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Aquinas and the Natural Law
Author(s) -
Seipel Peter
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of religious ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.306
H-Index - 20
eISSN - 1467-9795
pISSN - 0384-9694
DOI - 10.1111/jore.12085
Subject(s) - mistake , interpretation (philosophy) , normative , reading (process) , natural (archaeology) , philosophy , epistemology , natural law , virtue , sociology , law , law and economics , political science , history , linguistics , archaeology
Recent decades have seen a shift away from the traditional view that A quinas's theory of the natural law is meant to supply us with normative guidance grounded in a substantive theory of human nature. In the present essay, I argue that this is a mistake. Expanding on the suggestions of J ean P orter and R alph M c I nerny, I defend a derivationist reading of ST I‐II , Q . 94, A . 2 according to which A quinas takes our knowledge of the genuine goods of human life and their proper ordering to one another to be self‐evident only to the wise who are able to discern the truth about our G od‐given human nature. I then show that this reading provides a better account of A quinas's view than two recent alternatives: J ohn F innis's brand of inclinationism and D aniel M ark N elson's virtue‐based interpretation.