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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 July 2015
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.
Thanks to Michael Giudice, an anonymous reviewer, and the editors for helpful comments. I am also grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program for their funding assistance at different points of this research.
1. Aquinas, Saint Thomas, Summa Theologica, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948)Google Scholar. Throughout this paper, all references to the Summa Theologica will note the relevant part, question, article, and (if appropriate) reply after the relevant matter.
2. HLA Hart, for example, interprets Aquinas (or, at the very least, Thomists) as defending SNLT. See Hart, ’s The Concept of Law, 2d ed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) at 156.Google Scholar For an explication of a slightly different formulation of SNLT, see Murphy, Mark, “Natural Law Theory” in Golding, Martin & Edmunson, William, eds, Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) 15.Google Scholar
3. John Finnis, for example, interprets Aquinas as defending WNLT. See Finnis, ’s Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) at 364–5Google Scholar. As with SNLT, see Mark Murphy, supra note 2, for an explication of a slightly different formulation of WNLT.
4. Although Aquinas discusses different aspects of the doctrine of the transcendentals throughout his oeuvre, his clearest general discussion of the transcendentals can be found in the first disputed question of Truth (also known as Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate), translated by Mulligan, Robert (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Company, 1952)Google Scholar. For very helpful work on the doctrine of the transcendentals, see Aertsen, Jan A’s Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas (Netherlands: EJ Brill, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacDonald, Scott’s “The Metaphysics of Goodness and the Doctrine of the Transcendentals” in MacDonald, Scott, ed, Being and Goodness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) 31 Google Scholar; and Stump, Eleonore, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003) at 12-14 and 61–91 Google Scholar.
5. Stump, supra note 4 at 61-91, devotes an entire chapter to Aquinas’s understanding of goodness, and my explication of this argument certainly leans on her work. It is also worth looking at Stump, Eleonore and Kretzmann, Norman’s “Being and Goodness” in MacDonald, Scott ed, Being and Goodness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) 98.Google Scholar
6. Aertsen, supra note 4 at 300, forcefully emphasizes this point; and so does Stump, supra note 4 at 62-63.
7. For Aquinas, all discrete beings in the corporeal realm are substantial beings. Qualities, quantities, relations, and so on are not discrete beings in their own right—for they are merely alterations of substantial beings. (See Stump, supra note 4 at 35-44.)
8. It is clear that Aquinas thinks accidents (e.g., colour and size) lie in the domain of relative being, too. In this paper, though, I will use “relative being” to refer to that addition of being that comes about when a species-specific potentiality is actualized.
9. Stump’s Aquinas gives a clear account of Aquinas’s philosophy of action, and my discussion of Aquinas’s philosophy of action is indebted to it. (Supra note 4 at 77-80.)
10. I should note that this explication of Aquinas is misleading, although I think justified. I say this because Aquinas says that the object of the action confers the species upon the action, and so we should think of the object of the action as akin to the form of the action (ST Ia IIae 18, 2). But he also says that human action is a genus (ST Ia IIae 18, 4), and then he further claims that the goodness or being of an action comes from four places: (i) its genus, (ii) its object, (iii) its circumstances, and (iv) its end (ibid). I am simply labeling the being of genus the substantial being of action to avoid confusion, given all the talk of substantial being and relative being in the last section.
11. Indeed, for Aquinas, since God is goodness itself, God is also being itself (ST Ia 3).
12. Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, translated by Larcher, FR, OP (New York: Magi Books, 1970) at 1–3 Google Scholar.
13. On this account, then, a defective judgment of practical reason cannot annihilate the substantial being of a law, but it does entail a reduction of substantial being—since the form of the law will possess a serious defect.