scholarly journals Natural Law and Goodness in Thomistic Ethics

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Sean Coyle
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Saint Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Law And Ethics ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Full Sense ◽  
John Finnis

The purpose of the essay is to recover a correct conception of natural law and goodness in the ethics of Saint Thomas Aquinas. It suggests that the dominant interpretation of Thomism known by legal philosophers—that of John Finnis—is importantly at variance with Aquinas’s true account. Against the dominant interpretation, a true account of natural law must (i) differentiate between natural law and ethics in the full sense (moral theology), and (ii) interpret references to human good as references to virtuous goodness rather than non-moral goodness. The main body of the essay explores the place of these concepts in Aquinas’s account of ethics.

Germain Grisez and the “New Natural Law”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
John Finnis

This chapter is an extended examination of a revisionist approach to natural law, explored by Germain Grisez and John Finnis. Grisez and Finnis elucidated an entirely new paradigm that they believed to be both sounder intellectually than the paradigms of the neo-scholastics and revisionists and much closer in outline to the paradigm offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. This approach is usually labeled the “new natural law.” The author proposes that the entire “new natural law” project undertaken by Grisez and Finnis could be viewed as being about saving natural law by reestablishing it on distinctly different foundations that avoided any appeal to metaphysical claims, which modern science had long rejected as outdated and unscientific.

The Natural Law in Catholic Ethics

2015 ◽  
pp. 387-402
Author(s):  
Kevin L. Flannery
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Classical Traditions ◽  
John Finnis

This chapter presents Catholic teaching on the natural law as the product of a conversation over millennia. After offering some basic conceptual distinctions, the chapter begins by considering ancient non-Christian sources for Christian reflection on the natural law, especially Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. The chapter then considers relevant biblical texts and the teachings of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Attention is particularly played to Thomas’s adaptation of Classical traditions, and his argument concerning the unchangeablness of natural law. The final section of the chapter focuses on discussion of natural law after the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) in the work of Germain Grisez and John Finnis.

Aquinas and the Ontological Flexibility of Law

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-386
Author(s):  
Matthew Schaeffer
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Saint Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Legal Validity ◽  
The Law

When Saint Thomas Aquinas makes claims such as “that which is not just seems to be no law at all” it is a bit difficult to discern what he means. Some think that Aquinas is defending what is now called the Strong Natural Law Thesis: for all X, X is a law only if X is just. Others think that Aquinas is defending what is now called the Weak Natural Law Thesis: for all X, X is a non-defective law only if X is just. In this paper, focusing on Aquinas’s metaphysics, I argue that both of these interpretations are mistaken. Aquinas is primarily defending what we can call The Metaphysical Natural Law Thesis: since being and goodness are convertible, legal validity (i.e., the existence or being of a law) comes in degrees—and this entails that the justice of a law literally increases the amount of being a law possesses, while the injustice of a law literally decreases the amount of being a law possesses. On this interpretation, then, the injustice of a law entails an ontological attenuation of the law without entailing an ontological annihilation of the law.

scholarly journals Fomes Pecatti y sindéresis en Santo Tomás de Aquino / Fomes pecatti and Synderesis in Saint Thomas Aquinas

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 203
Author(s):  
Fabio MORANDÍN AHUERMA
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Saint Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Individual

This paper addresses the problem of evil from the perspective of St. Thomas Aquinas. It argues that, for Aquinas, the nature of moral evil is in the individual who, due to a disordered reason, departs from the pursuit of the good that is inherent to being. Synderesis is the only indissoluble bridge that man has with natural law and even with the eternal. Will converted into noluntas guides man intrinsically to evil acts, but synderesis, as a power with a natural habit, is the best guide for the contingent decision-making under the rubric of the first practical principles from the transcendent.

scholarly journals Natural law as a way to achieve the common good: an interpretation of Thomas Aquinas and John Finnis arguments

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 609-617
Author(s):  
Anton Didikin
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Instrumental Approach ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Decent Life ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Common ◽  
John Finnis ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

The paper interprets the arguments of Thomas Aquinas on natural law as a way to achieve the common good, which had a significant impact on John Finnis’ natural law theory. The author reveals the conceptual foundations of J. Finnis’ understanding the morally justified actions of people in the community aimed at the obtaining of basic benefits, and the debatable issues of his theory in modern philosophical and legal research. The author arrives to the conclusion that the reinterpretation of J. Finnis analysis of the grounds for ethically significant actions leads him to formulate an instrumental approach to natural law as a rational way to implement a decent life.

The Ethics of Natural Law according to Thomas Aquinas

Verbum ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-368
Author(s):  
Dalia Marija Stancienė
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Thomas Aquinas

Lisa Sowle Cahill and the Search for a “Functionalist” Paradigm of Feminist Global Ethics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Global Ethics ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The Real ◽  
Boston College ◽  
Moral Duties

This chapter presents an examination of the thoughts and writings of Lisa Sowle Cahill, a moral theologian at Boston College. Taking issue with both Germain Grisez and Jean Porter, Cahill seeks to construct a new paradigm of natural law that addresses feminist and poststructural scholars. Cahill believed that any paradigm of intercultural or interreligious ethics that purported to be describing moral duties in the real world must begin by exploring how ethical questions are intimately tied to the concrete experiences in specific (often religiously diverse) communities. Her paradigm addressed the concerns of feminist and postimperialist scholars in moving beyond the “false universalism” offered by paradigms like that of neo-scholasticism, while offering a “realist” understanding of social ethics that remained true to the realist impulses in Catholic moral theology.

Saint Thomas Aquinas Exegete of the Hexaemeron: Bible and Philosophy

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1207-1234
Author(s):  
Serge-Thomas Bonino
Keyword(s):  
Saint Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Thomas Aquinas
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