Erica Neely (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} elneely) wrote,@ 2005-08-30 22:50:00 |
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Aquinas on Natural Law
Aquinas argues that laws are to benefit the common good - we still argue about this today. Mainly, however, we are not debating whether laws should benefit the common good but whether particular laws are benefitting that good. This is especially true in the cases where it is unclear whether the laws impact public (as opposed to merely private) behavior: gay marriage, sex, drugs, porn, seat belt laws, abortion...the list goes on. A key element of all of these debates, however, is whether the actions in question are purely a matter of personal choice, affecting no one except the actor, or whether the acts have ramifications for the society as a whole. We might object to certain kinds of drug use on the grounds that they turn people into homicidal maniacs, for instance, but what about a drug that just made people stay at home being happy? Does society have a right - or even a responsibility - to regulate this? We argue about this still.
Aquinas also has a curious argument in his section about eternal law. One of the objections he considers claims that it makes no sense to speak of eternal law because a) something is only a law if the object it applies to exists (after all, there's no point making laws about ghosts if they don't exist) and b) nothing but God is eternal. Since the laws aren't about God (the only eternal thing) they must be about non-eternal things; hence the laws themselves are not eternal. Aquinas avoids this by arguing that all things exist in potential in God, and this is all that is needed; once there are trees and rocks, the law of gravity will fall into place as well.
This might seem odd, but consider this: we talk and reason about things which exist only in potential every day - they're called "ideas." Karl Capek wrote his play "R.U.R." about a race of mechanical beings and how they interacted with humans - a race he called "robots." At the time, nothing resembling a robot existed (in fact, this is how "robot" was introduced into English). This did not stop Capek from reasoning about them, of course; he simply reasoned and invented about them in potential, not in actual fact.
Aquinas might be a strongly Christian philosopher, and many of the questions he was concerned with may seem irrelevant to people today, but the most secular and modern thinker can see the echoes of his thought in issues we consider today.
Aquinas argues that laws are to benefit the common good - we still argue about this today. Mainly, however, we are not debating whether laws should benefit the common good but whether particular laws are benefitting that good. This is especially true in the cases where it is unclear whether the laws impact public (as opposed to merely private) behavior: gay marriage, sex, drugs, porn, seat belt laws, abortion...the list goes on. A key element of all of these debates, however, is whether the actions in question are purely a matter of personal choice, affecting no one except the actor, or whether the acts have ramifications for the society as a whole. We might object to certain kinds of drug use on the grounds that they turn people into homicidal maniacs, for instance, but what about a drug that just made people stay at home being happy? Does society have a right - or even a responsibility - to regulate this? We argue about this still.
Aquinas also has a curious argument in his section about eternal law. One of the objections he considers claims that it makes no sense to speak of eternal law because a) something is only a law if the object it applies to exists (after all, there's no point making laws about ghosts if they don't exist) and b) nothing but God is eternal. Since the laws aren't about God (the only eternal thing) they must be about non-eternal things; hence the laws themselves are not eternal. Aquinas avoids this by arguing that all things exist in potential in God, and this is all that is needed; once there are trees and rocks, the law of gravity will fall into place as well.
This might seem odd, but consider this: we talk and reason about things which exist only in potential every day - they're called "ideas." Karl Capek wrote his play "R.U.R." about a race of mechanical beings and how they interacted with humans - a race he called "robots." At the time, nothing resembling a robot existed (in fact, this is how "robot" was introduced into English). This did not stop Capek from reasoning about them, of course; he simply reasoned and invented about them in potential, not in actual fact.
Aquinas might be a strongly Christian philosopher, and many of the questions he was concerned with may seem irrelevant to people today, but the most secular and modern thinker can see the echoes of his thought in issues we consider today.
