IS THOMAS

IS THOMAS'S NATURAL LAW THEORY NATURALIST? [1]

If we define naturalism, as R.M. Hare did, as the position that statements of value are derivable from statements of fact, [2] then a disagreement exists among interpreters of St. Thomas's ethical theory concerning whether his position is naturalist. Proponents of what has been called "the new natural law theory" [3] claim that according to Thomas's theory moral norms depend on practical principles so that Thomas's ethics certainly does not commit the fallacy of inferring a moral ought-proposition from premises containing only theoretical is-propositions, what has come to be identified as the "naturalistic fallacy." [4] On the other side, the naturalist wing of Thomistic ethicians has claimed that on Thomas's view, to reach the basic criterion of morality one must first determine by theoretical reasoning what the human good is, and so ethical reasoning necessarily depends on theoretical knowledge, whether that be provided by philosophy of nature, metaphysics, or common sense knowledge about human nature.

Some proponents of the naturalist interpretation have been reluctant to admit that what is called the "naturalistic fallacy" is a fallacy. Sometimes they refer to it as "the alleged naturalistic fallacy." [5] At other times naturalist interpreters have admitted that, strictly speaking, one cannot infer a moral ought-proposition from premises all of which are theoretical, but hasten to add that no one ever really attempted that, and that the important point is that ethical knowledge has a relation of dependence on theoretical knowledge rather than a strict deductive logical relation. [6]

One might be tempted to dismiss this as just another intra-scholastic dispute over a hairline difference. However, there are good reasons not to do so. First, the most frequent criticism of Thomas's ethical theory by standard ethical works for the last fifty years has been that it commits the naturalistic fallacy, that it illicitly assumes that the nature of a thing is, just by itself, ethically normative. [7]

Second, the naturalist interpretation is, I believe, quite seriously mistaken. Moreover, the naturalist interpreters are mistaken not just on how to support the moral criterion, but, frequently, on what, according to Thomas, the basic moral criterion is. Thus, this interpretative dispute has more than historical interest. In my view naturalist misinterpretations of Thomas's thought misrepresent it and thus prevent it from receiving the widespread attention it deserves.

I will first consider some arguments for the naturalist interpretation. Second, I will examine Thomas's thought on how one knows the human good in knowing the first principles of the natural law. Third, I will examine how, according to Thomas, the will should be related to the human good. Fourth, I will return to the arguments for the naturalist interpretation indicated in section I. Fifth, I will present an unresolved difficulty for my non-naturalist interpretation.

I. The Naturalist Interpretation

Germain Grisez's 1965 article on Thomas's position on the first principle of practical reason claimed that according to Thomas the basic moral truths which constitute natural law are self-evident propositions, not derived from any previous theoretical propositions. And so, Grisez claimed, according to Thomas's thought the knowledge of the human goods, which is presupposed by criteria for morally good choices, is not assumed or taken over from any previous theoretical exercises of the intellect. Speaking of the self-evident principles of natural law, Grisez wrote:

They are principles. They are not derived from any statements at all. They are not derived from prior principles. They are underivable. . . . . Ought requires no special act legitimizing it; ought rules its own domain by its own authority, an authority legitimate as that of any is. [8]

This position has been frequently criticized by proponents of a naturalist interpretation of Thomas.

In Aquinas on Human Action, McInerny wrote:

We live in a time when, under a persistent Kantian influence, practical reason is accorded an autonomy quite alien to the classical understanding of it that Thomas adopts. Moreover, nonsense such as the "naturalistic fallacy" clouds minds, and it is thought that Thomas must be so interpreted as to be saying that the truths of the practical order are utterly independent of the way the world is, independent of nature and facts, of descriptive truths. . . . It is grievously wrong to imagine that Thomism must be corrected from such quarters. [9]

In a book-length study of the position developed by Grisez, Boyle and Finnis, Russell Hittinger wrote:

Once again, it is our judgment that the effort to retain a natural law foundation for practical reason by substituting intuitions for the evidence derived from a philosophy of nature does not work. [10]

Others proposing a naturalist interpretation have been: Henry Veatch, [11] Vernon Bourke, [12] Janet Smith, [13] Janice Schultz, [14] Peter Simpson, [15] Douglas Flippen [16] and Alastair MacIntyre. [17]

One argument for the naturalist interpretation concerns Thomas's treatment of the ultimate end in the Prima secundae of the Summa Theologiae. Thomas's treatment of natural law, it is pointed out, occurs long after Thomas has established, in the opening questions of the Prima Secundae, what man's ultimate end is. Indeed, early in his treatment of law Thomas says that the first principle of operations, which is the concern of practical reason, is the ultimate end. [18] And Law, of course, is defined as a directive toward the common good, which, again, would mean the ultimate end. Now, the reasoning in the first questions of the Prima secundae seems based on an analysis of what human nature is. Thus, the very structure of Thomas's Prima secundae seems to suggest that Thomas's position is that one first identifies the ultimate end, by theoretical reasoning, and then, by practical reasoning, discerns the best way of achieving that end. The naturalists accuse the non-naturalists of extracting Thomas's treatise on natural law from its context in the Prima secundae. [19]

A second argument for the naturalist interpretation is the claim that moral propositions need support from outside the domain of practical reason. To base all of ethics on certain intuitions seems to end argument prematurely. Criticisms of twentieth-century British intuitionism would seem to apply to natural-law theory also, if it were based on self-evident moral propositions.

Thirdly, some proponents of the naturalist interpretation have argued that the non-naturalist view creates a gap between practical reason and nature. Is not natural law essentially characterized by the fact that it bases what is morally right upon the nature of the human being? And, if so, does it not follow that judgments about human nature, in philosophical anthropology and metaphysics, must provide the starting point for moral reasoning? And, whatever else Thomas's ethics is, it certainly is a natural-law ethics. [20]

Fourthly, naturalist interpreters argue that if the human good is not known by theoretical or speculative reason, then it will be subject to will, that is, it will be arbitrary or non-objective. This point is expressed clearly by Douglas Flippen:

Knowledge is determined to be speculative in itself when it is of a non-producible or non-operable object.(reference to De Veritate, Q. 3, a. 3) A consideration of human nature and the activity proper or peculiar to it, or even activities in which human flourishing consist by nature, is knowledge of something we have not made and hence is speculative in itself. [21]

I reply to the first three arguments in section IV; I reply to the fourth argument in the next section.

II. Knowledge of the Human Good in Thomas

While proponents of both interpretations agree that, for Thomas, the human good or human perfection is in some way the criterion for what is morally right, they disagree concerning Thomas's position on: (1) how we initially know what the human good is, and (frequently, at least), (2) how our human acts or choices should be related to the human good. Significantly, proponents of a naturalist interpretation do not distinguish between these two questions. But I will argue that a mistaken interpretation on the first question tends to lead to a larger mistake on the second. In this section I discuss Thomas's position on the first question; in section III I discuss his position on the second question.

In the Prima secundae, Question 94, article 2, Thomas says that just as there are certain first principles of speculative reason, so there are certain first principles of practical reason, which are per se nota, known through themselves, and at the basis of every other act of practical reasoning. The very first principle of practical reason, says Thomas, is: "Bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum ("Good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided.") [22] This proposition is, according to Thomas, per se nota (known through itself) because the predicate, faciendum et prosequendum (to be done and pursued) is immediately (without proof, without a middle term) understood to be included in the subject, bonum (good). [23]

Difficulties begin to emerge on the next point. Given that the human good is to be pursued, how is the human good known? The naturalist interpreters hold, as we saw, that it is by theoretical reasoning. However, Thomas writes:

Quia vero bonum habet rationem finis, malum autem rationem contrarii, inde est quod omnia illa ad quae homo habet naturalem inclinationem, ratio naturaliter apprehendit ut bona, et per consequens ut opere prosequenda, et contraria eorum ut mala et vitanda.

(Now because good has the intelligibility of end, and evil has the contrary intelligibility, thus it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination, reason naturally apprehends as good and consequently as works to be pursued, and their contraries as evil and to be avoided.) [24]

If Thomas thought that one first had to establish, by theoretical reasoning, what the human good is, surely this would be the place to refer back to the proof, but we find nothing of the sort. Moreover, the word "naturaliter," (naturally) in "ratio naturaliter apprehendit . . ." (reason naturally apprehends. . ) would have no point. What Thomas means by it is clear in the following passage, where he explains what is known by synderesis: Now as in the speculative reason certain things are naturally (naturaliter) known, of which there is understanding (intellectus) and other things are known through them, namely, conclusions, of which there is science; so in the practical reason certain things pre-exist as principles naturally known, and such are the ends of the moral virtues, since the end is in practical matters as is the principle in speculative matters, and other things are in the practical reason as conclusions . . . . [25]

Of course, what he says here is known by synderesis is the same as what, being objects of natural inclinations, he says (in 94, 2) is naturally apprehended by reason: namely, the principles of the natural law. Thus, the word "naturaliter" (naturally) both here and in 94, 2, means spontaneously and immediately, as opposed to, through proof or reasoning. Thus, according to Thomas, reason operating practically apprehends without proof, not the various means by which to attain the ends set by nature and reasoned to by theoretical reason, but what the ends of our human action, the bona humana, are-to-be (and, from there, infers practical conclusions).

The passage just quoted also makes it clear that Thomas holds that by the habit of synderesis one is disposed to recognize the ends of the moral virtues, and that this recognition is in the practical reason. No mention is made of such principles having first been discovered by a theoretical exercise of the intellect. If Thomas held that the knowledge of the human good were attained originally by the intellect functioning speculatively or theoretically, he would have to classify synderesis as a habit of the speculative reason rather than, as he does, of the practical reason.

In 94, 2, Thomas says that good is what first falls into the apprehension of the practical reason, "quae ordinatur ad opus" (which is ordained to a work). This is a knowledge of that which is-to-be, but does not yet actually exist (even the preservation of a good, such as life, is a good which is to be and is not yet). Naturalist interpreters seem to think knowledge of the human good is in itself speculative, since they think it is of what-is, but that it is practical in a certain sense, or becomes practical later, because it is ordained to operation. However, knowledge which is speculative "on the part of the things known," as distinguished from knowledge which is speculative in its mode or with respect to its end, Thomas classifies as speculative tantum (speculative only), where he discusses different types or degrees of speculative knowledge. [26] Thus, if Thomas understood the knowledge of the human good as the naturalist interpreters say he did, he would have classified such knowledge, and the habit of synderesis, as speculative, which he did not.

Thus, according to Thomas the knowledge of the first principles of natural law is practical knowledge simpliciter. The "ordinatur ad opus" defines the knowledge intrinsically. Rather than an act of conforming one's thought to what is, it itself is an act of putting order into the coming to be of voluntary acts. [27]

It is the intellectual act of understanding life, knowledge, friendship, and so on, not just as they are perfective of us (and thus as dimensions of human nature), but precisely as worth pursuing, as realities it would be good to realize. Thus, such possibilities for action are seen as reasons for acting, and therefore the practical proposition does not describe what is, but prescribes what-is-to-be.

Thomas does not, then, make the assumption that the good must either be known by theoretical reason or be arbitrary. The fourth argument for the naturalist interpretation presented in section I (p. 6) was that since the human good is not made it must be known through speculative reasoning. I suspect that this assumption motivates many of the naturalist interpreters. It is true that human reason cannot change what is to be fulfilling for human beings, and so what the human good is to be is objective. But since it is only through reason and will that the human good will actually come to be in its fullness, the objective direction in which human perfection lies is not discovered by speculative or theoretical reason, but by an insight into what-can-be-through-human-action. This is initially known, according to Thomas, by practical reason's insight into the objects of our natural inclinations.

This point is philosophically important. Suppose one could determine by theoretical reasoning, anterior to practical reasoning, what the natural end or natural perfection of the human being is. Then, we would know that the perfection of a human being consists in knowledge, friendship, health, and so on. What would follow from that fact? How does the fact that my perfection consists in this or that make a demand on my action? That is, how does it provide a reason which can motivate me? The answer is, nothing follows from that fact alone; just of itself, it does not make a demand on my action at all. This is so, not because of a particular understanding of nature or because of a particular (quasi-)definition of good, but simply because the affirmation of an action-guiding proposition is a different sort of act than the affirmation of a theoretical proposition. [28]

As with the principle of non-contradiction, to which Thomas compares the first principle of practical reason, we should not suppose that this principle is affirmed in a separate act, or that it serves as an explicit premise in arguments by practical reason. The first principle of practical reasoning is implicit in all acts of practical reasoning. [29]

To begin to reason practically is at the same time to be aware implicitly that, as people sometimes say in exasperation, "Something's got to be done." When people say this it is because they perceive a problem that calls for a solution, a need that must be met (fulfilled). This "perception" is not of what-is, but a perception that goes beyond what-is to what could be, perceived as what it would be good to bring about. The expression, "Something's got to be done," connotes an emergency situation, which does not always obtain in our practical reasoning, and it places the emphasis (because of the emergency) on the lack or need, rather than on the object which would fill the lack or meet the need. But, subtract these connotations, and "Something's got to be done," is a colloquial expression of Thomas's "Good is to be done and pursued (and evil avoided)." While "Something's got to be done," may primarily convey my (or our) need, it also conveys, conversely, the anticipated aptitude of the something to fulfill that need. And that, according to Thomas, is what the notion of good adds to the notion of being. [30]

Thus, according to Thomas, the proposition, Good is to be done, etc., is known simply by grasping the ratio boni, the intelligibility of good. Good, says Thomas, is being, considered as an object of appetite. [31] When I begin to reason practically, the transition is made from the notion of being to the notion of good. Being is what is, viewed without any relations. As long as I view being that way, there is no action-guiding potentiality in what I understand. This is so, even if I understand what can be, instead of just what is. Good is being (what can be) viewed as object of appetite (tendency): not just desired, but fitting, that is, something which perfects me (or those with whom I am united). [32] (Once one has such a notion of good, then one can use it in theoretical propositions as well as practical ones, but it initially arises in a practical context.) Thus, Thomas says that one knows the truth of the proposition, Good is to be done and pursued and evil avoided, by understanding the predicate in the intelligibility of the subject.

As mentioned, this principle normally remains implicit as common condition for other propositions (precepts) rather than considered as a separate proposition. The text indicates what those primary, explicit practical propositions are. Thomas next says, "Because good has the intelligibility of end and evil the intelligibility of its contrary, all those things to which man has a natural inclination reason naturally apprehends as good and consequently as works to be pursued, and their contraries as evil and to be avoided." [33] He then lists (in a list he does not offer as complete) human life, the union of man and woman, the education of children, the knowledge of the truth about God, and life in society, as objects of natural inclinations and human goods, constituents of human perfection. It is in first understanding that life or health, for example, is good and worth pursuing that one simultaneously and implicitly first understands that good is to be done and pursued and evil (the privation of good) is to be avoided. This implicit understanding gives form to practical reason: it makes reason practical, that is, brings it about that one is engaged in directing action to some (real or apparent) fulfillment.

An example may help to illustrate Thomas's position here. Suppose, as Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and many others maintain, that aesthetic experience is also a basic human good, a constituent of human perfection. Applying Thomas's analysis to this example, we can see how people discover the intrinsic goodness of aesthetic experience in their natural inclination toward it. At an early age one experiences different sorts of beauty on different occasions and takes delight in those beautiful objects. One might see a beautiful line of trees, hear beautiful music, and be impressed by a beautiful horse, and taking delight in these experiences, come to see that they have something common. One understands, not just that these sorts of actual objects have actual beauty in them, but that this sort of experience is something worthwhile and to be pursued. Here the delight, which reflects the actuation of one's natural inclination, guides one's intellect to pick out those experiences, distinguish them from others, and understand them not just as pleasant but as fulfilling or perfective, and to be pursued. The natural inclinations serve as data for the intellect functioning practically; they prefigure to the intellect what fulfills or perfects us as human. The intellect thus goes beyond what is, to anticipate what is to be.

The naturalist interpretation of Thomas's ethics obscures the distinctive contribution Thomas's theory makes to the Is-Ought problem. On Thomas's position one has some primary and irreducible action-guiding propositions. No inference from purely theoretical premises to an action-guiding proposition is needed (or possible). The naturalistic fallacy can be recognized as a fallacy according to Thomas's theory. This is so because of the distinctive nature of practical propositions. On Thomas's position reason is practical by beginning that way, and its principles are objective truths without being descriptions. That reason guide one's actions toward the good or the perfective (in other words: action must have a point, and the point must be anticipated as somehow a fulfillment) is demanded by the very nature of action, and one is aware of this aspect of the nature of action not in a theoretical proposition established by metaphysics or philosophy of nature, but in the practical insight which is implicit in the very act of beginning to reason practically at all.

There is another, decisive argument to show that this really is the approach in Thomas's ethics. As John Finnis has pointed out, only this approach is consistent with the basic Thomist position that we can know our nature only by first knowing our actions, and we can know our actions only by first knowing the objects of those actions. [34] Therefore, since the only way to know the specifically human actions is by knowing their objects, one can know human nature in an adequate way only by first performing specifically human actions. But the only way of performing specifically human actions is by choosing among various alternatives all of which have some direct or indirect appeal, in relation to objects which are naturally understood as good and fulfilling. [35] But that understanding occurs in the knowledge of the first practical principles we have been discussing. [36]

McInerny's reply to Finnis's statement of this argument misses the point. McInerny first says that the inference from the action to the nature is a sequence of theoretical knowledge. "What leaps out is the fact that knowledge of the nature of action is the starting point." [37] But Finnis's argument is that, whether the knowledge be of human nature or of the nature of human action, whether it be theoretical or practical, it cannot be attained unless one has performed specifically human actions, and one cannot have performed specifically human actions without already grasping the truth of the first practical principles.

McInerny next grants that one must have acted before beginning moral philosophy, but still, he says, even the pre-philosophical grasp of practical truths depends on theoretical, although non-scientific, knowledge. But this does not answer Finnis's argument. It merely reasserts the very point refuted. Moreover, although pre-philosophical ethical knowledge is unarticulated and unorganized, still, it can be knowledge only if it is based at least on an implicit knowledge of the premisses needed to show the proposition true. Fallacious transitions from "is" to "ought" are no better in everyday life than in philosophy.

In many respects, Ralph McInerny's Aquinas on Human Action is a fine book. His comments on Thomas's position on the ultimate end are especially helpful. But his position on the naturalistic fallacy is somewhat perplexing. On the one hand, when giving an exposition of Thomas's treatment of synderesis and the first principles of natural law, he clearly says that Thomas holds that the first principles of natural law are self-evident and not derived from any previous propositions. He also grants that one cannot logically derive a moral ought-proposition from an argument containing only theoretical propositions, although he implies that no one ever claimed that one could do that. [38] (On this last point McInerny is certainly mistaken: indeed he himself seems to have attempted such an inference in an earlier article. [39] Others also explicitly claimed that one could make such an inference. [40] )

On the other hand, McInerny at many places implies that what has come to be called the "naturalistic fallacy" is not a fallacy at all, and that metaphysics and/or philosophy of nature are necessary prerequisites for ethics. [41]

What McInerny seems to mean is this. Yes, these practical principles are not deduced from prior theoretical propositions; so they are per se nota. But they depend on prior theoretical knowledge nonetheless. McInerny first argues that the first principle of non-contradiction is a theoretical or speculative proposition. From this McInerny concludes that there is at least one speculative proposition presupposed by practical reason. Next he points out that this shows that there are dependencies other than deductive, and he then says that additional theoretical knowledge is presupposed. Speaking of the principle of non-contradiction, McInerny says:

But all other self-evident principles will presuppose and thus depend on it (i.e., the principle of non-contradiction>. And there may be dependencies among the later self-evident principles. There is a kind of discourse here, as there is in the order of definition, but it is not the discourse of demonstration. . . . It is sometimes said that if there are self-evident principles of the practical order, then they must stand on their own without any relation of dependence on theoretical truths and perhaps quite independently of one another. This seems a view quite alien to that of Thomas. [42]

The first problem to point out is that, while G.E. Moore had a special understanding of "naturalistic fallacy," the term has come to mean (as McInerny himself uses the term [43] ), an argument in which all of the premises are theoretical and yet the conclusion is a moral ought-proposition. If McInerny concedes that this is a fallacy, then to continue to say that the idea of a "naturalistic fallacy" is nonsense only clouds the issue.

Secondly, regarding the principle of non-contradiction. Thomas does not call it the first principle of speculative reason, but the first principle of demonstrations in general. [44] This principle, he says, is based on the apprehension of being, which first falls in the intellect's apprehension absolutely or simply (simpliciter), while good first falls in the apprehension of the practical intellect. The principle, then, is of itself neither speculative nor practical but governs both types of exercises of the intellect.

Moreover, the principle of non-contradiction does not function as a premise for other arguments at all. Thus it is implicitly contained within the first principle of practical reason, rather than serving as a distinct premise. The good is being, and so when one understands that good is to be done, etc., one implicitly also understands the definiteness of being. When one understands that life is a good and to be pursued one also understands it as being and the pursuit as being. This implicit awareness of the definiteness of being operates as a rule governing all acts of affirming, both practical and speculative. Just as in any reasoning one is implicitly aware of the nature of predication, or the nature of universality (predication being the actuation of universality) and this awareness functions as a rule by which one moves from the premises to the conclusion (the dictum de omni, in affirmative conclusions), [45] so in any understanding of any proposition the awareness of the definiteness of being functions as a rule. In this way it becomes a logical principle: it governs acts of affirming and denying, although as based on the understanding of the definiteness of being, it is different from other logical principles, which are based on the understanding of logical intentions (relations of reason arising from the human intellect's way of knowing). [46] Thus, the principle of non-contradiction is presupposed by any other act of reason, not as a distinct bit of knowledge on which this knowledge depends--and only in this way would McInerny's argument go through--but rather as the indeterminate grasp upon reality immanent in every specific act of intellectual knowledge.

From Thomas's position it still follows that the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy, and the knowledge of the human good is arrived at originally by practical knowledge. Per se nota means just that, not per physicas nota or per metaphysicas nota, or so on.

McInerny argues that since good means being as perfective or perfect then one cannot understand that a thing is good unless one first understands what it is, and what the thing is for which it is good. [47] I agree in part: one cannot know that life is a good unless one knows what life is. Moreover, by the time one one makes explicit in philosophical ethics the proposition that life is a good and is to be pursued, one already has understood the difference between living and nonliving things in theoretical exercises of one's intellect. But this is a matter of contingent psychological development; it does not denote an analytical or logical priority or dependence. One's understanding of what human life is initially arises partly from one's practical insights into health, self-preservation, and so on. It is the same with all of the practical principles. One need not first know what one's nature is in a theoretical way before knowing these practical principles. Knowledge of the human goods and knowledge of our nature are the same. We understand our nature, originally, in practical insights.

But perhaps someone might say that such principles are in one way self-evident in everyday life, and yet their affirmation in philosophical ethics presupposes sections of metaphysics or philosophy of nature. Here a distinction must be made, for in one sense this is true. First, one could mean by this that a certain amount of metaphysics and philosophy of the human person is necessary to understand more fully, in their context, basic moral truths, to argue against counter-positions, to give a dialectical defense of various moral truths, and to provide the factual and theoretical premises in many practical syllogisms. Understood in this sense, the non-naturalists do not disagree; in fact, Grisez and others have developed a good bit of this type of argumentation.

But, secondly, this claim could be understood as saying that the structure of the fundamental arguments in philosophical ethics are, on Thomas's theory, simply different from that of the sound ethical arguments in everyday life, so that the principles of philosophical ethics do, after all, depend on theoretical propositions. Understood in this sense, the claim differs from Thomas's position. On Thomas's theory, the first task of philosophical ethics or ethical theory is to clarify and make explicit the manner in which someone knows moral propositions in everyday life. There are not two routes to knowing ethical conclusions, the everyday way on the one hand and the certain and philosophical way on the other hand. The argument which the moral philosopher proposes to show, for example, that we ought not intentionally kill innocent human beings, is the same argument, with the same basic premises, as someone who knows it in everyday life would have to be aware of, although his or her awareness of the various premises may be implicit or difficult for him or her to articulate. This is because Thomas' position on ethical principles is not merely an account of the psychological origin of various propositions; it is an account of the structure of the justification for ethical propositions. Thus, what he says of practical principles is relevant to any justified practical knowledge, whether it be scientific and explicit or implicit and unarticulated.

III. Thomas's Position on How

the Will Should be Related to the Human Good

As mentioned before, there are two interpretative questions: (1) How, according to Thomas, is the human good known? And (2) how should human actions be related to the human good? So far I have discussed the naturalists' and non-naturalists' positions on (1). But there is disagreement on (2) as well. That is, the naturalist and non-naturalist interpreters of Thomas disagree not just on how to support an agreed upon moral criterion, but also, at least at times, on what the moral criterion is. That they do differ on (2) is not obvious on first reading, since both schools of interpretation hold that for Thomas the moral criterion is in some way the human good. However, I do not think the naturalist interpreters are entirely consistent; at times they seem to adopt, although less clearly, the same moral criterion as that proposed by the non-naturalist interpreters.

In this section I explain how they propose (at times) a different moral criterion than that proposed by the non-naturalist interpreters, and in the next section I explain why I think the moral criterion proposed by the non-naturalists is a more accurate interpretation of Thomas's thought.

The following passage from Henry Veatch will begin to illustrate where the difference between their views on the moral criterion lies:

Given that human beings are by nature ordered to an appropriate end or goal of human perfection or fulfillment, may we not now also see how in the light of such an end, it becomes possible to determine what those moral rules and "oughts" are that human beings must observe if they are to become what they naturally ought to be? As I have said, such moral laws being no more and no less than the naturally determined "how-to-do-it" rules for attaining our natural human end or telos, it thus becomes clear that such moral laws are natural laws in a precise and literal sense of that term. [48]

The moral question, on this view, seems rather simple: find out what human beings are naturally oriented to, and aim at that goal; actions which promote attainment of that goal are morally good, actions which lead away from that goal are morally bad. Isn't this just a reiteration of Thomas's most general principle of natural law? [49]

This does differ from the moral criterion proposed by non-naturalist interpreters of Thomas. The non-naturalists' interpretation is that the basic moral criterion concerns most directly how the will is to be related to all of the principles of practical reason, or, in other words, how the will is related to all of the goods to which we have natural inclinations and to all of the people who might share in those goods. Hence according to the non-naturalist interpreters, it is not simply a question of whether a given action, viewed as an external action (that is, the actuation of some power other than the will), does or does not promote the human good--but whether the choice of such an external action is in accord with the will's love for all human goods and persons or diminishes that love.

Another way of clarifying the difference between the moral criteria proposed by the naturalists and the non-naturalists, and perhaps getting closer to the source of the difference, is to examine an important puzzle or problem that arises from Thomas's conception of how the will is related to the human good. In an article written in 1976 on Thomas's ethics and naturalism, Ralph McInerny pointed out how this problem arises:

If all men, say, do in fact seek the good, it seems otiose to recommend that they do or to say that they ought to. It sounds like a move from "Snow falls in winter" to "Snow ought to fall in winter." [50]

McInerny expressed the same idea in his later works, both in 1982 and in 1992 (though less clearly or explicitly in the latter). [51]

In explicating Thomas's theory of natural law in one of his early works, Grisez had already expressed the same puzzle in this way:

But how do these primary practical principles actually establish definite obligations? Do they not underlie everything that we might do, no matter what? Certainly, they seem to open the doors too liberally, for they begin from every possible basic human good and they endorse every one of these goods indiscriminately. [52]

This is an important problem. The puzzle arises because Thomas holds, on the one hand, that the moral criterion is in some way the human good, and, on the other hand, that every human action aims (in some way) at the human good. [53] How can a goal distinguish between morally good actions and morally bad ones, if both types do aim at it? That which is common to two classes can scarcely distinguish between them.

McInerny proposes that the solution to this puzzle, according to Thomas's thought, is to distinguish within what human beings always aim at: true, they always aim at something that appears good, but what appears good is not always really good. Moreover, this point distinguishes between morally good and morally bad choices. In Ethica Thomistica he writes:

Let us speak of desirable<1> to cover what we in fact do desire. <Later he defines desirable<2> as what ought to be desired.> Desirable<1> involves the judgment that what is desired is perfective of the desirer. On the face of it, there seems little sense in saying that one ought to desire what he in fact desires. Nonetheless, it is because what is desired, desirable<1>, may involve a mistaken judgment, because what is desired as perfective of the desirer is not in truth perfective of him, that it can make sense to say that one ought to desire what he in fact desires. We ought to desire what we desire in the sense that the object of our desire ought to deserve the formality under which it is desired, viz., perfective and fulfilling. [54]

On the interpretation of the non-naturalists, however,

while some morally bad actions are choices of sentient satisfaction rather than of real human goods, in other cases morally bad choices are for the sake of true human goods. In other words, in some cases real human goods are pursued but in an unreasonable way.

Grisez's explanation, later followed by Boyle, Finnis, May, and others, is this. Thomas repeatedly says that the norm for human actions is right reason. Practical reason is right when, and only when, it operates in accord with all of its principles. That is, a practical judgment is false, and choosing according to it is morally evil, when reason operates in accord with some of the first principles (hence it is not sheer insanity) but not in accord with all of them (and so it is not fully reasonable). Thus, morally good action is simply completely rational action, while morally bad action is action that in some way sets aside or ignores one of the principles of practical reason. [55]

How does a human action set aside or ignore a practical principle? The answer is that there is not just one way. The immoral act may be a choice to pursue a merely apparent good, but it may also be a choice contrary to one good--of my neighbor or of myself--for the sake of another (i.e., a choice to destroy, diminish or impede an instance of a basic good), and such a choice is contrary to the practical principle which requires avoiding intentional harm to the good violated. Or in a choice of one instance of a good one may unduly neglect another instance of a good because of partiality, fear, or so on. What is common to these points is this: a choice may diminish one's love of God, love of neighbor, or love of self. [56] If so, the choice is immoral.

I believe the non-naturalist interpretation--that of Grisez, Boyle and Finnis--is accurate, and that it best fits the rest of Thomas's thought. (I also think it, and not the naturalist position, is philosophically tenable.)

First, even the point that at times one chooses to pursue a merely apparent good needs careful explanation. There are two ways in which one might choose an apparent good. In the first way, the defect is wholly in the intellect. A generation ago many parents insisted that children eat a "wholesome" breakfast of bacon and eggs, not knowing that bacon, at least, is actually unhealthy. That is not a moral defect at all, although it is a choice of a merely (or, for the most part) apparent good.

In the second way--the morally decisive case--the defect is not wholly in the intellect but is primarily in the will, even though one's guilt might be mitigated or removed if one does not know that the choice is immoral. For example, one chooses to eat a third piece of pie only for the sake of the pleasure, the consumption of the pie not being really perfective. One ought not to make such a choice; the activity is attractive only because it is pleasant, and one is aware that it is not really good for one. (Still, one may not think that such a choice is immoral, and so one's conscience may be inculpably mistaken.) So, the choice of an apparent good is a moral defect--that is, it is a choice one ought not to make--only if one chooses what one knows, on some level, is only an apparent good. So, even here the defect is primarily in how one's will is related to the various human goods rather than simply choosing the wrong sort of goal.

Secondly, while it is true that some immoral actions involve pursuing a merely apparent good, this certainly is not true of every immoral action. Doing evil to achieve a good end, and various types of unjust actions, are examples of pursuing real goods instead of merely apparent ones. Since such actions violate right reason, on Thomas's position, violating right reason does not consist in--although sometimes it involves--pursuing a merely apparent good. [57]

According to Thomas the moral order just is the order in willing. [58] Moral goodness is the perfection due an action proceeding from reason and will, [59] and hence the standard for moral goodness is the full-being possible for the will. The natural act of walking may be naturally good, but the choice to walk will be bad if it involves neglecting one's studies, one's children, or the like. This is because even though the act of nature is perfective of the agent, as far as it goes, it is chosen in a context in which the choice involves a privation in the will. On Thomas's view, two acts may be the same in the natural order, but differ solely in the moral order, so that one is morally good and the other is morally bad, even though both have a certain degree of natural perfection. [60] Thus, the moral criterion is not: select that action (materially considered) which will build up the good man, or the good society. Rather, the criterion is: choose that action (external act) or make that choice (internal act) which will be consistent with, and not diminish, the will's openness and love of every aspect of human good. [61] This is Thomas's position, for according to his thought moral goodness is a goodness distinct (although not separated) from that of nature and technique.

The naturalist interpretation models moral action (doing) too closely upon technique (making). Thomas, of course, clearly distinguishes between art (concerned with making) and prudence (concerned with doing). He defines art as recta ratio factibilium (right reason about things to be made): through art one measures one's actions by the external goal one wishes to produce, for the action measured is the action of modifying external matter. [62] For example, by the art of pottery, one orders the actions of one's hands in relation to the goal of a clay pot. But prudence is different, and so moral goodness is quite different from technique.

The difference is not simply that art directs one to a more specific goal, such as a clay pot or a cabinet, while prudence concerns one's actions in relation to the broadest goal, a good life (the difference emphasized by McInerny. [63] ) Nor is the difference only that the goal of moral action is set by nature while the goal of art is arbitrary (the difference emphasized by Veatch). [64] To reduce the difference to such distinctions--as naturalist interpreters seem to--is to reduce moral action to the level of a grand technical project (produce the good man!). Rather, what is measured in moral action, Thomas explicitly says, is the act of the will, an act remaining within the agent. [65] Now, since prudence or moral reasoning is putting order into the coming to be of something (an act of will instead of an external product), then, somewhat like art, the criterion for right moral reasoning will be a goal or goals. But, since the act of will does not itself produce an external product, the optimum relation of the will to the goal or goals cannot be the same as the relation which obtains in artistic or technical actions. That is, the will ought to be related to the goal of human life as a whole, which is the total human good (which includes life, knowledge, friendship, and so on) in a certain way; but the required relation cannot be productivity or effectiveness, which is the required relation in artistic or technical matters.

Nor can one say that Thomas's position is that the will ought to be related to the human good as willing that external action or behavior which is most effective for producing the human good. This position subordinates the moral to the technical. It denies the distinct and intrinsic importance of the will's direct relation to various instances of human good (in oneself and in others). It reduces morally good action to a mere means to bringing about some non-morally defined good. [66]

Hence on Thomas's view the human good does not function as an end providing a criterion for morally good and morally bad action in the same way that ends function in technical or artistic matters. It is not that morally good actions lead to an extrinsic goal and bad ones lead away from it. Rather, morality primarily concerns acts of the will or rational appetite. The moral norm is right reason. And reason is right if it is informed by all of the principles of practical reason. Thus, the moral norm is that one must choose and will in accord with or in harmony with all of the goods prescribed in the first practical principles. This accord or harmony is quite different from a means-end relation obtaining between a physical action and its desirable products.

In other words, given a recognition of the goodness of the various basic human goods, there is in the will a natural inclination or natural love for these goods, as they are possible to realize both in ourselves and in others. [67] (Thomas holds that the will has a natural inclination not just to love oneself as an individual but to love others too, although original sin damages that tendency without removing it altogether.) [68] The moral criterion is this: one ought to make choices which perfect this love, thus choices which build up love of God and neighbor and self (since the disposition to the fulfillment of a person is love of that person), and one ought to avoid choices which diminish or suppress in oneself such a love of God, neighbor and self. [69]

One might object that on this criterion moral good is the only type of intrinsic good, that this criterion reduces other goods to the level of only providing the arena for what is intrinsically good, the development of a good will. But this objection confuses a criterion of moral goodness with the object of motivation. To say that the full-being possible for the will is the moral criterion is not to say that the will's full-being is the only good, and it is not to say that we should act or choose only for the sake of this type of good. [70]

On the one hand, the criterion of moral goodness concerns the full-being possible for the will. On the other hand, it is how the will is related to all of the basic human goods, including the perfection of the non-moral aspects of the person, that determines whether the will has the full-being possible for it. [71]

As mentioned before, there are two interpretative questions: (1) How, according to Thomas, is the human good known? And (2) how should human actions be related to the human good? In reply to the first question, the naturalist interpreters hold that, according to Thomas, the human good is known by theoretical reasoning and then by practical reasoning one selects means to that end. In section II I argued against this interpretation. I have argued in this section that naturalist interpreters have also proposed a mistaken interpretation regarding the second question. While the two mistakes do not necessarily go together, there is a link. The naturalists place so much emphasis on the theoretical, they tend to think that identifying the human good is sufficient to settle the question of what the moral criterion is. Naturalist interpreters tend to think that the work of moral theory is largely done once one establishes that there is an objective goal towards which human beings are naturally oriented, and determines what that goal is, for they view the relation between "action" and goal as that of an effective means of attaining an end.

IV. Reply to Naturalist Arguments

It remains to reply to the arguments for the naturalist interpretation indicated in section I above. The first argument claimed that in the Summa Theologiae Thomas's treatment of the principles of practical reason presupposes his treatment of the ultimate end, and that it is by theoretical reasoning that one proves what the ultimate (natural) end is.

However, this objection would succeed only if Thomas held that human beings are naturally oriented to immediate union with God, so that not attaining this end would frustrate their nature. [72] Thomas's position, however, is more complex. The natural perfection of the human being, according to Thomas, consists in the actuation of the human being's various potentialities. God is not the proper object of any of these potentialities, including the intellect or the will. The proper object of the intellect is being in general, and the proper object of the will is goodness in general. Being in general and goodness in general are not the same as God. Thus, human nature does not have a natural tendency toward God himself as end to be attained (as distinct from a perfection to be imitated). Therefore, in the early questions of the Prima Secundae Thomas does not establish the natural end or natural perfection of the human being. Establishing that God is man's ultimate end is not the same as identifying the natural perfection one must first know as a prerequisite to the basic criterion of morality.

Thomas does argue, in the early part of the Prima Secundae, that direct union with God is the only thing that would put to rest all of the human being's natural tendencies--not because the direct vision of God is the natural end to which human nature is oriented, but because only the direct vision of the divine essence would put to rest the natural tendency toward being in the intellect and the natural tendency toward goodness in the will. That such an end can be attained is knowable only through revelation. In the concrete order of salvation God has called us to this direct vision of the divine essence, and this supernatural end is what Thomas examines in the first questions of the Prima Secundae. Thus, God is the ultimate end of human action: God is the ultimate end on the side of the object, union with which would completely put to rest all of the human being's desires.

Thomas then says that union with God will also bring about, by a certain "overflow" (redundantia), the perfection of every part of human nature, including the bodily powers. Not until this point does Thomas refer to the attainment of the natural perfection of the human person, the ultimate end or perfection on the part of the subject. Thus, one need not know that direct union with God is possible in order to know what the natural perfections of human nature are. Is there an object union with which would put to rest all of the human being's natural desires? One need not answer that question in order to know what the natural human ends or human perfections are. Therefore, a knowledge of the practical principles of the natural law, which prescribe pursuit of the various human perfections, does not presuppose any argument--theoretical or otherwise--regarding the possibility of union with God, the issue Thomas is concerned with in the early questions of the Prima Secundae.

The second objection is that the non-naturalist interpretation reduces Thomas's theory to a type of intuitionism. Does the Grisez-Boyle-Finnis interpretation leave itself open to the serious objections raised against intuitionism? The main difficulty with intuitionism is that it seems to stop argument prematurely. At some stage in the discussion the intuitionist makes a specific moral claim with which many people disagree. Challenged to support the claim, the intuitionist replies simply that his or her opponents are morally blind. Are the non-naturalists putting Thomas's theory into that category?

The explanation of why they are not is threefold. First, ethical intuitionism concerns specific moral norms with respect to particular acts. The non-naturalist interpretation, as some other ethical theories, claims that there are self-evident principles, a very different position. Secondly, a proposition's being self-evident does not mean that one cannot argue for it in any way whatsoever. It means only that there is no middle term by which one could demonstrate this proposition. But one could still argue for it indirectly, by reductio ad absurdum, argument from analogy, and so on, that is, by dialectical arguments (as Aristotle argued for the principle of non-contradiction in Book IV of the Metaphysics). [73]

Thirdly, when one says that a proposition is self-evident in the manner Thomas does, namely, because the predicate is contained within the intelligibility of the subject, one can then give an account or an analysis of the proposition, in an effort to make clear the proposition's self-evident truth. Thus, if someone does not agree to the proposition, one is not forced to end the discussion or dismiss one's opponents as morally blind. Intuitionists, however, treat moral propositions as a special type of perceptual propositions, and so either one sees them or one doesn't.

It is true that someone can fail to see the truth of a self-evident proposition only if he or she is ignorant of or confused about the intelligibility of the subject. But there can be various causes for that, and it is not implausible to hold that there might be confusion on the intelligibility of choose or love (for the first principle of morality should be expressed as: one ought to choose in such a way as to remain open to all aspects of human good, or, as Thomas notes in his discussion of the ten commandments, one ought to love God and neighbor as oneself). [74]

It has often been objected that the non-naturalist interpretation separates morality from human nature. If moral principles are not based on theoretical knowledge of human nature, then how does one claim that natural law is universal, or even that it is natural law at all? [75] But, as others have pointed out, [76] there is a clear difference between saying that: (1) moral propositions cannot be inferred from arguments containing only theoretical premises, and (2) what is morally good is not dependent on the kind of nature human beings have. The non-naturalist interpreters assert (1), but have never asserted (2). Clearly, on the non-naturalist interpretation the moral obligations human beings have to pursue life, friendship and so on, are ontologically dependent on human beings' having a nature such that they are perfected or fulfilled by life, knowledge, friendship, and so on. If human beings had a different nature, they would have different moral obligations. The link is this: our basic moral obligation is to pursue and respect every aspect of human good. This is quite different from saying that the proposition that we ought to pursue life, for example, follows just by itself from the proposition that human beings are living things. Moral ought-propositions do not follow from is-propositions just by themselves, but what moral obligations we have are based on the kinds of things we are. This point, together with part II above, show clearly that, while the ethical theory of Grisez, Boyle and Finnis is far from merely a rehash of Thomas's theory, it owes both its inspiration and its principles to Thomas, not to Kant or Kantianism.

V. An Unresolved Difficulty

Finally, in at least one place, when arguing for a specific conclusion, Thomas resorts to a type of argument which does not fit the non-naturalist interpretation, a point noted by the non-naturalist interpreters themselves. [77] His argument against the "vitia contra naturam" ("sins against nature": masturbation, sodomy, etc.) seems naturalist. [78] He seems here to hold that one's actions must not only conform to the order of reason, but also conform to the order set by nature. Speaking of the "sins against nature" he says that there can be two types of defect in a sin of lust: "In one way, because it is contrary to right reason, and this is common to every sin of lust. In another way, because, in addition to this, it is contrary to the natural order itself of the venereal act belonging to the human species." [79] Thus, he seems to argue that one is morally obligated to respect not only the goods towards which we are naturally inclined, but also those natural teleologies themselves. This argument could be interpreted in various ways, but it seems to take nature in its given reality, in addition to the goods to which human beings are naturally inclined, as a standard for morally good choices. [80] This does not cohere with what he says explicitly, and with care, about the first principles of morality and the general principles of the virtues. Nor does it provide a cogent way of establishing ethical conclusions.