For Thomas Aquinas, as for Aristotle, doing moral philosophy isthinking as generally as possible about what I should choose to do(and not to do), considering my whole life as a field of opportunity(or misuse of opportunity). Thinking as general as this concerns notmerely my own opportunities, but the kinds of good things that anyhuman being can do and achieve, or be deprived of. Thinking about whatto do is conveniently labeled “practical”, and isconcerned with what and how to choose and do what one intelligentlyand reasonably can (i) to achieve intelligible goods in one’sown life and the lives of other human beings and their environment,and (ii) to be of good character and live a life that as a whole willhave been a reasonable response to such opportunities.

1. Summa theologiae: complete set (pdf) by thomas aquinas (ebook) This set includes volumes 13-20 of the Complete Works of Thomas Aquinas: 13: Prima Pars, 1-49 14: Prima Pars, 50-119 15: Prima Secundae, 1-70 16: Prima pages: 5256 His professional life of number iii, endeavouring.
2. The Collected Works of St. Thomas Aquinas contains almost every work of St. Thomas which has been translated into English. Back to Past Masters Titles Index.

Political philosophy is, in one respect, simply that part or extensionof moral philosophy which considers the kinds of choice that should bemade by all who share in the responsibility and authority of choosingfor a community of the comprehensive kind called political. In anotherrespect, it is a systematic explanatory account of the forms ofpolitical arrangement that experience and empirical observation showare available, with their characteristic features, outcomes, andadvantages (and disadvantages and bad aspects and consequences).Though in form descriptive and contemplative, and thus non-practical,this aspect of political philosophy remains subordinate, in itssystematization or conceptual structure, to the categories one findsnecessary or appropriate when doing moral and political philosophy asit should be done, that is, as practical thinking by one whose everychoice (even the choice to do nothing now, or the choice do moral orpolitical philosophy) should be a good use of opportunity.

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Moral and political philosophy for Aquinas, then, is (1) the set orsets of concepts and propositions which, as principles and precepts ofaction, pick out the kinds of chosen action that are truly intelligentand reasonable for human individuals and political communities,together with (2) the arguments necessary to justify those conceptsand propositions in the face of doubts, or at least to defend themagainst objections. It is a fundamentally practical philosophy ofprinciples which direct us towards human fulfillmentso far as that happier state of affairs is both constituted andachievable by way of the actions that both manifest and build up theexcellences of character traditionally called virtues. If onemust use a post-Kantian jargon, it is both “teleological”and “deontic”, and not more the one than the other.

• 1. Interpretations and method
• 2. Practical reason’s first principles
• 3. Moral principles
• 4. Virtues
• 5. Political community
• 6. The state a “complete community” with “mixed” and “limited” government
• 7. Law
• Bibliography

1. Interpretations and method

Aquinas’ moral and political philosophy has to be reconstructedfrom his theological treatises and commentaries and his commentarieson Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and the first two andhalf books of Aristotle’s Politics. Its properinterpretation has been a matter of some difficulty from the time ofhis death in 1274. In recent decades the way to understand someaspects of its foundational concepts and logic has been strenuouslydisputed, not least among those philosophers who see it as offering abroadly sound answer to radical scepticism about value and obligation,an answer truer and more human than Kant’s or Bentham’s ortheir (in the broadest sense) successors’. A partial sample ofthese controversies is given in 1.1 and 1.2 below, which state themore common interpretation on two strategic issues and then elaborateobjections to those interpretations. The remainder of this articlethen proceeds on the basis that there is merit in these objections,and that the study of Aquinas’ ethics as a systematic andstrictly philosophical work of practical reason (at its most generaland reflective) is still in its infancy. Further textual support, fromover 60 of Aquinas’ works, can be found in Finnis 1998.Criticisms of the interpretation of Aquinas’ theory that isproposed in that work can be found in Paterson 2006, Wheatley 2015,Long 2004, and earlier in Lisska 1998 and McInerny 1997. These worksargue in various ways that that interpretation denies or neglects themetaphysical foundations of the principles of practical reason that itoffers to identify. Support, in general, for the approach in thisarticle will be found in Rhonheimer 2012 and 2000. The first issueunderlying this debate is whether the order of inquiry and coming toknow (the epistemological order) is the same as the order ofmetaphysical dependence. The second issue is whether we can settle thefirst issue by using the epistemological axiom that we come to an(ultimately metaphysical) understanding of dynamic natures byunderstanding capacities through their actuations – which, inturn, we come to understand by understanding their objects. Does ordoes not that axiom entail that understanding of objects such as theintelligible goods (the objects of acts of will) precedes an adequateknowledge of nature, notwithstanding that (as is agreed on all sides)in the metaphysical order of intrinsic dependence such objects couldnot 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 toidentify a “distinctive” or “peculiarly human”function, arguments which proceed on the postulate that, if each kindof craft has its own characteristic function and mode of operation, somust human life as a whole have an “overall” and“distinctively characteristic” function andoperatio; and the determination of this should decisivelyshape the whole of (the rest of) ethics and political theory. To thisstandard interpretation other interpreters, such as Grisez, Finnis,and Rhonheimer, object on grounds such as these:

(i) Aquinas’ austerely self-disciplined purposes as anAristotelian commentator make quite insecure any assumption that hetreats as fundamental to his own thinking any and every propositionwhich is treated by Aristotle as fundamental and expounded inAquinas’ relevant commentary without adverse comment.

(ii) The “distinctive function” argument is notprominent or adduced as fundamental (or at all) in Aquinas’ morefree-standing treatments of morality.

(iii) The argument is treated by Aquinas’ commentary as yieldingthe conclusion that felicitas (human happiness orflourishing) consists in a complete life lived in accordance withreason and hence, by entailment, with virtue. But in the SummaTheologiae this is argued to be only an imperfect and incompletefelicitas, and the problematic character of such a concept isapparent from the Summa’s definition offelicitas (and synonymously beatitudo) as perfectgood and complete satisfaction of all desires.

(iv) The “distinctive function” argument is inherentlyunsatisfying in ways that could hardly have failed to be apparent toso able a philosopher as Aquinas. (a) In Aquinas’ rendering, itdepends on the postulate that “nature does nothing invain”, which in turn depends, according to Aquinas, on thepremise that nature is the product of divine creative rationality, apremise which Aquinas himself argues is, though provable, by no meansself-evident. (b) It seems arbitrary to assume that, if there is anappropriate function or operatio of human beings, it must bepeculiar to them. For peculiarity or distinctiveness has no inherentrelationship to practical fittingness, and in fact Aquinas elsewheredenies that rationality is peculiar to human beings since he holdsthat there are other intelligent creatures (the angels, understood tobe created minds unmixed with matter, occupying what would otherwisebe a surprising gap in the hierarchy of beings which ascends from themost material and inactive kinds through the vegetative kinds, theanimal kinds, and the rational animal humankind, to the one utterlyactive and intelligent, non-dependent and uncreated divine being).

(v) The root of the weakness of the “peculiar/distinctivefunction” 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 (anyhuman being). And it is a truly fundamental methodological axiom ofAquinas’s philosophy, from beginning to end of his works, thatin coming to understand the nature of a dynamic reality such as humanbeing, one must first understand its capacities, to understand whichone must first understand its act(ivities), to understand which onemust first come to understand those activities’ objects. But theobjects of human activities are intelligible opportunities such ascoming to know, being alive and healthy, being in friendship withothers, and so forth – objects whose attractiveness,fittingness, opportuneness, or appropriateness is in no way dependentupon, or even much enhanced by, the thought that they aredistinctively characteristic of human beings as opposed to otheranimals.

(vi) The fact that an operatio is distinctive of human beingsdoes not entail that that operatio is truly valuable, stillless that it is obligatory, or that it is more valuable thanalternative and incompatible ways or objectives of acting. For apremise containing no evaluative or normative term cannot entail aconclusion including such a term. If, on the other hand, the postulatethat a certain operatio is the proper (or even a proper)function of human beings is asserted to be itself evaluative and/ornormative rather than, or as well as, factual/descriptive, then someaccount is needed of the postulate’s source or justification (orself-evidence?). Aquinas has a fairly careful account of theself-evidence of a number of foundational evaluative and normativeprinciples, but only one or two of them are said by him to point tokinds of operatio distinctive of human beings; two of thefoundational principles are explicitly said by him to direct to goodsthat are not peculiar to human beings.

(vii) The analogy comparing one’s life as a whole to arts andcrafts, each with its own distinctive function, operatio,seems weak, questionable and indeed question-begging. For life as awhole is open-ended both in having no knowable duration (see 2.2.below) and in requiring judgment about the choice-worthiness of endsas well as means and techniques (see 4.4.1. below). Moreover, Aquinaslike Aristotle regularly insists on the irreducibility of thedistinction or distinctions between, on the one hand, ars orfactio (arts, crafts, techniques) and actio (theprecise subject-matter of morality and morally significantchoices).

1.2 Is the identification of “man’s last end” foundational for Aquinas?

Along with very many other Thomistic commentators, McInerny andO’Callaghan 2005 and Celano 2003 treat Aquinas’ moralphilosophy as founded, like his moral theology, upon his determinationof what felicitas (= perfecta beatitudo andAristotle’s eudaimonia) truly is, a determination madein the opening quaestiones of the Second Part of hisSumma Theologiae, where he elaborately argues that completebeatitudo or felicitas consists in anuninterruptible vision of God (and, in God, of the other truths wenaturally desire to know), something possible for us only in a life– in many respects another life – after death. But it ispossible to regard Aquinas’ argument in thosequaestiones as dictated by the needs of a specificallytheological pedagogy, as open to telling objections, and as detachablefrom (or at least as methodologically posterior to) the working andsound foundations of his moral philosophy and his treatment ofspecific moral issues – detachable, that is to say, in a waythat Aquinas would not need to regard as inappropriate in thedifferent context of today’s discourse. This article will treatAquinas’ ethics and political theory as detachable from histheology of life’s ultimate point, and will take seriously hisemphatic and reiterated thesis that, apart from the divinely given andsuper-natural opportunity of perfecta beatitudo (a gift aboutwhich philosophy as such knows nothing), the only ultimate end andbeatitudo (fulfillment) for human beings is living in acompletely reasonable, morally excellent (virtuosus) way.That thesis entails that philosophy’s main account of moralityneed and should contain no claim about what perfect happiness consistsin.

Despite surface appearances, Aquinas is conscious of Aristotle’sfailure to settle whether it is contemplation or politicalpraxis that is the essence of human fulfillment. He thereforeattempts, more intently than Aristotle did in any surviving work, toidentify what the first principles of ethics and politics are, and todo so without any premises or presuppositions about a unitary“last end of human existence”.

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

The ultimate end of human life is felicitas orbeatitudo… So the main concern of law [including thenatural (moral) law] must be with directing towardsbeatitudo. Again, since every part stands to the whole asincomplete stands to complete, and individual human beings are eachparts of a complete community, law’s appropriate concern isnecessarily with directing towards common felicitas …that is, to common good. (ST I-II q. 90 a. 2.)

The “complete community” mentioned here is the politicalcommunity, with its laws, but the proposition implicitly refers alsoto the community of all rational creatures, to whose common goodmorality (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 compatiblewith distinctions he firmly delineates at the beginning of his twomature theological syntheses, the Summa contra Gentiles andthe Summa Theologiae. (i) There are truths, he says, whichare 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 goodand evil, right and wrong. (ii) Many of those truths of natural reasonare confirmed, and even clarified, by divine revelation, that is, thepropositions communicated directly or inferentially in the life andworks of Christ, as transmitted by his immediate followers andprepared for in the Jewish scriptures accepted by those followers asrevelatory. (iii) Some of the truths divinely revealed could not havebeen discovered by natural, philosophical reason, even though, onceaccepted, their content and significance can be illuminated by thephilosophically 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 biblicalDecalogue are, in Aquinas’ view, all knowable independently ofthat revelation, which confirms and perhaps clarifies them. But thepropositions that he holds about what the true last end or ultimatedestiny of human beings actually is belong to category (iii) andcannot be affirmed on any philosophical basis, even though philosophy,he thinks, can demonstrate that they are neither incoherent norcontrary to any proposition which philosophy shows must beaffirmed.

2. Practical reason’s first principles

Intelligence and reason are not two powers; “reason” and“reasoning” in a narrow sense can be regarded as theextension of one’s “intelligence” (one’scapacity for intelligent insight into the data of experience) into thepropositional work of reasoning towards judgment, and“reason” (ratio) in a broader sense refers tothis whole capacity, only analytically divisible into aspects orphases. 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 thinkingintelligently and making reasonable and true judgments about whatto do. Thinking and judging of the latter kind is practical, thatis, intends to terminate in choice and action (in Greekpraxis, in Latin actio). “Practicalreason” sometimes refers (i) directly to such thinking,sometimes (ii) to the propositional content or structure which suchthinking has when it is done well – and thus to the propositionsthat pick out what kinds of action one ought to be judgingpursuit-worthy, undesirable, right, wrong, etc. – and sometimes(iii) to the capacity to engage in such thinking by understanding suchpropositions and being guided by them.

2.1 Precondition: capacity for self-determination by free choices

Practical reason’s central activity is deliberation about whatto do. One would have no need to deliberate unless one were confrontedby alternative attractive possibilities for action (kinds ofopportunity) between which one must choose (in the sense that onecannot do both at the same time, if at all) and can choose. Thestandards that one comes to understand to be the appropriate guidesfor one’s deliberation, choice and action give such guidance,not by predicting what one will do, but by directing what oneshould 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 freelychosen: there are indeed “acts of the human person”,perhaps quite frequent, which are not “human acts” in thecentral sense (freely chosen) but rather spontaneous andundeliberated. Nor is it that chosen acts must be immediately precededby choice: many of one’s acts are the carrying out of choiceswhich were made in the past and need not be now renewed or repeatedsince no alternative option appears attractive. It is that one can beand often is in such a position that, confronted by two or moreattractive possibilities (including perhaps the option of “doingnothing”), there is nothing either within or outside one’spersonal constitution that determines (settles) one’s choice,other than the choosing: Mal. q. 6. This conception of freechoice (liberum arbitrium or libera electio) is muchstronger than Aristotle’s, on whose conception free choices arefree only from external determining factors. Aquinas’conception of free choice is also incompatible with modern notions ofsoft determinism, or the supposed compatibility of humanresponsibility (and of the sense [self-understanding] thatone is freely choosing) with determination of every event by laws(e.g. physical) of nature. Aquinas understands the freedom of our freechoices to be a reality as primary and metaphysically and conceptuallyirreducible as the reality of physical laws, and he puts all hisreflections 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 andself-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 ofunderstanding (reason) and intelligent response (will) that constitutedeliberation, choice, and execution of choice: ST I-II qq.6–17. The analysis shows the centrality of intention in theassessment 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 tryingor exertion) is also an end relative to a more proximate means, whatis chosen when one adopts one of two or more proposals (forone’s action) that one has shaped in one’s deliberation isrightly, though more broadly, said to be what one intends, what onedoes intentionally or with intent(ion), and so forth. An act(ion) isparadigmatically what it is intended to be; that is, its morallyprimary description – prior to any moral evaluation or predicate– is the description it had in the deliberation by which oneshaped the proposal to act thus. Aquinas’ way of sayingthis is: acts are specified by – have their specificcharacter from – their objects, where “objects”has the focal meaning of proximate end as envisaged by thedeliberating and acting person. Of course, the behavior involved inthat act can be given other descriptions in the light of conventionsof 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 isprimarily on acts qua intended, or on the acts (e.g. oftaking care) that one ought to have intended, that ethical standards(moral principles and precepts) bear. To repeat: in the precedingsentence “intended” is used in the broad sense; Aquinassometimes employs it this way (e.g. ST II-II q. 64 a. 7),though in his official synthesis the word is used in the narrowersense to signify the (further) intention with which theact’s object was chosen – object being the most proximateof one’s (broad sense) intentions.

This understanding of human action has often been misappropriated byinterpreters who have assumed that when Aquinas says that acts arewrongful by reason of their “undue matter” (indebitamateria), he refers to an item of behavior specifiable by itsphysical characteristics and causal structure. So, for example,direct killingof the innocent is taken to refer tobehavior whose causally immediate effect is killing, or which has itslethal effect before it has its intended good effect. But this isincompatible with Aquinas’ fundamental and consistent positionsabout human action. The “matter” of a morally significantact is, for him, its immediate object under the description it has inone’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 behaviorconsidered in its observable physicality as such, but ratherone’s behavior as one’s objective (or the most proximateof one’s objectives), that is, as one envisages it, adopts it bychoice, and causes it by one’s effort to do so. The mostobjective account of human action is provided by the account that ismost subjective. This sound account will, however, set aside anydistorted 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 courseof deliberation, as one’s reason for acting as one did. Theimmediately and foreseen lethal effect of an act of self-defense maygenuinely be a side-effect of one’s choosing to stop the attackby 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) becauseone’s (further) intent was to take lethal revenge on an oldenemy, or to deter potential assailants by the prospect of theirdeath, or to win a reward. Behaviorally identical items of behaviormay thus be very different human acts, discernible only by knowing theacting 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 principlesprovide the foundations or sources, concern actions as choosable andself-determining. They are thus to be distinguished clearly, asAristotle already emphasized, from standards which are practical,rational, and normative in a different way, namely the technical ortechnological standards internal to every art, craft, or other systemfor mastering matter. Aquinas locates the significant and irreducibledifference between ethics and all these forms of “art” inthree features: (i) Moral thought, even when most unselfishlyconcerned with helping others through the good effects of physicaleffort and causality, is fundamentally concerned with the problem ofbringing order into one’s own will, action, and character,rather than the problem of how to bring order into the world beyondone’s will. (ii) Correspondingly, the effects of morallysignificant free choices (good or evil) are in the first instanceintransitive (effects on the will and character of the acting person.Only secondarily are they transitive effects on the world, even whenthat person’s intentions are focused, as they normally shouldbe, on the benefits of those external effects. (iii) Whereas every artand technique has a more or less limited objective (end) which can beaccomplished by skillful deployment of the art, moral thought has inview an unlimited and common (shared) horizon or point, that of“human life as a whole [finis communis totius humanaevitae]” (ST I-II q. 21 a. 2 ad 2), for each ofone’s morally significant choices (for good or evil) is a choiceto devote a part of one’s single life to a purpose which couldhave been any of the whole open-ended range of purposes open to humanpursuit 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 absolutelyfirst principle and many truly first principles: ST I-II q.94 a. 2. The absolutely first principle is formal and in a sensecontentless. Like the logical principle of non-contradiction whichcontrols all rational thought, it expresses, one might say, thepressure of reason and is so far from being empty of significance andforce that its form may be regarded as the frame, and its normativitythe source, for all the normativity of the substantive firstprinciples and of the moral principles which are inferable from them.Aquinas articulates it as “Good is to be done and pursued, andbad avoided” (ibid.).

This has often been truncated to (i) “Good is to be done, andevil avoided” or even, more drastically, (iia) “Do goodand avoid evil” or yet more drastically (iib) “Avoid eviland seek the good”. But Grisez 1963 gave reason to think theseabbreviations both exegetically and philosophically unsound. The firstpractical principle is not a command or imperative as (ii) would haveit, nor is it a moral principle as all these formulae suggest byomitting “to be pursued” (see 2.7 below). Both in grammarand in propositional content, the principle’s gerundive“is-to-be” is neither imperative nor predictive, butrationally directive – an ought – in the way thatgets its fully developed and central sense and normativity in the morespecified ought of moral standards.

Against a Kantian or neo-Kantian primacy or ultimacy of“structures of mind”, Aquinas would say that just as thepressure of reason articulated in the principle of non-contradictionhas its source in the structure of reality – in the realopposition between being and not being – sothe source of the equivalently first practical principle is the realdesirability of intelligible goods, and the trueundesirability of what is not good.

2.4 First principles of practical reason

If Plato and Aristotle fail to articulate substantive first principlesof practical reason, and if Kant overlooks them in favor of thequasi-Humeian notions of motivation that dominate ethics during theEnlightenment (and ever since), the articulation of such principles byAquinas 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 reasonpicks out and directs one towards a distinct intelligible good which,in line with the primariness of the principle identifying it, can becalled “basic” (not a term used by Aquinas). Aquinasregards 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 theindemonstrable first principles in any field of human knowledge areknowable only by insight (intellectus) into data ofexperience (here, of causality and inclination).

Moreover, when describing the first practical principles asself-evident, Aquinas emphasises that self-evidence is relative: whatis not obvious to some will be self-evident to those who have moreample experience and a better understanding of other aspects of thematter. And we should expect our understanding of first principles togrow as we come to understand more about the objects to which theyrefer 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’sfirst principles are undeduced refutes the common accusation orassumption that his ethics invalidly attempts to deduce or inferought from is, for his affirmation entails that thesources of all relevant oughts cannot be deduced from anyis. There remain, however, a number of contemporary Thomistswho deny that such a deduction or inference need be fallacious, andregard Aquinas as postulating some such deduction or inference. Theyare challenged., however, by others (such as Rhonheimer, Boyle, andFinnis) who, while sharing the view that his ethics is in theserespects fundamentally sound, deny that Aquinas attempted orpostulated any such deduction or inference, and ask for somedemonstration (i) that he did and (ii) that he or anyone else couldmake such a deduction or inference.

These critics reinforce their denial by pointing out that in hisprologue to his commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics,Aquinas teaches that knowledge of things that are what they areindependently of our thought (i.e. of nature) is fundamentallydistinct both from logic and from practical knowledge, one of whosetwo species is philosophia moralis (whose first principles orfundamental 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 beunderstood. But he holds that they are understood and accepted byeveryone who has enough experience to understand their terms. Theprocess of coming to understand a first practical principle may beexemplified as follows, in relation to the basic good of knowledge. Asa child one experiences the inclination to ask questions, and to greetapparently satisfactory answers with satisfaction and failure toanswer as a disappointment. At some point one comes to understand– has the insight – that such answers are instances of aquite general standing possibility, namely knowledge, coming to knowand overcoming ignorance. By a distinct though often well nighsimultaneous 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, abenefit, something desirable as a kind of improvement (aperfectio) of one’s or anyone’s condition, and asto be pursued.

2.5 The other basic goods

The basic human goods which first practical principles identify anddirect 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 thetranscendent cause of all being, value, normativity and efficaciousaction (ST I-II q. 94 aa. 2 & 3). His lists are alwaysexplicitly open-ended. They sketch the outlines and elements of theflourishing of the human persons in whom they can be actualized. Evencomplete fulfillment – the beatitudo perfecta thatAquinas places firmly outside our natural capacities and this mortallife – could not be regarded as a further good, but rather as asynthesis and heightened actualization of these basic goods in themanner appropriate to a form of life free from both immaturity (andother incidents of procreation) and decay.

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

2.6 Known by (or from) inclination?

Many modern accounts of Aquinas’ theory of natural law giveexplanatory primacy to the naturalness of the inclinations (to live,to know, etc.) that correspond to these basic goods. But others regardthis as a fundamental misunderstanding of Aquinas’ conception ofwill, and of the epistemological relationship between nature andreason. Will is for him intelligent response to intelligible good:one’s will is “in” one’s reason [voluntasin ratione]. He makes it very explicit both that human actionsare rightly said to be natural (in the morally relevant sense of“natural”) when and because they are intelligent andreasonable (ST I-II q. 71 a. 2), and that there areinclinations which are natural, in the sense that they are commonlyfound or characterize some or even most individuals, yet are unnaturalbecause lacking any intelligibly good object. So explanatory prioritymust be accorded to the basic human goods themselves, and to theself-evident desirability which makes each of them the object of aninclination in the will of anyone sufficiently intelligent and matureto understand their goodness (that is, the way they make human beingsmore fulfilled, more “perfect” [complete]). An inclinationof that kind is relevant in practical reason because its object isdesirable, and desirable because it would contribute to anyone’sflourishing. To say this is not to say that our natural inclinationsto what contributes to our flourishing are mere accident orhappenstance.

2.7 Only incipiently moral

Many nineteenth- and early twentieth century accounts of Aquinas tookit that the first principles of practical reason, which he regularlycalls first principles of natural law or natural right, are moralprinciples 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 themanner of the Commandments. But though there are a few passages inwhich Aquinas himself speaks in that way, they can be read down so asto make them consistent with the more strategic passages in which hespeaks of such moral principles or norms as “derived”conclusions from first principles. (See also 3.3 below.) Even immoralpeople so blinded by culture or disposition that they do not makethese inferences nevertheless can and normally do understand thefirst principles of practical reason and are guided by them,though imperfectly, in their deliberations.

Against Kant’s assumption that, since the ends toward which onewishes to act are subjective because projected, and established inone’s deliberating and willingness (as Hume proposed), byone’s subrational desires, practical reason’s function isto limit and channel one’s pursuit of those ends, Aquinasconsiders that practical reason’s first and fundamentaloperation is not limiting, confining or negative but ratherfacilitating and positive: finding and constructing intelligible endsto be pursued (prosequenda), ends that give intelligent pointto our behavior.

The thesis that the first practical principles are only incipientlymoral should not be confused with the widespread modern opinion thatpractical reason’s default position is self-interest or“prudential” reason, so that there is a puzzle about howone transits from this to morality. In Aquinas’ classical view,one’s reason (as distinct from some of one’s customaryways of thinking) naturally understands the primary or basic goods asgood for anyone, and further understands that it is good toparticipate in the many forms of friendship which require that one setaside all merely emotionally motivated self-preference.

3. Moral principles

The discerning, inferring and elaborating of moral principles is atask for practical reasonableness. The judgments one makes in doingthis are together called one’s conscience, in a senseprior to the sense in which conscience is the judgments one passes orcould pass on one’s own acts considered retrospectively. Someonewhose conscience is sound has in place the basic elements of soundjudgment and practical reasonableness, that is of the intellectual andmoral virtue which Aquinas calls prudentia. Fullprudentia requires that one put one’s sound judgmentinto effect all the way down, i.e. into the particulars of choice andaction in the face of temptations to unreasonable but perhaps notunintelligent alternatives.

3.1 Conscience

Conscience in Aquinas’ view is not a special power or presencewithin us, but is our practical intelligence at work, primarily in theform of a stock of judgments about the reasonableness (rightness) orunreasonableness (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: isgenerally to be done, etc.]” or “phi is [always][or: generally] required [or forbidden] by reason”, it must bethe case – as Aquinas stresses very forcefully – thatone’s conscience is binding upon oneself even when it is utterlymistaken and directs or licenses awful misdeeds. For since it islogically impossible that one could be aware that one’s presentjudgment of conscience is mistaken, setting oneself againstone’s own firm judgment of conscience is setting oneself againstthe goods of truth and reasonableness, and that cannot fail to bewrong: ST I-II q. 19 a. 5; Ver. q. 17 a. 4. The factthat, if one has formed one’s judgment corruptly, one will alsobe acting wrongly if one follows it (ST I-II q. 19 a. 6) doesnot affect the obligatoriness (for oneself) of one’s conscience.This teaching about conscience was rather novel in his day and to thisday is often misrepresented or misapplied as a kind of relativism orsubjectivism. But it is actually an implication of Aquinas’clarity about the implications of regarding moral judgments astrue (or false) and of thus rejecting subjectivismand relativism.

3.2 The supreme moral principle

Aquinas is regrettably inexplicit about how the first practicalprinciples yield moral principles, precepts or rules that have thecombined generality and specificity of the precepts found in theportion of the biblical Decalogue (Exod. 20.1–17;Deut. 5.6–21) traditionally called moral (the lastseven precepts, e.g. parents should be reverenced, murder is wrong,adultery is wrong, etc.). But a reconstruction of his scatteredstatements makes it clear enough that in his view a first implicationof the array of first principles, each directing us to goodsactualisable as much in others as in oneself, is this: that one shouldlove one’s neighbor as oneself.

Since he considers this principle, like the set of first principlesmentioned in I-II q. 94 a. 2, to be self-evident (per senotum), he must regard the principle of love-of-neighbor-as-selfnot so much as an inference from, or even specification of, but rathera redescriptive summary of that set. This in turn suggests the furtherreflection that the first principles, and the goods (bona) towhich they direct us, are transparent, so to speak, for theflesh-and-blood persons in whom they are and can be instantiated.Moreover, it may be thought that the primary moral principle of loveof neighbor as oneself is another reason to doubt (despiteappearances) the strategic role of eudemonism in his ethics.Aristotelianising interpretations of Aquinas’ ethics normallymake central the notion of fulfillment, understood (it seems) as thefulfillment of the deliberating and acting person – to which therequirement of neighbor love does not have a perspicuous relationship.Grisez and others, on the other hand, take it that the role offulfillment (eudaimonia, beatitudo) in ethicalthought’s unfolding from the first principles of practicalreason is best captured by a “master moral principle”close though perhaps not identical to Aquinas’s supreme moralprinciple: that all one’s acts of will be open to integralhuman fulfillment, that is to the fulfillment of all humanpersons and communities now and in future.

The supreme moral principle of love of neighbor as self has, Aquinasthinks, an immediately proximate specification in the Golden Rule:Others are to be treated by me as I would wish them to treat me. Thetight relation between the love principle and the Golden Rule suggeststhat love and justice, though analytically distinguishable, certainlycannot be contrasted as other and other. “Neighbor”excludes no human being anywhere, insofar as anyone could be benefitedby one’s choices and actions. To love someone is essentially towill that person’s good. The reasonable priorities among allthese persons as objects of one’s love, goodwill and care arediscussed 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 thetranscendent source of all persons and benefits, is certain, his usualstatement of the master moral principle affirms that one should loveGod and one’s-neighbor-as-oneself. But since he accepts that theexistence of God is not self-evident, he can allow that the morestrictly self-evident form of the master moral principle refers onlyto love of human persons (self and neighbors). He would add that, oncethe existence and nature of God is accepted, as it philosophicallyshould be, the rational requirement of loving God, and thus the fullerversion of the master moral principle, is self-evident. He also holdsthat one does not offend against this requirement of loving God exceptby making choices contrary to human good, that is, to love of self orneighbor: 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” asconclusions from – the moral first principle of love of neighboras self: ST I-II q. 99 a. 1 ad 2 with q. 91 a. 4c and q. 100a. 2 ad 2; q. 100 aa. 3 and 11c. But he never displays an example orschema of these deduction-like inferences. Consequently, as noted in2.7 above, his would-be successors have sometimes proposed that moralprinciples and norms have the self-evidence of first principles, andsometimes, equally desperately, have offered premises which, thoughsuggested by some of Aquinas’s argumentation or remarks, areincoherent with his general theory – e.g. that natural functionsare not to be frustrated.

The main lines of Aquinas’ theory of moral principles stronglysuggest 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 theprimary goods (elements of human fulfillment) will be respected andpromoted to the extent required by the good of practicalreasonableness (bonum rationis). And what practicalreasonableness requires seems to be that each of the basic human goodsbe treated as what it truly is: a basic reason for action amongstother basic reasons whose integral directiveness is not to becut down or deflected by subrational passions. The principle of loveof neighbor as self and the Golden Rule immediately pick out oneelement in that integral directiveness. The other framework moralrules give moral direction by stating ways in which more or lessspecific types of choice are immediately or mediatelycontrary to some basic good. This appears to be Aquinas’simplicit method, as illustrated below (3.4).

An adequate exposition and defence of the moral norms upheld byAquinas requires a critique, only hints for which can be found in hiswork, of theories which claim that choice can and should rationally beguided by a utilitarian, consequentialist or proportionalist masterprinciple calling for maximizing of overall net good (or, some say,incompatibly, for minimizing net evils). In developments ofAquinas’s moral theory such as are proposed by Grisez andFinnis, that critique is treated as an indispensable preliminary toany reflective non-question-begging identification of the route fromfirst principles to specific moral norms.

3.4 Some examples

The three examples or sets of examples considered in this section areonly examples of the kinds of moral norms (praecepta) whichAquinas considers are excluded by any sound conscience fromone’s deliberations about what to choose. Other examples aremore complex, such as theft and various other wrongful deprivations ofproperty, and the form of charging for loans which is named usury andjudged by Aquinas (not implausibly, though with little directapplicability to developed financial markets: see Finnis 1998,204–210) to be always contrary to just equality. Aquinas alsotreats 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 thebasic 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 aninnocent human being, and every act done by a private person which isintended to kill any human being, is to be excluded fromdeliberation as wrongful because contrary to love of neighbor as self(or self as neighbor). Public persons, Aquinas thinks, can rightfullyintend to kill in carrying out needful acts of war, suppression ofserious wrongdoing, and punishment (see also 6.3 below).

As a private person one may rightfully use force in defense of oneselfor others even if the force is such that one foresees it is likely oreven certain to kill; but one’s intention in using such lethalforce must not be to kill, but only to disable and block the attack(and less lethal force would not have met the need for defensiveblocking of the assault). Aquinas’ discussion of this(ST II-II q. 64 a.7) is the locus classicus for what laterbecame known, unhappily, as the “principle” of doubleeffect, whose real core is the thought that moral principles beardifferently on kinds of action specified by intention (e.g.to kill) from the way they bear on behavior chosen withforesight that it will (probably or even certainly) killas 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 casesdeath is indeed intended. The latter is his dominant position; hisarguments to justify a kind of choice which, whatever its beneficialconsequences, is so immediately against the good of life have comeincreasingly to seem insufficient: the Catechism of the CatholicChurch (1993), paras. 2263–67 expounds its whole teachingon war, lethal police action, and capital punishment on the basis ofthe thought that these can be justified only so far as they amount tocausing death as a side-effect, and not as killing with intent tokill. The thought is formulated by appeal to Aquinas’ referenceto acts with “double effect” in his discussion ofprivate 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, philosophicallyconsidered, it has a dual point (end, finis): (i) theprocreation and bringing up of children is a manner suited to theirgood, and (ii) fides, which goes far beyond the literaltranslation “faithfulness” and includes not onlyexclusivity and permanence but also the positive readiness andcommitment to being united with one’s spouse in mind, body and amutually assisting domestic life. Aquinas neither subordinates one ofthese two “ends” to the other, nor regards it asappropriate to choose to divide them. Fides is a good andsufficient reason for engaging in the usus matrimonii, thekind of sexual act that is intended to enable both husband and wife toexperience and in a particular way actualize and express the good oftheir marriage, so that the act’s giving and receiving ofdelight is token of their commitment.

Consequently the kind of wrongful sexual choice most often consideredby Aquinas is engaging in intercourse with one’s spouse withoutfides, because one either (i) is thinking of one’sspouse in the way one would think of a prostitute, or (significantlyworse) (ii) would be willing to have sex with somebody else if someother attractive person were to be available. Such depersonalized sexacts are instances of willing against the good of marriage (contrabonum matrimonii). This reiterated analysis should be regarded asthe key to Aquinas’ sex ethics. Another paradigmatic kind ofinstance, in itself much more serious, is a married person’schoice to have intercourse with some third party (perhaps with theother spouse’s consent). All other wrongful kinds of sex acthave their wrongfulness, according to Aquinas, not because they areunnatural in some biological or sociological sense of“unnatural”, but because they are against reason’sdirective to respect, if not also pursue, the good of marriage, arespect that calls for reserving to marriage and truly maritalintercourse all uses of one’s capacity to engage in theintentional pursuit of sexual satisfaction. For unless one regardssuch reservation as required, one’s stance about human sex actsis contra bonum matrimonii and unreasonable because onecannot coherently maintain that the intercourse of the married enablesthem to actualize and experience their fides and theirmarriage, a thought essential to the flourishing (bonum)of marriage and thus of children and thus of the wider community as awhole. One measure of the gravity of morally bad sex acts isapplicable to some kinds but not others: injustice (as in rape orseduction of the vulnerable). Another measure, applicable to all suchacts, is the extent of the deviance (“distance”) betweenacts of that kind and truly marital acts.

As in ours, many in Aquinas’ milieu found it difficult tounderstand how mutually agreeable sex could be a serious moral issue,or indeed a moral issue at all. Aquinas noted this, but was clear thatevery kind of conduct that acts out and thus confirms and reinforces adisposition of will contra bonum matrimonii is seriouslywrong because so many aspects of individual and social flourishingprofoundly depend upon the health of the institution of marriage, asit exists in the real lives of adults and children. It is worthrepeating, since the point is so often misunderstood and misreported,that Aquinas’ moral arguments for distinguishing good from badsex never run from “natural” to “thereforegood/reasonable/right”, but always from“good/reasonable/right” to therefore “natural”(and similarly, of course, for unreasonable and unnatural): see II-IIq. 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 beexcluded as to some extent wrong. The thesis is often misunderstood asbeing premised on the thought that lying is contrary to the naturalfunction of tongue or speech, a thought that has often been transposedinto 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 plausiblebasis, and so, it seems (albeit less clearly), has his ethics oflying. Though all his treatments include something like “wordsare naturally signs of what one understand” (ST II-II q. 110 a.3) or “speech was invented for expressing the conceptions inone’s heart” (Sent. III d. 38 a. 3c), thisstatement is pointing to a more explanatory and prior premise,discernible though never adequately articulated so as to show itsrelation to basic human goods. This prior premise turns on hisdefinition of lying as one’s assertion of what onebelieves to be false. Whenever one asserts, one affirms as true twopropositions: explicitly the proposition one articulates as truedespite one’s belief that it is not, and implicitly theproposition that one believes what one is assertively articulating. SoAquinas seems to locate the essential wrongfulness of lying in thisintentional dissonance between the self presented or reportedand one’s real self: a duplicitas. It is oftenreasonable and even morally necessary to hide one’s beliefs, andthis, not “deception”, is what Aquinas means by the“prudent dissimulatio” he thinks justifiable inappropriate contexts. But one should not do so by the spuriousself-projection entailed by asserting what one believes false.Pretended flight as a device for luring an unjust enemy into an ambushcan be right in a just war, but lying to the enemy is wrong, althoughits gravity is much diminished by the duty not to reveal the truth tothe enemy, a duty compatible with the coexisting duty not to lie.Subsequent scholars in his tradition have wondered whether theconditions of discourse with an unjust opponent do not, at least inmany circumstances, defeat the presumption that a grammaticallyindicative statement asserts what it is put forward to seemto 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 moreurgent and direct as implications of love of self and neighbor, butare not necessarily more important in other dimensions of importance.That is to say, they are applicable and to be followed semper etad semper, always and in all circumstances, whereas theapplicability of affirmative norms (requiring one to act in aspecified kind of way) is semper sed non ad semper: alwaysapplicable subject to there being (as is not always the case) suitablecircumstances. Kinds of conduct that are contrary to a negative moralnorm of this type are “intrinsically wrongful”(intrinsece mala).

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

4. Virtues

A virtue is an aspect of, or constitutive element in, being a personof good character. To have the virtues is to have a stable and readywillingness to make choices that are morally good because in line withthe bonum rationis, the basic good of practicalreasonableness.

4.1 Specified by principles identifying the reasonable “mean”

The virtues, like everything else in one’s will, are a responseto reasons. But practical reasons (i.e. reasons for action) arepropositional: they can be stated as principles and other standards,more or less specific. So principles, ultimately the first principlesof practical reason (that is, of natural law), are more fundamental toethics than virtues are. Aquinas accepts Aristotle’s notion thatevery virtue is a mean between too much and too little, and heconstantly stresses that it is reason – with the principles andrules (regulae) it understands – that settles the meanand thus determines what is too much or too little. Indeed, theprinciples of practical reason (natural law) establish the ends of thevirtues: ST II-II q. 47 a. 6. And the master virtue ofbringing practical reasonableness into all one’s deliberations,choices, and carrying out of choices – the virtue ofprudentia, a virtue both intellectual (of one’sintelligence) and moral (of one’s whole will and character)– is part of the definition, content, and influence of everyother moral virtue: ST I-II q. 65 a. 1, q. 66 a. 3 ad 3,etc.

Aquinas arranged the Summa Theologiae’s exposition ofmorality within a classification, not of the goods to which rationalacts are directed, nor of types of act, nor of practicalreason’s standards, but of the virtues. Explicable as areflective theological project of depicting the flourishing ordeviations of human beings in an account of the whole movement ofcreature from their origin to their fulfillment, his decision to adoptthis superstructure has tended to obscure the real foundations of hisethics. As one would expect from the considerations sketched in thepreceding paragraph, his actual arguments about what is right andwrong, virtuous or vicious, get their premises not from analysis ofthe virtues at stake but rather from the principles and more specificstandards, norms, precepts or rules of practical reason(ableness). Itis the conclusions of these arguments that are then re-expressed interms of what is contrary to or in line with one or more of thevirtues.

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

One’s affirmative responsibilities are all conditioned bycircumstances, and mostly are (conditional) implications of the GoldenRule of doing to or for others what you would wish them to doto or for you. For both these reasons, one cannot make sound judgmentsabout what one should be doing – that is, about what is the“mean” of reasonableness – unless one’s wishesare those of a person who understands the opportunities and thecircumstances well, and whose concerns and intentions are those ofsomeone whose reasonableness is not corrupted or deflected either bysub-rational desires and aversions or by deformations of will such aspride or presumption. Such a person has the virtues, intellectual andmoral, and virtue is thus, and in these respects, required for soundmoral judgment. Sometimes the mean of reason, properly assessed bysomeone 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 theconnexio virtutum: that to have any of the virtues in itsfull and proper form one must have all of them, and (ii) of thegoverning and shaping role of (the good of) practical reasonableness(bonum rationis), that is, of the intellectual and moralvirtue of prudentia. For some indication why, see 4.4below..

4.3 Virtue’s priority not reducible to self-fulfillment

Just as some take Aquinas to hold that concern for one’s ownhappiness is the source of one’s moral motivation and judgment,so some take him to hold that the point of being virtuous is beingvirtuous. But a sounder reading may understand him to hold thatattaining beatitudo and virtus are more likebuilt-in beneficial side-effects of openness to the beatitudoof everyone – that is, of love of neighbor as oneself, accordingto a reasonable order of priorities. What virtue (the state ofcharacter) is praised for, he says, is its actualizing the good ofreason(ableness), and reason is good because it enables one to discernthings for what they truly are – and so, in the practicaldomain, to discern real benefits (bona, opportunities) anddirect one’s choices and actions to bringing them about in thereal people for whom one thereby makes effective one’s love andrespect.

4.4 The cardinal virtues

Aquinas accepts the Platonic-Aristotelian thesis that there are fourvirtues which are cardinal, that is on which the moral life and allother virtues hinge or depend: prudentia, justice, courage,and temperantia. Each is a strategic element in one’sintegrating of the good of practical reasonableness into one’sdeliberations, choices and execution of choices (prudentia),in one’s dealings with others justice), and in integrating andgoverning one’s desires by genuine reasons(temperantia) and enabling one to face down intimidatingobstacles (courage, fortitudo).

4.4.1 Prudentia and love

Practical reasonableness involves not only (i) an intelligent andrationally integrated understanding of practical reason’sprinciples and of the implications that, under the auspices of themaster principle of love of neighbor as self, they have in the form ofmoral standards, but also (ii) the personal self-governance needed toput those conscientious judgments into effect by choices andcorresponding action. So prudentia has many phases or, asAquinas says, parts, and enters into every other virtue. It is farremoved from “prudence” in the sense of “rationalself-interest”, for by prudentia one is actively awarethat self-interest is self-stunting or indeed self-destructive unlessone transcends it by one’s dispositions and acts of justice andfriendship or love. (And see 2.7 above.)

Although Aquinas subscribes to Aristotle’s thesis that practicalreasonableness (phronesis, prudentia) concerns meansrather than ends, he eliminates any quasi-Humeian reading of thatthesis by emphasizing that what “moves” prudentiais not one’s passions but one’s underivative understandingof the first practical principles and of the intelligible goods towhich they point (synderesis movet prudentiam: STII-II q. 47 a. 6 ad 3). Moreover, since he holds that virtually allmeans are also ends, the Aristotelian thesis in no way inhibits himfrom holding that prudentia is what guides one in identifyingmoral standards and the “mean” of every virtue:prudentia “directs the moral virtues not only inchoosing means but also in establishing ends”: I-II q. 66 a. 3ad 3.

4.4.2 Justice

Justice is the steady and lasting willingness to give to others whatthey 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 divisionof justice into (i) distributive (good judgment about how todivide up and parcel out beneficial or burdensome wholes or sets in away that is fair because guided by appropriate criteria) and (ii) whatAquinas calls commutative justice (good judgment going farwider than Aristotle’s “corrective” justice, andconcerned with all other kinds of dealings between persons). Hisprioritizing of the concept of right (jus), conceived assomething that belongs to another, brings him to the brink ofarticulating a concept of human rights, a concept certainly implicitin his thesis that there are precepts of justice each imposing, on meand 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 correlativeto such duties of justice there must be rights that belong to everyoneindifferenter. Many duties of justice are positive(affirmative duties to give, do, etc.), and Aquinas treats the dutiesof relieving poverty both under justice and under love (of neighbor,for God’s sake). The duties in either case are essentially thesame, and Aquinas’ understanding of them strongly affects hisunderstanding of justified private property rights, which are validbecause needed for prosperity and development, but are subject to aduty to distribute, directly or indirectly, one’ssuperflua – that is, everything beyond what one needsto keep oneself and one’s family in the state of lifeappropriate to one’s (and their) vocation(s). For the naturalresources of the world are “by nature” common; that is,reason’s principles do not identify anyone as having a priorclaim to them other than under some customary or other sociallyposited scheme for division and appropriation of such resources, andsuch schemes could not be morally authoritative unless theyacknowledged some such duty to distribute one’ssuperflua.

4.4.3 Fortitudo and temperantia

Though one’s passions, that is one’s emotional desires andaversions, support one’s reason in deliberation, choice andaction, they are also always capable of deflecting one from reasonableand right choice. So the ready disposition to keep these passions intheir proper role is an essential element of a virtuous character andlife. By temperantia one integrates one’s desires,particularly but not only for sexual pleasure, with reason, lestreason be enslaved by passion and become its ingenious servant, as itreadily can. Temperantia is the mean, for example, betweenlust and frigidity or apathy (Aquinas everywhere rejecting any“Stoic” ideal of passionlessness, and holding that thereis good as well as bad concupiscentia).

By fortitudo one keeps one’s aversions, particularlybut not only fear, in check lest one shirk one’s moralresponsibilities in situations of danger or other adversity. It is themean between recklessness or over-boldness and cowardice ordefeatism.

4.5 “Virtue ethics”

In recent decades various philosophers and theologians have proposedthat ethics done well is virtue ethics, not an ethics of rules andprinciples. An ethics of the latter kind is denounced as legalistic.As should be clear from the foregoing, Aquinas rejects the proposedcontrast and gives systematic prominence both to standards, such asprinciples and rules, and to virtues. He holds, in effect, that theyare interdefined. Nor does he have any time for the view that thereare no exceptionless moral norms and that moral norms or otherstandards are no more than a kind of anticipation, shadow orapproximation of the judgments which in each situation need to be madeby a person of virtue, and which could never exclude inadvance any kind of act as always wrongful by reason of itsobject and regardless of its further intentions or the circumstancesof the situation. On the contrary, he holds that no human act ismorally good (right, in the sense of not wrong) unless it is in linewith love of self and neighbor (and thus with respect for the basicaspects of the wellbeing of each and all human beings) not only (i) inthe motives or intentions with which it is chosen, and (ii) in theappropriateness of the circumstances, but also (iii) in its object(more precisely the object, or closest-in intention of the choosingperson) (see 2.1.1 above). This is the primary sense of the axiom hefrequently articulates by quoting an old tag: bonum ex integracausa, malum ex quocumque defectu (good from an unflawed set ofcontributing factors, bad from any defect in the set). That is, thereis a fundamental asymmetry between moral good and moral evil – anotion very foreign to any version of utilitarian or post-utilitarianconsequentialist or “proportionalist” ethics.

5. Political community

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

5.1 Common good

“Common good” is very often a safer translation ofbonum commune than “the common good”. For thereis the common good of a team, but equally the common good of auniversity class, of a university, of a family, of a neighborhood, ofa city, of a state, of a church and of human kind throughout theworld. The difference in each case between the group’s commongood and an aggregate of the wellbeing of each of its members can beunderstood by considering how, in a real friendship, A wills B’swellbeing for B’s sake, while B wills A’s wellbeing forA’s sake, and each therefore has reason to will his or her ownwellbeing for the other’s sake, with the result that neitherenvisages his or her own wellbeing as the source (the object) of thefriendship’s value, and each has in view a truly commongood, not reducible to the good of either taken separately or merelysummed. Inasmuch as there is possible and appropriate a kind offriendship 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 awhole [totum] made up of persons (and perhaps of othergroups), their unity being not merely one of composition orconjunction or continuity, but rather of order, in twodimensions: (i) of the parts (members) as coordinating with eachother, and (ii) of the group and its members to its organizing purposeor end (finis). Of these, (ii) is the more explanatory, asAquinas argues at the very beginning of his commentary onAristotle’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, thefamily-cum-household, the political group, and the church establishedto transmit divine revelation and salvation each have suchsignificance. The benefits made possible by political community, withits state government and law, are such that its common good is bothextensive and intensive in its reach and implications (e.g. thelegitimacy of securing it by coercion). So on those occasions when“the common good” is the best translation of bonumcommune, the referent will normally be the good of the politicalcommunity in question (or of political communities generically), oftencalled by Aquinas public good.

Nevertheless, Aquinas’s use of the Aristotelian axiom,“human beings are naturally political animals” almostalways takes it as asserting our social, not solitary, nature –our need for interpersonal relationships both for friendship and forsuch necessities as food, clothing, speech, and so forth. So the axiomshould not be made to mean that Aquinas thinks there is a distinctbasic inclination towards, or a distinct basic good, of politicalcommunity, to put alongside the distinct basic good of marriage andfamily. He accepts that we are naturally parts of a politicalcommunity, but also that we are more naturally conjugal than political(in the narrow sense), and that political community does not properlyhave the ultimacy it has for Aristotle. For Aquinas, politicalcommunities have been irrevocably relativized by the appropriatenessfor (in principle) everyone of belonging to the Church which is, inits own way, as complete [perfecta] a kind of community asany state.

Moreover, Aristotle’s claim that the polis is“greater and more godlike” than any other human communityis put by Aquinas into a horizon which contains not merely the onecivitas (Latin for polis) of which I am a member butrather the whole plurality of peoples and civitates (states,political communities): Eth. VIII.4.11–12. So for himthe common good that is the ultimate concern of political philosophy,and thus of the reasonable person, is nothing less than thefulfillment of all human persons and communities (and see 3.2above).

Still, this wider perspective does not lead Aquinas to develop atheory of international community; this had to be developed by hissixteenth-century followers. Indeed, he takes remarkably littleinterest in a number of important issues related to the plurality ofstates and the dynamics of state-formation, and the appropriaterelationship between a people [populus, gens, etc.]and a state (should each people presumptively have a state?). Hispolitical philosophy explores with subtlety and care the state[civitas, regnum, etc.], almost as if there weresimply 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 thecentral case, are also members of another “completecommunity”, the Church. So this completeness is, in each case,relative and delimited. Correspondingly, the state’s governingstructures (which Aquinas does not call “the state”) are– again in the central, morally proper case – limited infour 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 doesnot mean that moral principles all apply to public authority in theway they do to private persons; they do not, yet there is no exemptionof public authorities from the exceptionless moral norms againstintentionally killing the innocent, lying, rape and otherextra-marital sex, and so forth. Moreover, this limitation has nobearing on the distinct question which moral standards should, or canproperly, be legally enforced by the state’s government and law(see (iii) below).

(ii) State governments are subject to laws governing election or otherappointment to and tenure and rotation of office, and the jurisdictionof particular offices. Even supreme rulers not subject to the coerciveauthority of anyone else cannot dispense themselves from theobligation of their own laws unless that is for the common good andfree from favoritism. If they defy these moral restrictions they showthemselves to be tyrants, and may be resisted and deposed by theconcerted (“public”) action of their people. The best formof government (or as we would now say, constitution) is one in which,“well mixed”, are found “monarchy”,“aristocracy” and “democracy”, that is, therule of one person (whose “monarchy” is probablybetter elective rather than hereditary), governing in concert with afew high officials chosen for their excellence of characterand aptitude, by an electorate comprising the many who areentitled both to vote and to stand for election: ST I-II q.105 a. 1. Establishing and maintaining such an arrangement is a matterfor laws which delimit the competences of all concerned.

(iii) State governments and laws have the authority and duty topromote and defend the common good, including the good of virtue. Thisresponsibility brings with it the authority to use coercion for thesuppression of crime and enemy attack. This coercive jurisdictionextends to defending persons and property both by force and by thecredible threat of punishment for criminal or other unjustappropriation or damage. But it does not extend to enforcing any partof morality other than the requirements of justice insofar asthey can be violated by acts external to the choosing andacting person’s will. Acts of virtues (or vices) other than suchexternal acts of inter-personal (in)justice cannot rightly beprohibited unless they involve (in)justice. For, unlikedivine law’s, “human law’s purpose is the temporaltranquility of the state, a purpose which the law attains bycoercively prohibiting external acts to the extent that theseevils can disturb the peaceful state of the state.” STI-II q. 98 a. 1c; likewise q. 100 a. 2c: “human law does not putforward precepts about anything other than acts of justice [andinjustice]”. State law’s justifiedly coercive domain isnot private good as such, nor the whole of the community’scommon good. Rather, it is those aspects of the politicalcommunity’s common good that can be called public good, and thatare affected by external acts directly or indirectly affecting othermembers of the community.

(iv) The morally significant authority of the state’s governmentand law is limited by the rights of the Church, though when thatgovernment and law are within their proper domain, one ought to complywith their directives rather than any purported act of administrationor government (apart from general moral teaching) by Pope orbishops.

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

6.2 Limited government’s forms: “political” and “regal”

Government is properly speaking “political” when thesupreme person or body “has power which is limited [potestascoarctata or limitata] by certain laws of thestate”: Pol. I.1.5. Such rulers govern in accordancewith the laws concerning the establishment of their office, theirappointment and their responsibilities. When power is, by contrast,“plenary”, the government is said to be“regal” in kind. But even regal government, in its properforms, is the government of free and equal people who have in somesense (never made quite clear by Aquinas) the “right to resist[ius repugnandi]” the ruler(s). Even regal rulers aresubject to the directive force of the laws, though there is no-one whohas the legal authority to coerce them.

Aquinas sees no need for any “social contract” to explainor justify the origins of government or of any particular regime. Buthe does think that, even in regal as distinct from political rule, theenacted laws constitute “a kind of covenant [pactum]between king and people” (In Rom. 13.1 v. 6), andviolation of this by the ruler can entail that subjects are releasedfrom their covenantal obligation.

In principle, Aquinas thinks, the supreme legislative powers are heldeither by the whole people [tota multitudo], a free people[libera multitudo], or by some public persona whohas 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 arepresentative are explored in any depth by Aquinas. Nor does hediscuss how it gets settled whether a particular people is (i) simplyfree and self-governing, or (ii) free but subject to the legislativeauthority of some princeps, or (iii) unfree (perhaps becauseconquered).

6.3 State authority is neither paternalistic nor divine

Though he never openly confronts them, Aquinas sets aside the sayingsat the end of Aristotle’s Ethics which seem to meanthat the polis has the responsibility and role of coercivelyleading all its citizens, of every age, towards all-round virtue.Aquinas plainly rejects the idea that the state is a surrogate forpaternal authority, or has God’s authority over morallysignificant conduct. Though he frequently states that the politicalrulers have a proper concern to lead people to virtue, thesestatements turn out to refer to the appropriate aspirations of rulers,not to their coercive jurisdiction or authority. In the context of thesurrounding argument, the statements do not commit him to any widergovernmental or legal authority than to require and foster the publicgood and the virtue of justice, that is, the willingness to performone’s duties to others: 6.1(iii) above. The othervirtues can be legally required of citizens only so far as they impacton justice: ST I-II q. 96 a. 3. Moreover, he holds theclassic position that doing justice does not require that one’smotivations and character be just. And when it comes to coercivemeasures, he holds that they can bear only upon conduct that isexternal and immediately or mediately affects other people unjustly ordisturbs the peace of the political community: ST I-II q. 98a. 1. Really private vices are outside the coercive jurisdiction ofthe state’s government and law. Though political authority isultimately derived from divine authority, it is not to be exercised inthe same all-encompassing way as God does when directing one (likeevery other human individual) to the complete and heavenly fulfillmentgratuitously and supernaturally offered to us all by God. Absolutepolitical authority of the kind later claimed by rulers such as JamesI of England is contrary to Aquinas’ constant teaching.

This reading of Aquinas as, in a nineteenth and twentieth centuryjargon, “a liberal” (or “the first Whig”) isoften disputed, for there are statements in his writings which takenacontextually seem to assert the simpler and paternalisticAristotelian position.

6.4 The state shares its authority with another “complete community”

One of the reasons why Aquinas’ political theory departssignificantly from Aristotle’s is that Aquinas believes he hasaccess to facts and considerations unavailable to Aristotle, namely tothe public divine revelation completed in the works and sayings ofChrist, founder of a spiritual community, the (Catholic =“universal”) Church. When political life is reallywell-ordered, therefore, each member (citizen) of a state will be alsoa member of this other “complete community” and subject toits laws as well as to the state’s. The function of this othercommunity is to transmit the divine promise or offer of eternal life,and to help people help each other, through their own individual freechoices, to become ready for that life. With the establishing of thiscommunity (in continuity and discontinuity with the older religiouscommunity of Israel), human associations are henceforth of twofundamentally distinct types: (i) temporal or secular, worldly, civil,or political, and (ii) spiritual. Correspondingly, responsibility forhuman affairs is divided between (i) secular societies, especiallystates and families, and (ii) the Church. The distinction betweensecular and spiritual tracks that between natural and revealedknowledge.

6.4.1 Non-dependence and non-subjection of secular authority

Accordingly, the Church’s leaders have no jurisdiction oversecular matters, although they can declare that the choice of a memberof the Church, albeit in a secular matter, is seriously immoral. Aparent has no jurisdiction over a child’s free choices except inso far as they violate the moral rights of other members of the familyor the parents’ responsibility for the child’s educationand moral upbringing. State government and law have no right to directthe Church’s leaders, or its members in their religious affairs,except in so far as the state’s peace and justice wouldotherwise be violated. “In those matters which pertain topolitical good [bonum civile], secular rather than spiritualauthority should be obeyed.” Sent. II d. 44 ex. ad4.

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

Beyond this, Aquinas works within the constitutional assumptions ofthe Christendom of his era. His positions imply that if ecclesiasticalauthorities expel members from the Church for their misdeeds asrulers, the consequences under their particular state’s ownconstitutional arrangement could include the rulers’deposition (loss of secular legal authority); but Aquinas blurs orelides this distinction of jurisdictions, and loosely says that theChurch “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 canrightly be compelled to accept the Christian faith or membership ofthe Church, but that those who are members can and should be compelledby both ecclesiastical and state law to abstain from any publicrenunciation of it. He treats such renunciation as an actionablebreach of promise (passing silently over the fact that in most casesthe promise was made not by the persons concerned but rather, in theirearly infancy, by their parents). And he regards public teaching ofheresy as comparable to counterfeiting coin of the realm and thereforerightly punishable capitally by the secular authorities (the fact offalse teaching having been ascertained by an ecclesiastical trial).His views about this matter are explicitly based on the evolvingtradition of the Church and on what historical experience suggestedwere the effects of more permissive political or legal arrangements.So there are no theoretical obstacles to his ready acceptance of thejudgment of later theologians and Church teachers that, as experienceshows, it is more compatible with basic positions in his moral andpolitical philosophy to hold that authentically personal judgment andfreely chosen commitment are so important in relation to ultimatequestions that all persons (even those whose beliefs about religionare false or ill-formed) have a moral right, and should have thecorresponding legal right, to be free from state (and ecclesiastical)coercion in religious belief or action except in so far as theirconduct would be contrary to the rights of others or to public peaceor to public morality (that is, morality so far as it concerns actionswhich impact on the public) (Second Vatican Council, Declarationon Religious Liberty (1965)). Nor is it clear how he could resistthe objection that, even if those baptized in infancy ratify thepromises made on their behalf at baptism, the subscription of faith isnot an undertaking to other people or the community, but rather is amatter which, as he says in a neglected passage elsewhere in his majorwritings (ScG III c. 80 n. 15), “pertains to thatperson alone as an individual [secundum se ipsum].”

7. Law

The best developed part of Aquinas’ political theory is hisaccount of law. That account’s main features may be summarizedin four propositions about the central case and focal meaning of law.It is a matter of intelligent direction addressed to the intelligenceand reason of those whom it directs. It is for the common good of apolitical community. It is made (positum, put in place) bythe ruler(s) responsible for the community in question. It needs to becoercive.

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 lessstudied qq. 98–105) has been justly admired by jurists and otherthinkers not otherwise much interested in his work. But it is shapedby his concern there (i) to present for beginner students of theologyan overview of the universe and of the vast sweep of creatures outfrom their divine creator and back to the same transcendent being astheir ultimate destiny, and (ii) to synthesize the traditionalvocabulary and classic theological sources on law. So prominence isthere given to the “eternal law” by which God governs eveninanimate 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 emphasizesthat law’s most essential feature is something which is not trueof the laws of nature (physics, biology, etc.), namely that it is anappeal to the mind, choice, moral strength (virtus) and loveof those subject to the law: ScG III cc. 114–117; thisis 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 forco-ordination through free cooperation. The structure of things beingwhat it is, the principles of practical reason and morality (naturalmoral law and natural right) can be understood, accepted, and livedby, as fully directive in conscience, without needing to be regardedas (what they really are) an appeal from mind to mind, aplan – freely made to be freely adopted – forintegral human fulfillment. As the divine creator was in no wayconstrained to choose to create this universe as distinct from anyother good possible universe, so human legislators have wide moralfreedom to choose amongst alternative possible legal arrangements,making one set of provisions legally and (presumptively) morallyobligatory by the sheer fact of adopting it – that is, by whatAquinas calls the law-makers’ determinatio: I-II q. 95a. 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 responsiblefor looking after that community.” It is by being intended forcommon good that law appeals to its subjects’ reason, and givesthem reason for regarding the law as authoritative and obligatory,morally as well as legally. Even when its subjects or some of themwould have made or preferred a different determinatio, adifferent way of pursuing communal benefit, the rulers’ intentto promote common good supports and is supported by their claim torulership. Only if they have such intent can they instantiate thecentral case of government.

7.2.1 The Rule of Law

The central case of government is the rule of a free people, and lawis 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 subjectsto be partners in public reason (Aquinas has the conceptthough not the phrase). The features of law thus itemized by Aquinasamount to the concept of the Rule of Law, which he clearly gives apriority over the “rule of men” in his treatment ofjudges’ subordination to legislation and of the duty of judgesto adhere to law even against the evidence of their own eyes (whenthat evidence is not legally admissible): II-II q. 67 a. 2; q. 64 a. 6ad 3.

7.3 Law is posited by the responsible authority

The person or body that “has the care of the community” isentitled to make laws. Aquinas treats all human law as“posited” and (synonymously) “positive”, eventhose of its rules that are restatements of, or authoritativelypromulgated deductions (conclusiones) from, general moralprinciples or norms. Interpretation, too, Aquinas thinks of asinvolving, in the last analysis, an appeal to the legislator(s) todeclare what the enacted law truly means.

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

Even in a paradise unflawed by any human vice, there would, Aquinasthinks, have been need for government and for law, though notnecessarily “political” government, still less coercivelaw. For social life needs a considerable amount of common policy andcommon action which cannot otherwise than by authoritativedeterminatio be achieved by a group whose members have manyideas – perhaps all of them good – about priorities andways to proceed: ST I q. 96 a. 4. A determinatio, ifit is just and fit to be authoritative, must have a rationalconnection to principles of practical reasonableness. But thatrational connection is like an architect’s decisions aboutdimensions; they must be rationally connected to the terms of thecommission (e.g. to build a maternity hospital, not a lion’scage) but these terms, while excluding various options, leave manyoptions entirely open (the doors must be more than 1 foot high but asbetween 7.1 and 7.2 feet the choice is entirely free, and likewisewith every dimension, selection of materials, colors, and soforth).

7.4 Law needs to be coercive

In a world (paradise) of saints (completely virtuous persons), therewould be need for law but not for coercion; so coercion is not part ofAquinas’s definition of law and law’s directive force canbe contrasted with its coercive force (and see 6.1(ii) above). But inour actual world the need for (the threat of) coercion is such thatAquinas will say without qualification that law ought to have coerciveforce [vis coactiva] as well as directive [visdirectiva]; he even says that it is a characteristic of law[de ratione legis] (ST I-II q. 96 a. 5), despite notincluding it in his official definition of law’s nature [itsratio] (q. 90. a. 3).

It is not quite accurate to say that the state or its government has amonopoly of force, since one can justifiably use force as a citizen todefend oneself or others from an attack or assault that is not itselfjustified (being criminal or insane), and this requires noauthorization. Still, Aquinas insistently draws a distinction betweenprivate and public use of force. Only public authority can punish orrightly engage in war, and it is reasonable for public authorities toseek a virtual monopoly on what would now be called police operationsfor the prevention, suppression, and detection of crime. Privatepersons can never rightly intend precisely to harm or kill, thoughthey can knowingly bring about harm or death as a proportionateside-effect of intending to block an attack (3.4.1 above). Personswith public authority can, Aquinas thinks, rightly intend to kill (orinjure) in the exercise of their duty to suppress the attacks ofcriminals, pirates, and other public or private enemies. (He does notexplore those borderland or badland – “wild west”– situations where the distinction between public and private isindistinct.)

The paradigmatic public use of coercion is judicially imposedpunishment, capital or otherwise. At the core of Aquinas’saccount of justified punishment is the notion that offenders arepunishable because, in choosing to offend, they have excessivelyindulged their will and thereby (he implies) gained a kind ofadvantage over those who have retrained their own wills from suchexcess; a just relationship between themselves and their fellowcitizens can fittingly be restored by proportionately imposing uponsuch offenders something contra voluntatem, contrary to andsuppressive of their will: I-II q. 46 a. 6 ad 2. This restoration of afair balance between offenders and the law-abiding is central to whatAquinas frequently calls the “medicinal” function ofpunishment, for the medicine of punishment is intended to heal notonly offenders (by reforming them) or potential offenders (bydeterring them), but also and more centrally the whole community byrectifying the disorder of injustice created by the offender’sself-preferential violation of justice. On capital punishment see3.4.1 above.

Aquinas regards as legitimate ground for going to war not only thedefence of this or another political community, but also the purposeof justly punishing and/or securing compensation. (As justifiablegrounds 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 ofunjustly taken territory or other possessions, and (iii) exaction ofcompensation 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, itcannot rightly be complied with; one’s moral obligation is notto obey but to disobey: ST I-II q. 96 a. 4. And if itpurports to authorize such acts (e.g. rape, theft, or infanticide),its authorization is morally void and of no effect (II-II q. 57 a. 2ad 2); courts should not guide their adjudications by such laws (II-IIq. 60 a. 5 ad 1). But law’s obligatoriness and authority issubject to further conditions, derived from the very nature andrationale of political authority. If the law-makers (i) are motivatednot by concern for the community’s common good but by greed orvanity (private motivations that make them tyrants, whatever thecontent of their legislation), or (ii) act outside the authoritygranted to them, or (iii) while acting with a view to the common goodapportion the necessary burdens unfairly, their laws are unjust and inthe forum of reasonable conscience are not so much laws as acts ofviolence [magis sunt violentiae quam leges]: I-II q. 96 a. 4.Such laws lack moral authority, i.e. do not bind in conscience; one isneither morally obliged to conform nor morally obliged not toconform.

This conclusion is subject to a proviso or exception: laws which areunjust by reason of one or more of these three enumerated types ofdefect in authority sometimes create an obligation in conscience justto the extent that disobedience would cause disorder or give the kindof ‘example’ that leads others into wrongdoing. To avoidthose sorts of unjust harm to public and private good one may have amoral obligation to forgo one’s right(s) [iuri suo debetcedere]. This obligation is not: to comply with the law accordingto its makers’ intent, and/or to the meaning it has under theparticular legal system’s interpretative canons. Rather, it is akind of collateral obligation: to avoid those acts of non-compliancethat would unjustly risk having the bad side-effects of being seen notto comply.

All who govern in the interests of themselves rather than of thecommon good are tyrants, for that is what a tyrant is in the classicalline of thought followed by Aquinas. Tyranny entails treatingone’s subjects as slaves – persons used for the benefit ofthe master. The laws of tyrants are not laws simpliciter, butrather a kind of perversion of law [perversitas legis], andone is, in principle, entitled to treat them as one treats abandit’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 theright of forcible resistance; as a private right this could extend asfar as killing the tyrant as a foreseen side-effect of one’slegitimate self-defence. It is the tyrant rather than the subject whois morally guilty of sedition. If one can associate with others toconstitute oneself with them a kind of public authority willing andable to assume responsibility for the common good of the state, one isentitled, in Aquinas’ view, to set about overthrowing, and ifneed be executing, the tyrant, with a view to the liberatioof the people [multitudinis] and the homeland[patriae]. Since rulers who are not tyrants are entitled tohunt down and most severely punish sedition, and both rulers andsubjects may fall into error about each other’s moral status,subjects ought to be slow to judge a tyranny so unjust thatoverthrowing or forcibly resisting it is fair to those likely to beinjured as a side-effect of revolutionary struggle; there is a(defeasible) presumption in favor of acquiescence and merely passivedisobedience: II-II q. 42 a. 2 ad 3, q. 104 a. 6 ad 3; IISent. d. 44 q. 2 a. 2; Reg. 1.6.

Bibliography

A. Works of Thomas Aquinas

• [Eth] Sententia Libri Ethicorum (Commentary onAristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics) [1271–2].
• [Mal] Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo (DisputedQuestions on Evil) [1269–71].
• [Reg] De Regno [or De Regimine Principum] adregem Cyprum (On Government [or Kingship] [orOn the Rule of Princes/Political Leaders] to the King ofCyprus) [c. 1265].
• [ScG] Summa contra Gentiles (A Treatise against theUnbelievers) [?1259–65].
• [Sent] Scriptum super Libros Sententiarum PetriLombardiensis (A Commentary on Peter Lombard’sSentences [Collection of Opinions of the Church Fathers])[1253–7]. Note that this remains untranslated save in smallexcerpts.
• [ST] Summa Theologiae (A Treatise on Theology),Parts I [1265–8], I–II [1271–2], II–II[c.1271], III [1272–3].
• [Ver] Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate (DisputedQuestions about Truth) [1256–9].
• Dyson, R. W. (ed.), 2002, Thomas Aquinas PoliticalWritings, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Aselection of texts in a new translation.
• Freddoso, Alfred (trans.), 2009, Thomas Aquinas: Treatise onLaw. The Complete Text. South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press.A new translation.
• Regan, Richard, and Baumgarth, William (eds.), 2003, ThomasAquinas: On Law, Morality, and Politics, Indianapolis: Hackett. Aselection of texts in a new translation.

B. Secondary Literature

Thomas Aquinas Complete Works Pdf

• Bradley, Denis, 1997, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good:Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas’s Moral Science,Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press.
• Celano, Anthony, 2003, “Medieval Theories of PracticalReason”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2003Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2003/entries/practical-reason-med/>.
• Dyson, R. W., 2003, Normative Theories of Society in FiveMedieval Thinkers, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press,187–225
• Finnis, John, 1983, Fundamentals of Ethics, Oxford:Oxford University Press; Georgetown: Georgetown University Press.
• –––, 1996, “The Truth in LegalPositivism”, in George, R. (ed.), The Autonomy of Law:Essays on Legal Positivism, Oxford: Clarendon Press,195–214; also in Finnis 2011, IV, 174–188.
• –––, 1997, “The Good of Marriage and theMorality of Sexual Relations: Some Philosophical and HistoricalObservations”, American Journal of Jurisprudence, 42:97–134; also in Finnis 2011, III, 334–352.
• –––, 1998, Aquinas: Moral, Political andLegal Theory, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2011, Collected Essays of JohnFinnis, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, fivevolumes.
• Goyette, John, 2013, “On the Transcendence of the PoliticalCommon Good: Aquinas versus the New Natural Law Theory”,Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, Spring: 133–55.
• Grisez, Germain, 1965, “The First Principle of PracticalReason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1–2,Question 94, Article 2”, Natural Law Forum, 10 :168‑201; reprinted Finnis, J. (ed.), 1991, The InternationalLibrary of Essays in Law and Legal Theory: Natural Law, vol. 1,Aldershot, England: Dartmouth Publishing; New York: New YorkUniversity Press, 191–224; reprinted Dunn, J., and Harris, I.(eds.), 1997, Great Political Thinkers 4: Aquinas,Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar, 393–426.
• –––, 1987, “Natural Law and NaturalInclinations: Some Comments and Clarifications,” NewScholasticism 61: 307–20.
• –––, 2001, “Natural Law, God, Religion,and Human Fulfillment,” American Journal ofJurisprudence, 46: 3–36.
• Grisez, Germain and Finnis, John, 1981, “The BasicPrinciples of Natural Law: A Reply to Ralph McInerny,”American Journal of Jurisprudence 26: 21–31; reprintedFinnis, J. (ed.), The International Library of Essays in Law andLegal Theory: Natural Law, vol. 1, Aldershot, England: DartmouthPublishing; New York: New York University Press, 1991, 341–51;reprinted Curran, C., McCormick, R., 1991, Readings in MoralTheology No. 7: Natural Law and Theology, New York: PaulistPress, 157–70.
• Kries, Douglas, 1990, “Thomas Aquinas and the Politics ofMoses”, Review of Politics, 52: 1–21.
• Lee, Patrick, 1981, “Permanence of the Ten Commandments: StThomas and his Modern Commentators”, TheologicalStudies, 42: 422.
• Lisska, Anthony J., 1998, Aquinas’s Theory of NaturalLaw: An Analytic Reconstruction, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Long, Steven A., 2004, “Natural Law or Autonomous PracticalReason: Problems in the New Natural Law Theory”, in JohnGoyette, Mark Latvic, Richard S. Myers (eds.), St. Thomas Aquinasand the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives,Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,165–91.
• MacDonald, Scott, and Stump, Eleonore (eds.), 1998,Aquinas’s Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of NormanKretzmann, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (essays by a numberof contemporary scholars).
• McInerny, Ralph, 1980, “The Principles of NaturalLaw”, American Journal of Jurisprudence, 25:1–15.
• –––, 1992, Aquinas on Human Action: A Theoryof Practice, Washington, DC: Catholic University of AmericaPress.
• –––, 1997, Ethica Thomistica: The MoralPhilosophy of Thomas Aquinas, Washington, DC: Catholic Universityof America Press, 1997.
• McInerny, Ralph, and O’Callaghan, John, 2005, “SaintThomas Aquinas”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2005/entries/aquinas/>.
• Macintyre, Alasdair, 1990, First Principles, Final Ends, andContemporary Philosophical Issues, Milwaukee: MarquetteUniversity Press.
• Paterson, Craig, 2006, “Aquinas, Finnis, and Non-naturalism” in Craig Paterson and Matthew S. Pugh (eds.), AnalyticalThomism: traditions in dialogue, Aldershot: Ashgate,171–93.
• Pope, Stephen (ed.), 2002, The Ethics of Aquinas,Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press (essays by a number ofcontemporary scholars).
• Rhonheimer, Martin, 2000, Natural Law and Practical Reason: AThomist View of Moral Autonomy, New York: Fordham UniversityPress.
• –––, 2011, The Perspective of Morality:Philosophical Foundations of Thomistic Virtue Ethics, Washington,DC: Catholic University of America Press.
• –––, 2012, “Practical Reason, HumanNature, and the Epistemology of Ethics”, Villanova LawReview, 57(5): 873–88.
• Stump, Eleonore, 2003, Aquinas, London: Routledge.
• Wheatley, Anthony Paul, 2015, “In Defence of Neo-ScholasticEthics: A Critique of Finnis and Grisez’s New Natural LawTheory”, Ph.D. thesis, Manchester, University of Manchester, available online.

Academic Tools

Other Internet Resources

• Corpus Thomisticum, provides a sound working Latin text of the works of Thomas Aquinas(without annotations or other apparatus, but fully searchable). It isbased, so far as they have been completed, on the critically editedOmnia Opera begun by the Leonine Commission in 1879/1882; c.20 of the projected c. 50 volumes remain to be published, and theworks thus not yet critically edited are given online in what arethought to be the best existing editions.
• St. Thomas Aquinas’ Works in English, provides parallel Latin and English for most of the works.

Related Entries

Aquinas, Saint Thomas | ethics: natural law tradition | practical reason: medieval theories of

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