and central sense and normativity in the more
specified *ought* of moral standards.



Against a Kantian or neo-Kantian primacy or ultimacy of
"structures of mind", Aquinas would say that just as the
pressure of reason articulated in the principle of non-contradiction
has its source in the structure of reality - in the real
opposition between *being* and *not being* - so
the source of the equivalently first practical principle is the real
desirability of intelligible *goods*, and the true
undesirability of what is *not good*.


### 2.4 First principles of practical reason



If Plato and Aristotle fail to articulate substantive first principles
of practical reason, and if Kant overlooks them in favor of the
quasi-Humeian notions of motivation that dominate ethics during the
Enlightenment (and ever since), the articulation of such principles by
Aquinas deserves attention.


#### 2.4.1 First principles are insights into the data of experience and understood possibility



Each of the several substantive first principles of practical reason
picks out and directs one towards a distinct intelligible good which,
in line with the primariness of the principle identifying it, can be
called "basic" (not a term used by Aquinas). Aquinas
regards each of the first practical principles as self-evident
(*per se notum*: known through itself) and undeduced
(*primum* and *indemonstrabile*). He does not, however,
mean that they are data-less "intuitions"; even the
indemonstrable first principles in any field of human knowledge are
knowable only by insight (*intellectus*) into data of
experience (here, of causality and inclination).



Moreover, when describing the first practical principles as
self-evident, Aquinas emphasises that self-evidence is relative: what
is not obvious to some will be self-evident to those who have more
ample experience and a better understanding of other aspects of the
matter. And we should expect our understanding of first principles to
grow as we come to understand more about the objects to which they
refer and direct (e.g. knowledge, human life, marriage, etc.).


#### 2.4.2 Their *Oughts* are not inferred from any *Is*



Aquinas's repeated affirmation that practical reason's
first principles are undeduced refutes the common accusation or
assumption that his ethics invalidly attempts to deduce or infer
*ought* from *is*, for his affirmation entails that the
sources of all relevant *oughts* cannot be deduced from any
*is*. There remain, however, a number of contemporary Thomists
who deny that such a deduction or inference need be fallacious, and
regard Aquinas as postulating some such deduction or inference. They
are challenged., however, by others (such as Rhonheimer, Boyle, and
Finnis) who, while sharing the view that his ethics is in these
respects fundamentally sound, deny that Aquinas attempted or
postulated any such deduction or inference, and ask for some
demonstration (i) that he did and (ii) that he or anyone else could
make such a deduction or inference.



These critics reinforce their denial by pointing out that in his
prologue to his commentary on Aristotle's *Ethics*,
Aquinas teaches that knowledge of things that are what they are
independently of our thought (i.e. of nature) is fundamentally
distinct both from logic and from practical knowledge, one of whose
two species is *philosophia moralis* (whose first principles or
fundamental *oughts* are under discussion here)


#### 2.4.3 A sample first principle: Knowledge is pursuit-worthy



Aquinas neglects to spell out how these first principles come to be
understood. But he holds that they are understood and accepted by
everyone who has enough experience to understand their terms. The
process of coming to understand a first practical principle may be
exemplified as follows, in relation to the basic good of knowledge. As
a child one experiences the inclination to ask questions, and to greet
apparently satisfactory answers with satisfaction and failure to
answer as a disappointment. At some point one comes to understand
- has the insight - that such answers are instances of a
quite general standing possibility, namely knowledge, coming to know
and overcoming ignorance. By a distinct though often well nigh
simultaneous further insight one comes to understand that this -
knowledge - is not merely a possibility but also a good
[*bonum*]*,* that is to say an opportunity, a
*benefit*, something desirable as a kind of improvement (a
*perfectio*) of one's or anyone's condition, and as
*to be pursued*.


### 2.5 The other basic goods



The basic human goods which first practical principles identify and
direct us to are identified by Aquinas as (i) life, (ii)
"marriage between man and woman and bringing up of children
[*coniunctio maris et feminae et educatio liberorum*]"
(not at all reducible to "procreation"), (iii) knowledge,
(iv) living in fellowship (*societas* and *amicitia*)
with others, (v) practical reasonableness (*bonum rationis*)
itself, and (vi) knowing and relating appropriately to the
transcendent cause of all being, value, normativity and efficacious
action (*ST* I-II q. 94 aa. 2 & 3). His lists are always
explicitly open-ended. They sketch the outlines and elements of the
flourishing of the human persons in whom they can be actualized. Even
complete fulfillment - the *beatitudo perfecta* that
Aquinas places firmly outside our natural capacities and this mortal
life - could not be regarded as a further good, but rather as a
synthesis and heightened actualization of these basic goods in the
manner appropriate to a form of life free from both immaturity (and
other incidents of procreation) and decay.



Similarly, as is entailed by the epistemological principle that nature
is known by capacities, capacities by acts, and acts by their objects
(see 1.1(v) above), these basic goods, being the basic objects of will
and free action, are the outline of human nature. The *is* of
an adequate account of human nature is dependent upon prior grasp of
the *oughts* of practical reason's first,
good-identifying principles, even though that prior grasp was made
possible by that partial understanding of human nature which comes
with an understanding of certain lines of causality and possibility.
But defending the epistemological priority of the intelligible objects
of will in explanations of practical reason does not entail (contrast
McInerny 1992) any denial of the metaphysical priority of the
naturally given facts about the human makeup.


### 2.6 Known by (or from) inclination?



Many modern accounts of Aquinas' theory of natural law give
explanatory primacy to the naturalness of the inclinations (to live,
to know, etc.) that correspond to these basic goods. But others regard
this as a fundamental misunderstanding of Aquinas' conception of
will, and of the epistemological relationship between nature and
reason. Will is for him intelligent response to intelligible good:
one's will is "in" one's reason [*voluntas
in ratione*]. He makes it very explicit both that human actions
are rightly said to be natural (in the morally relevant sense of
"natural") when and because they are intelligent and
reasonable (*ST* I-II q. 71 a. 2), and that there are
inclinations which are natural, in the sense that they are commonly
found or characterize some or even most individuals, yet are unnatural
because lacking any intelligibly good object. So explanatory priority
must be accorded to the basic human goods themselves, and to the
self-evident desirability which makes each of them the object of an
inclination in the will of anyone sufficiently intelligent and mature
to understand their goodness (that is, the way they make human beings
more fulfilled, more "perfect" [complete]). An inclination
of that kind is relevant in practical reason because its object is
desirable, and desirable because it would contribute to anyone's
flourishing. To say this is not to say that our natural inclinations
to what contributes to our flourishing are mere accident or
happenstance.


### 2.7 Only incipiently moral



Many nineteenth- and early twentieth century accounts of Aquinas took
it that the first principles of practical reason, which he regularly
calls first principles of natural law or natural right, are moral
principles picking out kinds of human act as to be done (e.g.
alms-giving to the poor) or not done (e.g. murder, adultery), in the
manner of the Commandments. But though there are a few passages in
which Aquinas himself speaks in that way, they can be read down so as
to make them consistent with the more strategic passages in which he
speaks of such moral principles or norms as "derived"
conclusions from first principles. (See also 3.3 below.) Even immoral
people so blinded by culture or disposition that they do not make
these inferences nevertheless can and normally do understand the
*first* principles of practical reason and are guided by them,
though imperfectly, in their deliberations.



Against Kant's assumption that, since the ends toward which one
wishes to act are subjective because projected, and established in
one's deliberating and willingness (as Hume proposed), by
one's subrational desires, practical reason's function is
to limit and channel one's pursuit of those ends, Aquinas
considers that practical reason's first and fundamental
operation is not limiting, confining or negative but rather
facilitating and positive: finding and constructing intelligible ends
to be pursued (*prosequenda*), ends that give intelligent point
to our behavior.



The thesis that the first practical principles are only incipiently
moral should not be confused with the widespread modern opinion that
practical reason's default position is self-interest or
"prudential" reason, so that there is a puzzle about how
one transits from this to morality. In Aquinas' classical view,
one's reason (as distinct from some of one's customary
ways of thinking) naturally understands the primary or basic goods as
good for anyone, and further understands that it is good to
participate in the many forms of friendship which require that one set
aside all merely emotionally motivated self-preference.


## 3. Moral principles



The discerning, inferring and elaborating of moral principles is a
task for practical reasonableness. The judgments one makes in doing
this are together called one's *conscience*, in a sense
prior to the sense in which conscience is the judgments one passes or
could pass on one's own acts considered retrospectively. Someone
whose conscience is sound has in place the basic elements of sound
judgment and practical reasonableness, that is of the intellectual and
moral virtue which Aquinas calls *prudentia*. Full
*prudentia* requires that one put one's sound judgment
into effect all the way down, i.e. into the particulars of choice and
action in the face of temptations to unreasonable but perhaps not
unintelligent alternatives.


### 3.1 Conscience



Conscience in Aquinas' view is not a special power or presence
within us, but is our practical intelligence at work, primarily in the
form of a stock of judgments about the reasonableness (rightness) or
unreasonableness (wrongness) of kinds of action (kinds of option).
Since each such judgment is of the form "[It is true that]
action of the kind *phi* is always [or generally] wrong [or: is
generally to be done, etc.]" or "*phi* is [always]
[or: generally] required [or forbidden] by reason", it must be
the case - as Aquinas stresses very forcefully - that
one's conscience is binding upon oneself even when it is utterly
mistaken and directs or licenses awful misdeeds. For since it is
logically impossible that one could be aware that one's present
judgment of conscience is mistaken, setting oneself against
one's own firm judgment of conscience is setting oneself against
the goods of truth and reasonableness, and that cannot fail to be
wrong: *ST* I-II q. 19 a. 5; *Ver*. q. 17 a. 4. The fact
that, if one has formed one's judgment corruptly, one will also
be acting wrongly if one follows it (*ST* I-II q. 19 a. 6) does
not affect the obligatoriness (for oneself) of one's conscience.
This teaching about conscience was rather novel in his day and to this
day is often misrepresented or misapplied as a kind of relativism or
subjectivism. But it is actually an implication of Aquinas'
clarity about the implications of regarding moral judgments as
*true* (or false) and of thus *rejecting* subjectivism
and relativism.


### 3.2 The supreme moral principle



Aquinas is regrettably inexplicit about how the first practical
principles yield moral principles, precepts or rules that have the
combined generality and specificity of the precepts found in the
portion of the biblical Decalogue (*Exod*. 20.1-17;
*Deut*. 5.6-21) traditionally called moral (the last
seven precepts, e.g. parents should be reverenced, murder is wrong,
adultery is wrong, etc.). But a reconstruction of his scattered
statements makes it clear enough that in his view a first implication
of the array of first principles, each directing us to goods
actualisable as much in others as in oneself, is this: that one should
*love one's neighbor as oneself*.



Since he considers this principle, like the set of first principles
mentioned in I-II q. 94 a. 2, to be self-evident (*per se
notum*), he must regard the principle of love-of-neighbor-as-self
not so much as an inference from, or even specification of, but rather
a redescriptive summary of that set. This in turn suggests the further
reflection that the first principles, and the goods (*bona*) to
which they direct us, are transparent, so to speak, for the
flesh-and-blood persons in whom they are and can be instantiated.
Moreover, it may be thought that the primary moral principle of love
of neighbor as oneself is another reason to doubt (despite
appearances) the strategic role of eudemonism in his ethics.
Aristotelianising interpretations of Aquinas' ethics normally
make central the notion of fulfillment, understood (it seems) as the
fulfillment of the deliberating and acting person - to which the
requirement of neighbor love does not have a perspicuous relationship.
Grisez and others, on the other hand, take it that the role of
fulfillment (*eudaimonia, beatitudo*) in ethical
thought's unfolding from the first principles of practical
reason is best captured by a "master moral principle"
close though perhaps not identical to Aquinas's supreme moral
principle: that all one's acts of will be open to *integral
human fulfillment*, that is to the fulfillment of all human
persons and communities now and in future.



The supreme moral principle of love of neighbor as self has, Aquinas
thinks, an immediately proximate specification in the Golden Rule:
Others are to be treated by me as I would wish them to treat me. The
tight relation between the love principle and the Golden Rule suggests
that love and justice, though analytically distinguishable, certainly
cannot be contrasted as other and other. "Neighbor"
excludes no human being anywhere, insofar as anyone could be benefited
by one's choices and actions. To love someone is essentially to
will that person's good. The reasonable priorities among all
these persons as objects of one's love, goodwill and care are
discussed by Aquinas both as an "order of love(s)"
[*ordo amoris*] and as a matter of right and justice.


#### 3.2.1 The fuller version: the place of the transcendent



Since Aquinas thinks that the existence and providence of God, as the
transcendent source of all persons and benefits, is certain, his usual
statement of the master moral principle affirms that one should love
God and one's-neighbor-as-oneself. But since he accepts that the
existence of God is not self-evident, he can allow that the more
strictly self-evident form of the master moral principle refers only
to love of human persons (self and neighbors). He would add that, once
the existence and nature of God is accepted, as it philosophically
should be, the rational requirement of loving God, and thus the fuller
version of the master moral principle, is self-evident. He also holds
that one does not offend against this requirement of loving God except
by making choices contrary to human good, that is, to love of self or
neighbor: *ScG* III c. 122 n. 2.


### 3.3 Moral precepts are further specifications of this master principle and its immediate specifications



All moral principles and norms, Aquinas thinks, can be inferred
- as either implicit in, or "referable to" as
conclusions from - the moral first principle of love of neighbor
as self: *ST* I-II q. 99 a. 1 ad 2 with q. 91 a. 4c and q. 100
a. 2 ad 2; q. 100 aa. 3 and 11c. But he never displays an example or
schema of these deduction-like inferences. Consequently, as noted in
2.7 above, his would-be successors have sometimes proposed that moral
principles and norms have the self-evidence of first principles, and
sometimes, equally desperately, have offered premises which, though
suggested by some of Aquinas's argumentation or remarks, are
incoherent with his general theory - e.g. that natural functions
are not to be frustrated.



The main lines of Aquinas' theory of moral principles strongly
suggest that moral norms (precepts, standards) are specifications of
"Good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided",
specifications which so direct choice and action that each of the
primary goods (elements of human fulfillment) will be respected and
promoted to the extent required by the good of practical
reasonableness (*bonum rationis*). And what practical
reasonableness requires seems to be that each of the basic human goods
be treated as what it truly is: a basic reason for action amongst
other basic reasons whose *integral* directiveness is not to be
cut down or deflected by subrational passions. The principle of love
of neighbor as self and the Golden Rule immediately pick out one
element in that integral directiveness. The other framework moral
rules give moral direction by stating ways in which more or less
specific *types of choice* are immediately or mediately
contrary to some basic good. This appears to be Aquinas's
implicit method, as illustrated below (3.4).



An adequate exposition and defence of the moral norms upheld by
Aquinas requires a critique, only hints for which can be found in his
work, of theories which claim that choice can and should rationally be
guided by a utilitarian, consequentialist or proportionalist master
principle calling for maximizing of overall net good (or, some say,
incompatibly, for minimizing net evils). In developments of
Aquinas's moral theory such as are proposed by Grisez and
Finnis, that critique is treated as an indispensable preliminary to
any reflective non-question-begging identification of the route from
first principles to specific moral norms.


### 3.4 Some examples



The three examples or sets of examples considered in this section are
only examples of the kinds of moral norms (*praecepta*) which
Aquinas considers are excluded by any sound conscience from
one's deliberations about what to choose. Other examples are
more complex, such as theft and various other wrongful deprivations of
property, and the form of charging for loans which is named usury and
judged by Aquinas (not implausibly, though with little direct
applicability to developed financial markets: see Finnis 1998,
204-210) to be always contrary to just equality. Aquinas also
treats in some detail scores, indeed hundreds of other moral issues,
touching the life of judges, advocates, merchants, the rich, the poor,
or everyone.


#### 3.4.1 Homicide



Some types of act are intrinsically and immediately contrary to the
basic human good of life, that is to a human being's very being.
Every act which is intended, whether as end or as means, to kill an
innocent human being, and every act done by a private person which is
intended to kill *any* human being, is to be excluded from
deliberation as wrongful because contrary to love of neighbor as self
(or self as neighbor). Public persons, Aquinas thinks, can rightfully
intend to kill in carrying out needful acts of war, suppression of
serious wrongdoing, and punishment (see also 6.3 below).



As a private person one may rightfully use force in defense of oneself
or others even if the force is such that one foresees it is likely or
even certain to kill; but one's intention in using such lethal
force must not be to kill, but only to disable and block the attack
(and less lethal force would not have met the need for defensive
blocking of the assault). Aquinas' discussion of this
(*ST* II-II q. 64 a.7) is the locus classicus for what later
became known, unhappily, as the "principle" of double
effect, whose real core is the thought that moral principles bear
differently on kinds of action specified by *intention* (e.g.
to kill) from the way they bear on behavior chosen with
*foresight* that it will (probably or even certainly) kill
*as a side-effect* (*praeter intentionem* -
outside the acting person's intention).



Aquinas wavers between suggesting that the use of lethal public force,
e.g. in capital punishment, intends ("is referred to")
justice rather than killing, and plainly accepting that in such cases
death is indeed intended. The latter is his dominant position; his
arguments to justify a kind of choice which, whatever its beneficial
consequences, is so immediately against the good of life have come
increasingly to seem insufficient: the *Catechism of the Catholic
Church* (1993), paras. 2263-67 expounds its whole teaching
on war, lethal police action, and capital punishment on the basis of
the thought that these can be justified only so far as they amount to
causing death as a side-effect, and not as killing with intent to
kill. The thought is formulated by appeal to Aquinas' reference
to acts with "double effect" in his discussion of
*private* defence in *ST* II-II q. 64 a. 7.


#### 3.4.2 Adultery and other kinds of act contrary to the good of marriage



Marriage is, Aquinas says, a primary human good and, philosophically
considered, it has a dual point (end, *finis*): (i) the
procreation and bringing up of children is a manner suited to their
good, and (ii) *fides*, which goes far beyond the literal
translation "faithfulness" and includes not only
exclusivity and permanence but also the positive readiness and
commitment to being united with one's spouse in mind, body and a
mutually assisting domestic life. Aquinas neither subordinates one of
these two "ends" to the other, nor regards it as
appropriate to choose to divide them. *Fides* is a good and
sufficient reason for engaging in the *usus matrimonii*, the
kind of sexual act that is intended to enable both husband and wife to
experience and in a particular way actualize and express the good of
their marriage, so that the act's giving and receiving of
delight is token of their commitment.



Consequently the kind of wrongful sexual choice most often considered
by Aquinas is engaging in intercourse with one's spouse without
*fides*, because one either (i) is thinking of one's
spouse in the way one would think of a prostitute, or (significantly
worse) (ii) would be willing to have sex with somebody else if some
other attractive person were to be available. Such depersonalized sex
acts are instances of willing against the good of marriage (*contra
bonum matrimonii*). This reiterated analysis should be regarded as
the key to Aquinas' sex ethics. Another paradigmatic kind of
instance, in itself much more serious, is a married person's
choice to have intercourse with some third party (perhaps with the
other spouse's consent). These and all other wrongful kinds of
sex act have their wrongfulness, according to Aquinas, not because
they are unnatural in some biological or sociological sense of
"unnatural", but because they are against reason's
directive to respect, if not also pursue, the good of marriage, a
respect that calls for reserving to marriage (and within marriage to
truly marital intercourse) all uses of one's capacity to engage
in the intentional pursuit of sexual satisfaction. For unless one
regards such reservation as required, one's stance about human
sex acts is *contra bonum matrimonii* and unreasonable because
one cannot coherently maintain that the intercourse of the married
enables them to actualize and experience *their* fides *and
their marriage*, a thought essential to the flourishing
(*bonum*) of marriage and thus of children and thus of the
wider community as a whole. One measure of the gravity of morally bad
sex acts is applicable to some kinds but not others: injustice (as in
rape or seduction of the vulnerable). Another measure, applicable to
all such acts, is the extent of the deviance ("distance")
between acts of that kind and truly marital acts.



As in ours, many in Aquinas' milieu found it difficult to
understand how mutually agreeable sex could be a serious moral issue,
or indeed a moral issue at all. Aquinas noted this, but was clear that
every kind of conduct that acts out and thus confirms and reinforces a
disposition of will *contra bonum matrimonii* is seriously
wrong because so many aspects of individual and social flourishing
profoundly depend upon the health of the institution of marriage, as
it exists in the real lives of adults and children. It is worth
repeating, since the point is so often misunderstood and misreported,
that Aquinas' moral arguments for distinguishing good from bad
sex *never* run from "natural" to "therefore
good/reasonable/right", but always from
"good/reasonable/right" to therefore "natural"
(and similarly, of course, for unreasonable and unnatural): see II-II
q. 153 a. 2c, a. 3c, q. 154 a. 1c, a. 2 ad 2, a. 11.


#### 3.4.3 Lying



Aquinas' thesis is that lying, properly defined, is always to be
excluded as to some extent wrong. The thesis is often misunderstood as
being premised on the thought that lying is contrary to the natural
function of tongue or speech, a thought that has often been transposed
into an effort to explain his theses about the wrong kinds of sex act.
But, as has been seen, his sex ethics has another and more plausible
basis, and so, it seems (albeit less clearly), has his ethics of
lying. Though all his treatments include something like "words
are naturally signs of what one understand" (ST II-II q. 110 a.
3) or "speech was invented for expressing the conceptions in
one's heart" (*Sent*. III d. 38 a. 3c), this
statement is pointing to a more explanatory and prior premise,
discernible though never adequately articulated so as to show its
relation to basic human goods. This prior premise turns on his
definition of lying as one's *assertion* of what one
believes to be false. Whenever one asserts, one affirms as true two
propositions: explicitly the proposition one articulates as true
despite one's belief that it is not, and implicitly the
proposition that one believes what one is assertively articulating. So
Aquinas seems to locate the essential wrongfulness of lying in this
intentional dissonance between *the self* presented or reported
and one's real self: a *duplicitas*. It is often
reasonable and even morally necessary to hide one's beliefs, and
this, not "deception", is what Aquinas means by the
"prudent *dissimulatio*" he thinks justifiable in
appropriate contexts. But one should not do so by the spurious
self-projection entailed by asserting what one believes false.
Pretended flight as a device for luring an unjust enemy into an ambush
can be right in a just war, but lying to the enemy is wrong, although
its gravity is much diminished by the duty not to reveal the truth to
the enemy, a duty compatible with the coexisting duty not to lie.
Subsequent scholars in his tradition have wondered whether the
conditions of discourse with an unjust opponent do not, at least in
many circumstances, defeat the presumption that a grammatically
indicative statement *asserts* what it is put forward to seem
to assert.


#### 3.4.4 Exceptionless negative norms: more urgent though not all or always more important



Negative norms such as the three sets of norms just discussed are more
urgent and direct as implications of love of self and neighbor, but
are not necessarily more important in other dimensions of importance.
That is to say, they are applicable and to be followed *semper et
ad semper*, always and in all circumstances, whereas the
applicability of affirmative norms (requiring one *to act* in a
specified kind of way) is *semper sed non ad semper*: always
applicable subject to there being (as is not always the case) suitable
circumstances. Kinds of conduct that are contrary to a negative moral
norm of this type are "intrinsically wrongful"
(*intrinsece mala*).



Only negative norms can be exceptionless (and not all negative moral
norms are). If affirmative norms could be exceptionless, there would
be inescapable conflicts of obligation, but since morality is simply
(the set of standards of) full reasonableness, there can be no
conflict of duties each truly and inescapably obligatory in one and
the same situation: one cannot truly be *perplexus simpliciter*
- that is, in a dilemma such that, through no fault of
one's own, any choice one makes will be immoral. (It is,
however, possible that my prior wrongful choices or my culpable
negligence in forming my conscience put me into a situation such that
I have applicable and irreconcilable duties and will be in breach of
one or more of them whatever I choose or do or omit: I am then
*perplexus secundum quid*, that is, in a dilemma but of a
qualified, derivative kind, only in a weak sense unavoidable.)


## 4. Virtues



A virtue is an aspect of, or constitutive element in, being a person
of good character. To have the virtues is to have a stable and ready
willingness to make choices that are morally good because in line with
the *bonum rationis*, the basic good of practical
reasonableness.


### 4.1 Specified by principles identifying the reasonable "mean"



The virtues, like everything else in one's will, are a response
to reasons. But practical reasons (i.e. reasons for action) are
propositional: they can be stated as principles and other standards,
more or less specific. So principles, ultimately the first principles
of practical reason (that is, of natural law), are more fundamental to
ethics than virtues are. Aquinas accepts Aristotle's notion that
every virtue is a mean between too much and too little, and he
constantly stresses that it is reason - with the principles and
rules (*regulae*) it understands - that settles the mean
and thus determines what is too much or too little. Indeed, the
principles of practical reason (natural law) establish the ends of the
virtues: *ST* II-II q. 47 a. 6. And the master virtue of
bringing practical reasonableness into all one's deliberations,
choices, and carrying out of choices - the virtue of
*prudentia*, a virtue both intellectual (of one's
intelligence) and moral (of one's whole will and character)
- is part of the definition, content, and influence of every
other moral virtue: *ST* I-II q. 65 a. 1, q. 66 a. 3 ad 3,
etc.



Aquinas arranged the *Summa Theologiae*'s exposition of
morality within a classification, not of the goods to which rational
acts are directed, nor of types of act, nor of practical
reason's standards, but of the virtues. Explicable as a
reflective theological project of depicting the flourishing or
deviations of human beings in an account of the whole movement of
creature from their origin to their fulfillment, his decision to adopt
this superstructure has tended to obscure the real foundations of his
ethics. As one would expect from the considerations sketched in the
preceding paragraph, his actual arguments about what is right and
wrong, virtuous or vicious, get their premises not from analysis of
the virtues at stake but rather from the principles and more specific
standards, norms, precepts or rules of practical reason(ableness). It
is the conclusions of these arguments that are then re-expressed in
terms of what is contrary to or in line with one or more of the
virtues.


### 4.2 Virtue can also be a source, rather than conclusion, of moral judgment



One's affirmative responsibilities are all conditioned by
circumstances, and mostly are (conditional) implications of the Golden
Rule of doing to or for others what you *would wish* them to do
to or for you. For both these reasons, one cannot make sound judgments
about what one should be doing - that is, about what is the
"mean" of reasonableness - unless one's wishes
are those of a person who understands the opportunities and the
circumstances well, and whose concerns and intentions are those of
someone whose reasonableness is not corrupted or deflected either by
sub-rational desires and aversions or by deformations of will such as
pride or presumption. Such a person has the virtues, intellectual and
moral, and virtue is thus, and in these respects, required for sound
moral judgment. Sometimes the mean of reason, properly assessed by
someone of true virtue, calls for heroic virtue (say, immense courage)
far beyond conventional measures or expectations of reasonableness,
moderation, and the like.


#### 4.2.1 The interdependence of the virtues



Aquinas firmly holds the Platonic-Aristotelian theses (i) of the
*connexio virtutum*: that to have any of the virtues in its
full and proper form one must have all of them, and (ii) of the
governing and shaping role of (the good of) practical reasonableness
(*bonum rationis*), that is, of the intellectual and moral
virtue of *prudentia*. For some indication why, see 4.4
below..


### 4.3 Virtue's priority not reducible to self-fulfillment



Just as some take Aquinas to hold that concern for one's own
happiness is the source of one's moral motivation and judgment,
so some take him to hold that the point of being virtuous is being
virtuous. But a sounder reading may understand him to hold that
attaining *beatitudo* and *virtus* are more like
built-in beneficial side-effects of openness to the *beatitudo*
of everyone - that is, of love of neighbor as oneself, according
to a reasonable order of priorities. What virtue (the state of
character) is praised for, he says, is its actualizing the good of
reason(ableness), and reason is good because it enables one to discern
things for what they truly are - and so, in the practical
domain, to discern real benefits (*bona*, opportunities) and
direct one's choices and actions to bringing them about in the
real people for whom one thereby makes effective one's love and
respect.


### 4.4 The cardinal virtues



Aquinas accepts the Platonic-Aristotelian thesis that there are four
virtues which are cardinal, that is on which the moral life and all
other virtues hinge or depend: *prudentia*, justice, courage,
and *temperantia*. Each is a strategic element in one's
integrating of the good of practical reasonableness into one's
deliberations, choices and execution of choices (*prudentia*),
in one's dealings with others justice), and in integrating and
governing one's desires by genuine reasons
(*temperantia*) and enabling one to face down intimidating
obstacles (courage, *fortitudo*).


#### 4.4.1 *Prudentia* and love



Practical reasonableness involves not only (i) an intelligent and
rationally integrated understanding of practical reason's
principles and of the implications that, under the auspices of the
master principle of love of neighbor as self, they have in the form of
moral standards, but also (ii) the personal self-governance needed to
put those conscientious judgments into effect by choices and
corresponding action. So *prudentia* has many phases or, as
Aquinas says, parts, and enters into every other virtue. It is far
removed from "prudence" in the sense of "rational
self-interest", for by *prudentia* one is actively aware
that self-interest is self-stunting or indeed self-destructive unless
one transcends it by one's dispositions and acts of justice and
friendship or love. (And see 2.7 above.)



Although Aquinas subscribes to Aristotle's thesis that practical
reasonableness (*phronesis*, *prudentia*) concerns means
rather than ends, he eliminates any quasi-Humeian reading of that
thesis by emphasizing that what "moves" *prudentia*
is not one's passions but one's underivative understanding
of the first practical principles and of the intelligible goods to
which they point (*synderesis movet prudentiam*: *ST*
II-II q. 47 a. 6 ad 3). Moreover, since he holds that virtually all
means are also ends, the Aristotelian thesis in no way inhibits him
from holding that *prudentia* is what guides one in identifying
moral standards and the "mean" of every virtue:
*prudentia* "directs the moral virtues not only in
choosing means but also in establishing ends": I-II q. 66 a. 3
ad 3.


#### 4.4.2 Justice



Justice is the steady and lasting willingness to give to others what
they are entitled to (their right: *jus* [or *ius*]
*suum*). Aquinas works with this Roman Law definition
(*ST* II-II q. 58 a. 1c), and with Aristotle's division
of justice into (i) *distributive* (good judgment about how to
divide up and parcel out beneficial or burdensome wholes or sets in a
way that is fair because guided by appropriate criteria) and (ii) what
Aquinas calls *commutative* justice (good judgment going far
wider than Aristotle's "corrective" justice, and
concerned with all other kinds of dealings between persons). His
prioritizing of the concept of right (*jus*), conceived as
something that belongs to another, brings him to the brink of
articulating a concept of human rights, a concept certainly implicit
in his thesis that there are precepts of justice each imposing, on me
and my communities, a duty to everyone without discrimination
(*indifferenter omnibus debitum*: *ST* II-II q. 122 a.
6). For his definition of justice immediately entails that correlative
to such duties of justice there must be rights that belong to everyone
*indifferenter*. Many duties of justice are positive
(affirmative duties to give, do, etc.), and Aquinas treats the duties
of relieving poverty both under justice and under love (of neighbor,
for God's sake). The duties in either case are essentially the
same, and Aquinas' understanding of them strongly affects his
understanding of justified private property rights, which are valid
because needed for prosperity and development, but are subject to a
duty to distribute, directly or indirectly, one's
*superflua* - that is, everything beyond what one needs
to keep oneself and one's family in the state of life
appropriate to one's (and their) vocation(s). For the natural
resources of the world are "by nature" common; that is,
reason's principles do not identify anyone as having a prior
claim to them other than under some customary or other socially
posited scheme for division and appropriation of such resources, and
such schemes could not be morally authoritative unless they
acknowledged some such duty to distribute one's
*superflua*.


#### 4.4.3 *Fortitudo* and *temperantia*



Though one's passions, that is one's emotional desires and
aversions, support one's reason in deliberation, choice and
action, they are also always capable of deflecting one from reasonable
and right choice. So the ready disposition to keep these passions in
their proper role is an essential element of a virtuous character and
life. By *temperantia* one integrates one's desires,
particularly but not only for sexual pleasure, with reason, lest
reason be enslaved by passion and become its ingenious servant, as it
readily can. *Temperantia* is the mean, for example, between
lust and frigidity or apathy (Aquinas everywhere rejecting any
"Stoic" ideal of passionlessness, and holding that there
is good as well as bad *concupiscentia*).



By *fortitudo* one keeps one's aversions, particularly
but not only fear, in check lest one shirk one's moral
responsibilities in situations of danger or other adversity. It is the
mean between recklessness or over-boldness and cowardice or
defeatism.


### 4.5 "Virtue ethics"



In recent decades various philosophers and theologians have proposed
that ethics done well is virtue ethics, not an ethics of rules and
principles. An ethics of the latter kind is denounced as legalistic.
As should be clear from the foregoing, Aquinas rejects the proposed
contrast and gives systematic prominence both to standards, such as
principles and rules, and to virtues. He holds, in effect, that they
are interdefined. Nor does he have any time for the view that there
are no exceptionless moral norms and that moral norms or other
standards are no more than a kind of anticipation, shadow or
approximation of the judgments which in each situation need to be made
by a person of virtue, and which could never exclude *in
advance* any kind of act as always wrongful by reason of its
object and regardless of its further intentions or the circumstances
of the situation. On the contrary, he holds that no human act is
morally good (right, in the sense of not wrong) unless it is in line
with love of self and neighbor (and thus with respect for the basic
aspects of the wellbeing of each and all human beings) not only (i) in
the motives or intentions with which it is chosen, and (ii) in the
appropriateness of the circumstances, but also (iii) in its object
(more precisely the object, or closest-in intention of the choosing
person) (see 2.1.1 above). This is the primary sense of the axiom he
frequently articulates by quoting an old tag: *bonum ex integra
causa, malum ex quocumque defectu* (good from an unflawed set of
contributing factors, bad from any defect in the set). That is, there
is a fundamental asymmetry between moral good and moral evil - a
notion very foreign to any version of utilitarian or post-utilitarian
consequentialist or "proportionalist" ethics.


## 5. Political community



Love of neighbor as oneself requires one to live in political
community with others. For the wellbeing and right(s) of all or almost
all of us are dependent upon there being in place institutions of
government and law of the relatively comprehensive kind we call
"political" and "state".


### 5.1 Common good



"Common good" is very often a safer translation of
*bonum commune* than "the common good". For there
is the common good of a team, but equally the common good of a
university class, of a university, of a family, of a neighborhood, of
a city, of a state, of a church and of human kind throughout the
world. The difference in each case between the group's common
good and an aggregate of the wellbeing of each of its members can be
understood by considering how, in a real friendship, A wills B's
wellbeing for B's sake, while B wills A's wellbeing for
A's sake, and each therefore has reason to will his or her own
wellbeing for the other's sake, with the result that neither
envisages his or her own wellbeing as the source (the object) of the
friendship's value, and each has in view a truly *common*
good, not reducible to the good of either taken separately or merely
summed. Inasmuch as there is possible and appropriate a kind of
friendship between the members of each of the kinds of group listed
(non-exhaustively) above, each such group has its own common good.


#### 5.1.1 Groups



Communities such as those just mentioned are groups, each of them a
whole [*totum*] made up of persons (and perhaps of other
groups), their unity being not merely one of composition or
conjunction or continuity, but rather of *order*, in two
dimensions: (i) of the parts (members) as coordinating with each
other, and (ii) of the group and its members to its organizing purpose
or end (*finis*). Of these, (ii) is the more explanatory, as
Aquinas argues at the very beginning of his commentary on
Aristotle's *Ethics*.


### 5.2 Political common good and political community relativized



Some of the above-listed kinds of group have, in Aquinas' view,
a significance that is in a sense strategic. In particular, the
family-cum-household, the political group, and the church established
to transmit divine revelation and salvation each have such
significance. The benefits made possible by political community, with
its state government and law, are such that its common good is both
extensive and intensive in its reach and implications (e.g. the
legitimacy of securing it by coercion). So on those occasions when
"the common good" is the best translation of *bonum
commune*, the referent will normally be the good of the political
community in question (or of political communities generically), often
called by Aquinas *public* good.



Nevertheless, Aquinas's use of the Aristotelian axiom,
"human beings are naturally political animals" almost
always takes it as asserting our social, not solitary, nature -
our need for interpersonal relationships both for friendship and for
such necessities as food, clothing, speech, and so forth. So the axiom
should not be made to mean that Aquinas thinks there is a distinct
basic inclination towards, or a distinct basic good, of political
community, to put alongside the distinct basic good of marriage and
family. He accepts that we are naturally parts of a political
community, but also that we are more naturally conjugal than political
(in the narrow sense), and that political community does not properly
have the ultimacy it has for Aristotle. For Aquinas, political
communities have been irrevocably relativized by the appropriateness
for (in principle) everyone of belonging to the Church which is, in
its own way, as complete [*perfecta*] a kind of community as
any state.



Moreover, Aristotle's claim that the *polis* is
"greater and more godlike" than any other human community
is put by Aquinas into a horizon which contains not merely the one
*civitas* (Latin for *polis*) of which I am a member but
rather the whole plurality of peoples and *civitates* (states,
political communities): *Eth.* VIII.4.11-12. So for him
the common good that is the ultimate concern of political philosophy,
and thus of the reasonable person, is nothing less than the
fulfillment of all human persons and communities (and see 3.2
above).



Still, this wider perspective does not lead Aquinas to develop a
theory of international community; this had to be developed by his
sixteenth-century followers. Indeed, he takes remarkably little
interest in a number of important issues related to the plurality of
states and the dynamics of state-formation, and the appropriate
relationship between a people [*populus*, *gens*, etc.]
and a state (should each people presumptively have a state?). His
political philosophy explores with subtlety and care the state
[*civitas*, *regnum*, etc.], almost as if there were
simply a single permanent political community.


## 6. The state a "complete community" with "mixed" and "limited" government



The state is a "complete community", whose members, in the
central case, are also members of another "complete
community", the Church. So this completeness is, in each case,
relative and delimited. Correspondingly, the state's governing
structures (which Aquinas does not call "the state") are
- again in the central, morally proper case - limited in
four distinct ways.


### 6.1 Four kinds of limitation on state government and law



(i) State governments and laws are subject to moral standards,
especially but not only the principles and norms of justice. This does
not mean that moral principles all apply to public authority in the
way they do to private persons; they do not, yet there is no exemption
of public authorities from the exceptionless moral norms against
intentionally killing the innocent, lying, rape and other
extra-marital sex, and so forth. Moreover, this limitation has no
bearing on the distinct question which moral standards should, or can
properly, be legally enforced by the state's government and law
(see (iii) below).



(ii) State governments are subject to laws governing election or other
appointment to and tenure and rotation of office, and the jurisdiction
of particular offices. Even supreme rulers not subject to the coercive
authority of anyone else cannot dispense themselves from the
obligation of their own laws unless that is for the common good and
free from favoritism. If they defy these moral restrictions they show
themselves to be tyrants, and may be resisted and deposed by the
concerted ("public") action of their people. The best form
of government (or as we would now say, constitution) is one in which,
"well mixed", are found "monarchy",
"aristocracy" and "democracy", that is, the
rule of *one* person (whose "monarchy" is probably
better elective rather than hereditary), governing in concert with a
*few* high officials chosen for their excellence of character
and aptitude, by an electorate comprising the *many* who are
entitled both to vote and to stand for election: *ST* I-II q.
105 a. 1. Establishing and maintaining such an arrangement is a matter
for laws which delimit the competences of all concerned.



(iii) State governments and laws have the authority and duty to
promote and defend the common good, including the good of virtue. This
responsibility brings with it the authority to use coercion for the
suppression of crime and enemy attack. This coercive jurisdiction
extends to defending persons and property both by force and by the
credible threat of punishment for criminal or other unjust
appropriation or damage. But it does not extend to enforcing any part
of morality other than the requirements of *justice* insofar as
they can be violated by acts *external* to the choosing and
acting person's will. Acts of virtues (or vices) other than such
external acts of inter-personal (in)justice cannot rightly be
prohibited unless they *involve* (in)justice. For, unlike
divine law's, "human law's purpose is the temporal
tranquility of the state, a purpose which the law attains by
coercively prohibiting *external acts* to the extent that these
evils can disturb the peaceful state of the state." *ST*
I-II q. 98 a. 1c; likewise q. 100 a. 2c: "human law does not put
forward precepts about anything other than acts of justice [and
injustice]". State law's justifiedly coercive domain is
not private good as such, nor the whole of the community's
common good. Rather, it is those aspects of the political
community's common good that can be called public good, and that
are affected by external acts directly or indirectly affecting other
members of the community.



(iv) The morally significant authority of the state's government
and law is limited by the rights of the Church, though when that
government and law are within their proper domain, one ought to comply
with their directives rather than any purported act of administration
or government (apart from general moral teaching) by Pope or
bishops.



The last three kinds of limitation can be considered here in a little
more detail.


### 6.2 Limited government's forms: "political" and "regal"



Government is properly speaking "political" when the
supreme person or body "has power which is limited [*potestas
coarctata* or *limitata*] by certain laws of the
state": *Pol*. I.1.5. Such rulers govern in accordance
with the laws concerning the establishment of their office, their
appointment and their responsibilities. When power is, by contrast,
"plenary", the government is said to be
"regal" in kind. But even regal government, in its proper
forms, is the government of free and equal people who have in some
sense (never made quite clear by Aquinas) the "right to resist
[*ius repugnandi*]" the ruler(s). Even regal rulers are
subject to the directive force of the laws, though there is no-one who
has the legal authority to coerce them.



Aquinas sees no need for any "social contract" to explain
or justify the origins of government or of any particular regime. But
he does think that, even in regal as distinct from political rule, the
enacted laws constitute "a kind of covenant [*pactum*]
between king and people" (*In Rom.* 13.1 v. 6), and
violation of this by the ruler can entail that subjects are released
from their covenantal obligation.



In principle, Aquinas thinks, the supreme legislative powers are held
either by the whole people [*tota multitudo*], a free people
[*libera multitudo*], or by some public *persona* who
has responsibility [*cura*] for them and represents them
[*gerit personam multitudinis*: bears their persona]: I-II q.
97 a. 3 ad 3; II-II q. 57 a. 2. Neither the meaning of this
"representation" nor the practicalities of designating a
representative are explored in any depth by Aquinas. Nor does he
discuss how it gets settled whether a particular people is (i) simply
free and self-governing, or (ii) free but subject to the legislative
authority of some *princeps*, or (iii) unfree (perhaps because
conquered).


### 6.3 State authority is neither paternalistic nor divine



Though he never openly confronts them, Aquinas sets aside the sayings
at the end of Aristotle's *Ethics* which seem to mean
that the *polis* has the responsibility and role of coercively
leading all its citizens, of every age, towards all-round virtue.
Aquinas plainly rejects the idea that the state is a surrogate for
paternal authority, or has God's authority over morally
significant conduct. Though he frequently states that the political
rulers have a proper concern to lead people to virtue, these
statements turn out to refer to the appropriate aspirations of rulers,
not to their coercive jurisdiction or authority. In the context of the
surrounding argument, the statements do not commit him to any wider
governmental or legal authority than to require and foster the public
good and the virtue of justice, that is, the willingness to perform
one's duties to *others*: 6.1(iii) above. The other
virtues can be legally required of citizens only so far as they impact
on justice: *ST* I-II q. 96 a. 3. Moreover, he holds the
classic position that doing justice does not require that one's
motivations and character be just. And when it comes to coercive
measures, he holds that they can bear only upon conduct that is
external and immediately or mediately affects other people unjustly or
disturbs the peace of the political community: *ST* I-II q. 98
a. 1. Really private vices are outside the coercive jurisdiction of
the state's government and law. Though political authority is
ultimately derived from divine authority, it is not to be exercised in
the same all-encompassing way as God does when directing one (like
every other human individual) to the complete and heavenly fulfillment
gratuitously and supernaturally offered to us all by God. Absolute
political authority of the kind later claimed by rulers such as James
I of England is contrary to Aquinas' constant teaching.



This reading of Aquinas as, in a nineteenth and twentieth century
jargon, "a liberal" (or "the first Whig") is
often disputed, for there are statements in his writings which taken
acontextually seem to assert the simpler and paternalistic
Aristotelian position.


### 6.4 The state shares its authority with another "complete community"



One of the reasons why Aquinas' political theory departs
significantly from Aristotle's is that Aquinas believes he has
access to facts and considerations unavailable to Aristotle, namely to
the public divine revelation completed in the works and sayings of
Christ, founder of a spiritual community, the (Catholic =
"universal") Church. When political life is really
well-ordered, therefore, each member (citizen) of a state will be also
a member of this other "complete community" and subject to
its laws as well as to the state's. The function of this other
community is to transmit the divine promise or offer of eternal life,
and to help people help each other, through their own individual free
choices, to become ready for that life. With the establishing of this
community (in continuity and discontinuity with the older religious
community of Israel), human associations are henceforth of two
fundamentally distinct types: (i) temporal or secular, worldly, civil,
or political, and (ii) spiritual. Correspondingly, responsibility for
human affairs is divided between (i) secular societies, especially
states and families, and (ii) the Church. The distinction between
secular and spiritual tracks that between natural and revealed
knowledge.


#### 6.4.1 Non-dependence and non-subjection of secular authority



Accordingly, the Church's leaders have no jurisdiction over
secular matters, although they can declare that the choice of a member
of the Church, albeit in a secular matter, is seriously immoral. A
parent has no jurisdiction over a child's free choices except in
so far as they violate the moral rights of other members of the family
or the parents' responsibility for the child's education
and moral upbringing. State government and law have no right to direct
the Church's leaders, or its members in their religious affairs,
except in so far as the state's peace and justice would
otherwise be violated. "In those matters which pertain to
political good [*bonum civile*], secular rather than spiritual
authority should be obeyed." *Sent*. II d. 44 ex. ad
4.



Neither those who adhere to the old, incomplete revelation (Jews), nor
those people and peoples who simply do not accept the truth of the
full revelation, are subject to the authority of the Church. Nor is
the legitimacy and authority of a government negated by the fact that
its members (officials) are unbelievers.



Beyond this, Aquinas works within the constitutional assumptions of
the Christendom of his era. His positions imply that if ecclesiastical
authorities expel members from the Church for their misdeeds as
rulers, the consequences *under their particular state's own
constitutional arrangement* could include the rulers'
deposition (loss of secular legal authority); but Aquinas blurs or
elides this distinction of jurisdictions, and loosely says that the
Church "has the authority of curbing secular rulers"
(*ST* II-II q. 12 a. 2 ad 1).


#### 6.4.2 Heresy, unbelief and religious freedom



Aquinas accepts the teaching of the Church of his era that no one can
rightly be compelled to accept the Christian faith or membership of
the Church, but that those who are members can and should be compelled
by both ecclesiastical and state law to abstain from any public denial
or renunciation of it. He treats such renunciation as an actionable
breach of promise (passing silently over the fact that in most cases
the promise was made not by the persons concerned but rather, in their
early infancy, by their parents). And he regards public teaching of
heresy as comparable to counterfeiting coin of the realm and therefore
rightly punishable capitally by the secular authorities (the fact of
false teaching having been ascertained by an ecclesiastical trial).
His views about this matter are explicitly based on the evolving
tradition of the Church and on what historical experience suggested
were the effects of more permissive political or legal arrangements.
So there are no theoretical obstacles to his ready acceptance of the
judgment of later theologians and Church teachers that, as experience
shows, it is more compatible with basic positions in his moral and
political philosophy to hold that authentically personal judgment and
freely chosen commitment are so important in relation to ultimate
questions that all persons (even those whose beliefs about religion
are false or ill-formed) have a moral right, and should have the
corresponding legal right, to be free from state (and ecclesiastical)
coercion in religious belief or action except in so far as their
conduct would be contrary to the rights of others or to public peace
or to public morality (that is, morality so far as it is publicly
communicated or concerns actions which impact on the public) (Second
Vatican Council, *Declaration on Religious Liberty* (1965)).
Nor is it clear how he could resist the objection that, even if those
baptized in infancy ratify the promises made on their behalf at
baptism, the subscription of faith is not an undertaking to other
people or the community, but rather is a matter which, as he says in a
neglected passage elsewhere in his major writings (*ScG* III c.
80 n. 15), "pertains to that person alone as an individual
[*secundum se ipsum*]."


## 7. Law



The best developed part of Aquinas' political theory is his
account of law. That account's main features may be summarized
in four propositions about the central case and focal meaning of law.
It is a matter of intelligent direction addressed to the intelligence
and reason of those whom it directs. It is for the common good of a
political community. It is made (*positum*, put in place) by
the ruler(s) responsible for the community in question. It needs to be
coercive.


### 7.1 Law is an appeal to reason



Aquinas' well-known discussion of law in *ST* I-II qq.
90-97 (a discussion which actually extends through the less
studied qq. 98-105) has been justly admired by jurists and other
thinkers not otherwise much interested in his work. But it is shaped
by his concern there (i) to present for beginner students of theology
an overview of the universe and of the vast sweep of creatures out
from their divine creator and back to the same transcendent being as
their ultimate destiny, and (ii) to synthesize the traditional
vocabulary and classic theological sources on law. So prominence is
there given to the "eternal law" by which God governs even
inanimate creatures (as by the laws of physics, etc.), and to the
"participation" of natural moral law in that eternal law.
But when he is free from these textbookish constraints he emphasizes
that law's most essential feature is something which is not true
of the laws of nature (physics, biology, etc.), namely that it is an
appeal to the mind, choice, moral strength (*virtus*) and love
of those subject to the law: *ScG* III cc. 114-117; this
is quietly indicated also in *ST* I-II q. 91 a. 2 ad 3.



Law (in its central case and focal meaning) is thus always a plan for
co-ordination through free cooperation. The structure of things being
what it is, the principles of practical reason and morality (natural
moral law and natural right) can be understood, accepted, and lived
by, as fully directive in conscience, without needing to be regarded
as (what they really are) an appeal *from mind* to mind, a
*plan* - freely made to be freely adopted - for
integral human fulfillment. As the divine creator was in no way
constrained to choose to create this universe as distinct from any
other good possible universe, so human legislators have wide moral
freedom to choose amongst alternative possible legal arrangements,
making one set of provisions legally and (presumptively) morally
obligatory by the sheer fact of adopting it - that is, by what
Aquinas calls the law-makers' *determinatio*: I-II q. 95
a. 2; q. 99 a. 3 ad 2; q. 104 a. 1..


### 7.2 Law is for a political community's common good



The definition of law offered by Aquinas in *ST* I-II q. 90 a.
4 is: "an ordinance of reason for the common good of a
[complete] community, promulgated by the person or body responsible
for looking after that community." It is by being intended for
common good that law appeals to its subjects' reason, and gives
them reason for regarding the law as authoritative and obligatory,
morally as well as legally. Even when its subjects or some of them
would have made or preferred a different *determinatio*, a
different way of pursuing communal benefit, the rulers' intent
to promote common good supports and is supported by their claim to
rulership. Only if they have such intent can they instantiate the
central case of government.


#### 7.2.1 The Rule of Law



The central case of government is the rule of a free people, and law
is centrally instantiated when its fully public character
(promulgation: q. 90 a. 4), and its clarity (q. 95 a.3), generality
(q. 96 a. 1), stability (q. 97 a. 2), and practicability (q. 95 a. 3),
enable government (law-makers and law-maintainers alike) and subjects
to be partners in *public reason* (Aquinas has the concept
though not the phrase). The features of law thus itemized by Aquinas
amount to the concept of the Rule of Law, which he clearly gives a
priority over the "rule of men" in his treatment of
judges' subordination to legislation and of the duty of judges
to adhere to law even against the evidence of their own eyes (when
that evidence is not legally admissible): II-II q. 67 a. 2; q. 64 a. 6
ad 3.


### 7.3 Law is posited by the responsible authority



The person or body that "has the care of the community" is
entitled to make laws. Aquinas treats all human law as
"posited" and (synonymously) "positive", even
those of its rules that are restatements of, or authoritatively
promulgated deductions (*conclusiones*) from, general moral
principles or norms. Interpretation, too, Aquinas thinks of as
involving, in the last analysis, an appeal to the legislator(s) to
declare what the enacted law truly means.



The making of law by custom is not incompatible with this thesis; it
amounts to a positing of law by the people, considered as having a
diffused authority and responsibility for their own community.



Even in a paradise unflawed by any human vice, there would, Aquinas
thinks, have been need for government and for law, though not
necessarily "political" government, still less coercive
law. For social life needs a considerable amount of common policy and
common action which cannot otherwise than by authoritative
*determinatio* be achieved by a group whose members have many
ideas - perhaps all of them good - about priorities and
ways to proceed: *ST* I q. 96 a. 4. A *determinatio*, if
it is just and fit to be authoritative, must have a rational
connection to principles of practical reasonableness. But that
rational connection is like an architect's decisions about
dimensions; they must be rationally connected to the terms of the
commission (e.g. to build a maternity hospital, not a lion's
cage) but these terms, while excluding various options, leave many
options entirely open (the doors must be more than 1 foot high but as
between 7.1 and 7.2 feet the choice is entirely free, and likewise
with every dimension, selection of materials, colors, and so
forth).


### 7.4 Law needs to be coercive



In a world (paradise) of saints (completely virtuous persons), there
would be need for law but not for coercion; so coercion is not part of
Aquinas's definition of law and law's directive force can
be contrasted with its coercive force (and see 6.1(ii) above). But in
our actual world the need for (the threat of) coercion is such that
Aquinas will say without qualification that law ought to have coercive
force [*vis coactiva*] as well as directive [*vis
directiva*]; he even says that it is a characteristic of law
[*de ratione legis*] (*ST* I-II q. 96 a. 5), despite not
including it in his official definition of law's nature [its
*ratio*] (q. 90. a. 3).



It is not quite accurate to say that the state or its government has a
monopoly of force, since one can justifiably use force as a citizen to
defend oneself or others from an attack or assault that is not itself
justified (being criminal or insane), and this requires no
authorization. Still, Aquinas insistently draws a distinction between
private and public use of force. Only public authority can punish or
rightly engage in war, and it is reasonable for public authorities to
seek a virtual monopoly on what would now be called police operations
for the prevention, suppression, and detection of crime. Private
persons can never rightly intend precisely to harm or kill, though
they can knowingly bring about harm or death as a proportionate
side-effect of intending to block an attack (3.4.1 above). Persons
with public authority can, Aquinas thinks, rightly intend to kill (or
injure) in the exercise of their duty to suppress the attacks of
criminals, pirates, and other public or private enemies. (He does not
explore those borderland or badland - "wild west"
- situations where the distinction between public and private is
indistinct.)



The paradigmatic public use of coercion is judicially imposed
punishment, capital or otherwise. At the core of Aquinas's
account of justified punishment is the notion that offenders are
punishable because, in choosing to offend, they have excessively
indulged their will and thereby (he implies) gained a kind of
advantage over those who have retrained their own wills from such
excess; a just relationship between themselves and their fellow
citizens can fittingly be restored by proportionately imposing upon
such offenders something *contra voluntatem*, contrary to and
suppressive of their will: I-II q. 46 a. 6 ad 2. This restoration of a
fair balance between offenders and the law-abiding is central to what
Aquinas frequently calls the "medicinal" function of
punishment, for the medicine of punishment is intended to heal not
only offenders (by reforming them) or potential offenders (by
deterring them), but also and more centrally the whole community by
rectifying the disorder of injustice created by the offender's
self-preferential violation of justice. On capital punishment see
3.4.1 above.



Aquinas regards as legitimate ground for going to war not only the
defence of this or another political community, but also the purpose
of justly punishing and/or securing compensation. (As justifiable
grounds for use of force, it is difficult to distinguish between (i)
defence of one's own community's (or another's)
territory and constitution, (ii) the recovery or restoration of
unjustly taken territory or other possessions, and (iii) exaction of
compensation for unjust takings or other injuries.)


### 7.5 Unjust law and just revolution



If the law purports to require actions that no-one should ever do, it
cannot rightly be complied with; one's moral obligation is not
to obey but to disobey: *ST* I-II q. 96 a. 4. And if it
purports to authorize such acts (e.g. rape, theft, or infanticide),
its authorization is morally void and of no effect (II-II q. 57 a. 2
ad 2); courts should not guide their adjudications by such laws (II-II
q. 60 a. 5 ad 1). But law's obligatoriness and authority is
subject to further conditions, derived from the very nature and
rationale of political authority. If the law-makers (i) are motivated
not by concern for the community's common good but by greed or
vanity (private motivations that make them tyrants, whatever the
content of their legislation), or (ii) act outside the authority
granted to them, or (iii) while acting with a view to the common good
apportion the necessary burdens unfairly, their laws are unjust and in
the forum of reasonable conscience are not so much laws as acts of
violence [*magis sunt violentiae quam leges*]: I-II q. 96 a. 4.
Such laws lack moral authority, i.e. do not bind in conscience; one is
neither morally obliged to conform nor morally obliged not to
conform.



This conclusion is subject to a proviso or exception: laws which are
unjust by reason of one or more of these three enumerated types of
defect in authority sometimes create an obligation in conscience just
to the extent that disobedience would cause disorder or give the kind
of 'example' that leads others into wrongdoing. To avoid
those sorts of unjust harm to public and private good one may have a
moral obligation to forgo one's right(s) [*iuri suo debet
cedere*]. This obligation is not: to comply with the law according
to its makers' intent, and/or to the meaning it has under the
particular legal system's interpretative canons. Rather, it is a
kind of collateral obligation: to avoid those acts of non-compliance
that would unjustly risk having the bad side-effects of being seen not
to comply.



All who govern in the interests of themselves rather than of the
common good are tyrants, for that is what a tyrant is in the classical
line of thought followed by Aquinas. Tyranny entails treating
one's subjects as slaves - persons used for the benefit of
the master. The laws of tyrants are not laws *simpliciter*, but
rather a kind of perversion of law [*perversitas legis*], and
one is, in principle, entitled to treat them as one treats a
bandit's demands: I-II q. 92 a 1 ad 4 & 5; II-II q. 69 a. 4.
Against the regime's efforts to enforce its decrees one has the
right of forcible resistance; as a private right this could extend as
far as killing the tyrant as a foreseen side-effect of one's
legitimate self-defence. It is the tyrant rather than the subject who
is morally guilty of sedition. If one can associate with others to
constitute oneself with them a kind of public authority willing and
able to assume responsibility for the common good of the state, one is
entitled, in Aquinas' view, to set about overthrowing, and if
need be executing, the tyrant, with a view to the *liberatio*
of the people [*multitudinis*] and the homeland
[*patriae*]. Since rulers who are not tyrants are entitled to
hunt down and most severely punish sedition, and both rulers and
subjects may fall into error about each other's moral status,
subjects ought to be slow to judge a tyranny so unjust that
overthrowing or forcibly resisting it is fair to those likely to be
injured as a side-effect of revolutionary struggle; there is a
(defeasible) presumption in favor of acquiescence and merely passive
disobedience: II-II q. 42 a. 2 ad 3, q. 104 a. 6 ad 3; II
*Sent*. d. 44 q. 2 a. 2; *Reg*. 1.6.