NATURAL   LAW   RECONSIDERED

Introduction

The natural law reconsidered here is the doctrine presented in 
theological writings of Thomas Aquinas. The subtitle, suggesting a 
continuity with the ideas of Chesterton and the mainly English lay and 
literary theologians of the 1940s, is serious in intention. Truth is 
indeed what does not lie hidden (aletheia), yet it is the only 
proportionate cause of wonder.
The first three chapters hammer home the same point from three 
different perspectives, this point being the necessity of transcending 
the legal approach. It is argued that the vocabulary of law, while 
remaining convenient for Aquinas due to his view of the divine 
revelational pedagogy, the Bible, is yet removed by him (and by 
implication the New Testament authors) to such an analogical plane that 
such discourse cannot be regarded as an essential part of his 
philosophical wisdom. A continuity with Nietzsche and modern 
speculation then becomes more visible. Aquinas in fact gives the 
rationale of these later intuitions in terms of the  bonum honestum 
itself as ultimately transcending any purely moral good.
This teleological position is distinguished from 
utilitarianism (ch.4) and ethical rationalism, opening the way to 
creative options as pointed to in the tradition of the virtues and 
their unity, this latter (unity of the virtues) being a doctrine of 
more use in legitimating apparent aberrations than in discrediting 
unconventional virtue. Here the individuality of any existing 
substance, such as persons in particular is brought out, with the 
implication of the insufficiency of any legal or scientific scheme. A 
richer doctrine of vocation in terms of personal inspiration is put 
forward.
Three central examples are considered in support of the 
thesis of love as the "form of all the virtues", viz. justice (only 
"mercy" provides the will to it), the erotic, the requirement never to 
murder. Next (ch.10) we consider ultimate happiness as the end uniting 
all individuals, going on to consider the Gospel beatitudes as 
presented by Aquinas as the charter here and now for full happiness. 
This leads to the topic of our natural and hence common inclinations as 
reflected in assertions of law, of which, we claim, the order of these 
inclinations is the source, all being derived from the urge to personal 
fulfilment (salvation). We show the continuity with biological reality, 
the necessity for a meaningful ethics of having biogenic roots, thus 
transcending all dualism. We end with a stress on creativity as the 
sign and effect of love, love itself being the only defensible ethical 
response to reality.
  NATURAL LAW RECONSIDERED

A Romance of the Obvious

Contents

 Introduction
 1.   Natural Law Reconsidered.
 2.   Against Atheistic or Any Other Moralism.
 3.   The New Law, Modernity and Natural Law: a Necessary 
Reintegration.
 4.   Consequentialism and Natural Law.
 5.   Creative Options.
 6.   Individual and Analogy.
 7.   Justice: Legal and Moral Debt in Aquinas.
 8.   Eros and the Human Good.
 9.   Murder Today.
10.   Ultimate Happiness.
11.   The Beatitudes as our Natural Plan of Life.
12.   Natural Inclinations and their Order.
13.   Natural Law and Physical Reality.
14.   Natural Inclinations Broadcast.
15.   The Central Role of Creativity.
Index
Bibliography

CHAPTER ONE

Natural Law Reconsidered

The doctrine of natural law has two poles, that of nature and that
of law. Conservatives use it so as to bind their charges by law,
such law just happening to be "natural", though this circumstance
helps them to claim to present an easy yoke, a light burden. Yet it
is a mere trick of language that suggests that the naturalness of
such law makes it no longer binding or constraining, as "positive"
law might be felt to be. If the real, existing and individually
personal subject does not find such a prescription coming
naturally to him here and now then he or she is without
qualification law-bound, unfree. It is not here that the easy yoke
and light burden is found.1

1
       Cf. Mtth.11,30.
 In the thought of Aquinas, however, natural law does not
seem to have functioned in this way, much to the annoyance of
the more zealous moralists calling themselves Thomists.2 In
reading him one is forced more and more to see how he focusses
first upon the natural inclinations, understood in an "objective"
sense as being those ends of our specific and generic nature, in so
far as this nature may be taken as common to us all, which evoke
inclination prior to any operation of free choice. For it is precisely
these inclinations that a free agent will consult as part of the
activity of choosing (electio) itself.3 WE do not begin, that is, with
constraints, as calling this ethics a theory of law must often have
suggested.
Thus our guiding, central inclination is to our ultimate end
("ultimate" is to be understood here as in "ultimate reality"; there
is no call to make it exclusively a term to a temporal process). As
being our ideal fulfilment one can only have one such end, just as
a matter of conceptual analysis, Aquinas thinks. We call it
happiness, though Aquinas has two terms for it, felicitas and be-
atitudo, both of which he identifies with God (it can also be called
salvation). Revealingly, he states that these, or this, is more truly
or directly the bonum honestum, or honourable good, than is
virtue. Virtue is only a bonum honestum as leading to happiness.4
This alone shows that Aquinas was not a moralist, in the sense of
an adherent of moralism, i.e. of the doctrine, in whatever form,
that there is a universe of "values" somehow separate from the
human good in general, so that we have to "respect" it or them,
not allow ourselves spontaneously to follow after happiness.

2
       Cf. V. Bourke, "Is Thomas Aquinas a Natural Law Ethicist?" The 
Monist 1974, pp.52­66.
3
       Just one short quaestio of the vast Second Part of the Summa 
Theologia, the whole of which deals with ethics and moral theology, is 
devoted to natural law. This is not even the main concern of the 
treatise on law itself, which as serving as a preface to the immediately 
following treatise on grace is only there at all out of deference to the 
pattern of development in scripture. Law is also dealt with in the 
questions on the virtue of justice, which again are more concerned with 
this virtue than with natural law. Aquinas's exhaustive commentary on 
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics underscores this stress, and cannot be 
dismissed as merely retailing Aristotle's views, since Aquinas begs to 
differ in a few places. What he does stress (more than Aristotle) are 
the ends of human nature, and here the aspect of law as defining an 
essence or nature appears, but not as particularly restrictive. For 
these ends only oblige us as it were vacuously, or under pain of not 
attaining them if we fail to pursue them.
4
       Summa theol. IIa­IIae 145, 1 ad 1um, ad 2um.
 Aquinas explains natural law by a reduction of it to these
inclinations. The order of the "precepts" just is the order, in our
nature, of these inclinations, from which it is obvious that each
inclination is itself a law, a precept. Hence the moralists try to
contest this reading of the text, basing themselves on Aquinas's
saying in one place that the one order is according to (secundum)
the other. But when order A is according to order B then the two
orders are the same, and there are other texts to drive home this
identity in any case.
Even the reference to precepts, in which Aquinas says
natural law consists, belongs only to the super-structure of his
conception. This is because lex naturale is an intellectual
abstraction made from the real ius naturale, which is a proportion
holding between things in reality and not something imposed at
all.5 One acts according to natural law when one's action is in tune
with reality, especially the reality of one's own natural needs.
In so far as obligation is a factor in Aquinas's thought it
rests entirely upon the natural necessity of those ends we call
goods, as being required for our happiness. We are obliged to
pursue them and to avoid what averts from them. But this is what
we anyway naturally do, more or less imperfectly, just as we
naturally try to do it yet more perfectly. This is the bakground to
virtuous effort.(Jan16)
Of course it is true that one of the virtues or habits we
need for success here is justice, the will to bestow what is due (to
the other), and it is under this aspect that moral obligation
appears, a bonum honestum attaching to actions needed, or to
non-performance of actions needing to be avoided, for the
attaining of the ultimate bonum honestum.
Even goodness, or the good, and hence also moral
goodness, is not an ultimate for Aquinas. Good, any good, he
points out, is a being. If some beings become goods then this is
because they are desired by us, i.e. this is what goodness names,
whether they be desired naturally or by a particular choice
indifferently. It is beings that are ultimately real, and a desired
being is a being in a certain relation to will.6 Happiness,
accordingly, is a state of being of a subject which could in
principle be objectively defined and described, as by Boethius, for
example. It is identical with the good, as also with the attainment
of the good, and while one can make some play with this double
aspect of happiness the main point stands, that it is being,
substantial or accidental, which is desired. It was the cardinal
5
       Ibid. IIa­IIae 57 1, ad 2um.
6
       Cf. QD de potentia 9, 7 ad 6.
error of Puritanism to divorce the morally good from what was or
even could be naturally desired, Kant's talk of a "higher or nobler
end than happiness" being just on the face of it a simple abuse of
language, even after allowing for his stipulatively "low" under-
standing of what can be called happiness. Good, in fact, like truth,
is an ens rationis.
There are many further indications of how far Aquinas is
from attaching any literal legality to natural law, which he defines
as a reflected divine light, something rather distant from any
usual notion of law, to say the least. One might indeed want to
say that this is a case of metonymy in the sense of a change of
name, i.e. of a wrong name for such a light. This light, however, as
being God, is identified with the eternal law, lex aeterna, in the
theory one with God in so far as his government of the world, one
with his being like all God's attributes, is considered. For all law
flows from this government, including in itself the divine justice
and mercy, corresponding to the biblical faithfulness. This notion,
however, posits nothing more nor less than the stability of
natures, stipulating that there be real, law-governed essences in
the world, the "laws of nature". Certainly these can be called
decrees, but the sociomorphism, whether or not sanctioned by
scripture, is patent.
Indeed it is only the third type of law in Aquinas's four-
part scheme, viz. human or positive law, that is really or literally
law. And here he has marked his opposition to "legalism", to that
concentration upon will, upon a will to bind, by his situating law
not in the will at all but in the reason7, to the scandal or at least
incomprehension of Suarez and others. Furthermore, in making
human law dependent upon "natural law", i.e. upon ordered
human inclination, for its validity he entirely robs the former of its
sting, as hard-headed jurists down the ages have at once seen.
This is a charter of freedom if ever there was one.
Thus for his fourth category, the divine law of positive
revelation, Aquinas, after a preliminary nod at the Old Testament,
declares that the new or gospel law, the one that counts, is
nothing written at all but, rather, a grace or charity infused into
the human heart. It is interesting that the language of
prescriptiveness is dispensed with here. Not a command to love,
say, but a new nature is what Aquinas states to be a law here, just
as there are the (scientific) laws of the old nature. The way for
such an identification, of moral laws and laws of nature, was
prepared for by situating law in the reason and not the will. It also
elucidates what we were earlier wanting to see as a wrong use of
7
       Summa theol. Ia­IIae 90, 1.
the term "law". Such a wide view of law, however, quite removes
the customary element of restriction attaching to the term, as
Suarez was expressly to object.8 Law in this sense, like a law of
natural being or an essence, guides and characterizes the life and
behaviour of the redeemed in the positive sense of enabling such
a life to be at all. Aquinas is here in agreement with St. Paul (or
Origen), for whom the Old Law (apart from a historical and now
defunct application) was no more than a "figure" of the new and
abiding freedom, a kind of spiritual cipher requiring to be
understood "spiritually".
The legalists among the Thomists often accept very much
of this, as good scholarship requires of them. They then go on,
nonetheless, to press their rearguard action (in favour of forensic
divine commands) within the field of the inclinations themselves.
Not only do they distinguish, rightly, between profound or "true"
inclinations and superficial urges. They go on to identify such a
true inclination with a natural or biological teleology of which the
individual is not conscious, since he or she may even desire the
contrary of such a supposed teleology. This is questionable
indeed, being hostile to spontaneity.
One may not be too categorical in distinguishing
inclinations and urges. A natural impulse, as we call it, is not
properly "blind" if nature itself has been conceded to be the guide.
A preoccupation with a supposed "corruption" of nature may lead
an individual to be more or less mistrustful, but the central
determining role of nature as generally whole and in order, such
that grace is said to build upon it, cannot be called in question
from within a natural law theory.
Nor, secondly, is there any contradiction in positing a
considered inclination as going beyond or negating a natural
teleology, as, for example, civilized cuisine goes beyond the
requirements of simple nourishment, or loving sexuality
transcends its foundations in the need for procreation. It is not,
that is, merely that the estate of marriage has a secondary (sic)
aim of mutual spousal affection, but that sexuality itself goes over
into this, thus transcending its biological teleology. Similarly, one
observes even in the animal world a homosexual enjoyment which
at least genitally is non-teleological.
It follows that natural law theory cannot be used to
outlaw some inclinations by appeal to other inclinations, just as,
our first point, one cannot downgrade any inclination to a "blind
urge" which is somehow no longer an inclination. What one can
do, rather, is to investigate what we really or most deeply want.
8
       Cf. F. Suarez S.J., De Legibus (1619), I, 1, i.
 Even here a "last ditch" attempt can be made to bolster
the legalist scheme. One can claim to show, with Aquinas indeed,
that we all "really want" one thing, viz. the infinite which is God.
So, once given that, one will not deeply want anything averting
from that end, will in fact be obliged by one's own pondus to avoid
it. Here there are complications, questions. Is this end attainable
at all? If so then what, if anything, averts from or endangers the
attainment of it and why? Even those questions only apply to
those once convinced of the uniqueness, reality and universal
desirability of an ultimate end, though this is in fact built into the
Thomistic account of the natural law, since the latter is even
defined as reflecting the lex aeterna. The divine is not just there
as an extra sanction, which a Grotius might discard. It founds and
makes possible any natural law at all.
If this end does exist, then its attainability (the first
question) can be defended by arguing from natural desire. Thus, a
natural end must be naturally attainable, at least on the premise
that "nature does nothing in vain", i.e. the creation is intelligently
ordered. This particular end, however, will be by its own nature
unattainable, it can be shown. for as infinite it cannot without
contradiction lie passive to anyone's gaze or grasp. Any God is
necessarily "a hidden God". What follows from the argument,
given the premise, is a qualified conclusion as regards the natural
attainability of this unique because infinite end, viz. it is natural
that the infinite being will reveal or give itself in response to its
creature's natural aspiration. One should, then, expect, hope, look
for this, as Newman argued and Plato once indicated. The intellect
itself, after all, according to Aristotle, "comes from outside". This
principle, anyhow, is reflected in the existence of traditions of
revelation (antecedent to their particular truth or falsity), as in the
passive, expectant attitude to tradition generally evinced down
the ages, taken together with people's propensity to offer sacrifice
to beings considered more potent than themselves. This impulse
to sacrifice, as if with all right to elicit (but not compel) a superior
initiative, Aquinas saw as a primary datum of natural law, in line
with what we have been saying.9
Theologians, however, tend to object here. They wish to
protect the gratuitousness of divine intervention. Now certainly
much of what is specific to Christianity must be gratuitous, but
one can still argue in general that an intelligent creature, as part
of the conditions for its creation, will have its natural needs

9
       Summa theol. IIa­IIae 85, 1. Cf. Lawrence Dewan O.P., "St. 
Thomas, Our Natural Lights and the Moral Order", Angelicum LXVII (1990), 
pp. 298­300.
provided for, including a need for some divine initiative exceeding
any finite creature's active powers, given that this can be shown
to be a need.
It is not convincing to argue that the natural inclination is
only to a natural knowledge of or about God and not to the fullest
conceivable contact with him. For Aquinas it is clear that since
bonum in communi, i.e. goodness without restriction, is the
natural object of any rational will, so there can be no restrictions
upon natural desire. We can and do naturally desire a
supernatural state, once it is conceived and its import
appreciated.10 All the difficulties of the hypothesis of limbo, where
the unbaptized innocents only do not know that they are in hell
because they are kept in ignorance of heaven, derive from this
fact. In general, a Carthusian author has remarked, "what the
spiritual man desires is contact."
So much for our first question. If there is such an ultimate
end, then it will be attainable, but upon its own terms only. For our
second question we asked what might avert from such attainment
and why or how it might do this. That action and the end are in
general related, let us first note, follows necessarily if one accept
that all free action (actus humani) is internally purposeful, propter
finem. The argument (one of them) was precisely that such a final
end was required for actions as a whole to be possible. But if
action is for the end, it cannot also be that the end is bestowed
independently of action. Thus even faith is an act, and otherwise
action would be robbed of its point. But in reality the final end is
pursued in any act whatever and desire for it is hence the motive
force of any activity at all.
Although action has to be for the end, however, this does
not, so far, exclude its attainment or hindrance by other means,
such as fortune, fate or predestination. One would have to argue
further for any elimination of arbitrary or irrational factors from
final human destiny which one wished to make. But certainly here
and now fortune can affect whether an action attains the
happiness it necessarily aims at, and a bad plan might succeed
better than a good one. Prudent action, therefore, has to take
account of this.
Given then that action does affect, is ordered well or
badly towards the end, then there has to be a differentiation
among acts, this being a condition for the choice between actions
which we make out of natural necessity. Hence some acts will

10
       The various traditional fantasies as to the Devil's archangelic 
intellect having baulked at just this offer are too tenuous and picture­
laden, too specific in fact, to form a serious counter­argument here.
hinder attainment of the end at least in the sense of slowing down
what a better chosen act could have achieved. Thus far there may
or may not be acts which send one in the opposite or reverse
direction, which avert from the end. They would do this in virtue of
some principal cause making them to be of this class. The
traditional Christian answer identifies this with destructiveness of
the love of God or neighbour. Independent analysis might seem to
confirm this. Thus the last end is sought because loved.11 What we
love we desire (cupiditas) and we love ourselves in desiring good
for ourselves (amicitia) as we might for another, such friendship
however being also a good we ourselves desire to possess, thus
completing the circle which makes up the unity of love, of eros
and agape, of losing one's life to save it.
So to love the ultimate end, however we see it (God or our own
happiness etc.), is already a disposing union of mind and heart for
the real union or possession sought. We should not doubt that to
resolve with energy to be happy is a positive step. We need strong
wants, as even a Buddhist must want strongly to shed his wants, if
he or she is to hope to succeed in that particular quest. It can
anyhow be shown philosophically, it is worth repeating, that God,
any God, whether actual or hypothetical, must itself have and
indeed be love.12 It would then follow that in loving we become
like and hence relatively closer on our way to him, her or it, a view
reflected in the Johannine biblical texts particularly.
But is it possible not to love, or to stop loving? Is
happiness sought with more force by some than by others? This
must be true, and hence an agent's missing the target, so to say,13
is not primarily due to his or her having aimed with an equal
energy at something else, as that sporting image might suggest to
us, even though lack of concentration and indifference are foes of
achievement in sports particularly. For we say that one "aimed at"
self-love in place of love of God or neighbour, or followed a ruling
passion which had usurped the desire for the infinite or "whole".
But the deeper truth is that there was a lack, an absence of the
degree of force or life (of love) needed, leaving a vacuum that
could be filled by particular demonic energies in the negative
sense. Thus the difficult goods of friendship or virtue (Aquinas
11
       That there is love in God, such that on his principles the 
divine simplicity would thus be identified with (inter alia) love, 
Aquinas first argues for at the most general level independently of the 
Christian revelation (Ibid. Ia 20, 1).
12
       See note 10.
13
       This idea is the tymological basis of the biblical Greek word 
for sin, hamartia.
sees friendship itself as a virtue) are rejected, fallen away from.
But friendship, seeking the other's good, is itself a need, a good,
required by our own nature, to which we cannot but be inclined
and even inclined to strive for. This is inclusive of that friendship
with God from which theologians often wish to debar what they
call the natural man, who has no right to expect it. Yet he can dare
to hope for it as falling under bonum in communi, this hope
maybe even leading him to aim at the "supernatural". Otherwise
how would he begin that journey. What, conversely, can forbid him
thus to hope, in ways immortalized, for example, in the psalms of
David or the poetry of Emily Bronte?
Thus it is that when Aquinas wishes to characterize sin, in
its traditional division of mortal and venial, he writes:

When the will sets itself upon something that is of its nature
incompatible with the charity that orientates man
towards his ultimate end, then the sin is mortal by its
very object... whether it contradicts the love of God, such
as blasphemy or perjury, or the love of neighbour, such
as homicide or adultery...

Here, although he mentions classes of action against which there

might be legislation or quasi-legislation, yet what he stresses is
the failure in the exercise of love, love as that which orientates
and unites with our object. Hence he adds

But when the sinner's will is set upon something that of its nature
involves a disorder, but is not opposed to the love of God
and neighbour, such as thoughtless chatter or
immoderate laughter and the like, such sins are venial.14

The new Roman Catechism, however, where this passage

is quoted, prefers almost on the same page to say of mortal sin
that it "destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of
God's law."15 But God's law, the New Law, is, we have seen,
precisely this charity, actually a freedom at the opposite pole to
law. There is no other divine codex of law, as is suggested here,
clean contrary to the quoted text of Aquinas, who keeps his
examples of action-types to a minimum, as being things one can
be morally certain will contradict love. The legalists prefer to
speak of destroying charity by exhibiting disobedience, somehow
a self-defeating and provocative way of speaking which reached
14
       Aquinas, op. cit. Ia­IIae 88, 2.
15
       Catechism of the Catholic Church, Vatican City 1994, no. 1855.
its acme in the heyday of late-medieval nominalist theology.
Disobeying is just one way in which a child may hurt a parent, and
that not the most fundamental.
We don't destroy charity by violating something called
God's law. We act unlovingly in ways that can be generalized in
general statements. Thus when John writes that "no murderer has
eternal life dwelling inside him" he is not declaring a divine refusal
to forgive murderers but saying, rather, why murder is generally
wrong as being hatred of one's brother. It denies love, and all that
we seek. While grace attempts to re-educate or perfect our
spontaneity the rationalist legalists strive to eradicate just that.
So much, indeed, follows from Aquinas's statement that
charity is the form of all the virtues.16 There is no set of laws or
commands in separation from the imperative of love. This is in
fact clear even in the Old Testament. The wrong or "averting"
action or action-type is always such under its aspect of
incompatibility with love, and statements of law are at best like
attempts to freeze or arrest the energy or fire of love as it passes
by, as in a photograph. Focussing too much upon a set of precepts
has obscured this, though it is certainly possible to restate natural
law in a more dynamic way, or to restate, rather, a programme of
life for which that term might prove to be more inappropriate than
ever.17

**********************************

Strategies for attaining the ultimate end might vary at different

stages of life, since, again, we are not tied exclusively to the
interpretation of it as terminating a linear temporal process. This
is a genuine counterweight to there being an objective hierarchy
of goods, as sketched out by Aquinas in Article Two of Question 94
of the pars prima secundae of his Summa theologica. At some
stages of life, for example, attainment of ideal fulfilment
(eudaimonia) depends very heavily for many people upon sexual
fulfilment, which in Aquinas's list would be situated if anywhere
under the second of the three sets of inclinations, viz. those
16
       Summa theol. IIa­IIae 23, 8.
17
       Cf. the passage cited below from Herbert McCabe's Law, Love and 
Language. The analogy of a revolutionary struggle (an analogy inclusive 
of the element of causality, "like causes like", if we recognize the 
Gospel ferment behind much revolutionary mentality) underlines the 
creative and free approach to ethical judgment (thus reducing its 
distinctness from decision) typical of those possessed by love. Adoption 
of this view leads me to wish to modify at least some of my earlier 
criticism of R.M. Hare on this point.
shared among all animals. Yet on his view human sense-life is
always superior to and more subtle than that of the brutes, even
before we consider that tendency we noted for each part or
passion to overflow its proper nature or to transcend itself. It is the
one intellectual soul that experiences the orgasm and its
preliminaries. At the season of passion all of being is grasped and
can only be grasped as mediated by such a fragile and particular
analogy. That is why there is "a time to love and a time to die".
Being, after all, has no parts, is one.
In fact the hierarchy of inclinations, it can be shown, is
not so much linear as circular, returning back upon itself.18 What
might be taken as the "lowest" impulse, for example, being shared
by all substances, viz. the impulse to self-preservation, actually
contains within itself the ultimate inclination to bonum in
communi and final beatitudo. Correspondingly, the specifically
intellectual inclinations to the knowledge of the truth about God,
say, or to life in society, in a way rejoin this first motor of all
impulses. It follows that the sexual impulse implies no descent. All
human quests are equidistant from the centre, and this implies
that this distance is nil, i.e. if they are not more distant than the
impulse to God as such which is at the centre. The centre is
everywhere and there is no path that one treads that is not
oneself. Conversely, in having God one would have all things,
since all are analogies of God before they are themselves. This in
fact is the meaning of being which Heidegger chided us for
forgetting. It is undivided and fully present in each and any being.
This is what founds the possibility of artistic achievement and
satisfaction, that nothing is a mere part of being, since it cannot
have parts.
Real analogy is hence the background to a proper
understanding of the unitary striving for the ultimate end amid a
world of multiplicity. The via negativa as often practised seems
based upon a wrong understanding, one which discounts analogy,
so that those who thus follow it reach the end, if they do, in spite
of rather than by means of it. The sine qua non, in any case, is
that one is driven into and through these activities by the same
impulse and energy that actually proceeds from the last end as
first motive power, viz. love. Even all social life and social
responsibility fall under this. As Maritain indicates, in his
Christianity and Democracy, a progression is required from civic
friendship to the fraternity of the human family under one father-
creator, this not as an addition to but as the hidden form (caritas)
of any movement of social cohesion that ever succeeded.
18
       Cf. Appendix I.
 This, though, was especially illuminated by the "new"
Gospel teaching on forgiveness, movingly echoed in Nietzsche's
descriptions of the magnanimity of the Übermensch:

For that man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the highest
hope, and a rainbow after long storms.19

Against this transcending of a structure of quasi-legal

restriction one might want to object by recalling that the atrocities
of the earlier and mid-century found a powerful counterweight in
the revival at that time of natural law doctrine, as does the
contemporary practice of routine abortion. Under natural law a
prohibition is placed upon any killing of human beings, even when
guilty, at least by private persons, while no created instance at all
can take upon itself the killing of the innocent. This absolute
prohibition corresponds to the constant which is the transcendent
dignity of human nature, such as Kant or Aquinas claimed to
establish in their different ways.
Now, however, we seem to be removing the security of
law in so far as we would make it an abstraction of reason. Does
this not open a way for the Nazis, say, to claim to have been
serving the common good by their exterminations, as if their final
solution (genocide) were a creative and free response to
circumstances, a mere variation of strategy for attaining the end?
We answer no. It certainly was a strategy, but one which we can
show fails. We are, anyhow, not discarding law as such. Rather we
are stressing the dependence of moral and, hence, even of
properly legal prescriptions upon the relations, often but not
always constant, obtaining in reality. This is law in the sense of
essence, and it is the very nub of natural law to derive
prescription from this alone. If no murderer has eternal life then
this is because such a deed is in essence the denial of life and
love, harmful of the common good which is yet, like being,
personal to the murderer himself and to each one of us. Here
belongs the Socratic insight that he harms himself most of all, a
view not in necessary connection with a lenient attitude to
criminals. The point is that there is no need for some additional
precept to bolster this insight, though unfortunately use of the
term "law" can suggest this to some minds. We do not need to
prove that God has forbidden murder before we can prosecute the
Nazis, or make laws under which to prosecute them.20 We only
19
       F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (tr. Kaufmann), in The  
Portable Nietzsche (ed. W. Kaufmann), Viking press, 1954.
20
       That we need a law against murder in civil society is certainly 
need to see that it denies human dignity, upon affirmation of
which the common good depends as requiring love of self and
others.21
It is in line with these analyses when Nietzsche, for
example, implies that the superior man will endlessly forgive,
since this follows from his notion of being free of all resentment.
He describes this in terms of valuing a human being, any human
being, for his being rather than his action. This, Nietzsche claims,
is what we do within a family, and we human beings as such form
a family. This is the positive thrust of one form of moral nihilism. It
does away with justice as a real relation (though not of course the
concept) since there is no longer any pure other upon whom,
Shylock-wise, to exercise a pure justice. The impulse, indeed, to
be just, where not thus restricted and hence de-formed, can only
proceed from the first of all impulses (always to the ultimate end)
which we are calling love. Hence, as we saw with other human
impulses, it has it in itself, as proceeding from a whole human
being, to transcend itself.
Thus interpreted this specifically moral nihilism or
existentialism is a straight reflexion of the being and teaching of
Jesus Christ, as also, in a less careful way, of that metaphysics
which only permit goodness to be distinguished from being in the
mind, not in reality. All concur in rejecting what we have called
moralism or moral rationalism.
When Jesus told people their sins were forgiven he was
understood by his more hostile critics to be setting aside or failing
to respect the moral law, the law of God indeed, and similarly
when he told us to forgive one another and, by implication,
ourselves. Who can forgive sins but God alone, they asked. This
divine prerogative itself, however, they had understood, again, in
a legalistic way, as if due to God's not being bound by his own
decrees, a sociomorphic term. The divine freedom to pardon was
amoral.
Jesus implies the error and shows the poverty of this
outlook when he exhorts us to love and accept and forgive one
another indiscriminately, precisely in this way being children and
hence likenesses of God who "sends his rain on the just and the
unjust", showing himself just in this way, this lowly, everyday way,
to be our "heavenly father", the father of all, who will always give
the egg or fish to those who ask and never a stone or scorpion.
not contested here. Our point, on the contrary, is that organized human 
society is the one place where law literally belongs.
21
       It might also seem to require denial of the view that "man is a 
useless passion."
For the same reasons we must expect Jesus to say, as he does,
that he has other (non-Jewish) sheep. The impulse to universality
arises from his own person. As Maritain says, we cannot go back
from this teaching of universal brotherhood to one of civil rights
restrictively viewed without great scandal to humanity.
In this teaching Jesus lays the foundation for the future
teaching of the eternal law, just as he confirms the previous
teaching of this by Plato, Cicero and others. Such a law is no
longer extrinsic, though this be the essence of law as normally
understood, but one with the divine being. One can now suggest,
all the same, that in calling this so insistently a law Augustine22
was tending to regress to legalism, as might seem confirmed by
the events and apparent compromises of his life as reflected in his
other writings, understandable as these may be in the light of the
then developing situation. In accepting the new faith in Jesus the
emperors and men of power were unbearably tempted to tailor it
back to the normal assumptions of legal government and thus
also to tempt or at least place special demands upon the Church,
as materially subject to their bounty. This, however, would not
prevent the emergence of Francis of Assissi, or even of the
paradoxical figure of Joan of Arc, as the Church's truest children.
Greater things than I shall you do, Jesus had said, with equal
paradox. The New Law, anyhow, as "law of freedom", is only
linguistically a paradox, one arising, indeed, from the need to
show continuity, about which though there was nothing fictitious,
with an existing situation. "I am come not to destroy but to fulfil."

It is worth noting, in so far as people often consider so-

called law ethics and virtue ethics in parallel, that while any
purportive ethical law can be questioned and even thrown out,
this is not in general the case with virtues. One reinterprets, as
claiming to understand more deeply, not so much the virtue's
definition as what behaviour might correspond to it.. The table of
the virtues remains intact as the ends of human nature remain
intact, this being powerful confirmation of the ethical tradition
which Aquinas felt able to represent in terms of natural law theory.
We should, however, bear in mind that even in the Summa
theologica he does this in just one small space, and perhaps there
with a further end in view, viz. to illuminate what is called in
scripture the New Law. This is why he has recourse to natural law
at all, and in a theological text, not in the commentary on the
Nicomachean Ethics, for example. There is no good reason to put

22
       Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will I, 6. See also his de Vera 
Religione 31, Contra Faustum I.
this down to a deference to Aristotle. Deference, on his part, is
more likely to be operative in the theological realm. But we should
note that even in the commentary, through giving a more central
role to natural inclinations than Aristotle seems to do, he moves
more towards a theory of natural law in the open sense described
above.
Scripture, as deriving from the Jewish tradition, was
bound to speak in terms of law, as if by a divine choice, whether
or not we want to accord divine inspiration to the Old Testament.
It may still, and even a fortiori, be the case that Jesus set out to
raise the tradition of law above itself altogether. It is thus absurd,
it might seem, when Kierkegaard treats the "new commandment"
("love one another as I have loved you") as an old-style precept
addressed to our higher will, in order to exclaim over the paradox
of commanding love (though this is already done in the Old
Testament). Is not Jesus rather pouring a grace into the heart? It is
even more imperceptive, at best, for Kant to argue from the mere
phraseology used (taken from the operative cultural background)
that what we have is an imperative addressed to pure will and
nothing of an affective or above all spontaneous nature. For the
new law, as Aquinas insists, and hence the new command, is
neither written nor spoken.23 The Superman has been anticipated,
the charter of freedom is there, as it was when Augustine
exclaimed "Love and do what you like." There is no call to respond
"Yes that is all very well but..." This, as an attitude common
among believers, would be to make God's word void, and is in fact
a case of applying a restrictive interpretation to what offers itself
as in essence the abolition of restriction, the liberation of captives.
The battle against objectification, legalism, abstract
generalization, is constant as flowing from the ineptness of
thought and language. The evil of giving in to this pressure lies in
the wish for self-justification, wishing to know that one cannot be
faulted, while the whole Christian proclamation centres around not
judging, around being justified by God and believing in this. This is
a bigger thing than God's paying the price (to whom?) for our sins
and so on. For it is a supra-historical declaration against such
objectification and legalism, culminating in the best man, who is
also God, it is claimed, being "made sin" for us. It was the
dynamic of the best Protestantism to have latched on to this so
single-mindedly, and much of our humanity and freedom today, as
expressed in our literary tradition, for example, derives from this,

23
       Summa theol. Ia­IIae 106, 1 & 2. He also says, at 3 ad 3 of this 
question that it is only due to man's fallen or sinful state that this 
"law" was not given and maintained from the beginning of the world.
of which the ultimate source remains the Gospels as fulfilling the
prophecy and promise of the Jewish sacred writings.
Thus Aquinas did not typically express himself in terms of
a restrictive natural law. The theme of the pars secunda of the
Summa theologica is that of the virtues, habits and graces needed
for attaining the end, and there is, again, little call to argue that
his commentaries upon Aristotle's ethical writings do not
represent his own views.

**************************************

This teaching, this tradition, this revelation continues to have its

effect in the world. The Popes, we may say, compromised and
clericalized as they may often have been, do not sit in Rome for
nothing, and we may place the canonization of Aquinas alongside
other bold and imaginative strokes of theirs such as the visits to
the Frankish court around the eighth century or general
encouragement of the Renaissance or, later, of regular
sacramental communion, all of which have been regularly kicked
against by restrictive legalists and enemies of eudemonism
generally. Properly understood, the canonization of Thérèse of
Lisieux, who declared she had no virtues, was also a revolutionary
act.
It is not sufficiently noted that Jesus told his disciples that
they could not but rejoice when the bridegroom was still with
them. This bridegroom said that he was life and we who are alive
may and are to rejoice, with a joy that can face the shadows to
come, since "he who believes in me will never die." These are the
perspectives which expand the heart and slowly turn it from all
that is negative or evil, just as they provide courage and
inspiration for eventual sacrifice with love unfeigned.
Marxism, it is well known, looks to a future abrogation of
law in general harmony. The attitude to capital punishment today
is an instructive example. Should we view the revolt against it as
an urge to the humanization of law within the law's system only,
or is something more fundamental involved, such as the beginning
of a general shift in our view of law and of its necessity? Let us
recall again the French revolution, liberty, equality, and the shift
from civic friendship or feudal bondage to brotherhood. The
revolution's atrocities, like those of Marxism, are well known. But
so are those of many defenders of orthodox religion.
To be against capital punishment is not just opposition to
something inhumane. In some cases it may not seem inhumane at
all. One makes a statement, rather, that the life of no man or
woman should lie under, be subject to, the law. The law, it is felt,
does not possess sufficient dignity for this. One inclines to this
position, perhaps, in proportion as one sees that law, public law, is
not a straight administration of divine law properly speaking.
Hence Aquinas, in both his main treatments of it, defends
society's right to use capital punishment in terms of a kind of
exception required for survival, not in terms of a divine dignity of
law. Neither God nor human nature are legislators. Human reason
may legislate if it wishes, and certainly what it sees is to be done
is to be done, but this seeing is one not perhaps with an actual
decision but at least with a choice (electio) which may itself be
creative or more like an invention than a choice. Nor need the
insights of reason always be universal, as when one decides to
marry this girl or boy.
This was in fact Nietzsche's point, that the being of
someone (i.e. his life) is not to be sacrificed to any rule or
principle. Jesus implies the same when he says that the sabbath
prescription must give way before the restoration of health and
hence life to a "daughter of Abraham". His reaction to the idea of
stoning an adulteress is well known, while it was the thief himself,
and not Jesus, who declared on the Cross that he, the thief, was
justly punished.
It is not our business here to outline how society might
manage without old-type legal systems. Nor need we address
pedagogical questions which may arise. It may indeed be true that
law is the best pedagogue for the immature. This would not affect
the truth of what we have said here.

CHAPTER TWO

Against Atheistic and Any Other Moralism

No search is as wild as the search for God. This statement may

seem forced, artificial. To the men, and sometimes women, whose
voices are recorded in what we now call the Bible, however, it
seems to have been a natural enough idea. One can also adduce
later works of art, the very atmosphere of certain music, not to
mention the excesses of fanaticism down the ages. For wildness,
of course, is not concerned with moral discrimination.
 There is enough testimony to find it a certain blindness in
Kant when he pronounces it impossible for the finite to love the
infinite.24 That is just what it does love, one would rather say. The
state of being in love might always seem to consist in finding an
infinite value in the object of one's love. One passes beyond any
sphere of calculation. That we others can see that the object is
then over-valued is not relevant here. But clearly God, at least,
could not be loved too much, and our inclination is thus most
typically blocked by a lack of knowledge of God. The Old
Testament commandment of this love seems to be intended as
natural to man.
We encounter repeatedly, all the same, among our high-
minded thinkers of the Romantic era in particular, but also those
of later times, a schizophrenia as between moralism and the spirit
of freedom. Not many people can follow Kant in seriously claiming
to fuse these two things. Thus in the English novel, through
George Eliot to Iris Murdoch (and Henry James is something of an
exception), we encounter this division, muted in Graham Greene
to a conflict between the law and mere sin but in Murdoch
burgeoning to full awareness of the demonic. All the same, as her
philosophical writings underscore, her conception of goodness is
ultimately moralistic and hence, from the metaphysical point of
view, restricted.
For on this metaphysical or even "religious" view, again,
the good is one with the real and the true, this being the doctrine
of the unity of the transcendental predicates. But the
phenomenon of moralism, it would seem, has to do not just with a
breaking of the link between goodness and being. More
specifically it is a case of the isolation of justice from the other
virtues, consequent upon the casting of our view of behaviour as
such into the legal mode, almost unreflectively, it might appear,
as if these thinkers are blinkered by childish or rationalistic moral
training, of a kind to damp all spontaneity and at times all love.25
Yet it is a task of philosophy to show how justice, as much as
temperance, say, is needed for happiness, for life, and needed in
no other way. This requires a philosophy of community, not indeed
merely of the social body but of the body of mankind united in
love, as form of all the virtues. Ultimately this will be a philosophy
of the Church.
On such a religious view we can trust and seek out the
24
       I. Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen 
Vernunft, WW IV, 838.
25
       Cf. André de Muralt, "The Founded Act and the Apperception of 
Others", The Self and Others (ed. Tymeniecka), Dordrecht 1977.
demonic, understanding this in the sense of the daimon of which
Plato's Socrates spoke as source of his inspiration. We might
rather call it the inspired, the creative, or, reversing the m and the
n and changing a vowel or two, the dynamic. The touchstone here
is power, life, and not passive rule-following. From such a
viewpoint to say of some course of action, like President Kennedy,
that we must do it "because it is right" is on the wrong tack, or at
least does not go far enough, does not get to the bottom of things,
to just why an action is right or not. Thus crime, we know or
believe, like a lack of the civil virtues, does not pay. That is even
what makes it crime, we want to say here26, for even justice is that
which pays, all things considered, and what does not pay is what
is unjust. It never pays to kill the innocent, because it always
harms the common good, the good we hold in common. If it ever
did truly pay then it would then be just, i.e. if it ever were
expedient that one man should die for the people. But those
whom we generally reckon to be just hold that it never is
expedient. Murder is ultimately always a great act of impoverish-
ment of the good we hold in common, a good seen as greater
even than the good of our common continuance in life.
So the demonic is not immoral or even amoral, just as
Christ, we pointed out in our first chapter, was not amoral in
forgiving sins. It was a righteousness exceeding that of the scribes
and pharisees, love and hence freedom being the form of all true
virtue. We speak of the spirit of love blowing where it will. So a
failure to love would be in the end a weakness, a diminution of
spirit and life. Although we may find it easier to understand an
energy of hate, such as we more often call demonic, yet the
witness of creative art, along with the inspiredly creative lives of
Christ and the saints, suggests otherwise. Hate, except where fed
by an at least partial love, is negative, its life, like that of a cancer,
stifling the authentic life of its own possessor.

***********************************

Under justice, then, such as moralism isolates, one considers law

and duty. That is to say, they depend for their activation upon a
virtue, justice. But justice correctly viewed is just one of a set of
virtues within a system. Still, we might seem to have the two
contrasting aspects of law and virtue as alternative approaches to
the theory of ethics, or to a system of morals. Kant expressly set
duty as more fundamental, claiming that virtue can be misused.

26
       See our The End of the Law: Dispensing with Moralism, Peeters, 
Louvain 1999.
Still, his good will or will to do one's duty could certainly be called
a virtue in so far as it might become habitual, and that virtue is
clearly justice. But these two aspects of ethical theory need,
anyhow, to be integrated, as is not always the case. It is clear that
for Kant, for example, virtue is not important as a philosophical
concept serviceable for the "metaphysical" (his term) explanation
of ethical reality. In later "analytical" moral philosophy it is even
clearer that the essentially ethical is thought of on the analogy of
giving an order, so that reason, for example, dictates to the
subject after the manner of a universal law-giver.27
The alienation of reason from the self in this manner is
already a departure from the profundity of the tradition. We
remember, for example, that St. Thomas spoke of the order of the
precepts of natural law being according to the order of the
inclinations of human nature,28 a thought quite alien to Kant, and
doubly so when St. Thomas combines this with the repeated
assertion that natural law is in fact the law of human reason, i.e.
just Kant's characterization of it. But St. Thomas gives us an
explanation, a justification rather, of his view, for example where
he asks the question, closely connected with our main enquiry
here, whether all the acts of the virtues belong to the natural
law.29 We remember here, incidentally, that whereas virtues are
habits, natural law is not itself a habit but consists of precepts
concerning things (or bona) to be done (facienda, sc. agibilia) or
pursued (persequenda). Hence it could only be acts of the virtues,
not the virtues themselves, which might coincide with the natural
law (unless we can say that a virtue itself is to be pursued30). St.

27
       This was the point of entry of P. Foot's criticism (cf. our 
Morals as Founded on Natural Law, Frankfurt 1987, pp. 43­49, referring to 
her "When is a Principle a Moral Principle?", Aristotelian Society 
Supplement XXVIII, 1954). One calls "someone good because of what one 
believes one has recognized in him. This that one can recognize can only 
be the disposition or habit we call a virtue" (p.51). So one should go 
even further than Foot, when she shifts the emphasis in ethics from 
principles (judgments, i.e. Aristotle's second act of the understanding) 
to concepts (first act). We should focus on the reality conceived, so as 
to see that the "collection" of virtues and vices is not, as she says, 
"haphazard", but an ordered structure in (human) nature. Otherwise we 
still remain at the rationalist level of discourse about morals, i.e. we 
confuse truth and being, concept and thing.
28
       Summa Theol. Ia­IIae, 94, 2.
29
       Ibid. 94, 3.
30
       The distinction between acts and their ends in relation to what 
is obligatory is discussed later in the present chapter.
Thomas writes:

it was said (94, 2) that everything to which man is inclined

according to his nature pertains to the law of nature. But
anything whatever is naturally inclined to the operation
which belongs to it according to its form (formam), as fire
inclines to heating. Whence, since the rational soul is the
proper form of man, there is therefore an inclination in
any man to act rationally; and this is to act virtuously.
Hence, according to this, all the acts of the virtues belong
to natural law, for his own reason naturally dictates to
anyone that he should act virtuously.

Everything in this text (of Ia-IIae 94, 3) falls into place with a kind
of obviousness as natural as the nature described, provided we
accept the substantive, in some way astonishing premiss that

the rational soul is the proper form of man,

that is, the soul of which intellect and will are the powers, as
flowing from its immaterial substance. This is the view that is
foreign to Cartesian (and hence Kantian) philosophy, according to
which reason is totally and even definitionally separated from the
extended quantities and bodies which it studies, bodies which
need no form outside of their own measurements, least of all an
intellectual and self-subsisting form, in order to make them what
they are.
Reason then, for St. Thomas, gives man his very self
(forma dat esse). It is, as natural, not alien to him. The importance
of this for ethics was stressed again by Pope John Paul II (K.
Wojtyla), himself no mean philosopher, in the encyclical letter
Veritatis Splendor:

A doctrine which dissociates the moral act from the bodily

dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of
Scripture and Tradition... the true meaning of the natural
law... is the person himself in the unity of soul and body,
in the unity of his spiritual and biological inclinations (49,
50).

So reason unites law and the acts of the virtues. But how does it
do this? Our text in fact refers to just one inclination, that to
acting virtuously or rationally, though it mentions that the natural
law includes the others. In this way the law might seem more
extensive than virtue.
On the other hand we find, in St. Thomas's treatment of
the virtues, that at the end of his treatise on each virtue he has a
section on the precepts of that virtue. In fact, under just one
virtue, justice, he includes all the precepts of the Decalogue in
their specific capacity (ratio debiti) of ordering us to others.31 So
all virtues come under one precept (to act rationally), and all
precepts come under one virtue (justice). How is that possible? It
at least requires a certain coextensiveness of law and virtue after
all (tempered no doubt by a measure of equivocation upon our
phrase "come under").
Before we go any further we should remind ourselves of a
simple fact. Law, for St. Thomas, belongs to reason. The moral
virtues, on the other hand, belong to the will as participating in
reason.32 So how far we are able to distinguish law and virtue
depends in a sense upon how far we are able to distinguish
intellect and will. The distinction is clearer in St. Thomas than in
the great Greeks, and this is largely due to St. Augustine. We
remember that for Socrates virtue was knowledge.
In explaining how precepts fall under a virtue St. Thomas
says that

law is only imposed by some ruler (dominus) upon his own

subjects, and therefore precepts of law (their existence)
presuppose the subjection of someone receiving the law
to him who gives the law.33

He also states clearly that

Since precepts are given concerning acts of the virtues any act
falls under precept insofar as it is the act of a virtue.34

It is clear then that law introduces the aspect of obligation, which

in the treatment of the virtues we only meet at one particular

31
       Summa theol. IIa­IIae 122, 1.
32
       Even the intellectual virtues, as habits, are distinct from the 
rational principles of the law. Thus the virtue of intellectus, which is 
the habitual understanding of first principles, whether speculative or 
practical, is in the latter case synderesis, the habit of (the 
principles of) natural law, not this law itself (Ia­IIae 94, 1; cf. Ia 
79, 12).
33
       IIa­IIae 16, 1.
34
       Ibid. 44, 4.
place, viz. the treatment of justice:

it is most manifest that the notion of obligation (ratio debiti),

which is required for a precept, appears in justice, since
this is essentially other-directed (ad alterum). For in those
things which are for one's own benefit one appears at
first sight to be free from constraint in what one chooses
to do; but in relation to others it is most clear that we are
obliged to give them what is due to them.35

So, certainly, there is one virtue, justice, concerned with fulfilling

one's obligations, but we need to ask: how do obligations come
into the picture? We might think that virtue alone is needed for
the good life, inclusive of course of the virtue of paying to others
their due, either financially or otherwise. But here the whole sum
of moral activity is seen as coming under an obligation,
presumably to God as law-giver.
One can reasonably wonder why courses of action should
be obligatory in this transcendent way. Even a believer in God
might wonder this, wonder if some huge extrapolation from social
relations has not been made here36. We may note that St. Thomas
makes religion as a virtue a part, the noblest part, of justice.
Here it is the theory of the end or ends that is crucial.

In humanis autem actibus se habent fines sicut principia in

speculativis.37

The basic principles of human action, that is to say, are the ends
pursued, and it is upon these that the Thomistic account of
obligation rests, just as those habits are virtuous, and hence good,
which human beings need to attain their ends.
35
       Ibid. 122, 1.

36
       We have already referred to N. Berdyaev's ideas on 
"sociomorphism", e.g. in his Slavery and Freedom, 1944.
37
       Ia­IIae 57, 4. "In human acts ends play the role that principles 
do in speculative matters." It follows immediately that practical 
principles do not play this role, and so are not the same kind of thing 
as speculative principles. There must therefore be an analogy in 
operation in St. Thomas's parallelling of the two sets of principles at 
Ia­IIae 94, 2, sufficiently indicated, after all, by the fact that 
practical reasoning employs the principle of non­contradiction, whereas 
speculative reasoning does not employ the principle bonum est 
persequendum, however this may guide the person choosing to reason.
 In distinguishing the necessity of compulsion and the
necessity of obligation St. Thomas speaks of the necessity of an
end, a precept (for its part) only being necessary

quando scilicet aliquis non potest consequi finem virtutis, nisi hoc
faciat.38

This shows already that it is primarily the end that is obligatory.

The primary or per se duty (debitum) is

id quod est finis, quia habet rationem per se boni (the end itself,
because definitionally this is the good pursued).39

The action, on the other hand, as id quod ordinatur ad finem (that

which is ordered to the end), is a duty only propter aliud.40 This
passage occurs in an argument for the primacy of the precept of
charity, the end being union with God, which is variously impeded
by things which are in consequence forbidden.
Also in the justification of prudence as a virtue St.
Thomas speaks of electio recta, right choice, which, to be right,
must choose firstly the due end (debitum finem), secondly what is
ordered to the end, viz. virtue in the will perfected by the habit of
reason (habitus rationis), knowledge of the natural law being
implied.41
Now these ends, we have seen, are those things to which
we are by nature inclined. Such inclinations, as pertaining to our
appetitive power, are not so much habits as the beginnings or

38
       IIa­IIae 58, 3 ad 2um: i.e. when someone cannot attain virtue's 
end unless he acts in this way (according to the precept).

39
       The appearance of utilitarianism is illusory. Every action has a 
built­in end (its objectum) specifying it, which no programme or more 
general end may erase from reality.
40
       IIa­IIae 44, 1.
41
       Ia­IIae 57, 5. One should note, however, that to speak of a 
knowledge of natural law other than that communicated by one's own 
present inclinations is to introduce a rationalistic and inert authority 
into the heart of morality, in place of the spontaneity of love. Cf. 
Aristotle's "As a man is, so does the end seem to him." It is in this 
sense that we are responsible for our moral beliefs. The habitus 
rationis which we need to exercise, however, is in no sense the same as 
having a rationalistic approach to behaviour. Compare the distinction 
between a "perfect use of reason" (in the virtue of scientia) and 
wisdom, which judges per modum inclinationus (IIa­IIae 45, 2).
natural starting-points (inchoationes) of habits, as it were
seminalia virtutum.42 It is they, their hierarchical order in human
nature, which determines the order of our duties, precisely
because inclination and duty coincide in each and every natural
end.43 Prior to legal formulation there is a ius and a iustum within
nature itself, failing which indeed legislative reason would be
falsified or rendered totally irrelevant to any serious praxis:

lex non est ipsum ius, proprie loquendo, sed aliqualis ratio iuris.44

This, however, gives answer only to the question of what, what

kind of entity, is obligatory, viz. that it is ends that we should
pursue, not the performance of certain actions in vacuo (as if we
were indeed nothing but actors on a stage, "merely players"). The
further question, as to why, or how, such an end and its pursual
can be obligatory, refers to human nature as being in the divine
image.45
It is paradoxical that the rationalist and enlightened
ethics of Kant and his successors, such as R.M. Hare, should fasten
on obligatory actions after the manner of what Nietzsche called a
slave morality of obedience, albeit to reason, reason seen,
however, very much as an extrinsic or alien power when no longer
seen as forma corporis (why did Romantics or the Fascists wish to
revolt against reason, if this were not so?). St. Thomas, on the
contrary, can show the rationale, the reasonableness and
naturalness, of obligation and why the obedience which it requires
in no way alienates us from ourselves but rather fulfils us.

******************************

So we have here a theory of action as being the means of and

even participation in an individual's attaining to what he wants. All
42
       Ia­IIae 51, 1; cf. 63, 1 (and Ia 115, 2).
43
       We are speaking throughout of the inclinations of our whole and 
hence rational nature, not disordered impulses of unintegrated parts of 
it. It is natural to man to be rational, as we saw (and even to apply 
the requisite discipline or education to that end).
44
IIa-IIae 57, 1 ad 2um. I.e. law is not the just thing or right itself,
properly speaking, but a certain formal intelligibility or expression of the
right. Ius stands to lex as matter to form (cf. Theron, "Precepts of Natural
Law in Relation to Natural Inclinations: a Vital Area for Moral Education",
Anthropotes 2, Rome 1991), pp. 172-187.

45
Cf. J. Maritain, Moral Philosophy, Magi Books, Albany
NY, 1990, chapter 5.
moral dispute is about that, and this will include matters of
justice. The demands of justice, while directed to the other, ad
alterum, are not themselves other or alien to us. How is this? Why
do we, as individuals, both want and need to be just? The question
is at least as old as Plato. One can answer it in terms of the
common good where this is rightly understood and distinguished
from what has been called the aggregate or utilitarian good.46 The
common good is shared in common as friendship is shared in
common. Between friends, and they may be more than two, as in
a family, each one fully possesses the good of the friendship or of
the family unity. To fail to give friends or other family members
their due, to defraud them in other words, is to lose the good of
friendship or of familial harmony. The person walking out of his or
her family loses that good totally, while the other injured family
members retain something of the common good damaged; they
have not totally lost it. This example illustrates the Socratic
dictum that the offender against justice is more to be pitied than
the unjustly harmed.
In just the same way, and not merely analogously, one
who destroys another's human life has destroyed human
brotherhood in himself, whether or not repentance is possible. He
is to that extent no longer one of us, one of our society, whereas
the murdered man has simply passed over to the host of our
honoured dead somewhat before his time. The same reasoning
can be applied to theft, deceit and all unjust acts.
Here especially the idea of acting against conscience
comes in, if we take conscience as our knowledge, our becoming
aware through memory, and so on, of what is or was due from us.
We can discount situations of people feeling obliged to this or that
without reference to conscience, when they so feel out of some
kind of fear, for example. The trouble, rather, is the ease with
which conscience can become diseased or neurotic or, in a word,
erroneous.
From what we have said so far, however, it can be seen
that the requirement for justice follows just as much from an
inclination of the agent as does the need for any and all of the
other virtues. This, again, is in general and principally the
inclination to act rationally, but as understood in a philosophy
where the intellect is the form of our human being and nature. It is
not a source of mysterious dicta or maxims before which nature
shrinks in terror, so to say. It shows us, rather, the way to go, as
46
Cf. Thomas D. Sullivan & Gary Atkinson, "Benevolence
and Absolute Prohibitions", International Philosophical
Quarterly, September 1985, pp.247-259.
being in the service of our deepest desires.
How necessary or absolute is justice? This is a root
question for our enquiry, our project of deducing justice from
needs, from what is required for the fullness of (in this case,
human) being. The common good, we are saying, which justice
serves, is needed for each person's good. Were this not so then
justice would not be justice. Yet we would still say, with
Thrasymachus perhaps, that it is not just to be just (this indeed
was part of the triumphant counter-argument). But this refers to
formal justice, as a necessary catgory47, before it receives
material content in terms of equality of proportion. Yet this
equality is still there if we would say that the weaker ought to
defer to the stronger. This debt, signified by "ought", is first cousin
to truth, as Anselm saw so clearly. Justice, the will to discharge it
is rectitudo (voluntatis), as truth is a straight (recta) reflection of
being, of what is, of the world, of how things are, in the mind.
So justice in this formal sense means being true, in
action, in the will (as habit), to the real. It is the real, then, that
requires justice, even or especially formally speaking. Hence the
point stands that if, even though it be unthinkable, the world were
otherwise then justice would be otherwise.48 Due proportion would
remain as formal constituent (just as the lion's unintelligible
utterances would be speech), the content of the due would alter.
The quarrel with Thrasymachus, however, is less radical than this,
being only about what is due to human beings, weak or strong, as
such. It is about human dignity, in the end a question of natural
philosophy, not of conceptual formalities or metaphysical
necessities. The element of "value", anyhow, in the modern
rationalist sense, lies precisely and only in this point of the will's
subjection to, love of, the real. Being, the true, is good, i.e. good is
understood or "defined" in terms of being. But this does not give
us a "separate universe of value". Rather, it binds us in just
homage to the one true universe as enshrined in the intentions of
its infinite creator.
The problem, however, might seem threatened with

47
Not of mind, but of reality, i.e. it is an a posteriori
necessity, intuited with respect to how mind and will have,
by their nature as constituted by their immanent objects
(the true and the good in communi), to respond to this
reality.
48
It would not be otherwise in such a way that we could
describe and understand it in this world. Cf. Wittgenstein's
saying that if a lion could talk we would not understand him.
incoherence in so far as the agent in some way always proclaims
by his very action what seems just to him, as Satan, in one
version, said "Evil, be thou my good." As desired, evil becomes a
good; as chosen, an action is judged proportionate, just, though
there can be error, and even wilful error, in this very judgement, in
this very choice. For it seems one can never choose totally against
all judgment, for "as a man is, so does the end seem to him", in
Aristotle's words.
But this consideration actually buttresses our position. For
the properly just man also does what seems just to him, as his
action too proclaims. He does not, either, act against all desire, as
in the fantasies of secularist altruists, but pursues his highest and
overall aim, assisted by fortitude, temperance and prudence. This
assistance turns our reflections to the question of the unity of
virtue, rather unhelpfully, we shall see, called the unity of the
virtues in the plural.

***********************************

What Kant said about virtue being able to be used in the service of
bad acts was pretty crude and unreflective. For Aquinas this is
only a seeming virtue, like thieves' honour or a murderer's
courage. It is so because of the unity of the virtues which in turn
depends upon the controlling role played by the ends of human
life towards which it is the unifying role of prudence to dispose our
actions.
There is however a truth behind, if not in, Kant's
observations here. This is, that there is no guarantee built into the
concept of virtue that its possessor is going to act in a way
generally considered right. It may please Aquinas to harmonize
the virtues with precepts but this provides no security, as indeed
we can observe in the lives of individualistic saints, against a
person's acting in a way considered reprehensible by society. This,
paradoxically, is a truth also entailed by the thesis of the unity of
the virtues. Either Tom Jones in lacking chastity is not in general
very virtuous or admirable or else what the novel would force us
to say is that in so far as he is admirable his improper acts are not
contrary to the virtue of chastity which he must possess along
with the others. In a similar way St. Thomas, if indeed he was a
hearty eater, could not have been a glutton. Again, one might ask
if the unjust steward was really unjust, if indeed his master
commended him. It seems we in some way assume the unity of
virtue. We find that those monks of whom Gibbon writes who
pictured Charlemagne in heaven except for his "guilty member",
which was variously plagued, badly lacked imagination. They can't
have it both ways. Either Charlemagne was not the saint that
ecclesiastical political mythology required him to be or, if he was,
then his exceptional amorousness was somehow all right, in
character as we say, justified by the general bigness of the man or
however we want to put it.
We can see this in quite simple dilemmas of the moral
life, such as our inability to determine externally whether one man
retreating before a particular danger has less courage than the
possibly foolhardy man rushing ahead. The first man may possess
perfect courage, as time will tend to show. Virtue, that is to say,
does not in these cases have to correspond with an external moral
absolute, since virtue itself is in the will. Of course if there are acts
of themselves undue then the virtuous man will never commit
them, but it is also true, as we are saying here, that any act which
the virtuous man does commit (and which he himself does not
repudiate) is ipso facto not undue, however it may look. Materially
it may merit, or at least incur, some nasty name or other, but
formally it will be free of it.

**********************************

The question of the unity of the virtues falls primarily under a

consideration of prudence. According to St. Thomas, it would
appear, all the acquired (as distinct from the infused) virtues are
connected in such a way that he who lacks one virtue can have
none of the others perfectly.49
This thesis meets with opposition from modern analytical
philosophers generally sympathetic to Thomism such as P.T.
Geach or A.C. MacIntyre. The latter's argument depends on the
assumption that Aquinas denied that there could be any virtue at
all in the morally flawed person.50 Against this MacIntyre points
out that a Nazi, say, would need moral re-education in charity and
humility but not in courage. This, however, is not self-evident,
while it is anyhow not true that Aquinas taught that there was no
virtue at all in morally flawed persons. For one thing he
distinguished between perfect and imperfect virtue (as MacIntyre
fails to do here), notably at the beginning of just the response
where the thesis is asserted:

49
Summa Theol. Ia-IIae 65, 1.
50
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, London 1981, p.166f.
In later work MacIntyre appears to have come closer to
Aquinas's position.
virtus moralis potest accipi vel perfecta vel imperfecta.

Imperfect virtue he equates with a natural or acquired inclina-

tion,51 such as might cover the customary behaviour of Nazis or,
say, those who might become

prompt to works of liberality, who nevertheless are not prompt to

works of chastity.

Before we consider Aquinas's argument concerning perfect virtues

and their unity, however, we will consider Geach's objections to
the position.
Geach sums up Aquinas's argument52, saying that the
conclusion,

all the virtues stand or fall together (sic),

is "both odious and preposterous". It means that

if a man is manifestly affected with one vice, then any virtue that
he may seem to have along with his vice is only spurious,
and really he is vicious in this respect too.

Against this he cites the

apparent teaching of human experience all the world over that a

man may be very laudable in some respects and very
faulty in others.

Now if the above were the teaching of Aquinas, then he might

seem in agreement with classical Protestants such as Baius, who
taught that

all the works of unbelievers are sins, and the virtues of the
philosophers are vices,

or Johann Huss, who wrote that

51
Such inclinations, we saw in the previous chapter, are
mere starting-points (inchoationes) upon which the virtue
can be built.
52
P.T. Geach, The Virtues, p.164.
if a man is vicious and does anything, then he acts viciously.

Yet the former proposition was condemned by Pope St. Pius V, the
latter by the Council of Constance (1415), authorities that
nonetheless had no difficulty with Aquinas's teaching on this
point. In fact he teaches that the acquired virtues (not the
infused) are able to exist without charity53 (just as he and Geach
agree is the case with the theological virtue of faith).
Much depends on the distinction between acquired,
imperfect virtues and infused, perfect virtues which are infused
with charity54 and depend upon it (as its effects55). Now of course
these infused virtues "stand or fall together", for theological
reasons which Geach hardly goes into, though he shows
awareness of the distinction when he says that

all virtues, however, are in the end vain for a man without the
theological virtues (p.168),

or when he asks

But, after all, what good is such imperfect virtue? Is it not really
spurious virtue? Not necessarily...

But by imperfect virtue here, context suggests, Geach does not

mean acquired virtue as such (the sense that Aquinas gives to the
phrase), but something such as a vice of laziness working only
quasi-virtuously to moderate a man's other vices.
In fact the only challenging example we find for his
position, as critical of Aquinas, is the appeal he makes to the need
for moral virtue if one is to succeed in science or art, many
paragons of which, he implies, have been notorious for particular
vices. But whether these are not spurious virtues (as used in the
art of theft) is just what needs to be proved in each case, while
enquiring whether a man "pursues good ends" is far too simple a
test, if one is to stop at the outward achievement.56 We hear of
53
Ia-IIae 65, 2.
54
According to a habit which may or may not be used,
says St. Thomas (it cannot be used, for example, by infants
until long after they have actually received it in baptism).
55
Ibid. 63, 3.
56
Particularly important here, if one is not to caricature
Aquinas's position, is the difference between actual sin,
politicians of whom it emerges at the end of their lives that they
sought achievement in the socialist movement merely because
there was someone on the right whom they could not hope to
outshine. Yet they may have done as great things for their country
as the old Roman whom Geach cites did for the Republic.57
But Geach here cites IIa-IIae 47, 13 (Utrum prudentia
possit esse in peccatoribus: whether there can be prudence in
sinners) as if Aquinas there speaks against the unity of the virtues
which he elsewhere affirms. Far from this, however, Aquinas rather
confirms the thesis, saying that a prudence which judges rightly
over the whole of life but which fails in some point accordingly to
command (praecipere) is only found in a bad man, propter
defectum principalis actus. But his perfect prudence or prudentia
simpliciter seems to be an infused prudence, since only this can
rightly judge of the end of life as a whole, this being supernatural:

prudentia... vera et perfecta, quae ad bonum finem totius vitae

recte consiliatur, judicat et praecipit; et haec sola dicitur
prudentia simpliciter; quae in peccatoribus esse non est58
(i.e. in people who have any one settled vice, or in the
sinner at the time that he sins).

This is the point in the argument which Geach contests, saying

that

There is a tacit assumption that if a man's habit of sound moral

judgment is vitiated anywhere it is vitiated everywhere.

In other words,

corrupt habits of action in any area will destroy the habit of

prudence. But no behavioural virtue is a virtue at all
unless behaviour is regulated by prudent judgments. So
loss of any one behavioural virtue is ruinous to prudence,
and thereby to any other behavioural virtue.
repeatable through weakness, and habitual vice. See below
in text.
57
One may take Shakespeare's Brutus as an example of
what moral complexities may be involved.
58
"True and perfect prudence, which rightly deliberates
in favour of a good achievement of the whole life, judges
and commands; and only this is called prudence simpliciter;
which is not able to be in sinners."
This is indeed the substance of Aquinas's argument (for the unity
of the infused virtues), who says that no virtue can be had without
prudence because

it is proper to moral virtue, as an elective habit, to make a right

choice,59

for which is needed not only that inclination to the due end which
is immediately proper to any moral virtue (in its particular
matter), but also the effective choice of whatever is needed for
that end,

which happens through prudence, which is consiliative, judicative

and preceptive

of such a means. But this prudence in turn cannot be had without

all the moral virtues, since it is recta ratio agibilium in general,
and such a rightness depends upon recognition of the due ends
sought by the virtues. Yet Aquinas explicitly says that imperfect
prudence, judging rightly about a particular end (Geach's science
or art) only, or failing, perhaps through akrasia, properly to
command (praecipere), can be found in sinners60, just as
imperfect virtue (in his sense) can there be found, which hardly
seems "odious and preposterous".
The position of St. Thomas here in summary is that
virtues are only truly and perfectly such which look to the
supernatural end, informed by charity, and are hence infused.
Acquired virtues are virtues imperfectly only, and these are not
necessarily connected. Hence even perfect prudence is infused
and cannot exist without charity.
An acquired virtue is compatible with serious sin, since
the use of a habit possessed (the virtue) is subject to our will:

Neque unus actus peccati tollit virtutem.61

But St. Thomas might just be thought to envisage the possibility of

sin even against an infused virtue, when he qualifies the
incompatibility of mortal sin with such virtue by saying
59
Ia-IIae 65, 1.
60
IIa-IIae 47, 13.
61
"Neither does one act of sin take away virtue." Ia-IIae
71, 4, sed contra.
maxime si in sua perfectione consideretur.62

Such sin is not the same as habitual vice. One may sin, at least
venially, against an infused virtue63, but it is not possible to have a
habitual vice without total corruption of such virtue. Vice, after all,
depends as much upon settled choice and will as does any virtue,
while repeatedly committed and repented sin does not of itself
amount to a vice (habitus non est simpliciter plures actus64). It is
the contrary vice which destroys the virtue totally (though any
such vice destroys perfect prudence). For the fact that the virtues
are interconnected does not mean that they are all connected in
equal strength:

potest esse unus homo magis promptus ad actum unius virtutis

quam ad actum alterius vel ex natura, vel ex
consuetudine, vel etiam ex gratiae dono.65

What has been said here would not be complete without recalling
St. Thomas's teaching66 that all previous gifts are restored in the
sacrament of penance, which might accordingly be viewed as a
return to a lost unity of virtue in whatever degree and not
necessarily as "back to square one". In this way the indelible

62
"Especially if it is considered in its perfection." Ia-IIae
63, 2 ad 2um. The absoluteness of the incompatibility (of
mortal sin with divinely infused virtue) here seems to be
qualified.

63
Ibid. 71, 4. This article speaks more absolutely (i.e.
without the possible qualification noted above) of the
incompatibility of mortal sin, considered as excluding
charity, with infused virtue, of which charity is the root.
64
"A habit is not simply a succession of acts." Ia-IIae 71,
3 ad 2um.
65
"One particular man can be more prompt to the act of
one virtue than to the act of another either by nature, or
through custom, or even through a gift of grace." Ibid. 66, 2.

66
E.g. in the Summa theologica, pars IIIa.
sacramental character and graces on the Christian scheme are
analogous to virtues as forming a character not lost by isolated
but uncharacteristic acts, just as one may note, looking in the
contrary direction, that the moral life is in continuity with the
spiritual or interior67 life, as the doctrine of the beatitudes and
gifts itself suggests. The association, however, is found equally in
traditions, religious or otherwise, not laying claim to a superna-
tural intervention, e.g. it is found in Plato. Such an approach,
indeed, is implicitly endorsed wherever one presents ethics under
the rubric of "the good life". It is endorsed wherever the end itself
is viewed as internal to ethics, i.e. as itself constituting, from the
side of the possessor, at least, a quality of life and behaviour68, as
in the Christian hope of divine friendship or the less ambitious
Aristotelian ideal of "active" happiness.

*************************************

The doctrine and central importance of the unity of virtue (the

virtues are one as all falling under what is due for the attainment
of the end, for life and the fullnes of our being) is reinforced if we
consider how the four cardinal virtues and their inter-relations are
thought of in the tradition. Against this background the points
raised by Geach and others are seen rather as difficulties only, of
which we hope we have in part at least disposed, than counter-
arguments.
Certain virtues are called cardinal, because they sustain
the virtuous life as hinges sustain a door. We find these four
virtues listed, with slight variations, from early times as fulfilling
this cardinal or principal role, e.g. in scripture69, by Cicero70, St.
Ambrose71, St. Augustine72, St. Gregory the Great73. One should
therefore try to grasp the reality implied by this doctrine and
67
I take this term from the traditions of, in the main,
French spiritual and mystical literature.
68
It has been the mark of liberalism to refuse concern
with this.
69
Wisdom 8, 7.
70
Rhetor., lib. 2 de Invent.
71
On Luke 6, 8: Scimus virtutes esse quattuor cardinales
(lit: we know that the virtues are four cardinal ones).
72
De Moribus Ecclesiae 15: Quadripartita dicitur virtus
(virtue is said to be fourfold) etc.
these distinctions.
St. Thomas understands the metaphor of a hinge (cardo)
as meaning that these virtues are principal, in the sense that all
other (human) virtues proceed from them. Accordingly he asks, at
61, 1 (of Ia-IIae), whether it is moral virtues which should be
called principal (as source of all good action) in the life of man,
and not rather some intellectual virtues. These, after all, pertain
essentially to reason, which is the active, formal part of man,
whereas the moral virtues, like the will itself, pertain to reason
only by participation.74 The theological virtues, again, might, from
another point of view, seem to be more principal, as being ordered
directly to God, the ultimate end, whereas the moral virtues are
ordered only to those things which help one to the end. This is
true, says St. Thomas, but such virtues are superhuman or divine,
whereas we are concerned here with human virtue.
Now human virtue, in the full sense, requires right desire
(rectitudinem appetitus)75, i.e. it does not only perfect the faculty
or ability of acting well (as do intellectus, scientia, sapientia and
also ars, art). Virtue, that is, in the full or perfect sense of the term
actually causes the good use of such a faculty. Hence such virtues
are more principal or fundamental to being a good person. But
such virtues, as bearing on the will to act, are the moral virtues
(inclusive, however, of prudence which, though formally
intellectual, as recta ratio, is yet moral with respect to its matter,
viz. agibilia76).
Only after establishing this point as to the moral
character of the cardinal or principal virtues (Socrates is perhaps
the principal opponent here77) does St. Thomas tackle the
question of whether and why there are four such cardinal virtues.
Given that these are moral, he argues, then they are concerned
with the good, i.e. with the perfecting, firstly, of practical reason in
itself, which gives us prudence. But such virtues are concerned,
secondly, with the perfecting of practical reason where it exists as

73
2 Moral. 49: In quattuor virtutibus tota boni operis
structura consurgit (the whole structure of good action is
encompassed in four virtues).
74
Cf. 58, 2: omnium humanorum operum principium
primum ratio est.
75
Cf. Ia-IIae 56, 3.
76
Cf. 57, 4; 58, 3 ad 1um.
77
Cf. 58, 2.
participated, i.e. in the will, both with regard to action, the will to
act rightly, which gives us justice, and also with regard to the
passions, either as restraining them, which gives us temperance
(in the "concupiscible" sense-appetite as moderated by reason),
or as holding fast to reason against certain passions, such as fear,
which gives us fortitude (in the "irascible" sense-appetite).
The claim is that all the other virtues are reducible to
these, which are themselves irreducible. This may be meant,
firstly, as by definition alone, in that any virtue, i.e. every habit of
acting well or rationally, when it relates to rational consideration
as such, may be called prudence; but when it has to do with what
is right and due in actions it may be called justice; when it
restrains passion it may be called temperance; when it involves
constancy in adversity it may be called fortitude.
But there is also, secondly, a material or real basis, in
addition to the formal basis, for the reduction of all virtues to
these four, in so far as they refer to what is most prominent in the
defined area. Thus the skill of determining what to do always falls
under prudence, which is "preceptive". All objective debts and
duties fall under justice. All moderation of sense-pleasure falls
under temperance. The facing of death, to which all danger and
adversity tends, falls under fortitude.
Yet we may wonder whether (or how far) these virtues are
really distinct from one another. For, as Gregory the Great says,
there is no true prudence which is not just, temperate and brave,
while the same applies to these three in turn; true courage is
prudent and so on. We often seem to attribute what belongs to
one virtue to another. Thus the temperate man's self-conquest is
rightly called bravery, says St. Ambrose.
Now it is true that in one way the cardinal virtues can be
taken as merely naming the elements which must be found in any
virtuous act. In this way they do not signify a diversity of habits in
reality. Any moral act, again, requires a certain firmness
(fortitude), a certain due order (justice), a certain reasonable
moderation (temperance), plus the initial discretionary judgment
(prudence). When the virtues are so taken then prudence alone
would seem essentially distinct as belonging essentially to the
reasoning prior to the commencement of action.
But, as we have said, these virtues each have a special
object or materia in which, says St. Thomas, that general
condition of virtue described above is specifically praised. So they
are diversified by these objects.
Thus the cardinal virtues are only denominated from one
another by "a certain redundancy". Prudence, for example,
redounds upon the other virtues in so far as they are all directed
by it. Fortitude, since firm against death, is firm against harmful
pleasures and, in reverse, temperance preserves courage from
foolhardiness. This is the redundancy upon one another of habits
in themselves distinct, even if they cannot exist apart from one
another.
Granted their diversity we might ask, firstly,78 how far
these virtues are found in an exemplary way79 in God. The divine
mind, if considered as practical providence, seems then to be
prudence, while the divine self-affirmation corresponds to
conformity of desire to reason (temperance), the divine
immutability to fortitude; divine justice is clear to view. St. Thomas
is here looking in the divine nature for causal analogues of the
virtues as realities.80
Secondly, these virtues can be political, inasmuch as man
uses them in the necessary affairs of society. Thirdly, as virtutes
purgatoriae (purgatorial virtues) they structure man's search for
the divine, the finis ultimus. Here prudence rejects what is less
than this and directs man wholeheartedly to God, temperance
"uses the world as though it used it not" (St. Paul), fortitude helps
us not to be terrified by the Cross, while justice consents to the
whole divine plan.
Fourthly, what of the virtues of the souls in heaven
(virtutes purgati animi), St. Thomas asks.81 He answers: prudence
knows only the divine, temperance knows no earthly desires, nor
fortitude passions, while justice associates with and imitates the
divine mind.
78
As Peter Geach does in his The Virtues (Cambridge
1977).
79
I.e. exemplary in the Platonic sense of a more absolute
way of existing.
80
Geach denies that temperance, in particular, can be
attributed to God. He also denies that chastity and sexual
morality comes under temperance, as it does according to
Aquinas and the tradition.
81
61, 5. If this article is compared with 65, 2 (Whether
the moral virtues can exist without charity) then it would
seem to be the mind of St. Thomas that also the "political"
virtues, i.e. those with which we conduct the affairs of this
life in society, are not truly virtues except where they are
infused, i.e. by grace, without which there is no charity (a
theological virtue, and form of all virtues, even of prudence).
 This applying of the general fourfold scheme to four such
specifically different areas (though three of them be in some way
theological) serves to underline its objective basis in a fourfold
reality, this in turn helping to explain the unanimity of the tradi-
tion.

*******************************

Thus our initial protest against moralism as a doctrine of

behaviour in divorce from the natural goals of life, and in favour of
a unitary vision of "the good life", seems to find justification. It is a
mistake to prefer a philosophy of value to this ultimately
eudemonistic vision, even though it may be the specifically
Christian thinkers whom we have to credit for making this clear, a
point which utilitarians ought more often to note. We simply
cannot pretend to discard this moment in the development of our
tradition. This is to take the more positivistic theologians upon
their own valuation of themselves, instead of attending to the
deep continuity between grace and nature from which an
understanding of our modern autonomy cannot be separated.
"He's a hedonist at heart," says C.S. Lewis's Screwtape of
God, quoting the psalm, "At thy right hand are pleasures for ever
more." In philosophies of "value", by contrast, such as that found
in Dietrich von Hildebrand's Christian Ethics82, the value spoken of
is somehow conceived of as apart from the natural universe while,
as von Hildebrand himself says, St. Thomas "does not use this
concept" (not surprisingly, in view of its distinctly rationalist
provenance). As Etienne Gilson explains it, perhaps with some
exaggeration, the Christians stood the old pagan philosophy of
virtue (and hence of value, the bonum honestum) on its head, by
making union with and enjoyment of God the end of all things.
This prepared the way for a philosophy more unambiguously
based upon happiness as final end of human action.83 "Only this is
desirable for itself, and all else for the sake of it" (Augustine). To
this corresponds the primacy of being over the good argued for by
the Christians, following Exodus, as opposed to the Neoplatonic
primacy of the Form of the Good (and ultimately of the One) over
Being. Iris Murdoch's view of goodness, we noted, seems to revert
to this ancient view, and indeed moralists often slip back into this
worship of "pure" morality, altruism and so forth. But "this moral

82
London 1953.
83
E. Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, New York,
1940,, pp. 325, 473.
theory does not correspond to the truth about man and his
freedom."84 Here we can understand Gabriel Marcel's remark:

I would accordingly be inclined to make the following undoubtedly

paradoxical affirmation that the introduction of the idea
of value into philosophy, an idea virtually unknown to the
great metaphysicians of the past, is as it were the sign of
a fundamental devaluation of reality itself...85

Thus in this tradition the virtues are habits which man needs so as
to attain his or her end, and in his theology, for his part, Aquinas
develops and extends this doctrine into a general teaching
concerning supernatural wisdom, as he calls it (theological
virtues, beatitudes, gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit). A
personalist doctrine emerges wholly distinct from individualism,
since individualism has no doctrine of the common good. It is
precisely because certain actions, including offences against
justice committed for utilitarian motives, harm the common good
that, as we noted above, the person thus responsible harms his
own ultimate and personal good in so acting.
This theory of the ultimate end is not the same as the
"one thing needful" of the mystical tradition. Bonum in communi
(actually identified by Aquinas both with happiness and with God),
goodness as such or all that is good, is the specific good of the
rational will and hence of the human being. Yet the various
faculties other than the will have each their own particular goods
which it is natural and hence right for man to desire as well as this
bonum in communi as such. The natural desire for God is just one
of the human desires and our openness to the transcendent, as
touched upon in the first chapter, does not contradict this. There
is a hierarchy of the natural inclinations, including, for example,
such desires as that to marry or that to live in political society. On
the other hand, even the (so-called supernatural) doctrine of
"using the world as though one used it not" seems prefigured in
statements of Plato and Aristotle, as when the latter says that just
a little of divine truth is worth more than all the other goods
together and that the wise person should practise death
(athanatizein) in relation to these things for the sake of gaining
wisdom. Self-transcendence of (human) nature is built into
(human) nature, it seems. Thus Aquinas can transpose this

84
Pope John Paul II, Veritatis splendor, Rome 1993, 48.
85
G. Marcel, Les hommes contre l'humain, Paris 1951,
p.127.
Aristotelian ideal into a doctrine of divine vision as ultimate end of
life. In contrast to Aristotle though he thinks that it is necessary to
know that this is the end in order to be able to live well.
True teleology, all the same, does not require us to deny
that there are intrinsically evil acts, acts, that is to say, which
never lead to the end. One recognizes the traditional Christian
scheme.

(T)he Christian moralists sought first to attach all moral worth to

the voluntary act as its root;... at the same time they
gathered up the concepts of the beauty and honour of
human acts into a concept still more comprehensive,
that, namely, of the good; then referred the good to a
transcendent principle worthy of all honour in itself and
absolutely, more truly even than virtue, which is only
honourable on account of this. They regarded the soul of
a just man as beautiful and worthy of honour because
virtuous, but virtue itself as honourable only because it
leads man to God. It is therefore not the supreme good,
the nec plus ultra that it was to the Greeks, the all-
sufficient unconditioned condition of all morality.86

*******************************

We will conclude and in part develop the above by considering

this crucial concept of the bonum honestum in relation to
temperance (having begun with justice) as treated by Aquinas,
bearing in mind our saying that each of the four virtues in one
way covers the whole of moral or practical life. Aquinas
paraphrases honestas, which he puts as one of the "integral
parts", together with verecundia (a kind of passion of modesty or
delicacy), necessary for any act of temperance, as "spiritual
beauty". One can perhaps see intuitively how honestas as beauty
might be especially associated with temperance, which includes
abstinence, sobriety and chastity as its so-called "subjective
parts" and, Aquinas tells us, has associated with it (its "potential
parts") such pleasant-seeming virtues as moderation, continence,
humility, mildness and simplicity.87
Those modern authors who feel that sexual morality does
not belong under temperance thus described88 might well have
86
Gilson, op. cit. p.325. Cf. p.473, note 4.
87
Quaedam spiritualis pulchritudo (IIa-IIae 145, 4).
88
E.g. P.T. Geach, The Virtues, Cambridge 1977, p.137.
lost the sense of a connection between unchastity and spiritual
ugliness, even if they should sound more severe against sexual sin
than the mild Aquinas. This in itself might be symptomatic of a
divorce of morality from the overall good life in the manner of
which we are complaining. They might equally well go the other
way and choose to ditch the traditional constraints upon sexuality.
This impulse to separate chastity and temperance, that is
to say, is a sign that some sexual behaviour spontaneously
reprobated in the classical and ritualistic cultures, a tendency we
find continued in today's Islam, is no longer seen as essentially
intemperate, as spiritually ugly. This development, partly
consequent upon the removal of certain sociological constraints in
the position of women, for example, was foreshadowed in the
traditional institution of carnival and (as reflecting a more
permanent imbalance) its earlier pagan counterparts. This
traditional imbalance was itself perhaps the prime cause of the
puritanism which succeeded it. For one understands the puritan as
being someone bound by his convictions to call evil or sinful what
he naturally apprehends as good89, a state of mind entailing the
theology of total depravity as a psychological need for him or her.
This means that the puritan is bound eventually to apostasise,
since he represents an essentially transitional or halfway
approach. Temperateness itself, by contrast to the real or fancied
embodiments of it to which one may commit oneself, can, as
pertaining to the formal anatomy of goodness, never be

Geach gives no cogent reason for his view, as does Aquinas

for his. The remark about parvity of matter (p.138) is a
straight ignoratio elenchi; all the virtues admit of both
trifling and grave violation.
89
Geach interprets "the Founder's" words on looking at a
woman to lust after her as if they would proclaim a stricter
law, old-style, not subsumable, again, under mere
temperance. But they are surely better seen as declaring a
relative lack of interest in law, as wishing to put a quite
different consideration at the centre of the spiritual theatre,
viz. that we should forgive trespassers (an act of love),
especially as we are ourselves are in pretty much the same
case, a case for which we may or may not wish to condemn
ourselves at different stages of our life and development.
For, in fact, as an ad hominem appeal this teaching seems to
avoid making a direct pronouncement upon the behaviour
concerned, only saying in preface that "ye have heard that
ye shall not...", and this might well be deliberate.
reprobated.
One should note though that the teaching of Jesus itself
envisages a state where what is as natural to one as an eye or a
foot becomes (though it be not it essentially) a source of offence
or contradiction, at least once one is entered upon the quest in
pursuit of the self-transcending end. But it is not entailed that
these or other organs are in themselves an offence or that they
will offend everyone at some time. It is not even entailed, thus far,
that our nature is wounded (though it may be), a doctrine anyhow
misread in the puritan schizophrenia. All that is implied is that we
may be called to give up one good for the sake of another.
Puritanism results from confusing this heroic
predicament, this call to transcend nature (to which, we noted, it
is no contradiction that we are naturally sympathetic90), with our
nature itself, as if man should naturally hate himself, a perhaps
inevitable mistake after whole populations had been committed to
the Christian message. For it is difficult for a whole nation to
consist entirely of aristocrats. An offshoot of the mistake is the
philosophy of the welfare state (and communism itself), in which
what can only fittingly proceed from social charity, i.e. in the
freedom of love, is made the legal responsibility of all citizens by
means of an essentially thieving tax system. Totalitarian
philosophy, therefore, like the puritanism to which it is akin, since
it is its effect, is bound also to be abandoned as transitional. The
call of Jesus, on the other hand, as calling to our freedom, forbids
institutionalisation.
This development towards welfare, but also towards its
abandonment in a more generous future, was foreshadowed in the
Robin Hood legend, just as the carnival foreshadowed both the
contradictions of puritanism (such as the reduction of an intrinsic
sexual ethos, perhaps more imagined than lived up to at any time,
to an extrinsic prohibition) and its later transcendence in
liberalism. In both cases restrictive law can be hoped to pass over,
via the transitional states, into the new, unwritten or spiritual law
of love, form of all the virtues.91

90
The human will, as participated intellect, has bonum
in communi as its object.
91
Cf. Jacques Maritain, True Humanism, G. Bles, London
1938, passim. It might seem unwarranted to see this hope
as anything more than an action-guiding ideal. This will
depend upon how much weight we are prepared to grant to
the argument from natural desire, and this in turn upon
anterior premisses.
 It is anyhow symptomatic that Geach, for example,
rejects the existing arguments for "the traditional view about
sexual vices"92, urging rather that we "hang on to" this view in
blind faith. For there is a clear connection between these
arguments in their appeal to "natural teleologies" and the ideal of
the fitting or decorous (i.e. the natural) which honestas
suggests.93 All the same of course, if an individual argument of
this type happens to be unsound, e.g. in a particular view of just
what is unnatural, then Geach is right to reject it. It could be that
acting freely and spontaneously is more natural and hence more
fitting to man than the following of any rule at all.
St. Thomas, then, speaks of honestas as that through
which one loves the beauty of temperance, adding that it is
especially temperance, i.e. not justice or prudence, to which one
attributes a certain beauty (decorem), just as the vices of
intemperance appear as having an especial vileness (turpitudi-
nem94), as corresponding to the lowest in man, which belongs to
his animal nature.95
Enlarging on the special relation of beauty to temperance
St. Thomas finds the common thread in "a certain moderate and
convenient proportion", this being the essence (ratio) of both the
beautiful and of temperance.96
There is in general a special refinement or subtlety in this
stress upon honestas in the context of a teleological ethics. Even
though moral principles are explained as precepts enjoined as
means to human fulfilment yet we meet here the idea of moral

92
Op. cit. p.141.
93
For exposition and defence of the traditional argument
see our "Natural Law and Humanae vitae", in "Humanae
vitae": 20 anni dopo. Atti del II Congresso Internazionale di
Teologia Morale, Rome 1988; also The Recovery of Purpose,
Frankfurt 1993, Chapter Two.
94
IIa-IIae 143, 1.
95
St. Thomas uses the word bestialem, in contrast to his
general view that human sense-life is nobler than that of the
brutes. With intemperance, however, we are dealing with
sense-life when manifested as without due proportion to
reason or intellectual nature (forma corporis) and as thereby
less properly human.
96
IIa-IIae 145, 2. Aequalitas proportionis, equality of
proportion, is also, we saw, the essence of justice.
beauty, of the goodness of right moral choice, in itself. Nor does
this contradict the overall teleological perspective.
Cicero, whom St. Thomas cites, tells us that the
honestum is that which is desired for its own sake (honestum esse
quod propter se appetitur, Rhetor.II). This was later echoed in St.
Anselm's definition of justice as rectitudo propter se servata,
implicitly criticized, however, by St. Thomas at IIa-IIae 58, 1 ad
2um. For justice, he points out, is not rectitudo essentially97, as he
here (145, 1) says that honestas is in some sense virtue as a
whole, as characterizing human excellence.98
Virtue, however, and hence honestas, he goes on to say,
and we have already noted it above, is a less perfect good than
the last end, happiness (felicitas), which is always desired or loved
only for itself. For honestas is only sometimes loved for itself, as
having in it something (by participation) of ultimate happiness,
and this can be so, therefore, even when it seems to bring us no
further good (etiamsi nihil aliud boni per ea nobis accideret). All
the same it is in general desirable as leading us to the more
perfect good.
St. Thomas therefore states expressly that God and
beatitude (Deus et beatitudo) are to be honoured beyond virtue as
being more excellent than virtue, i.e. as being greater goods. We
do not worship virtue. It is noteworthy here how he seems to use
the terms God, beatitude and happiness (felicitas)
interchangeably, in so far at least as he says the same about all
three, viz. that they are a more perfect good than virtue. This,
indeed, is what we found Gilson stressing about St. Augustine and
the Christians, viz. that they "stood the old pagan philosophy of
virtue on its head."

As the supreme moral value Christianity replaces virtue by God,

and the whole conception of the moral end is thereby

97
Ad secundum dicendum quod neque etiam justitia est
essentialiter rectitudo, sed causaliter tamen: est enim
habitus secundum quem aliquis recte operatur et vult: i.e.
justice is not essentially but only causally rectitude. For it is
the habit whereby someone acts and wills rightly (recte).
One can hardly find a better example of the precision
employed by St. Thomas in this work of discrimination
among the virtues.
98
Honestum... in idem refertur cum virtute. The
honourable and the virtuous are referred to the same things.
 transformed.99

The bonum honestum, as "that which is to be enjoyed (frui not

uti=utile), but not used" (Gilson, p.474)100, is thus in reality God
rather than virtue, since virtue "depends on God... as regards... its
existence and worth". The name (honestum), however, is applied
generally to virtue as that which is more known to us. We praise
virtue as alone making a man good, we honour it (honestum) in so
far as it is desirable for itself.
The bonum honestum as applied to moral life is thus in
reality just one exemplification of a general metaphysical truth,
viz. that everything is good in itself (to be enjoyed, we said above)
which fulfils its nature or, more generally, in so far as it is. This is
so even though it is also true that every finite thing is to be used
(bonum utile), so as to lead us to the last end.101 The action which
is really useful is thereby the action which is beautiful (honestum)
in itself. Hence St. Thomas says that "the honourable concurs in
the same subject with the useful and the delightful, from which it
nevertheless differs in meaning."102
In this way Maritain too distinguishes the orders of formal
and of final causality, of specification and of exercise in his
terms103, pointing out that

99
Gilson, op. cit. p.474.
100
Frui has a more "substantive" sense than does the
enjoyment of the delectabile, as witness our word
"usufruct". Still, we can enjoy both the honestum and the
delectabile for themselves, but not the utile. In so far as we
did it would cease to be this.
101
The truth in question depends upon the reality of the
analogy of being, according to which finite things truly are
(so that the term for being, "are", is naturally analogous),
and are not, like shadows, things which "both are and are
not", as we find in Plato's univocist account.
102
Honestum concurrit in idem subjectum cum utili et
delectabili, a quibus tamen differt ratione (145, 3).
103
This distinction is found in Summa theol. Ia-IIae 9, 1,
as that between a power's potentiality or need to be moved
quantum ad exercitium (to act or not to act) or quantum ad
determinationem actus. Here, however, it does not seem to
imply Maritain's notion of a separate moral order or
universe. On formal and final causality in this connection cf.
The honourable good is the very first, primordial aspect of the
good, its first apprehension, in the moral order.104

It is only later, in philosophical analysis, that we see how all is and

must be for the sake of the finis ultimus, present and operative in
all moral activity. Such analysis, however, should not tempt us to
deny our spontaneous tendency to respond to the beauty
(honestas) of, say, an act of self-sacrifice (of which we might
ourselves be incapable), etiamsi nihil aliud boni per ea nobis
accideret105, i.e. even though no other good would come to us
through it.
Maritain speaks here of this aspect as that which is
substantially good (i.e. not merely instrumentally) in the moral
order:

The expression "substantial good" would be more philosophical

than "honourable good". There is a connection between
the honourable good in the moral order and substance in
the metaphysical order. Substance, in relation to being, is
what is fit to exist in itself or by itself.It is the first
meaning of being in the order of the categories. Likewise,
in the moral order, the honourable good is what is
desirable or lovable in itself, since it is plenitude of
being... of the act of freedom itself, which does not fall
short of this primordial accomplishment,... agreement
with its own rule (reason).106

Laurence Dewan O.P., "The Real Distinction between Intellect

and Will", Angelicum 57 (1980), pp.557-593, especially note
24. It is hard to see how distinguishing formal causality from
final should lead to a separate order of absolute obligations
or "values", especially if obligation is itself conceptually tied
to ends ("absolute" or natural enough) and finality in the
way that we have tried to show.
104
J. Maritain, An Introduction to the Basic Problems of
Moral Philosophy, New York (Magi Books), 1990, p. 40.
105
The understandable wish to belittle or condemn the
martyr might exemplify such a temptation to denial.
106
Maritain's tendency to speak of two orders in parallel
seems regrettable. In reality there is only the one order of
reality, viz. the metaphysical, in which indeed the world of
personal spirits may be thought to outweigh the area of the
Similarly, when St. Thomas wishes to prove that the honestum is
the same as the spiritually beautiful (which, with being, true, good
etc. is one of the transcendentals) he argues from due proportion
(debita proportio) as a property of the beautiful (pseudo-Diony-
sius) to behaviour which is well (duly) proportioned according to
the spiritual "clarity" of reason, reason being the rule of freedom
as he says elsewhere. For this is the meaning of honestum.107
So what Kant wished to say of the good will as "good
without qualification" applies simply to the point where the will, as
principle of moral life, is measured in the same way as any other
(substantive) reality, viz. as good in its own being.108 It does not
apply uniquely to the will, after all. Anything whatever is good
without qualification in so far as it is. We may add to our analysis
that the substantive good of virtue is further called honestum as
being that which makes men and women worthy of honour.

*****************************

We conclude by recalling Aquinas's view that such

honestas belongs especially to temperance, as beauty is opposed
to the especial disgracefulness of intemperance, with its brutales
voluptates. Again, the very name "temperance" recalls the good
of reason, in the proportion of which, we noted above, spiritual
beauty (honestas) is found, since it belongs to reason to moderate
and temper base desires.109
Our century (i.e. the twentieth) might seem to have been
characterized by a great effort to see the integrally human in the
specifically sexual, to free the latter from the taint of baseness.
But there is no reason to oppose this effort to the good or beauty
of chastity as the virtue of rational control, of temperance, in this

material. Thus, again, the good, like anything else, is a being

(an ens rationis in fact, since secundum rem it is the same
as being), and good is sought as that which perfects (one's
own) being. Will, similarly, is a participation in reason.
107
IIa-IIae 145, 2.
108
Calling it substantive is not to say that the will is a
substance. As a power of the human soul it is a proper
accident of the substance man. Accidental being, however,
is real in its own (analogous) way, according to Thomism.
109
Moderari et temperare concupiscentias pravas (145,
4).
area. For when we ask what is the right way to live with our
sexuality we are asking what is the rational way and hence,
according to the above arguments, what is the beautiful and
honourable way. Nothing has changed there. And so, when St.
Thomas tells us that temperance as chastity has to do with the
sense of touch,

But temperance concerns the delights of touch... Some of these

are ordered to our power of procreation: and in these
chastity is ordered to the principal delight of coitus itself,
while modesty (pudicitia) is ordered to the surrounding
delights to be found, for example, in kisses, touches and
embraces,110

we should bear in mind his general principle that this kind of

precision (praecisio) is compatible with a coincidence in reality
with other factors, as sexuality belongs with love, creativeness,
the sense of life and beauty and so on.111 It remains the case that
sexual vices, however we materially identify them, are basically
vices of intemperance, even if erotomania, like sexual love itself,
has all kinds of ramifications as profound as they may be elusive
and magical. Any further resistance which one may feel to the
analysis may well be found to lie at root in a more fundamental

110
143, 1: Est autem temperantia circa delectationes
tactus... Quaedam vero ordinantur ad vim generativam: et
in his quantum ad delectationem principalem ipsius coitus
est castitas; quantum autem ad delectationes
circumstantes, puta quae sunt in osculis, tactibus et
amplexibus, attenditur pudicitia.
111
Again, we might keep the substance of this doctrine of
temperance and chastity while developing a different or at
least more nuanced view from those traditionally held as to
what materially exemplifies these virtues. It might be worth
noting, for example, that the earliest church council
enjoined abstinence from "fornication and things strangled",
as if these two were on a par. Yet the ban on the latter is no
longer operative! The word for fornication, however, could
have a built-in sense of intemperance separable, at least
theoretically, from the identification of it as intercourse
between the unmarried. Or it could refer to the partly ritual
prohibitions of Leviticus 15, which would remove it even
further from a material moral prohibition of a non-provisional
kind.
disagreement concerning the role of reason in human nature. For
in Thomism this is seen as by no means an alienating, restrictive
factor but rather as the form of humanity (forma corporis) itself.
This is why canons of goodness do not constrain human existence
and being, open as it is to original impulses of power and
creativity such as Socrates associated with his daimon. "Power is
the morality of those who stand out from the rest and it is mine"
(Beethoven). The doctrine in the Summa theologica (and
elsewhere in the Thomistic corpus) of spiritual gifts and related
matters seems to show this to be a thoroughly Thomistic
sentiment.112

CHAPTER THREE

The New Law, Modernity and Natural Law: a Necessary

Reintegration

We have not yet settled our account with what we have called
here rationalist moralism. We have always to strive for further
understanding of how the new insight, as we believe we may
characterize it, relates to a previously established wisdom, so that
what is ever new is, in another sense, ever the same. It is a matter
of paring away the imperfect apprehensions of what has always
lain within the grasp of man, of men and women. Thus in what
MacIntyre calls an epistemological crisis new ways of seeing
things are applied to an old or abiding tradition in such a way as
to explain why the old ways are no longer valid, in his terms, and
so as to keep the riches of the tradition accessible. We can apply
this to moral theology and philosophy.
The whole stress of the revival of natural law doctrine has
been to show how, in one way or another (on a spectrum from the
"deontological" to the "teleological"), the divine commands are

112
St. Thomas attributes these developments towards a
transcendence of constraining or rationalistic morality to the
operation of an extrinsic, supra-natural principle, viz. grace.
But we can focus upon the development without having to
decide as to the cause, all the more so since it seems the
view of Aquinas that nature somehow naturally requires
perfection by grace.
rooted in the inclinations of human nature.113 "This do and thou
shalt live" is the biblical word, understood as saying that this is
intrinsically the way to life, ultimately, in the New Testament, life
eternal.
When one sees this clearly, however, then the time has
come to ask whether the doctrine of natural law was ever, even as
such, more than a middle or holding position. This implies that one
also has to ask whether it is not also time for the divine command
element to drop out of the picture, being recognized as a
metaphor. One way of asking this, as situating the enquiry but
also as of inherent theological and human interest, is to ask
whether this was not the further intention of the preaching and
teaching of Jesus.114 In other words, or to particularize, in saying
"This is my commandment: love one another" what was Jesus
doing? Was he, at least among other things, discreetly discarding
the paradigm of law and obedience, rather than simply enjoining a
"love" at the opposite pole to spontaneity and passion, a
somehow more spiritual attitude of will, this being where
Kierkegaard and MacIntyre's Scotchmen put the emphasis?
We have had the doctrines, biblical enough, of the new
law, the law of the spirit, the law written on the heart115, the law of
113
It is an oddity of the "Scottish Enlightenment" as
discussed by MacIntyre (Whose Justice? Which Rationality?)
that this does not seem to have been so there, a doctrine of
"deontological" moral principles unrelated to "self interest"
being set against English utilitarianism. The natural law
theory of tradition however enjoins morality precisely as the
means to human fulfilment and the religious discussion,
where Christian or post-Christian, must presuppose that God
ultimately wishes us well, wishes us fulfilment, just as we
wish ourselves, only sometimes misidentifying its content.
114
We can apply this enquiry both to Jesus as portrayed
by the evangelists, thus allowing for the particular
theological interests of each, and also to the "historical"
Jesus who can be distinguished from this portrayal (though
not thereby found to differ from it), just as can Socrates from
the Platonic record of him. The Gospels themselves, one
may feel, encourage us to go behind the letter of their text
on occasion.
115
This expression is used of natural law by St. Paul (in
Romans), certainly, but specifically as applied to people who
have no set of divine commands, the Gentiles, and Aquinas,
we saw, defines natural law in terms of a reflected divine
charity poured into our hearts, the unwritten law of grace, the
spirit as opposed to the "letter" of the law, which is nothing
without charity or love. Certain it is, anyhow, that law is an elastic,
an analogical concept, this being what enables it to remain a
concept necessary to any orderly explanation of reality.
But despite analogy, we found in our first chapter these
explanations of law as structuring our essential nature, as man or
as grace-led Christian, can be seen as kinds of reduction (or
transcendent expansion) of the original legal concept naming the
relation of an essential denial of freedom as between an inferior
and a superior. Such expansion, though, has in practice been
forced uneasily to co-exist with the old obedience mentality.
Contraception, say, was against natural law, but nobody could
really see it. Thus in practice loyal believers just had and have to
obey the directive, to knuckle under to an explanation of their
natures they could never have given themselves, since they take
rather like ducks to water to the freedom given by "the pill". In
addition to this, it is not clear how far natural law means or
expresses a demand for a subjection to natural teleologies
apparently contrary to natural inclination, even granted that we
may have deeper desires than those of which we are most
conscious.
This and related situations can of course be explained as
directives given by the wise (sapientes) to those who should be
naturally inclined to listen to them. But what if the wise
themselves do not see the matter clearly, are merely adhering to
a tradition the validity of which is not clear to their unaided wise
perception either? Would this not mean that no one knows any
more (did they ever?) that the practice is wrong? This might
almost (if, perhaps, not quite) seem to have been the situation for
Aquinas himself when writing negatively, but loyally, of
fornication, in so far, at least, as the argumentation appears weak.
It has been well said, to pursue the example as proving
the general claim, that if physiology were different then sexual
morality would be different (e.g. if sex did not produce babies).
But can one accept that, as one can hardly avoid doing, and yet
rule out from the start that other changes in circumstances might
not affect sexual morality, particularly a change approximating
more and more to this very hypothesis, viz. the separation of the

light in the mind, not an impress of precepts (even if he can

say elsewhere that such a law "consists of" precepts). The
situation tends to support our view of natural law as an
openness to ever further fulfilment.
procreative from the copulative or unitive aspect?116
This is merely to argue for the possibility of change in the
matter of the law, old-style. The new law of Christ, however, was
at the least a change in the very type of law, and we were asking
here whether this change should not in the end be seen as more
equivocal than analogical where law is referred to, as a liberation
indeed from the yoke of law. This, in another way, was the
inspiration of Kant, the philosopher of modernity. To be
autonomous was to live only as if under a law, as we have
emphasised above in our treatment of Kant. If one is as if under a
law then one is no longer actually under it, but rather above it.
One is "captain of one's soul" and does what one wants. There
remains only the task of coming to understand what one wants,
for "as a man is, so does the end seem to him" (Aristotle).
Christ enjoined love, and it is often objected that love
must have matter to go to work on, and so this matter would be
the natural law, fulfilled from the higher motive of those who are
perfect, who "need no law", who can "love and do what they like",
this being the new freedom, viz. one that is inter alia freed by
charity from sinful desires. There is much truth in this, but is it
really and fully the revolution as intended?
In fact Christ did supply matter to love, i.e. matter of his
own. Thus he did not say, except dismissively to the rich young
man, if you love me keep the commandments, but if you love me
keep my commandments, adding that "my commandment is that
you love one another." Nothing is said in these last chapters of
John's Gospel about natural law. But what is taught throughout as
the matter of love and unique condition of life in the "kingdom of
heaven" is forgiveness, and forgiveness without limit (up to
seventy times seven, so stubbornly if grotesquely misunderstood
by Emily Bronte's Joseph Poorgrass), applied even, in Luke's
Passion account, to those driving in the nails. The point is not their
having an excuse, but the tremendous will to forgive and hence to
find an excuse.
What is forgiveness? One can find surprisingly little about
it in Aquinas's Summa Theologica, perhaps because of the
grounding of moral theology there in natural law and the virtues,
116
This separation is, of course, itself condemned by defenders of a
traditionalist view of natural law, but there cannot be a moral condemnation
of a change in a situation (viz. that such a separation is now much more
possible), only of an action. The moral question is what to do about the
change, granted that some changes do or would affect our duties. Of course
some sins, in earlier teaching, were defined precisely as a seeking of
solitary or mutual pleasure in separation from procreation. We might
otherwise seem to be saying that the same morality which would alter with
altered physiological conditions forbids the altering of those conditions!
maginificently crowned indeed by the prominence given to charity
(love) as form of the virtues. Aquinas insists, in his treatment of
the sacrament of penance, that "sins are forgiven in the Church";
this, attractive as it is, would not of itself measure up to or fully
translate Christ's placing of central weight upon a disposition of
forgivingness in the ordinary, non-formalized conduct of life,
between man and man and between man and God, as Aquinas
would surely have agreed.
On the other hand the doctrine seems echoed,
unconsciously maybe, by the teaching of Nietzsche on the
Übermensch or superior man who is free of resentment and
grudges, who, in a word, forgives without limit, as one forgives a
brother, simply because all human beings are his brethren. In
Nietzsche this forgiveness coincides with the setting aside of
moral law. But this, we remember, is how the pharisees
understood Jesus, his claim to forgive sins or to just tell people
that they were forgiven.
The Sermon on the Mount prompts to similar thoughts.
There is a coincidence between the raising of the law to a
"perfect" imitation of the Father before whom all are brothers and
a setting aside of the law, even of justice in some sense. For
justice, we remember, was classically "ad alterum", to the other
as other, but the matter of this new proclamation is that there are
no others, no aliens, we are all brothers and sisters or at least
invited to be so. This should be remembered when Jesus asks
"who are my mother and brothers and sisters" and answers that it
is anyone who does his Father's will, so that we do not fall back
into an uninteresting (and untrue) interpretation of these words in
terms of moralism alone. It is the family of those who forgive and
are forgiven, who live in freedom, this disposition being what has
been declared as his will.
Again, the depths of the remark about adultery in the
heart go beyond a mere charter for an oppressive regime directed
against "impure thoughts". It also teaches that those publicly
caught out in what we might call traditional sin are not in fact
worse than the rest of us, as is reinforced by the question as to
who shall cast the first stone, this being again a prelude to
forgiveness - "neither do I condemn thee."

********************************

A close study of Aquinas's ethical theory reveals that for him the
first principles of behaviour are the ends of our nature, known by
synderesis, which is a natural or innate habit. Any moral principles
of a judicial or enuntiative kind, by contrast, are conclusions
drawn by the intellectual (if also moral) virtue of prudence. While
synderesis is not merely analogous to but actually is the virtue of
intellectus in its practical aspect, so prudence, as intellectual,
coincides with practical knowledge (scientia, again an intellectual
virtue) concerning things to be done, agibilia (a distinct
intellectual virtue bearing upon practice, here factibilia or things
to be made, is art, ars or techne). Prudence, for its part, is only
distinct as a virtue from scientia because it is never purely
speculative, but practical, a knowledge ordinata ad opus. Any
purely speculative knowledge of moral systems, such as Aquinas's
own moral theology, comes under scientia, not prudence. Hence
theology is not a practical science, as Scotus was to teach, and
neither are science and prudence distinguished by their matter,
but by the type of knowledge, speculative and practical
respectively. There can arguably be a practical knowledge of
speculative principles or conclusions, just as we have allowed for
a speculative knowledge of practical principles.
If it is the ends of nature which primarily oblige, then
there seems no room for any possibility that a principle concluded
from such ends, as all moral rules must be, should frustrate those
ends. One may believe that a given divine commandment, say,
will never frustrate these ends, but must still grant that if or where
it did then there it would no longer apply. This is a better answer
than just refusing to suppose a counter-instance, at least within
philosophy. One should not wish to defend a greater absoluteness
of enunciated moral principle than that.
To this extent Aquinas appears in agreement with
"situation ethics" if this phrase refers to an agent bringing to a
situation a view of his natural ends, happiness, survival, etc.
These ends, also called goods, have thus to be arranged into a
correct hierarchy, since this very hierarchy it is which gives the
order of the precepts, since they are based on it alone. Finnis's
objection to this hierarchy is thus a massive exegetical error,
whatever else it may be.117
In a similar way Aquinas is thus far in agreement with the
utilitarians or consequentialists. Styling his ethics a version of
natural law theory has obscured this. We should rather see him as
accommodating the natural law tradition to this fundamentally
teleological ethics. He does this very skilfully, as when he points
out that law itself is to some end, comes from reason and not will,
a thought he further emphasises by equating this so-called law
117
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford
1980.
with the divine light. He had a precedent for this in Christian
theology, where the new law is equated with a grace beyond all
law but poured into the heart without measure. But there too law
is only spoken of to preserve continuity with Judaic concepts, just
as here natural law preserves continuity with positive law, which
Aquinas wishes to see regulated by its means.
Once we have settled all this, what remains in Aquinas's
work of significance for gaining ethical insight? On the negative
side, to begin with, it appears that those who have wanted to use
him, and his canonically established prestige in orthodox circles,
in order to strengthen or even found a case for absolute principles
in the sense in which we have said that they are more truly
conclusions, enuntiations of prudence (scientia practica) drawn
from a view of our natural ends as discerned by synderesis - such
people have misused him.
One finds a tendency among the orthodox, such as Geach
or Lawrence Dewan, to associate God with binding law beyond the
evidence. Thus awareness of the general undesirability of an
action-type is interpreted by Geach as the divine promulgation of
a total prohibition118, while Dewan implies that had we the
intellects of angels we would see that at least some (which?) of
society's adumbrated moral norms are in fact absolute laws119.
There is no need to exempt Aquinas from this tendency, especially
when writing in his more ecclesial vein. This is what causes the
confusion, though we have also to consider his account of the
common good in relation to absolute prohibitions. What we are
saying, though, is that the main logical thrust of his account,
whether in the Pars Prima Secundae of his Summa Theologica or
when commenting on Aristotle, exerts itself in the opposite
direction.
There does not, incidentally, seem good reason to thus
associate the infinite being with binding laws. There are
psychological roots for the tendency in fear and lack of trust,
which the progress of Judaic revelation (as it is claimed to be),
inclusive of Christianity, could well be interpreted as increasingly
setting aside.
What Aquinas gives us is a full account of human nature,
of what perfects it (its ends) in the passage through life, and of
the various powers and habits, the virtues, needed to satisfy these
initial potentialities. Precepts, not necessarily absolute or very
specific, are annexed to the virtues as their most obvious

118
P.T. Geatch, God and the Soul, London 1969 p.125.
119
Cp. Dewan, op. cit. p.304.
expression and exercise120, while the contrary vices are also
identified and analysed. The Christian beatitudes and spiritual
gifts, as well as the doctrine of infused virtues, charity above all as
giving the final form to virtue, are harmoniously fitted into this
scheme. Charity, indeed, is Aquinas's main bulwark against the
spectre of legalistic moralism and we can see a link with our own
modern attitude via the eighteenth century doctrine of
benevolence, to say nothing of the more positive or liberating
aspects of Luther's contribution, which the Catholic Church,
despite the external break, has not failed to assimilate.
In association with this thought one might remark that
the ascetic Franciscans who got Aquinas condemned at various
local synods (e.g. in 1277) read him with more understanding (and
appalled rejection) than have those of today and yesterday who
have sought to make him a support for an a priori type of
moralism. These have simply followed the path of all those clerics
who have had to stomach his being made a and even the doctor
of the Church. His canonization by a Pope, indeed, and the late
nineteenth century intensification of this move, was typically far-
sighted and should be classed with the initial papal endorsement
of the Renaissance humanist spirit before the panic after the
violent German revolt, perhaps better called the revolt of the laity
or, rather, a revolt against legalist authority in general, since
many clerics abetted it.121 Is the absolute authority of Christ

120
But also as bringing them all under justice.
121
As a result of the panic one may well feel that the
Church has still to come properly to terms with the
Renaissance and its spirit. This is the view, for example, of
Louis Bouyer in his theological study, Erasmus, published
earlier this century. The past thirty years, however, have
seen new developments, though such things as belated
acknowledgement of Galileo may seem rather damp squibs.
More inspiring is the energetic application of Christian
teaching within the whole range of questions about human
rights, as these derive directly from human dignity, such as
are so urgently raised today, rather than rationalistically
remaining at the second level of the duties consequent upon
them. Such rationalism was connected, again, with the
corruption of philosophy by a decadent theology which had
forgotten that duty is always propter finem, even and
especially in the infinitely wise mind of God, whose being
must be one with his law, with the right (ius coming before
lex as declaring it).
legalist? Or is submission to revealed, to "poured out" spirit of
another kind than a legal submission? This question is posed by
Dostoyevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor, which has no
intrinsic connection with Russian separatism.
We may note that also Maritain sees a causative
connection between the revelation of charity and the modern
democratic movement, with its ideal of a "fraternity" (implying
one father, as in the Schiller/Beethoven hymn adopted by the
European Union) transcending classical notions of civic friendship.
But such fraternity is expressed in equality and liberty.

****************************************

One has to face squarely the implications of the denial of innate

ideas, the truth that all knowledge, including practical knowledge,
comes from experience of reality as grasped by our senses.The
temptation to make of morality a kind of a priori datum has
proved historically very strong, and an opening might indeed
seem to be left to this notion, again, by the Pauline doctrine of a
law written on the heart. But Aquinas, we noted, reduced this law
to a "light", to an impression of divine light indeed, which
becomes in Descartes the natural light of reason. What is prior to
experience, that is, is a determinate potentiality both to interpret
the good and, more centrally, to attain the good as the specific
good of our human nature, what fulfils it as end (the meaning of
good) in each person. There is an implicit limit placed upon
individualism by the common nature, but this limit is more de
facto than de iure. The main statement is that nature cannot allow
a majority of people to be homosexual, say, not that the minority
should not be allowed to be it. That is a derivative application (but
still claiming to be true, to be factual)122 of the doctrine, of the
fact, and thus far Aquinas might agree.
The modification (of Aristotelian empiricism) introduced
by consideration of morality turns, rather, upon the idea of
custom, which in turn invokes the community as established over
generations. This gives at once the idea of a tradition having, as
such, an authority. This authority can never, however, be more
than auxiliary given that any knowledge, even of moral principles,
122
When the tradition derives "ought" from "is" it is
indeed representing "ought" as a kind of "is", just as,
analogously, Aquinas says elsewhere that truth is a being,
and indeed that the transcendentals truth and goodness are
nothing but being itself as presented to the intellect or will
respectively. They are entia rationis.
any seeing of their truth, depends upon an experience of reality.
This, however, is no plain either/or, given that such experience is
not only experience of inanimate nature, or of one's own situation
of primal need, to act, to find shelter or food. It is also, and even
primarily, of the community itself, including the community in its
aspect of handing down a moral teaching.
Those whom we call the conventional are those who, if
honest, see or think themselves to see fundamental moral truth in
their simple experiencing of these universal principles and laws as
applied in their society or even in the one human society in
general. One has to insist, though, that this social constraint does
not suffice for the binding force of moral obligation as we typically
conceive it. The argument from morality to God begins here. This
argument, however, says nothing as to the matter of such moral
law, as it then becomes if only because of its being initially
derived from a common custom of society, all law being rational,
in the sense of a universal concept, and with the common good in
view. The aspect of law which is commonness, transcending
individual nature, does not then come from God but from the
community. What comes from God is the sacred obligation. That is
why it was right and rational to link this first with individual
conscience. Traditionalism, in fact, has been condemned by the
Catholic Church, in the form of the doctrine that moral principles
(and some other putative truths) derive from a revelatory
teaching given to the first human being or beings. It amounts to
saying that there is no natural knowledge of morality. Natural
knowledge, on Aristotelian principles, cannot be handed down or
taken on faith. Natural knowledge of the community only gives
knowledge of what the community professes. Each member has
then to see the truth of the moral principle for himself, just as in
disputation one has to see that a conclusion follows, even see for
oneself the truth of an accepted principle of logic used in the
demonstration.123
The authority of communities is often reinforced by the
sanctions of a common religion. Judaic religion even elevates the
idea of community itself to a sacred principle and hence sanction,
the Chosen People, the Body of Christ. This apotheosis of totalism,
however, allows the individual the initial choice, if not much else,
of detaching himself from the natural totalities of tribe and nation.
This new common mind, however, is held to be the expression of a
common love, such love being both soul and safeguard of freedom
in that general respect for conscience perhaps first adumbrated
123
Cf. S. Theron, Philosophy or Dialectic? Frankfurt 1994,
p.100.
by St. Paul, whence it has passed into modern Western culture.
Love entails that one no longer has one's happiness in
one's own hand. One would not have it even if evil fortune were
guaranteed averted. One who loves another is no longer an
entirely separate unit. Love is a principle, that is, of union, of
forming a unit with another. Doctrines of altruism miss this point,
striving indeed nonsensically to restrict the universal motivation
of happiness. The lover cannot be happy in despite of the beloved.
Hence the resistance to and anger against love, often within the
lover's own breast. It has often to contend with a hidden instinct
of domination, striving for a personal power which love seems to
limit.124 But this particular instinct is ultimately a refusal of all
community. Whereas if love is understood as achievement and a
good, then the Christian teaching as to its extension, "love one
another as I have loved you", is, once revealed, logical and
desirable. It founds the new community in which there is no longer
that extrinsic constraint which is law and slavery, but rather the
intrinsic constraint of the loving heart itself which is freedom, and
which while it is never unjust is always more than just.125 It is
against such, in the first place at least, that there is said to be no
law.
The infused prudence, or prudence informed by love, of
this new community, can draw somewhat different conclusions as
to behaviour at different periods of its history, though always in
pursuit of those ends natural to man as man and hence stable.
That, at any rate, was the assumption of Aquinas. Attempts that
have been made to think through a theory of man as able to vary
these ends for himself have not wholly succeeded. Here, though,
we may note a certain imbalance.
The Christian project itself is marked with particularity, is
a positive revelation, even though grace may perfect nature. The
idea of living in the Last Days, the time being short and so on, all
this turns ethics into a kind of strategy for "saving the soul" in a
time to come. The history of Christianity, on the other hand, is
marked by attempts to soften this situation, to equate this
strategy for the future with the ethics needed for the good life as
normally conceived. This indeed has been, one might think, how
grace has perfected nature, though it can appear, even to one

124
Cf. S. Theron, Africa, Philosophy and the Western
Tradition, Frankfurt 1995, p.104.
125
This is the abiding lesson of that most Christian play,
The Merchant of Venice. It is merely shallow, and indeed
hard-hearted, to revile it for "anti-Semitism".
such as Maritain, as a compromise.126 One can think again of St.
Francis's Deus meus et omnia. Did he mean having nothing but
God, or did he mean, in accordance with the analogy of being but
also with St. Paul, that in having God he had all things, that all
things were his, "as having nothing and yet having all things"?
Life, it seems, shines with glory whether we be marked with joy or
sorrow. Either may be taken from God's hand, as we take also our
natural impulse to seek first joy, since we could never find
salvation without it. The message is unvarying from Job to de
Caussade and this faith, be it more or less specified, "overcomes
the world" (St. John). It has little to do with a moral code unless at
the most general and noblest level. This judgment itself, however,
is of the highest significance for ethics, which is thus shown to be
able to judge morals, to situate the whole project.
Returning, however, to the at least apparent imbalance
one may note that the scheme of human nature, of the virtues, is
an open one. There is not, indeed, an openness behind this
scheme, i.e. a meta-scheme, in accordance with which one can
pick and chooses among these virtues, discarding courage, for
example (Hare). The virtues form a unity and we should not argue
from the examples that one can have some virtues without the
others, but that such chastity, let us say, as was not needed to
round off the attractiveness of the fictional character Tom Jones
would really not have been a virtue in him given the view of his
situation that he had attained. It would have been, it might be
said, a pusillanimous lack of spirit. Thus we shift his imperfection
to a lack of vision, if we must condemn him at all, a defect of
prudence allowing him not more than, say, eight out of ten for all
or any of his virtues, including chastity, instead of the ten out of
ten of the fully enlightened orthodox Christian saint, fasting and
rolling in his nettles or whatever. Again, a weakness nobly born
can give added virtue, like the "thorn in the flesh".
This open scheme, however, allows for any number of
free projects, choice of which is in fact only intelligibly to be
understood as the main step in pursuit of the invariant natural end
and ends. In the community of love we see the extent of this
choice ever widening as new vocations and interpretations,
126
Cf. Maritain, Introduction to the Basic Problems of
Moral Philosophy, Chapter 5, "Moral Experience and the
Ultimate End". Maritain seems committed to the via
negativa, viewing what we are presenting as a development
of humanity as being in essence a mere sociological
compromise. But this did not seem to be quite the view he
held in his earlier book, True Humanism.
previously often judged negatively, are opened up. Less typically,
but not to be excluded, older vocations can come to be ruled out,
at least for a time. This scheme, then, is no more restrictive than
our nature itself, which is of course not to be confused with that
general material or cosmic nature in which we share.

*******************************************

In works of Nietzsche, to whom we have referred above, one finds

word of the overcoming of revenge as a sign of the superior man
(or, a more radical expression, Übermensch), of that being who
also overcomes or transcends morality and its laws, i.e. morality
viewed Kant-style as a system of law. This attitude, we noted,
might be viewed as being one with the spirit of forgiveness. In
asking us to forgive one might say that Christianity, Christ, asks us
to transcend moral law. This would be moral law in the sense of
the "justice of the scribes and pharisees". For of course in a
Christian system of ethics such as that of Aquinas charity, love, is
itself made the form of all other virtues, being itself not merely
the supreme law but rather the spirit (form) of any authentic or
acceptable law at all.
This is obscured in so far as Christians continue to speak
of the (Ten) Commandments, of, for example, pharisaism, as
giving the matter of charity, love, forgiveness, rather than holding
to a more exact view of how these rules hang or depend upon
charity in the sense of growing out of it. This is the view more
proportionate to charity's greatness. Although called the New Law
it does not come to laws which are ready formed as giving an
extra or higher motive to their observance. Love rather fulfils the
law, a concept different from observance. Those laws, if observed
without love, were observed in a deformed way. In this sense Jesus
does not bring a new attitude but recalls to the original good life.
If one asks why just forgiveness is taken as the
expression of love (or as the sign of the Superman), as it is also in
the sayings of Jesus, one can, with Nietzsche as it might seem,
give an answer in terms of being or reality. There is a certain
likeness between value-nihilism and those metaphysics of being
which equate being with goodness, the latter having no separate
reality (as in the pseudo-"universe of values"). Goodness, rather,
is only an ens rationis, i.e. it is being itself, but as presented to the
will, just as truth coincides with being but with being as offered to
intellect.
Both value-nihilism and such a metaphysics agree in
rejecting any law or value-system imposed on the human being.
For the "natural law" theorist such law is reduced to the human
essence itself. The deontologies themselves become teleological.
Now the deontologist has no understanding of, no
possibility of justifying, forgiveness. He must find it unjust. Who
can forgive sins but God himself, they ask, yet this, for them, will
be precisely where God shows himself above, as not bound by,
the moral law. They do not think of his compassion as a higher
part of law. Mercy and compassion are or were seen by them as
non-moral, until Christians called on men as somehow obliged to
imitate God in this respect.
Forgiveness is recognized as something that occurs in
families, precisely because one values the being of a brother or
child above the inflexible law applying to outsiders. For Jesus,
however, there are no outsiders. All are neighbours, brothers. In
this very proclamation the law as extrinsic loses any possible
scope. It rather vanishes like a bad dream. Being, the being of any
man, is placed above law. Being encompasses all actuality.
But to forgive, as Nietzsche saw, is to forgive the past as
a whole. Why? Because the only real life is the life found now
under whatever conditions, life, in fact, precisely as caused by the
no longer existent past. Being, that is, outweighs utterly any scale
or degrees of its conditions. "Is not the life more than the
raiment?" In the same way, incidentally, it is the fact of the world,
and not anything special about it, which proves the existence of
God as its creator.
Love, then, shows, is based upon, the plenitude of being
as sole source of all value or obligation. It is also, therefore, the
source of justice. There is no properly formed justice independent
of love. "The quality of mercy is not strange." To believe the
contrary is unacceptably to devalue love, which is the response,
the union, of being with being. Otherwise we leave unexplained
why it is that he or she who loves (and only he or she) fulfils the
law. For if the law has an independent existence then why does it
coincide so perfectly with love? Justice is ad alterum, towards the
other, indeed, but that "towards" already destroys the alterity of
the other. Justice, in other words, goes over into love in order to
be itself. This is why it must exceed the justice of the scribes and
pharisees (those poor whipping boys of the Gospel proclamation),
this latter being no true justice.
It is not that love without morality has no matter. The
rules of morality, rather, describe the contours of love itself as it
passes by. They are a memory of it (Cf. I Cor. 13). Love is
appreciation of the other, not as other, but as self in the other. It is
consequent upon a universal likeness or analogy which we may
call brotherhood, using still another analogy, with the basic
human biological group. Brothers do not in fact always love one
another, but the relationship in which they stand, of likeness in
stemming from a common father or mother, is a primal analogue
of love. And yet again, it is itself in reality a living analogy of the
true Father, God, of each and every creature. Love is truly the law,
the only law. When we speak of the New Law we mean the one
and only law as newly revealed.
The idea of what is due, the debitum, remains. But what
is due is love, just as the will to give what is due, when found
simply and without distortion, is also love. Love is the giving of
itself. Love is loving. It refuses substantivization (like God who is
pure act, esse which is actus essendi). The true praxis transcends
morality. This was also the message of Nietzsche as we noted it,
as indeed it was of Marx and, differently, of Freud.
Love, then, is not simply the will to fulfil the law, viewed
as antecedently established, as the expression "man of good will"
too easily suggests. At least, if the law is there, then it is there as
an established work of love. As St. Paul plainly said, it is charity
itself which is kind, thinks no evil, is not puffed up and so on, while
without it there is no value to our praxis at all. Where he says love
seeks not its own we see the coincidence with justice. The faith
and hope he mentions are in some sense faith and hope just in
the all-sufficiency of love as the very bond of being.127
127
Maritain refers to the distinction between the order of
specification and the order of exercise, in defence of his wish
to equate the conventional moralism of the child with an
intuition of the bonum honestum as set above the
teleological reduction of morality by philosophers. But one
can ask whether this distinction is so useful or so keen as
Maritain would have us believe, at least when applied to
ethical questions.
Maritain equates specification with laws or norms,
exercise with ends. This seems to ignore (though Maritain
himself does not ignore) that laws are themselves
specifications precisely of ends, these themselves being
what primarily oblige. For if bonum habet rationem finis, this
applies as well to the bonum honestum. Even the latter, in
any case, is not a synonym for the moral good, for good
human action, but applies more properly, Aquinas claims, to
God and beatitudo.
If we went along with this distinction we might equate
charity or love with mere motivation (amor), pure exercise.
Yet it is the very form, is specificatory, of virtuous action. If
 ****************************************

These first three chapters on natural law with at least a measure

of endorsement of Nietzsche might be viewed (in a comparison as
far-fetched as it might be thought self-laudatory) as completing a
manoeuvre analogous in structure and also in spirit to that
accomplished by Beethoven in finally transforming, through over
thirty variations, the skittish theme of Diabelli into a form of the
sublime arietta theme from his last piano sonata. As he, in many
of his last works, wished to show an incredulous public that the
skittish and the sublime are not ultimately opposed, so our moral
reality demands that we now see that our choice does not lie
between Benedict and Nietzsche (neither of whom were of course
skittish). MacIntyre's insight failed him when he asserted this, as
did mine when I quoted his dictum with approval in previous work.
Where Beethoven gave unitary expression, i.e. not by way of
compositeness or "composition", to his feeling on the matter he
said "Power is the morality of those who stand out from the rest."
What seems now to emerge, if we may repeat ourselves a little, is
that such a sentiment, as corresponding to its philosophically
reasoned equivalent, is not a revolt against but a further
deepening of our grasp on the good and great in human life,
progressively aspired to in the gropings of an open natural law
tradition (i.e. the Tao or ethical tradition as such) and propheti-
cally sketched in a divine teaching to which we are heirs. Honi soit
qui mal y pense.

good means (ratio)end then we cannot make primal a doing

good or avoiding evil divorced from ends, as meaning only a
conformity with what is socially praised or forbidden. The
sense, even if statable, is a deformed sense. We may say
that, in praxis, in practical knowledge, the specification is of
ends, and the later speculative specification (ethics) must
acknowledge this. Ends belong with specifically ethical
contemplation (and have not been introduce through the
accident of Aristotle's having been a biologist). Nor is this
just the theological as distinct from the philosophical way
(Maritain, op. cit. p.98). Moral obligation is deformed if
separated from teleology - such a philosopher confuses
separation and distinction, as does talk of these two orders
all too easily.
 CHAPTER FOUR

Consequentialism and Natural Law

Having brought out the essential liberality of the Aristotelian

Thomistic ethic, we need to consider further its relation to the
utilitarian or consequentialist systems put forward in modern
times. Points in common are the positing of a general aim to life,
be it happiness or beatitude, a refusal to divorce values from
natural inclination or to distinguish a moral from a non-moral
good. Differences are the weight given to tradition in the older
system on the one hand and the secularist ethos of modernity on
the other.

**********************************

Consequentialism is a wider notion than utilitarianism, as

understood by Mill or Sidgwick. For distinctive of utilitarianism is
not merely that actions are evaluated in terms of results. This is
true also of Aristotelian teleology or mainstream Christian ethics,
where precepts are given for a purpose, to achieve a result, to
serve life. This purpose, though, specifies the action itself, which
is thus not to be exclusively justified post factum, by a result
which might be accidentally prevented. Intention of the result is
decisive, not the result itself.
A utilitarian might accept much of this. What
distinguishes his view would be that he considers it wholly in the
right of the agent to decide what he will do, under no law but the
single rule to "maximize" happiness. Anything else is an unworthy
heteronomy, both for rule- and for act-utilitarianism. Yet, in the
light of what we have been saying about love as form of the
virtues, we can see how a Thomist can in turn accept this, given
that he has his or her own views as to how happiness ever can be
maximized.
Aristotle and Thomas point out that for ethics as a
division of intellectual enquiry, as a science, custom supplies the
first principles. Even the appeal to happiness is an appeal to
customary human thinking.128 For them indeed the ultimate aim of
life is intrinsic to any custom or rule one encounters, so it can
hardly be a general policy to jettison rules or laws in favour of the
128
Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. I; see Aquinas's Commentary I,
lect. ii.
end to which they point. One principle of action, rather, might be
discarded as not fitting into the whole existing web of such rules
and precepts as make up the expression of our human nature in
action. One is not faced with the task of giving sense, from outside
them, to a previously senseless set of precepts, though one does
need to deepen one's understanding of what a precept or moral
principle is. It is at this point that utilitarianism and other moral
philosophies take their rise. They are not revolutionary or
ideological programmes, but an interpretative wisdom rather.
Thus that there is some one ultimate end does not even begin to
suggest that there should be no structured or invariant ways of
coming at that end. This idea was no more than a reaction to the
Kantian revolution in ethics, whereby actions and happiness
become unthinkably divorced. In fact there are rules for every
successful procedure, and nowhere more so than where the rules
partake of the success, as in dancing. The good life, too, is a kind
of dance. In a way, then, the utilitarians are less original than they
often imagine.
What is distinctively modern and rationalist about
utilitarianism, despite the resemblance to Aristotelianism, is the
maintenance of the divorce, in all heaven and earth, between
duty, the dictates of reason, and our natural inclinations, even
though on their account what reason dictates is in fact the
satisfaction of inclination, predominantly though of what they view
as the general inclination of humanity, the aggregate good. So on
their method conclusions can be reached which are every bit as
hostile to natural inclination as anything in Kant.129
Utilitarian values, that is, are as much values as anything
come up with by our modern axiologists in general. But value, we
have noted here, is a notion of dubious parentage. The more
spontaneous frame of mind suggested by reference to natural
inclination is in contrast with that evoked by talk of holding a
value. For Aquinas the order of values, of moral duties, depends
upon and even is the same as the natural order of our inclinations.
129
This can be seen by perusing the utilitarian literature.
See, for example, B. Hooker's "Rule-Consequentialism", Mind
1990, pp.67-79, or J. Fishkin, Limits of Obligation, New Haven
1982, or S. Kagan, "Does Consequentialism Demand Too
Much? Recent Work on the Limits of Obligation", Philosophy
and Public Affairs 1984, pp.239-254, referred to by Hooker. It
is often admitted that these utilitarian ideas can run counter
to normal self-interest; in fact they at times give rise to
plainly silly statements, though this of course is not
uncharacteristic of philosophy generally, I hasten to add.
 In an interesting paper,130 to which I have often referred,
André de Muralt focussed upon this question of how we grasp how
we should act. He considers two contrasting ways of viewing
"illumination of will by knowledge". In one, which he attributes to
Aristotle and Aquinas,

voluntary activity would be specific and autonomous, the good

recognized by the intellect being precisely the good that
the will seeks as its own real and concrete end, because
the will would experience in the reality of its spontaneous
appetite the coincidence between the natural exigencies
of its potency and the end proposed to it by the intellect.
In this case, freedom would be the habitual mode of its
operation...

But according to a different view of things, which de Muralt finds

first appearing in the fifteenth century interpreter of Aquinas,
Capreolus, as heralding "the characteristic structure of modern
moral philosophy",

the will would have no life that is radically its own. Its activity
would be that of dictating an end that is recognized as
good independently of the natural exigencies of its own
potency. The principle of its freedom would then be
lacking.

The good is indeed identical with being, but it is as good that the
will pursues it. It cannot just will being as being because the
intellect declares that it should do so. First, at least, such
obedience would have to appear to it as good, but then why would
not its other inclinations do so too? This is what de Muralt means
by saying that a principle of rational order is substituted for the
genuine finality of a voluntary act, so that it

is no longer a specific act finalized by a principle of its own, i.e. by

the real and individual concrete good towards which it
tends either in the primary mode of love or in the
secondary mode of practical realisation. The good that is
its end can no longer be seen as the immanent moving
principle that gives the moral act the spiritual quality
proper to it. On the contrary, the practical act is governed
130
André de Muralt, "The 'Founded Act' and the
Apperception of Others" in The Self and Others, ed.
Tymeniecka, Dordrecht 1977.
 in an exemplary manner by a universal law that imposes
a rational norm on the act, a norm that is incapable of
being either internally experienced or absolutely realised
in itself - hence an ideal that remains in itself necessarily
extrinsic to the act.

De Muralt complains of "a rationalization of the moral act... by

substitution of a principle of rational order for the final principle of
the voluntary moral act." He expresses a confidence in our
spontaneous ability, precisely as practical and hence loving
beings, not needing extrinsic a priori regulation, to aspire to the
good. The virtues, that is, as intrinsic principles of human action,
are placed before the law, inclusive of natural law. For it is indeed
apparent and striking how in Aquinas's theological thought the
extrinsic current of law, whereby God is said to instruct us,
culminates in the infused virtues, virtues, that is, extrinsically
made to be intrinsic to the graced person. In rational altruism, or
nominalistic theology, on the contrary,

The practical act of volition is still an activity and it is still

practical, it remains an act of will and continues to realise
a certain good that is rationally prescribed in the law. But
for this very reason it is no longer a specific moral will, as
would be the case with a voluntary operation - basically
love - in view of the good that answers to the exigencies
of its natural potency. Defined by an extrinsic rule, a
universal and ideal a priori rule, it is still an act of will; but
it is no longer a voluntary act, it has lost the root of its
living autonomy, of its freedom. It has lost the in-
tentionality proper to it.

We recognize this, in fact, as what happens to people who give

themselves up to some ideology or other, such that they become
"wooden". This rational dictation to and of the will could only be of
an a priori sort, since what is found in experience is what is
spontaneously recognized. Thus on this rationalist conception
morals or values turn out to be nothing but a correlate to an
internal demand for subjective consistency. The alternative,
defended by de Muralt, was also brilliantly demonstrated in an
early paper by Henry Veatch.131 Far from their being a priori, we
grasp the principles of how we should behave, just as we do
131
Henry Veatch, "Concerning the Distinction between
Descriptive and Normative Science", Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research VI, 1945-46, pp.284-306.
scientific laws, in direct and renewed epagoge, in function of our
desire for happiness or bonum in communi, the will's natural
object and identified by Aquinas both with God and with happiness
(beatitudo).
Veatch shows that

all sciences, whether normative or descriptive, are alike descripti-

ve, and all the laws, which it is the purpose of these
sciences to describe, are alike prescriptive.

That is, "the ontological status of both sorts of laws is

fundamentally the same." Moral laws, however, have an existence
in mensurante, in the mind of man, in our own rather than in some
other nature, hence our knowledge of them "must be practical".
But this "does not mean that it is not knowledge at all, but mere
'legislation'." For

the practical reason... intends only to recognize and to express, in

the form of obligatory statements, the fundamental
tendencies of human nature.132

There is here expressed a parity of moral with scientific laws,

which in no sense

compel a thing to act contrary to its nature and will; instead it

(law) is simply a statement of what the implications of
that thing's own nature are.133

So even before we place virtue above law in the moral scheme, a

move in virtue of which we question whether Aquinas was "a
natural law ethicist" (Bourke), it is possible to bring out the
comparatively open quality not only of Aquinas's virtue ethics but
even of his moral theology in so far as this takes in the idea of
God as an extrinsic principle of human acts, in contrast to the
intrinsic principles of habits and natural potentialities, instructing
us by law and grace.
We should not talk of a "passage... from inclination to
value". The whole point of there being a human nature which
134

132
Yves Simon, The Nature and Functions of Authority,
p.51.
133
Veatch, op. cit. p.304.
134
Cf. J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford
1980.
itself, to speak in analogically forensic terms, has the force of law
or of the set of human inclinations being themselves laws,
directives, to those who know themselves is that there is no such
passage. There are not two parallel orders in idle duplication and
the existence of our inclinations is one with the existence of the
corresponding ius naturae, which reason expresses as a law or
propositional precept.
The picture of "blind urges" as raw material for moral
codification is a false one, just as de Muralt has diagnosed it,
robbing our will of its free nature. More convincing is Herbert
McCabe's enlistment of D.H. Lawrence's talk about learning to
distinguish our deepest desires from trivial desires of the moment,
so that we don't "miss the mark".

Ethics is entirely concerned with doing what you want, that is to

say with being free... breaking the moral law means doing
what deeply we do not want to do.135

What nature teaches a rational animal is not likely to be blind, and

so a spontaneous human urge is not like that of a dog, although
even a dog's urge is naturally thought of as in some relation to
canine estimative powers, so not quite blind either. Nor is this to
deny the need for education of our urges. If they were blind one
could only rationally suppress them. To this picture belongs the
teaching that greater virtue means more spontaneous and easy
virtuous action, as well as all that is said about the fruits and gifts
of the spirit.
Anterior to any human urge there is clearly a perception.
We spontaneously see (freedom beginning in judgment) that a
certain state, such as that of having moved into the sun, would be
good. It is the same even with concupiscence. What is meant by
the clouding of the reason thereby is that we forget to take into
account other goods which may be lost by the beckoning
behaviour. What the well brought up and "graced" person needs to
save the situation is not a diminution of desire or appreciation (of
a soft young bosom or manly physique, say) but an all-conquering
urge to his or her overall good. If there is no urge to it then this
will not be valued over what one does have an urge to. We will not
strive for the higher gifts. We cannot be compelled logically to be
moral (R.M. Hare) or to rest all on the claim of a secularized
"reason" to obedience (Alan Donagan). Therefore this cannot be
the right way of actually being "moral". "Do what you want to do,"
135
H. McCabe, Law, Love and Language, London 1968,
p.61.
the song says, and there is no getting round that, for, also, "as a
man is, so does the end seem to him," in Aristotle's words. What is
important, therefore, is the education of character, of the feelings,
as they used to say. But for this a certain optimism about human
beings is perforce required.

CHAPTER FIVE

Creative Options

For many recent moral philosophers136 it has been an ideal to

control ethical theory by a morally neutral rule, such as universa-
lizability viewed as a purely logical thesis. Now it is of course true
that the laws of logic control reasoning in any field whatever,
including the ethical. Also in the tradition of natural law, therefore,
the reasoning is controlled by rational principles while, indeed, the
whole programme is presented as one of acting according to
reason. Here, however, no one imagines that a programme of
human life, which, after all, is the only plausible candidate for
being the object of ethics, is to be generated out of self-evident
(nota per se) logical principles alone. The principles are rather of a
type such as that every agent acts for an end or that good is to be
pursued, the good for man being identified with the various ends
of our nature. Thus based, there was no need for ethics to go in
search of "morally neutral" or meta-ethical principles, since the
ethical was always rational in its own right.
The possibility of acting contrary to reason includes that
of violating reason, this being one view of what sin is, reason
being here the image of the ultimate mystery. Contrariwise, there
can be acts contrary to reason which are not morally wrong, such
as humorous or harmlessly absurd behaviour, to say nothing of
story-telling or creative fantasy in general. We are prone, we have
136
E.g. R.M. Hare, Freedom and Reason, Oxford 1965;
Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality, Chicago 1977. There
is a causally analogical relation between this wish and the
subsuming of all ethics under the rubric of obedience to law
or duty, a motivation powerfully fuelled by the ideological
obsessiveness of a decadent theology dominated by the
voluntarist idea of the absolute power of a God who could
declare evil good. This idea is the seed-ground of moral
nihilism, since it robbed duty itself of all sense.
noted, to reduce the reasonable to the idea of acting according to
a law or, more generally, a rule. Yet nothing entitles us to deny
that reason itself may require that we engage ourselves in areas
for which no such rules are supplied, where creative initiative is
called for (just as it may require us to be humorous, to "come off
it"). This, after all, is the difference between the defective
presentation of the "Golden Rule of the Gospels" offered by
several philosophers, who take it as a rule of not doing to others
anything which one does not want them to do to ourselves, and
the active programme of life urged in the biblical text, viz.

Do to others whatever you want others to do to you.137

The negative version simply places a restriction upon established

ways of behaviour, while the positive injunction proposes a new
programme of living, in that the "whatever" is inexhaustible. This
is the morality, or ethic, rather, of love or charity which found its
way into philosophy under the notion of active benevolence and
which subsists in Anglo-Saxon secular culture as the ideal of
kindness.
One might see a remote preparation for this expansion of
inert moral tradition in the Aristotelian ideal of not merely the
right but the beautiful action (to kalon) as what is appropriate to
the great-souled man, even though he allows, or even insists, that
some action-types are always wrong, as though by a rule
derivable from the essential nature of things. But they are only
wrong, we might say, because, like cruelty, they can never be
beautiful. We have seen in music, in our time, how the highest
creativeness can overturn all the rules of harmony, yet certain
ideals, certain rules, remain to structure the endeavour, though it
may not be easy off-hand to specify them.
Speaking of being great-souled, the implication of our
citation from Beethoven at the close of our third chapter, surely, is
that one ought to stand out from the rest, and this is a purely
Christian ideal, of the righteousness exceeding that of the scribes
and pharisees, i.e. that taught by official religious leaders even of
a religion acknowledged to be of divine origin.138 Again, we have
137
Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31. Cf. our The Recovery of Purpose, Frankfurt
1993, p.52. The negative version also can be found in the Bible. Our point is
that they are not equivalent.

138
St. Thérèse of Lisieux offered a doctrine for "little
souls". It was, however, a doctrine of conspicuous
magnanimity in which they were required to believe that
they could participate. The ethical attitude (that of the soul)
the narrow gate, admitting just one at a time and setting
members of families against one another, for example. Thus N.
Berdyaev, in his The Destiny of Man, speaks of an ethics of
creativeness succeeding upon an ethics of asceticism, or of law, in
the development of the good life, as the word as law was fulfilled
in the word as love.139 Connected with this is the idea of personal
vocation, emphatically fostered, one should note, in the Catholic
natural law tradition.
St. Teresa of Avila offers a similar perspective when she
mocks those who seek security too exclusively in a well regulated
life and thus fail to fulfil their potential. One feels she might
almost have approved her English contemporary's notion of
conscience as "making cowards of us all":

They are eminently reasonable folk! Their love is not yet ardent
enough to overwhelm their reason.... How I wish ours [our
reason] would make us dissatisfied with this habit of
always serving God at a snail's pace. As long as we do
that we shall never get to the end of the road... For the
love of the Lord let us make a real effort: let us leave our
reason and our fears in His hands... Our task is only to
journey with good speed so that we may see the Lord.140

The doctrine has a more general application. In her own life, we

know, this spirit led her to add to the usual asceticism of the
cloister a vast, apparently gratuitous programme of labour in
reforming and expanding her Order of Carmelites. We can,
however, keep the point general in that we have been speaking of
the need for creative initiatives in life, for exertions of love, of
power, of energy. Love, of some kind or other, is what gives
energy, as the monastic tradition knows well.141 It is surely, as an
inner energy, what drives the creative artist. No one need create
or exert themselves beyond a certain point, which is why the
great artists tended to vex their employers by producing much
more than they were asked to do. At the same time, as an ethics
of creativeness would imply, everyone has some special task,

is distinguished from the accident of natural gifts.

139
Cf. H. McCabe, Law, Love and Language, London 1968.
140
St. Teresa, III The Interior Castle, ii.
141
Cf. the chapter on "The wonderful Effects of Divine Love" in the
fifteenth century Imitation of Christ, or Louis Bouyer's The Meaning of
Monasticism (c.1960). See also our own exposition of John Cassian's
doctrine in The Recovery of Purpose, p.73 f.
some shape to give to his life beyond the general rules, i.e. it is a
general rule that this should be so, this being also the doctrine of
the dominical Parable of the Talents.
It is for all these reasons, no doubt, that love, charity, is
declared in the Christian scheme as the form of all the virtues, the
motive power, so to say. Love, though, is not the following of a
rule, even where its matter should happen to be the following of a
rule, as in the genuine virtue of obedience. But, this is the point,
there is nothing contrary to reason in love. We shall find, rather, in
this and the following chapter, that reason requires it.
From this perspective, however, the outlook of natural law
might seem unduly restricted. Do we, after all, want an ethics of
law at all? Or, rather, if we do, then is such law the heart of the
matter? It may indeed be an error, even a dishonesty, to claim
that genius, say, dispenses one from rules such as that of fidelity,
or, worse, of consideration for and justice towards the weak or
inconvenient, but should we, even so, be primarily concerned with
codifying such inert rules of behaviour? Does not the New
Testament rather show the way when it declares, impatiently
enough, that all such "commandments" are summed up in this,
thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself? But again, it is not just
that love perfects the will to observe commandments, since they
only derive their authenticity from love in the first place. The wind
of the spirit is creative, blowing where it wills as the scriptural
metaphor has it. Was Elijah concerned about natural law when he
slew the false prophets, or Freud when he developed the theory of
infant sexuality, or Joyce when he wrote Ulysses, if we can regard
any of these, or preachers of revolutions and crusades, as
inspired? The giving up of himself by Jesus to a criminal's death
stands at the centre of our culture as an example of the prophetic
overturning of existing ideas. Now prophecy, to which a section is
devoted in the Summa theologiae, can also be considered
philosophically, as it was by Plato in the Phaedrus dialogue (but
also elsewhere) under the figure of the lover.142
But within the natural law tradition the tendency is to
present such creative acts as exceptional forays, depending even
upon merely occasional dispensations from law,143 though in so far

142
Cf. Josef Pieper, Begeisterung und Göttliche Wahnsinn,
München 1962, a study of this dialogue. It is significant that
the author chose this topic for his address at his 90th
birthday celebrations in the Münster Town Hall, May 1994.
143
The story of Abraham and Isaac, or the command to
"spoil the Egyptians", was often discussed in this way. It is
as they are related to a more mature wisdom our notion of a
superior, more creative ethics (which does not contradict natural
law) would seem to follow. Aquinas, for example, writes:

we should understand that moral precepts bear upon practical

situations which are particular and variable, so that these
cannot without further ado be assessed under one
common blueprint and rule. Rather, one must at times, in
some particular new situation, act in a way that will
transcend the common rule. But when something is done
beyond the common rule in this way wise people,
considering the cause for it, are not disturbed and do not
consider what was done unwise. But the indiscreet and
less wise, not seeing the cause of such action, are
disturbed and consider the unconventional action as folly.
For example, there is the command: thou shalt not kill.
Sometimes, all the same, it is necessary to kill evil men.
And when this is done, then the wise commend it or at
least do not condemn it. But fools and heretics condemn
it, saying that this was done badly.144

But if we go so far we should perhaps acknowledge that love, from

which we should not allow Aquinas's stern example to distract us,
takes many forms, since as love, as energy, it is beyond form
altogether. One thinks of the great projects of love, which is all too
readily assumed to be simply an equivocal concept in its divisions
into eros and agape or charity, love of desire and love of
friendship. Yet in the tradition there is the idea, often enough
expressed as a transport of eroticism, of seeking God, of having

no accident that such a concern goes with a blindness to

literary form, just as it often creates hostility to traditional
fairy tales or, for that matter, Biggles and Enid Blyton. To
take another example, it was at one time important to spell
out the difference between authentic martyrdom, for which
one should be zealous, it was and is thought, and suicide.
Yet Jesus did not scruple to say of his life "I lay it down of
myself." He chose the time, rather as Nietzsche advocates in
his prophetic book. The last action of Captain Oates comes
to mind. But if in praising these examples one is not
advocating suicide then what is one doing if not to point to a
practical response beyond the following of a law and more
like being driven from behind or within?
144
Aquinas, In II Cor. c.11, lect. 1.
great desires, and the Gospel represents this as the pearl of great
price which the merchant desired, the kingdom of heaven which is
taken by violence. A book such as Louis Bouyer's The Meaning of
Monasticism brings this out powerfully, while the classic example
of such violent longing, beyond all law, all balancing of one good
against another, is of course to be found in St. Augustine's
Confessions at the beginning of our era, where he tells of his
reaction on first hearing, from Pontitianus, a description of the
monastic life.145 It is anyhow obvious that the whole intent of the
Gospel story, as indeed of its divine protagonist, come to cast fire
upon the earth, is to arouse a passion of love.146
One can, however, consider the force of the erotic more
in general, as does Plato, as something piercing the dome of
bourgeois life otherwise so tightly screwed down upon us, to
borrow Joseph Pieper's imagery.147 The idea is that of sacrificing
one's life to love in one way or another, like Ramon Lully, who said
that after dedicating the first thirty years of his life to the love of
women he would dedicate the rest of it to the love of God. Cases
of women pursuing this path of love may be yet more frequent
and so again we must ask, why cannot that be according to
reason, why need one assume that reason requires a balance of
finite goods if something transcending them all is indeed to be
had? This something might indeed be immolation in an erotic
flame, a notion perhaps big enough to include the fires of charity,
whose devotees say, "Our God is a consuming fire." It would be a
question of finding out what one most wants, the fool being the
man who desires most what is comparatively worthless, while on
the other hand those who praise acting according to reason in the
narrower sense are obliged to show how this conduces to personal
happiness. It is absurd to claim any other motivation for the

145
Confessions VIII, 6,7.
146
As Aquinas remarks, should God communicate to us his blessedness,
which we desire (eros), then friendship with him (agape, caritas) will be
founded upon this, as indeed one should expect friendship (amicitia) to
result in the natural way where the erotic longing of human beings for one
another finds mutual satisfaction. Cf. Summa theol. IIa-IIae 23, 1. A.
Nygren's attempt to separate these two elements from one another, in his
Eros and Agape, is a prime example of that rationalism discussed
throughout the present work. When St. Ignatius said "My eros is crucified"
he did not mean that he denied it. The relation between love and death is
richer than that, as even Wagner gropingly understood, but St. John of the
Cross much better.
147
J. Pieper, The Philosophical Act (Was heisst Philosophieren? in Werke,
Band 3, Hamburg 1996). See also our own review of this volume appearing
in Acta Philosophica, Rome.
pursuit of ethics, and the unity of love must be preserved.148
It is clear that the requirement of creativeness fuses,
most obviously under the ideal of personal vocation, with the idea
of offering one's life in the pursuit of one thing, the one precious
pearl, of making a unity out of the potentialities of one's mutable
being. Nor need, nor should this be purely at the level of action.
Kierkegaard is too restrictive and therefore strained in saying that
purity of heart is to will one thing. It is also to see one thing, as
poets such as Blake make plain,

To see a world in a grain of sand,

as is implied in the analysis of St. John of the Cross when he refers

to God as the All.149 The saying of St. Francis, Deus meus et omnia,
to which we alluded earlier, was badly translated in the negational
French school of spirituality as "My God and my all", as if St.
Francis as it were chose to be happy with just God, though he
could, so to say, still see other things. What he said was "My God
and all things", in perfect agreement with the analysis of St. John
of the Cross according to which there is nothing outside of God, a
doctrine found in Aquinas when he says that God knows things in
his own thought of them150, which is identical with his essence.
G.K. Chesterton makes a similar point in his study of Aquinas
when he points out that the saint did not say, is not reported as
saying, when Christ on the crucifix asked him what he wanted as
reward for his writing, "only Thyself", but, rather, "Give me
Thyself." The pure heart wills one thing because there is just one
thing seen to will. Anything and everything is bearer of the All. To
this extent the end of all the various vocations is one and the
same, scandalous though this may be to a thoughtless liberal
ideology.
This returns us to the question of choice, which we do not
wish to treat quite as is done by the Existentialists, according to
whom one arbitrarily decides, like Kirilov, to offer one's life to this
or that cause, just so as to be engaged. We would still wish to ask,
148
Cf. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves; M.C. D'Arcy S.J., The
Mind and Heart of Love.
149
For example, cf. Johannes Bendick, "God and World in John of the
Cross", Philosophy Today XVI, Winter 1972, pp.281-296. But Bendick is
mistaken in thinking "there is nothing of the traditional teaching on the
analogy of being to be found in St. John." It is just because of this analogy
that created being adds nothing to God (plura entia sed non plus entis), as
he quotes John of the Cross as stressing.
150
Summa theol. Ia 14, 5 c. & ad 3um.
however, as giving voice to a feeling of restriction under the
perspective of natural law and its natural ends, this question: can
one, may one choose to be mad, to be impassioned? Even: are not
the ways to the infinite God who is pinpointed as man's last end in
moral theology ultimately so many ways of madness, of passion?
Is not this indeed the connection, certainly a pronounced one in
Christianity, between love and death, love and laying down one's
life? Or does such madness, divine madness as it is called by
Socrates in the Phaedrus, lead to the Devil only and destruction,
as in the saying, "Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make
mad"? I am of course referring to the way of passion as distinct
from that of rational moderation and arguing that the former can
be found to be actually more wise and prudent. This does not
mean that rational moderation is not to be exercised as a means
to safeguarding achievement of this passionately desired end, e.g.
as in the Benedictine Rule or in the conduct of any lover.
One can suppose, by way of counter-example, the case of
a strangler or "serial" killer who may have deliberately chosen to
give himself up to what he did, despising ordinary morality and
humanity. Probably he felt strong desire, only metaphorically
called compulsion. We are not considering, again, the situation of
someone just determining to do something perverse, against
desire. Another man believes he has a divine mission to kill
women. Perhaps it suits him to believe it, and he may indeed
himself be responsible for his loss of balance of mind. For one
must suppose the balance is indeed lost when such flagrant
injustice results. Yet even Anna, the rule-breaker and sinner,
appears as somehow wiser than Karenin, though her life was
destroyed. She had more truth in her, it is clearly Tolstoy's
intention to show, and he succeeds in doing so. One thinks of the
Gospel saying, "Her sins are forgiven, because she has loved
much".151
One might decide, again, to prefer the world of Tolkien's
books to the reality, and from an early age go around acting,
thinking and dreaming as if it were true that hobbits or elves
might be come across in deserted places. It may indeed come to
seem normal to an individual, or to a whole society, to despise
and discard ancestral moral laws as found wanting before a
subsequent enlightenment. One might one day, again, decide to
rule one's subsequent life by the fall of a dice.
Clearly, all the same, some decisions, though maybe less
151
Much effort is made by the conventionally religious to remove the
potentially scandalous ambiguity in this saying (cf. the translator's
argument from context in the English Jerusalem Bible, NT p. 105, at note j),
to which, however, the original speaker may well have been alive.
 absurd or extreme than these, have to be freely taken,
such as to devote one's life, with hard work, to mastering
and practising an art, or to a chosen spouse152 or way of
life. But one might equally decide for a single-minded
dedication to erotomania, as seeming to have much to
commend it, doing it in a way which would include, for
example, amassing the wealth necessary for such a life,
working out how to create the situations and so on.153
Certainly only a person conscious of great energy would
plan for such a course. Equally, many persons, like
Browning's grammarian, devote themselves to a given
kind of research in a way that leads to what others would
dismiss as madness.
We might relate this discussion of the possibility, the
option, of transcending law in some kind of creativeness to
Aquinas's distinction between the prudent and the wise man,
between the man who needs to act with deliberation and the man
to whom the true way is somehow connatural. This distinction
somehow mirrors, at the philosophical level, the theological
distinction between the wisdom of this world and the wisdom
which is "from above". Certainly the idea of following law is
transcended here, but in a very definite, as it were previously
determined way, not obviously favourable to erotomania, for
example. St. Thomas is clear, rather, as to how just good and evil
can and cannot coincide in this transcendence of law, as when he
says that verecundia, sexual shame or modesty, is not properly a
virtue because it is not universal, lacking not only to the great
sinner but also to the saint or person perfected in love. These two,
indeed, often confuse themselves with each other in their own
estimation. So it is not aurprising that we do not know so much
about what a saint's relation to the erotic would be, though it
might seem that we know enough to be sure that the Christian
tradition is never going to give quite the same outlet to our pro-
152
The philosophers, as we will note in the chapter following, speak of a
"suitable life companion", but this "reasonableness" is emphatically not our
ideal, Christian or "post-Christian", of marriage, and so perhaps not really
reasonable either. Plato, with his idea of seeking our other half, was nearer
the mark, at least on that occasion.
153
In practice, experience might seem to teach, even such a dedication
either finds its fulfilment in the marriage vows or runs into the sand. Here
then would be the place to consider more closely how marriage as a
creative project transcends the prescriptions of natural law. These set up
the conditions for and indeed prescribe marriage as such; but they say
nothing as to the exercise of it in particular cases. Here creativeness and
artistry must take over, and in art, we will remember, the step which
disregards a particular rule can be the sign of the more perfect mastery.
pensities as some varieties of Hinduism, say, have offered. The
style, at least, would be different. One should rather say that it
aims to transform but yet fulfil those propensities in the fire of
charity, which alone can give outlet to all our desire. Psychologists
differ as to the plausibility of this claim, which may itself demand
revision of some of these differences among the psychologists.
The spiritual man, it was said, judges all things.
It is a perversion of this "new wine" of the Christians to
have dreamed of a transcendence of the ethical, though no doubt
a Christian or post-Christian civilization is ever open to this
temptation, using liberty for a "cloak of malice", in the Apostle's
words. A specific ethics of law is transcended, rather, or at least
subsumed, into a higher ethics of creativeness, a category we
might propose as more general than the specifically Christian
ideal of love which it includes, though it is still likely that it is the
Christian ferment which historically opened the possibility of such
a creative approach, also exemplified, at the political level, in the
idea of a revolutionary movement, of a social transformation
which would indeed be creative. Herbert McCabe makes this
connection:

it seems to me that christianity does not in the first place propose

a set of moral principles... I do not think that such
principles are out of place in christianity; without them
the notion of love may collapse into vagueness and
unmeaning... We have not a code of conduct - except in
the crudest sense... - we propose a way of life, a way of
discovering about the depths of life, out of which
decisions about our behaviour will emerge.154

But McCabe also relates his analysis to D.H. Lawrence's ethical

insights about the problems of life in general (for Christian and
non-Christian alike), the need to identify our deepest desires.
Ethics as such is raised from "legislating for an achieved static
society" to planning and preparing for a hopefully better future.
Apostolic moral exhortation (paranese) is compared to

deciding what is best to do during the conduct of a revolutionary

struggle.

There is no doubt that the "voluntarist" approach of Hare or Sartre

has much in common with this, after all, though, unlike them,
McCabe preserves unconditional commitment to principles or
154
McCabe, op. cit. p.172.
laws.155 It is clear, however, that the centre of gravity no longer
lies here, and so we can wonder, in accordance also with our own
analysis, whether the urging of the valid claims of law, of right and
wrong in other words, is sufficient to meet the case, given that the
claims of creativeness, of love and of the need to fulfil human life
and attain the common good (glimpsed by the utilitarians in their
ideal of the maximization of happiness) are equally valid, as
indeed natural law theory itself recognizes in its doctrine of the
ends of human living.156

CHAPTER SIX

Individual and Analogy

The creative ethics outlinedin our previous chapter, in so far as

they are contradistinguished against an ethics exclusively of rule,
depend upon, are called for and are justified by the primal
individuality of each thing, situation and, consequently, human
self. Each thing or person is, fully and completely, and being has
no parts. In a similar or, we might say, analogous way no animal
merely participates in animality. Rather, every animal is fully and
completely an animal, the animal, in fact, which it is, horse-
animal, cat-animal, rabbit-animal, this-horse-animal, that-horse-
animal and so on. It is in fact this feature of being, viz. its simple
indivisibility, which can best lead us to appreciate the divine
simplicity, such that every divine idea is identical with the divine
essence, though the truth of this, all the same, is attainable on
other grounds. Each of us exists because he is known in an idea of
him or her which is one with the divine essence. It is in this sense
that we

See a world in a grain of sand,

in this sense, not the pantheist's, that God is all things, that each
155
Thus "we may dismiss certain kinds of behaviour as obviously
incompatible with the kingdom." Ibid. p.172. Even Sartre preserves the ideal
of authenticity (and one or two others).
156
We had already urged this, in systematic fashion, in our book The
Recovery of Purpose (Frankfurt 1993), e.g. in Chapter Four, pp. 50-51. Now,
however, we present it as less tied to our specific Christian experience,
while still according Christianity credit as prime cause of this approach to
life to which Western man remains committed.
thing is the All.157 Just as nothing, again, exists as God exists, so
that no creature adds to his infinity, so no creature's existence is
communicable with or to any other creature.
This is the analogy of being which is prior to and
causative of any analogical use of language. All universals, all
univocal linguistic usage, is built upon likenesses between
disparate things which often enough derive from a common
causal background, as we call whatever is born of a woman
human. This background, however, includes formal causality, such
as the animality of a rabbit or a dog. Yet rabbit-animality and dog-
animality do not share a common base to which the specific
differences are added, since in reality rabbit-animality is, as such,
totally different from dog-animality. Mere common animality does
not and cannot exist. Similarly animal-body differs toto caeli from
plant-body. We can say then, with Aquinas, that the term "body" is
not treated in the same way by the logician as by the
metaphysician. What binds things together really is not class-
membership, but patterns of likeness, the things themselves
severally being merely like or analogical to one another, bound
together in a common love, ultimately deriving from the fact that
each of them is, that they are all beings, even though there can
be no super-class of things which are, since each thing is, has
being, in the unique way without which it would not be that thing
and no other thing. All that can be common is the proportion of
each thing to its own being, not any being in itself.
We do not now have to apply this to ourselves, in order to
give a ground to our assertions about creative ethics, about the
unique vocation of each person, and so on. It will rather emerge in
whatever way we choose to approach the matter, if we dare to let
things speak, so to say, for themselves, unveil themselves.
We could start by observing that every person's

157
Cf. the paradox Charles Williams liked to quote, "This
also is thou, neither is this thou." The painter's chair is not,
of course, God, but, like God, it is being, which, Parmenides
the "giant" (Plato) rightly saw, is one. Cf. F. Inciarte, Forma
Formarum, Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg/Munich 1970, p. 142,
on participation in esse as understood by Aquinas: "Das
Eigenart dieser Teilname, die sich mit keiner Zerstückelung
verträgt... Denn jeder Aspekt dieses Universums ist insofern
Totalität, als er von der unteilbaren Totalität des esse
durchdrungen ist... Erst wenn der Blick auf das esse inm
Ganzen gerichtet wird, leuchtet in jedem Teil das ganze esse
und erscheint jeder Teil als die Totalität des esse, die er ist."
experience remains his or her own, has to be that.158 Each use in
language of "I", correspondingly, refers to a different being (i.e.
when not used again by the same being159). It refers to it,
however, not just as referring to an individualized nature, of some
type or other, as "man" must refer to some man or other, whether
it be myself or another person being an irrelevancy. Rather, "I"
always refers to the person, to the being of the person, who utters
it. No two men can give "I" the same reference160, as they can with
any other term inclusive of pronouns, though there would remain
a query about "we". It is therefore not so clear either, as Hegel
seemed to think, that different people can use it with the same
meaning, since I can never use it to mean just "the speaker". It
has to mean "I", this unique individual, whom no one else can
mean in the same way ("you" or "he" are very different) and who
only happens to be the speaker. It is not even clear that it is as
being restricted to that capacity (speaker, thinker) that the term
can, so to say, catch me. Here it is important to adhere to the old
meaning-theory according to which terms have meanings open to
simple apprehension (apprehensio simplex) before eventual use in
sentences.
This fact, that "I" does not merely refer to the speaker in
the way that he might refer to someone else, is brought out
especially in some uses of the future tense. I do not know my
intentions in separation from intending them in the way that I
might know another person's intentions. But nor, when I thus refer
to myself, are my intentions (which I do not mention) excluded
from the reference, there being no grounds to exclude them. I do
not, that is, make myself an object (of reference, of my own
consciousness, like any other) when I refer to myself. To do that a
158
For an earlier treatment of this theme, see the
author's "Other Problems about the Self", Sophia 24, April
1985, pp.11-20.
159
Here we see the need for a metaphysics of substance,
in order to be able to speak of "the same being". Cf. F.
Inciarte, "Die Einheit der Aristotelischen Metaphysik",
Philosophisches Jahrbuch 1994, pp.1-21. This forms a
chapter in the author's forthcoming book in English, First
Principles, Substance and Action. Studies in Aristotle and
Aristotelianism.
160
Yet it is not a proper name but signifies, rather, as
Hegel remarks, the most general of universals (cf.
Encyclopaedia I: Logic, parag. 24). It is only its reference or,
better, suppositio, which resembles that of a proper name.
special extra or, rather, different operation would be required, as
when I might speak about "the only man in this room with glasses
on". But here I do not refer to myself qua myself but to a man who
I merely happen to be.
What is it to be this I who I alone am? I can of course refer
also to you (my reader), who alone are yourself. Indeed, it seems
that just as I can ask of myself, and this is my main question, why
am I numbered among, why do I find myself among actual
consciousnesses, so I can ask it of you. It is good that you exist.
You might not have existed. Still, there is a real, an inescapable
sense, in which you are, you have become, quite recently perhaps,
part of my world, though I know indeed that there is more to you
than that. But I, I myself: how is it that the world has become,
quite recently, a world for me? It is entirely that, even though I
know that it existed before me and, I do not doubt, even now
exists apart from me, often all too palpably apart.
Why am I just that child born of just those parents at that
time and place? It is absolutely clear that another might have
done as well, just as, though this might seem less clear to many, I
might have had different parents, a different place or time of
birth, if it were given (it was not) that I was going to be born at all.
I can say, intelligibly enough, of a tree that there just
happens to have come to be this tree in this place. Can I similarly
say, though, that there just happens to have come to be a
consciousness in such and such an ambience such that I am
aware of it and it is mine? Is this, could this be so? We have,
anyhow, simply shunted the problem of "I" into a subordinate
clause.
There is, we said, a world apart from the self. One can
give the year of one's birth; others will know the year of one's
death. Of this world it is legitimate to ask: why is there a world?
Each man may, should, ask this, but it is not the same question as
each man asks or can ask of himself, what is it to be "I"? Why am
just I, again, numbered among those who exist or have existed? I
am to myself something which is, but which is not an object of
experience. For the same reason I cannot know myself directly,
only in some way concomitantly with knowing something else.
There is, it seems, if we might speak in Cartesian terms
for the moment, a class or species of thinking things. Yet each
man can in his own case verify that these thinking things do not
collectively constitute an ideal consciousness with which, like any
other general notion, philosophy could deal in the good old way,
i.e. not exhaustively. Certainly my mind is of the same nature as
all other human minds; indeed it is individuated in just the way
that they are. Traditional sexual morality bases itself upon this
generic consideration, race taking precedence here over
individual and person. But all this could have been so without my
being there at all, not just a given individual's not being there but
just I.
Every actual human being knows that he is part of the
spectacle that he beholds, knows both that the world includes his
or her awareness of it and that it need not do so. This sense of
personal contingency must be the more pronounced in so far as
we are clear that there is not, has not been, an infinite multitude
of men, as natural history studies have indeed made clear, though
we can wonder whether philosophy has assimilated the
implications of such research. When the Greeks looked back and
imagined human nature endlessly reproducing itself against a
static geological background the problem of individual
consciousness not merely could have no importance but could not
easily arise. For to be one of an infinite number (if that were
possible) is not to be at all as we understand it, and the same
might apply, mutatis mutandis to this present life, if we had to do
with an infinite or eternal series of incarnations of the same
individual.
Quite simply, there is a clash between the vista of a
certain number of human beings, at present or at all times, sitting,
standing, making history, living, dying, reproducing, and the
inward awareness, as against the vista, not just of "this individual"
(he belongs to the vista), but of me, not the universal state of
being first person, but me, with my particular name, me not as a
condition without which the world cannot be thought or
experienced or lived, but me who might not have been, me to be
lost or saved, me who is not merely the son or daughter of
particular parents, both of whom might seem more astonishingly
improbable than even myself, but a me who is alone himself,
incommunicably (this is the scholastic mark of personality, though
also of all substance), with an ultimate responsibility, though not
necessarily with ultimate power, for what he makes of himself
(this being, for scholastics and others, peculiar to rational
substances).
The world too, though, appears as highly fortuitous and
finite, as it were besides our own contingency. Why should it ever
become conscious of itself, supposing such an idea to have
meaning (it is of course an attempt to explain away the separate
contingency of the individual from that of the world)? It is really
only we men, in our limited numbers, who can become conscious
of the world, while the efforts we make seem to presuppose, in
apparent disproportion to our fortuitousness, an ability to attain a
knowledge reaching right up to the reality. Nothing less is
knowledge, after all. Yet our belief in, our assumption of this ability
clashes awkwardly with that awareness of our contingency to
which the Greeks, as thinking of an infinite multitude or of an
eternal return, hardly attained. There is a kind of providence in
this, however, in that if they had attained to it it would have been
more difficult for them to reach what is surely a true statement of
Plato's, viz. "All nature is akin and the soul has learned
everything" (Meno), i.e. is from birth capable of that, and even
capable too, therefore, of an understanding of the Darwinian
theory which might seem to make it more difficult to account for
this capacity, though Aristotle too seems quite at a loss in having
to flatly state that the intellect, common or possessed by individu-
als, "comes from outside".161
One came to be, to exist, gratuitously. That is the in some
sense awful truth, which leads us so to despise the hard fates of
multitudes of unkown persons in far off places, those "clowns" to
whom Hume, for example, in unfavourable comparison with
himself, found it absurd to attribute immortality. We lack the
capaciousnes of mind to care for "the fall of a sparrow", just as we
are prone to assume, without scientific backing, that more people
than we can imagine is too many, and this despite our joyous
impulse, the fecundity of which we strive to prevent, to breed and
breed and breed again. The generative movement indeed forms
the basis of all the dancing which crowns our celebrations. There
might seem to be a connection, an analogy, between this
joyousness inseparable from human generation and the
gratuitousness of our being as issuing, we imply, from a divine
creation. For the impulse to love, and love again, is inseparable
from the uniqueness of each new human face. Each person is as it
were a world, potentially the world (quodammodo omnia). Hence
the feeling that "there can never be enough" people (Mother
Teresa of Calcutta), the deep urge to multiply. It is this that must
be reconciled with the demands of personal fidelity, the urge, that
is, to a universal unity, spirit achieving what flesh merely
prefigures, though, again, this is only possible given the reality of
the analogy of being, whereby each person's spouse can truly
stand for and mirror the whole, Christ or the Church, can truly be
being, which is indivisible into parts.
Even here, though, one seems to suggest, as the
language compels, that one was there beforehand although
lacking this particular gratuitous benefit, of existence; which is
161
Relinquitur intellectus solus de foris adinvenire. De Gen. Anim. II 3.
plainly false. It is not a matter of a temporal beforehand but of a
gift, as it seems, being given to an otherwise non-entity.162
Certainly what has life can receive more life, as, in a context of
miracle, what has lost life can be thought of as having it restored.
What has lived, after all, is more than a non-entity. A non-entity
cannot be a "what" at all. As theologians say, in creation the thing
created does not undergo change, is not passive to a divine
action. Hence in creation there is no real relation of God to the
creature. Aquinas generalizes the idea thus:

Not everything accepted is received into a subject; otherwise one

could not say that the whole substance of the creature is
accepted from God, since there is no subject capable of
receiving a whole substance.163

The, so to say, phenomenal situation of creation (of an individual)

is captured by Peter Geach in the following terms:

There is just one A, and God brought it about that (Ex)(x is an

A)164; and for no x did God bring it about that x is an A;
and c is an A.165

Geach comments on this that

The part of this proposition that expresses the creative act

(namely the first three conjuncts) does not mention c,
and explicitly denies that in creating God acted upon any
individual.

I am as contingent as the world itself, yet my contingency cannot

be reduced to a function of the world's contingency. Thus the
162
Cf. Aquinas, QD de potentia III, 1 ad 17: Deus simul
dans esse producit id quod esse recipit...
163
Aquinas, Summa theol. Ia 27, 2 ad 3.
164
To be read, there is an x such that x is an A. The "for some x" reading
seems not to capture what is intended by creation, viz. new being, although,
once granted the creation of A, then it certainly follows that something is an
A, as truth follows being. But truths do not exist; beings do. This is the
ultimate divide between Sylvan's sistology or the possible worlds ontology
and Thomism, the divide between truth and being, parallelling the divide we
have been emphasising between goodness and being (not a divide between
beings and the existence of values which are not beings, a contradiction,
but between being itself and being as desired, as truth is being as known).
165
P.T. Geach, God and the Soul, London 1969, p.83.
above formula makes logically perspicuous what is said when
creation is asserted, but it cannot be applied by anyone, without
some modification, to himself. To be sure I can substitute "I am"
for "c is" and then the formula states that God created me in the
same way as I can as well state that I am a chess-player as that
Johnny is a chess-player.
A pure contingency is scarcely thinkable, though there
are coincidences and a man might, one supposes, think himself to
be one such. An inability to think this is the sense of vocation. One
thinks instead that controlling the coincidences there is One
whom they do not surprise. One wonders at being one of a limited
number, which is also a chosen number. Thus Augustine: we exist
because God is good.
It is a small step, however, from this sense of choice, of
vocation, of one's special creation, to that awareness of the
analogy of being which must indeed be adverted to also in the
explanation of the unique vocation of each person, of each being
that is conscious of and hence responsible, under the first being,
for its own being, as if (quasi, says Aquinas) a providence for
itself.166 This analogical character of the set of human beings is
central to appreciating the need for what we have been calling a
creative ethics, one which, apparently contrary to Kierkegaard's
emphasis, is at bottom ruled by an aesthetic canon.167 This canon,
however, is as firm or firmer than any law whatever. This,
however, in contradistinction to the passivity required by
prescriptiveness, can only be seen after the event, after the
action, just as the principles of a revolution can only be charted by
history when its movement is complete. To a certain extent the
dialectic of Nicholas of Cusa and of Hegel as translated into
progressive action by the Marxists is relevant here, though
ignorance of analogy condemned these movements to
insufficiency and a worse legalism of their own.
The analogous character of being predestines each
person who will explore his creative potential to being an outsider.
This is thus a kind of norm, not an exception. It is normal to be
exceptional. Since I am not needed by the world, by society,
having no reason in myself why I should be present, due to that
double contingency mentioned, therefore, by a backward
application to the same situation, the laws in operation in that
community, constitutive indeed of that shared nature in which I
166
Cf. the Prologue to the Second Part of the Summa Theologica.
167
As in the notion, recently popularized, of doing "something beautiful
for God". Cf. Theron, Africa, Philosophy and the Western Tradition, Frankfurt
1995, pp. 139-144.
participate, cannot be held in advance to apply automatically. Or
rather, the way in which they will apply, if we do hold them, as
constitutive, to be invariant, cannot be predicted in advance.168
Abraham, whatever his principle as to killing the innocent had
been, knows that he must prepare to kill his son; Elijah has no
doubt of his mission, his empowerment and calling, to slay the
false prophets; a certain good man and more than a man knows
that he has power to lay down his own life; St. Peter foretells but
himself seems to take part in the expiry of Ananias and Sapphira.
Here in scripture we see people acting in unheard of and,
particularly, unclassifiable ways, but in obedience to the highest
inspiration only, of the Spirit that "blows where it will", such that
we cannot tell its direction. This, too, is what is echoed in all the
great love stories of tradition, besides lying behind those acts of
political realism which we found Aquinas defending in the case of
malefactors, but which must not be confused with the later
doctrine of realpolitik. Unlike the cynicism of the latter, these
inspired actions, including that of reacting to a perceived
necessity never to be attributed to a mere national or personal
self-interest as such, are always directed to the fulfilment of the
good and therefore never violate the common good. We therefore,
if we admit them, have to allow that the common good is at
bottom structured by something deeper and freer than the mere
outward shell of morality which we have identified with a passive
observance of prescriptions. The norm of love, indeed, active love,
can never be seen as such a passive following of a prescription,
and here again Kierkegaard seems wrong. He interprets the divine
commands of love as it were univocally, and then marvels that we
can be commanded to love.169 Is it not rather that the nature of
love determines that the notion of command here be taken
analogically. The Lord as it were tells us to let go, to break the
mould of passive observance, sharing rather in his own kind of
life, which no man can take from him, no sabbath or tax-ordinance
can constrain.
One can wonder, finally, why that contingency of being
does not equally apply, as Sartre, say, might urge, to the highest
being, appeal to which would thus yield no explanation or
vocation at all. Here it is necessary to recall, to trouble to see,

168
Cp. L.E. Palacios, "La analogia de la logica y la prudencia en Juan de
Santo Tomas", La Ciencia Tomista 69 (1945), pp. 221-235.
169
S. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 1847: "only when love is a duty, only
then is love eternally secure." Here there seems no place for creativeness.
Or, we might say, the servant had indeed a duty to trade with the talents,
but that precisely means a duty to act beyond duty, out of creative love.
rather, that there is also an analogy between the ultimate
principles of essence as such and existence as such. They are
indeed really distinct, but not so as to constitute a chasm of
duality at the foundations of the real, leaving us with a bare first
principle of existence, like that at the beginning of the Hegelian
dialectic, devoid of all worth or quality. Existence, rather, is the
most formal of all things, forma formarum, just as it is the most
utterly analogical. This is the truth glimpsed in the Ontological
Argument. By this route we go some way towards rejoining the
Neoplatonic stream of speculation. The ultimate actuality, actus
purus, God, is thereby actual and existent in a different way to his
creatures, whom he knows in his idea of them, as (in this idea)
more like himself than they are when considered in their own
being which is, beside him, nothingness.170 As pure form this actus
purus has something in common with an idea, if only an idea
could be actual. It is super-existent, in perfect freedom, such as
the Neoplatonists tended to equate with unity to the detriment of
existence. But, contrary to this Neoplatonist position, also what is
super-existent is a being, ipsum esse subsistens in fact. It is this
essential formality which gives the First Cause its necessity, its
necessary being. If we think of a being which might not have been
then we are not thinking of God. That is why we say he is like an
idea.171 Ideas abide as possibilities (we should not call them actual
possibilities) eternally, though it is the wrong kind of Platonism to
postulate an existent (third) realm of ideas. But we could not think
that there might be no such idea as that of a so-and-so, and
similar we cannot think, if we are thinking God, that there might
be no God.172 His esse is pure form, and this means that anything
else, as being merely an essence composed with esse, is not
really but only analogously formal. We, using a created language,
make the cause the analogate, but this is in so far as it is an

170
Cf. Aquinas, Summa theol. Ia 14, 5: "Things other than
himself he sees not in themselves but in himself, because
his essence contains the likeness of things other than
himself." But this essence, Aquinas insists, is pure esse.
171
So much is this so that it is in having universal goodness or universal
being (ideas are universal) as object that the soul is directly moved by God
(it does not, of course, then see God, as the ontologists seemed to claim),
who is idem re with bonum universale. Esse, the divine esse, is itself the
most formal thing (perfectio perfectionum).
172
I do not deny the question as to whether such an idea is realised in
reality. What I say is that it is an idea of something which cannot but be
realised in reality and that this something is in this respect imitated by any
idea qua idea.
analogous term, i.e. in language. But what the term173 stands for
(supponit pro) renders the whole created world analogous, and
shows why analogy theory is a matter, firstly, not of logic but of
metaphysics, whether or not we may choose to approach it
through logic.
Ethics, then, is not to be separated from the search for
one's personal vocation. Analogy, however, is not equivocal
disparateness, and so the reality of a common end common to all
these vocations, as unifying life at one further remove still, so to
say, would now present itself for analysis.174

CHAPTER SEVEN

Justice: Legal and Moral Debt in Aquinas

We conclude our reconsideration of the natural law tradition with

an examination of three ethical topics in the light of what we have
said so far, these being justice, sexual morality and murder, which
might seem to recall us to justice but above all to charity or love
as, we found, not merely the full expression of virtue but its
original constitutive form. We begin with justice, in fact selecting a
particular aspect of Aquinas's own treatment of it, since this
brings to light a notion of legal justice which is peculiar to the
natural law conception.
In addition, an examination of the treatment of the virtue
of justice in Aquinas's moral theology can bring us to a closer
appreciation of what is meant by the notion, almost the ideal
notion, of the unity of the virtues, be that unity relative or
absolute. The wider reach of justice is particularly illustrated in
the discussion of the so-called potential parts of that virtue. By
potential parts of a virtue are meant other, associated (adjunctae)
virtues which in some way exemplify, in some way fall short of the
main virtue concerned. As less fundamental to it they are to be
distinguished both from the integral parts, i.e. the conditions
173
I.e. this term "cause", for example. Cf. S. Theron, "Analogy and the
Divine Being", The Downside Review, April 1998, pp.79-85.

174
On this topic, see our "Happiness and Transcendent
Happiness", Religious Studies 21, 1985, pp.349-367.
necessary for the perfect act of a virtue (on the analogy of the
basic parts of a material thing), and from the subjective parts
(partes subjectivae) or diverse species of the virtue, each of which
will exemplify it in the full sense. In the case of justice the integral
parts are given simply as doing good ("general justice", under the
aspect of what the law prescribes), as constituting justice, and
avoiding evil, as conserving it.175 The subjective parts of justice
include commutative, distributive and legal justice (also called
justitia generalis), but also epicheia or equity, which is prior to
legal justice, St. Thomas says, as directing it by a superior rule.
In the discussion, then, of the potential parts of this
virtue, justice, i.e. of the virtues adjoined to or associated with
justice, one can be surprised to find St. Thomas distinguishing,
even within the ethical sphere, between a legal and a moral debt
or duty (debitum):

The notion of the debt owed in justice can be defectively in-

stantiated inasmuch as there are two sorts of debt, viz. a
moral and a legal.176

These two debts can overlap, even coincide. Yet failure to

discharge a purely moral debt is only the second of two ways in
which behaviour, under the aspect of directedness to the other
(justitia est ad alterum177), could fall short of the full meaning of
justice. For besides rendering to the other what is due to him as
his own, the legal debt of justice consists in rendering it in full.178
175
Cf. Summa theologica IIa-IIae 79, 1. By contrast there
are eight integral parts of prudence, four of fortitude.
176
Summa Theologica IIa-IIae 80, 1. A ratione vero debiti
justitiae defectus potest attendi, secundum quod est duplex
debitum, scilicet morale et legale.
177
The essential mark of justice among the virtues.
178
In fact neither more nor less than it should be. This is
St. Thomas's concept of equality of proportion, taken from
Aristotle X Metaph. 19; NE II 6&7, V 3&4. Hoc autem dicitur
esse suum unicuique personae quod ei secundum
proportionis aequalitatem debetur (this is called each
person's own which is due to him by an equality of
proportion). The equality is of thing to person, "equal" being
understood as the mean between too much and too little
(IIa-IIae 58, 10). This relation, a real relation in reality
(medium rei) is the jus, an "equality of proportion",
In this way religion and pietas (to parents), however perfect their
exercise may be in a given case, always fall short of justice, the
debt which they cannot pay in full being objective and legal in St.
Thomas's sense (i.e. not merely moral).
A moral debt, on the other hand, is not thus strictly due to
the one to whom it is owed. Yet all debt implies some necessity,
and in this case (of moral duty which is not strictly due or
necessary) the necessity implied is that of whatever is necessary
for a good moral character (honestas virtutis). Thus, for Aquinas,
even if truthfulness or gratitude or vindicatio (three virtues of
giving others what is due to them in this purely moral sense), for
example, are not owed to the recipient with the binding force of
law, yet they are owed to one's own character (with such binding
force), to its beauty we might well say. In this way there is a debt
of legal justice to God who imposes the whole moral law.179 We
are, so to say, obliged legally to be moral, but the legal obligation
is to God as imposing also moral duty. God (legally) obliges us to
be moral, just as religion is legally owed to him and piety to
parents, in a way that leaves us necessarily debtors.180 Thus God
reprobates ungrateful behaviour or even an untoward lack of
affability, though these are not due legally, but rather morally, to
other human beings. This may not be at such great odds with the
present day liberal, who stresses merely that this legal obligation
(to God) cannot be enforced, and also that morality as such
should not be enforced. Vestiges of the idea of a legal obligation
to parents are stronger in some liberal societies than in others,
e.g. in Germany, where citizens with means are still compelled to
establishing the justum, just action or thing, price etc.
179
The same would apply, mutatis mutandis (nothing is
owed toanimals at all), in regard to a duty of showing proper
consideration for animals.
180
It should be noted that the concept of legal justice
does not only overshoot the modern notion in the religious
domain, since it also covers a relation to parents. We do not
only owe it to our own character, or even only to God, to be
good to our parents. According to Aquinas we owe it to
them, in strict justice, in a debt without limit. This is said by
a man who forsook his own parents and dashed all their
hopes for him (when he joined the mendicant Dominicans
against their violent opposition). The view, however, does
show that liberalism is not the only alternative to a public
religious posture, since legal ties to parents could well be
thought to remain after a given secularization.
pay for their indigent parents. On the other hand there has been a
tendency to go further and to evaluate the purely moral ideals, as
they are significantly called, as being merely optional (R.M. Hare),
which seems prima facie at least to contrast with the Thomistic
idea of a divinely enjoined perfection.
For it is in this sense, for Aquinas, at least if we take his
words at face-value, that we are legally obliged to discharge also
our moral debts, an obligation extending, indeed, even to those
moral duties or simply desirabilities not needed for honestas
morum as such, but only for its greater perfection, such as
liberality and affability (IIa-IIae 80, 1). It is in this way that the
New Testament command of love181, say, or the command "Be ye
perfect", might be understood, though we might still wonder, as I
have suggested elsewhere, whether a mystical extrapolation from
the situation of human law is not being practiced by Aquinas here,
in what Nicholas Berdyaev, writing from outside the long Roman
tradition, characterizes as the mentality, ultimately the deception,
of sociomorphism. One needs to see, on this view, that the term
"command", in the evangelical "new commandment", is better
understood as used analogically. God does not really legislate.
181
Just as justice is distinguished from the three other
cardinal virtues as being ad alterum, so inclination as such is
essentially towards another (Cf. Summa theol. Ia 80, 1).
Inclination, however, is the basic movement referred to
when explicating will and hence love, obviously extending
here to the love of friendship. This emphasises the necessity
of appreciating the analogical character of any command to
love. It is not just an inclination per accidens, even though
we can help to prepare the way for strengthening the
inclination (but again, through an inclination, also a love,
which we already have). The command, in fact, must itself
be a giving of the inclination, a grace, and this is how
Aquinas explains the new "law". All original law, in fact, is
now seen as the beginning of gift, and hence he says
elsewhere that God teaches (i.e. not merely commands) us
by his law as he helps us by his grace. Law is the beginning
of the grace which perfects it. Law and grace together
instantiate God as an external principle (internal principles
are the powers of the soul and the virtues) moving us to
good (movens ad bonum: op. cit. IaIIae, Prologue to Q90).
The use of movens strongly associates law with love, the
justice which must exceed that of the scribes, and this is
how legal justice can be a general virtue although (i.e. now,
because) love is the form of all the virtues.
Otherwise one goes on to argue, with Kant or Kierkegaard, that
Christian love, since it is commanded, can have nothing to do with
the affections, which leaves little room for liberality, affability and
the like. Aquinas, by contrast, saw the Christian life of grace, as it
is called, as a process of the refinement of the affections. This
might indicate that he was less of a literalist than the two later
thinkers, as might seem indeed to emerge from how he
characterizes both the eternal law (one with God himself) and the
natural law (a reflected light). Such situations or dispensations are
hardly law in the literal sense, any more than is the divine law of
the new covenant, characterized by Aquinas not merely as being
unwritten but, unlike any unwritten law in the usual sense, as
being "poured into" the heart. A law is inert (even if it can have an
ordering function), not a tonic medicine, and this is indeed the
thrust of the Pauline contrast between law ("the law") and
Christian freedom and love.
But to understand this fundamental conception of justitia
legalis one must be clear, all the same, that it is not itself, qua
conception, to be understood merely by analogy with some
human legal system, even if the idea may have been formed
through people's experience of this. Rather, the theory is that civil
obligation is itself generated (nascitur) through a prior existence
of a debt of legal justice to the divine law-giver in the natural law
as it were given to man at his creation as being inseparable from
him, just as he himself, or she, is inseparable from his created
nature. It is in this way that Aquinas saw it as natural (and hence
of natural law) to man to belong to a political state. Analogy here
is linked with causality, not the sociomorphic, extrapolating
causality frombelow to above but the real causality from above to
below of the divine rectitude mirroring itself in our necessary
human arrangements made according to reason, this being part of
Aquinas's broad definition of law.
It would not, however, be either necessary or correct to
define legal justice under this theological aspect. Rather,

legal justice is said to be a general virtue inasmuch as it orders

the acts of the other virtues to their end.182

For it can be shown that for Aquinas it is the end itself (of actions)
which is above all (i.e. rather than the action as such) due or
obligatory, this being the reason why the theological virtues,
182
Ibid. IIa-IIae 58, 6.
which have the end itself (ultimately, he thinks, God) for their
object, are superior to and more central than justice which merely
ordains (the other virtues) to the end. Now the end to which
specifically justice orders them is bonum commune (the common
good). This, however, in so far as it may be identifiable with
bonum in communi (the good in general or absolutely and hence
the good for the rational creature both personally and collectively,
i.e. also a common good), is itself really one with the finis
ultimus.183
So while on the one hand we, or Aquinas, may seem to
reduce the talk of divine law to an analogy, on the other he argues
for a causal link from above underpinning the reality or, for
Aquinas, legality of both positive human legal enactments (but
also of the unsatisfiable legal debts to God and parents)and of the
various moral obligations to others or to ourselves, however these
be identified, as being themselves legally owed to God. God does
not literally command, but because of God, of the ultimate
spirituality or intellectuality of reality, we are, as free agents, at
some points or levels commanded, obliged. This seems to be his
mind. If it is to the acts of the virtues, i.e. to moral character,
inclusive of course of a readiness to discharge properly legal and
just debts, that we are commanded, rather than to some
materially specified task or omission, then the field is left open to
the acting person as regards the identification of these acts as
and when their possibility arises. For if God does not literally or
positively command then there are no other divine commands
than this, to follow virtue or, more simply, to work in pursuit of the
end as loved above all things, in the execution of which even a
religious obedience may be perfected.
These notions are well illustrated in the discussion of the
virtue, adjoined to justice, of truthfulness (veracitas). This is the
habit whereby one speaks the truth or truly, and since this is a
good act the habit of it is therefore a virtue (IIa-IIae 109, 1), since
virtue is what makes its possessor and his work (opus) good.
Truthfulness makes him good by duly perfecting the ordering of
our exterior words and deeds to reality, sicut signum ad signatum
(109, 2).
Veracity (art. 3) belongs to justice as being other-directed
and as setting up an equality of proportion between signs and
existing things. Yet it falls short of justice inasmuch as the
183
Cf. Ia-IIae 10, 1. Et quia ad legem pertinet ordinare in
bonum commune (Ia-IIae 90, 2) inde est quod talis justitia
praedicto modo generalis dicitur justitia legalis (IIa-IIae 58,
5).
obligation discharged is moral rather than legal, says St. Thomas.
His reason for saying this is that one man owes it to
another to manifest the truth to him ex honestate rather than as
prescribed by law (even if he should owe it more strictly to God, or
to the common good, to be thus truthful, for this is to consider
veracitas not in itself but ut a justitia legali imperatur, i.e. as it is
commanded by legal justice). Honestas is later called by Aquinas,
when discussing temperance, spiritual beauty. It is perhaps a
defect that this ideal should take second place to the more plain
necessity of law, unless of course one can argue that legality,
under the aspect of order, rejoins the domain of beauty and that
at a higher twist of the spiral, so to say. This was implicit, indeed,
in the Anselmian notion, inherited from Augustine, of rectitudo.
In further explanation of the above he says first that
truthfulness attains the proper meaning (ratio) of debt "in some
way" (109, 3 ad 1um), since men naturally owe to one another
that without which society cannot be preserved.184 Something
more than honestas might be at stake, that is to say, even before
we go on to consider, Kant-style, what is owed to our own dignity
in not telling lies. Here the necessity (for the end) proper to
obligation, of preserving society, appears. The picture receives
additional clarification when he goes on to distinguish (from this
so to say consequent obligation of truthfulness) acts of truth-
telling which really belong in the first instance to obligation and
hence require no distinct virtue at all but are particular acts of
justice, the habit which obliges one on occasion to manifest the
truth, e.g. in a court of law.185 In such cases a man principally
intends to give another his due as, it is implied, he does not so
intend in normal truth-telling, by which, rather, in life or words,
one shows oneself to be as one is (ad 3um), the habit of doing
which is associated with but distinct from justice. Here, art. 4, in
showing oneself to be as one is, one need not manifest everything
good that one possesses, though it is untruthful to show oneself
as greater than one is, e.g. by boasting.
One can indeed see that the beauty of gratitude, another
of these virtues associated with justice, would be largely lost if the

184
There is strong indication here of the ambiguity in
Kant's moral theory, inasmuch as he does not distinguish
within morals between legal and moral debt, but reduces the
former to the latter while yet speaking of the latter as if it
were the former ("So act as if you could wish that the
maxim.. were a universal law").
185
See 109, 3 ad 3um.
man showing it felt himself simply obliged, to and by the other, to
manifest it, i.e. if he did not understand, rather, that he owed it to
himself in the way we have described. In this connection St.
Thomas quotes Seneca: qui invitus debet, ingratus est, i.e. he who
is not willing to be in debt or "obliged" (he is too quick in
recompensing the gift he has received) is ungrateful, graceless as
we say. This would not be the case if we were dealing with a strict
legal debt (thus, and by contrast to repayment, only the feeling of
gratitude should be immediate, but often not its external
expression):

a legal obligation should be discharged at once, otherwise the

equality of justice would not be preserved if one kept
back another's property against his will. But a moral
obligation depends on the decency of the one indebted:
and therefore such an obligation should be remitted at
the proper time demanded by rectitude of virtue (i.e. not
necessarily at once).186

Here the "legal" concept of rectitudo, dear to St. Anselm, is

mentioned as controlling the discharge of the "moral" debt. The
one order is contained within the other.
But again we see the pivotal role of honestas, and the
place where this quality is analysed in the Summa is found under
temperance, of which, together with verecundia, it is said to be an
integral part. St. Thomas speaks of it, we noted, as "spiritual
beauty". It is connected with honouring virtue for its own sake,
rather than exclusively for the end to which legal justice orders us.

Certain things are desired both for themselves, inasmuch as they

have in themselves some quality of goodness, even if no
other good were to come to us through them, and yet
they are also at the same time desired for something
else, as leading us to a yet more perfect good.187

In this way the virtues somehow resemble or imperfectly

participate in God and beatitude, which are still more "honest"
than the virtues (Ibid. ad 2um). And so we praise virtue as useful
for the end, we honour it for itself. We tend more often to speak of

186
IIa-IIae 106, 4 ad 1um. The parallel with mercifulness,
the evangelical duty (owed to God) of giving to the needy or
guilty what is not owed to them, is illuminating.
187
IIa-IIae 145, 1 ad 1um.
them as "honest", he says, because the virtues are closer to us
than God or his beatitudo. This is the source of the temptation to
see the morally good as specifically different from goodness in
general, giving rise to the notion of a separate universe of values.
All the same, virtues having this quality of decor
spiritualis (art. 2), but also concerned with what is in some way
due to another, are associated with justice as discharging a moral
debt to that other. They offer him gratitude, truthfulness, affability
and so on. The unity of the virtues is once again illustrated, with
temperance extending the reach of justice. In this vision of things
we can have to others both a legal and a moral debt, while our
moral debts or duties in general are legal, and not merely law-like,
in the internal forum (a legal term) of conscience, both because
conscience is able to apprehend the true and transcendent divine
law and because part of that very law is that we follow conscience
even when it fails to do this. The mere fact that conscience is free,
that we can make up our own minds, could not of itself lead to any
kind of obligation, not even to an obligation to follow conscience,
though we might think it more honest or beautiful to do so. We
might also then think otherwise, however, considering it cowardly,
for example.188

188
The objection might be raised that this conception of legal justice
contradicts our thesis of love as final form of all virtue, which must mean
that love is prior and causative of any relation of owing to another. We
should remember though that law, as belonging to reason, is originally
descriptive, only subsequently prescriptive. It is entirely descriptive as
regards the natural laws of creatures generally. It is only in so far as known
from within, or practically, in our own case, that it becomes prescriptive.
Thus creation flows from the divine love and by nature tends towards, i.e.
loves, its origin and exemplar. This is the actual relationship within which
there arises the consideration that such love is normal, as it is normal for
lions to roar, and hence what we call due within the frame of the divine
government or lex aeterna. This metaphorical notion refers to the divine
love as circulating through creatures and back to the divine, itself creating
our freedom and the formalities of justice which we attach to it. So it is true
of justice as such what is said specifically of divine justice: "The work of
divine justice always presupposes the work of mercy [sc. misericordia,
kindness, love], and is based on it" (in eo fundatur. Summa theol. Ia 21, 4).
Cf. IIa-IIae 120, 1 & 2: equity regulates justice and is thus not only better
than legal justice (melior quadam justitia, scilicet legali) but, as regulating,
prior to it, and in the same way love or mercy is prior to equity, as
instigating it for one thing, equity being, it is stressed, a work of execution
rather than interpretation, already as it were halfway to love in that.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

Eros and the Human Good

In relating ethics to the purpose of life, in giving a or the central

role to personal vocation, to a diversity of inspiration fuelled
essentially by love, we have departed from, as transcending, an
inert model of law or rule. It may have surprised, however, when
we claimed that this move, this transposition, could take place
within a theory still calling itself one of natural law. But we should
not dispute too much about mere words. It is a fact, we noted,
that Aquinas, with whom such a theory is most associated,
included in his account of what he called law one component, the
New Law, which he said was not written at all. This, however, is
also true of natural law which, all the same, consists, according to
Aquinas, of precepts. It is thus that lex naturalis is distinguished
from ius naturale, which is a relation in reality. The New Law,
however, is not even a precept, in any but an analogical sense.
The new "commandment" of love, in fact, is actually the grace of
the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts by charity. In fact it so
parallels ius naturale, rather than lex naturalis, that one can find
in the spontaneous liberty of the wise, creative man a genuine
basis for the grace and freedom of the New Law, this analogy
itself exemplifying the Thomist principle that grace builds on
nature.189
It might thus be thought that Aquinas was ill-advised to
go on speaking of law here, and so Bourke190, for example, claims
that Aquinas is not really a "natural law ethicist" at all, but simply
made use of this style of speaking in a given theological context.
Law today, after all, is naturally conceived on the rationalist model
of a command or order from outside, which might be right or
wrong, just or unjust, while still remaining law. If, however, one
places the stress rather on "natural", understanding by natural
law any theory which derives the goodness of human customs
(mores) from the extent to which they are derived from the nature
189
The duplication is so close that it might be suspected by some of
being idle. Grace, its possibility, might then appear itself to be natural, as
man is that being naturally called to transcend himself, open himself to
what transcends his nature. This situation was reflected in the somewhat
inhibited theological debate on "supernatural" life centring around Henri de
Lubac's Surnaturel (1947).

190
V. Bourke, "Is Thomas Aquinas a Natural Law Ethicist?" The Monist
1974, pp. 52-65.
and inclinations proper to men and women, then the vision of
Aquinas can legitimately be called the theory of natural law.
We can, however, make use of another classification
according to which an ethics of law or asceticism is superseded by
an ethics of creativeness.191 This corresponds to the
spiritualization of law as recorded in the New Testament and, in a
reserved kind of way, faithfully documented in the writings of
Aquinas. These bring out the dynamic, living role of right reason
(recta ratio) and above all of love.
We might now see how this approach applies in key areas
such as that of the sources or of the value of human life,
attending, that is to say, to sexuality on the one hand, as source,
and to the preservation of the lives of men, women and children
on the other. What determines actions in these spheres as morally
good or bad, and why? More positively, what creative patterns
might one look for or hope to find inspiration for in these areas? In
this chapter we will focus upon sexuality, going on from there to
consider questions relating to the preservation of and respect for
human life.

**************************************

Within the natural law tradition of ethics, for the most part in the
hands of moral theologians, we find accordingly that sexual ethics
are particularly bound to the letter of traditionally authoritative
treatments, among which are included the texts of Aquinas, and
that of the Pars Secunda of the Summa Theologica in particular.
This is far less so in the treatment of justice and murder, which
one can accordingly consider more on its own merits, so to say.
Regarding sex, however, it seems particularly useful to proceed by
way, initially at least, of a textual dissection. We might begin with
contraception, since this has assumed such a peculiar importance,
if for largely extrinsic reasons, in Roman Catholic and related
academic circles. We are anxious to find whether there is some
canon or shibboleth which holds independently of the new law of
love, dividing the allegiance as it were, or whether, rather,
generally accepted restrictions upon the sexually possible derive
immediately, i.e. non-mediately, from the requirement of love, in
particular from the "new" commandment, which we have
suggested transcends the paradigm of something's being literally
commanded. Any command, in any case, in terms of our general
analysis, will bear principally upon some human end or good as
191
This, we noted, was explored by Nicholas Berdyaev in
his ethical study, The Destiny of Man.
requiring some corresponding action and not primarily upon an
action as such. Thus love also, as inner or outer act, in St. John's
Gospel and elsewhere, is derived as life-principle, so to say, from
the good end of assimilation to God.
Thus we find, to begin with, that in the pronouncements
of Church or Council contraception is altogether forbidden,
absolutely excluded. What we have here seems to be a
pronouncement, rational or philosophical in character, having the
character of an application of natural law to a special case.192 To
this extent it might seem assimilable to Fr. McCabe's analogy with
particular decisions taken as required during a revolutionary
struggle,193 if it did not look too much like the Suarezian inability
to leave commands too general which Westberg mentions. For, if
we look at the reasoning employed, contraception is not explicitly
classified (by the authorities condemning it) among the vices,
among those classes of action seen as impeding the gaining of the
end, even if certain general principles are employed in arriving at
the condemnation. The nature of contraception is not itself set
out.
This might tend to suggest that it is a vice all on its own.
192
On this topic, cf. Daniel Westberg, "Reason, Will and Legalism", New
Blackfriars, October 1987, pp.431-437., esp. p.435: "The development of
legalistic moral science... can thus be seen to be a characteristic of a
Scotist-Suarezian view of human action... Because choice is a matter of the
will, the will needs to obey commands, and the commands cannot be left
too general (see our discussion of de Muralt's argument above, ch. 4)... St.
Thomas, however... could make each individual situation a matter for the
reason.. to judge what principle was to apply. This meant that the principles
could be left general... help from the Holy Spirit becomes not so much a
matter of the desire to obey God's commands... as wisdom to see how the
general principles are to be applied." We would rather say, to see what
virtue requires. Westberg shows how the professed Thomism of G. Grisez's
The Way of the Lord Jesus in does not in fact break free from the voluntarist
orbit which we call rationalist, preoccupied with "moral norms". This will
lead Grisez to find, for example, that "contraception is morally tantamount
to killing" (Persona, verità e morale: Atti del Congresso Morale, Roma, 7-12
aprile 1986; Città Nuova Editrice, Rome 1986, p.293). Paradoxically, this on
the face of it absurd moral inflation might remind us of Jesus associating
fraternal anger with the prohibition on killing. Of course, if one thinks of
Jesus as laying down a positive command, old-style, rather than
transcending legalism altogether, then the resemblance ceases to be
paradoxical.

193
This is not to imply that it has not always been with us,
and always in the consciousness of the Church even, as J.T.
Noonan's monumental study of it (Contraception: a History
of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists,
Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass. 1965) tends to
show.
Yet it seems clear that according to the analysis in Aquinas
contraception would be found to be a subspecies of the sixth and
worst species of lust (luxuria), i.e. it would be one of the unnatural
vices (vitia contra naturam).194 It would not, however, be the
gravest of these sins against nature, according to Aquinas. Let us
now look at his list of them. For him "the sin of impurity
(immunditia) holds the lowest place" among these.195 He also calls
this vice mollities, softness, and explains it as the procuring of
pollutio. This ought to have a wider meaning than the emission of
seed (outside the womb) if female masturbation, or, by analogy,
uncompleted male masturbation is to be included.
The gravest of these sins against nature, on the other
hand, is bestiality, as being contrary to the nature of the human
species196, and not merely, like the others, against our
determinate generic nature (shared with all animals) in so far as
these acts are against "the natural order of the venereal act".197
This opposition to our God-given nature, in fact, makes all of these
sins worse even than incest, for example, i.e. worse than incest as
such (he is not making light of child-abuse and so on, often a
conjoined offence to incest pure and simple). For although incest
is also directed against something natural, viz. the "natural
reverence" which we owe to persons conjoined to us198, yet this is
a lesser violation if it is a case of normal sexual intercourse. This is
to say that the other sins of lust are not unnatural, even though
they can be said, like all sins, to be in some way or other against
natural law. They "only bypass what is determined according to
right reason."199 These so to say natural or non-perverse sins of
lust, in descending order of gravity after incest, are adultery,
violation (i.e. of a virgin or more innocent person: both of these
being merely aggravated by the violence of rape) and, lastly,
simple fornication between unmarried persons (minima inter
species luxuriae).
Returning to unnatural vice, we find that after bestiality
Aquinas places homosexual behaviour as the gravest sin against
nature. For this would of course be a matter of homosexual acts,
194
Aquinas, op. cit. IIa-IIae 154, 1.

195
Ibid. 154, 12 ad 4um.

196
Ibid. 154, 12 ad 3um.

197
Ibid. 154, 11.

198
Ibid. 154, 9.

199
Ibid. Ia-IIae 94, 3.
of which in turn some would be graver than others, so that here
too, as in ethics in general, there is a certain overlapping of
categorization in so far as one has to look to more than one
criterion at the same time. Thus although St. Thomas calls such
homosexuality the vitium Sodomiticum he includes under it
female concubitus or lying together. Below this, in the scale of sins
against nature, he places departure from an assumed natural way
of lying together in any other way, i.e. given that a man and a
woman are here concerned. This might be, he says, through the
use of some unauthorized instrument (what?) or might involve
other monstruous or bestial activities (what we somewhat blandly
call oral sex, perhaps), but the sin is greater, he says, if the right
orifice is not used (si non sit debitum vas), whether at all or for
the deposition of sperm is not quite clear. Buggery seems
principally meant here, which would thus come out as less grave a
sin in itself than homosexual intercourse, even between women,
but more grave than the use of vibrators or than oral sex.200 Some
of these conclusions are already clearly paradoxical.
If one looked for a reason, which Aquinas does not give,
for this greater gravity of buggery in comparison with the other
failures to observe the due manner (debitus modus) of
heterosexual intercourse, then one would have to find it in
something analogous to that abuse of natural reverence which he
says is what makes incest worse than fornication (or even
adultery). Aquinas in fact says here that

the gravity of a sin is measured more by the abuse of something

than by the omission of its due use.

This is his reason for making masturbation (immunditia) the least

of the peccata contra naturam or sins against nature, a view
which is obscured when the indirect term, self-abuse, is used for
masturbation. For in masturbation a person seeks pleasure as he
or she generally does in intercourse, but without respecting the
natural setting for that pleasure. So it is an abuse of nature and
such a sin, like all sin, is harmful to the self, i.e. to the person and
soul. Nonetheless, the abuse consists, for Aquinas, in an omission,
in the absence of a partner, rather than in an active abuse of self.
Excitation and handling of the organs as such, it seems to follow,
are not for him unnatural in themselves, as is the junction of penis
and anus, even though this be for the same purpose of procuring
pleasure, say.
It is difficult, all the same, to see why buggery is more
200
Ibid. 154, 11, 12 ad 4um.
wrong, given that a willing partner be present, absence of which
constitutes the evil of immunditia. The special and greater evil is
that of a specifically positive abuse of nature. How so?
Well, what has been posited here is, firstly, there being a
due manner of intercourse (concubitus). More specifically,
however, there is, in addition, a due place or vessel (vas) for
deposition of the seed, viz. the vagina.
One can abuse positively (as distinct from the omission of
due use to which we referred) this concubitus, a term meaning
simply lying together, with instruments (e.g. dildoes) or in other
mostruosos et bestiales modos.201 It would seem to follow that
mutual masturbation between man and woman, or husband and
wife, is worse than solitary masturbation, as actively abusing the
natural situation (rather than just failing to set it up before
procuring the pleasure). Such a view would require a sharp
distinction from mere foreplay, the difference depending almost
entirely upon voluntarily procured emission of seed outside the
womb. For the woman, however, it is little more than a difference
of expectancy which determines the character of the action upon
which she is here engaged, altogether too lightweight a
circumstance for such a strong moral difference (between good
and evil), one would think. For a banning of foreplay could hardly
be envisaged. Nor need it be beyond the resources of an ethics of
this type to find reason to be more liberal when considering the
many husbands who through age or other cause can only achieve
emission in this way (there is certainly no linking of masturbation
with murder in the way the sentence quoted from Grisez might
have led us to expect).

If one takes the clause si non sit debitum vas as implying

the use of some other vas, then, by the above argument, emission
in anus or mouth would be worse than the other abuses. Yet the
clause could have a purely negative meaning, meaning any
ejaculation outside the vagina. If so then the other "inordination"
could only refer to such things as unseemly positions, reprobated
by some Church fathers but not easy to take seriously today.
Context, however, seems to make this interpretation improbable,
in which case what we have is a statement as to the special
gravity of buggery.
Following up our hint about "natural reverence" one easily
supposes here that buggery is seen as a special abuse of the
body. One could only refer this notion to some sort of violation of

201
This in other respects typically emotive language is rather untypical
for Aquinas personally.
intimacy. The Latin word intima means depths. One violates the
depths in a way analogous to wounding or stabbing, instead of
placing the penis in a place created for it.
One could ask, does the evil reside in the depositing of
seed in the anus or in penetrating it at all? Would the author
condemn spouses for any kind of caressing or rubbing of the anal
area during intercourse? Probably these exuberances were all
seen as part of the disorder of concupiscence which marriage in
general should remedy and excuse.
All this, of course, is directly relevant to a consideration of
contraceptive intercourse. Setting the latter in this larger context
helps, for one thing, to free the matter from a too exclusive
concentration upon intention, which, as Aquinas points out, is only
one of the circumstances which may or may not happen
(accidere) to an actus humanus which is naturally of a certain
specific type, even if it be also true that it is intention itself which
specifies this type morally (as distinct from naturally). There are
types of action, after all, which cannot be redeemed by any
intention whatever, as you cannot have loving torture (either it is
not real torture or it is not real loving). This must be so, since it is
according as they exemplify these primary objective types of
action that the intentions themselves, as interior acts, are judged
morally. The reason that they specify the outer, objective act is
that they proceed from the inward, interior sphere of freedom, i.e.
of intellect and consequent will, not so much duplicating the
outward act as projecting it in an intentional species.
The use of a condom, for example, straightforwardly
presents one with one of those acts of mutual masturbation which
we have discussed. Whether or not for the sake of pleasure
(delectationis causa: strictly speaking a matter of intention and
hence second-order) emission is procured outside the body (thus
becoming pollutio) and so not in the due place, this being the
essential effect of a condom. We do not find Aquinas, needless to
say, speaking of what he calls pollutio as being "morally
tantamount to killing". Thus he treats male and female
homosexuality, where no sperm is involved, as on an equal moral
footing.
The taking of an ovulation-preventing pill before
intercourse is therefore a different type of act (from use of a
condom), not in itself easily regarded as unnatural. Hence it is
that much of the reasoning in Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae
Vitae is in terms of the intention. To have intercourse with the
intention, as part of this human action (actus humanus) and as
shown by one of the things one does, of preventing conception, is
against nature, the nature of this act in particular. Hence such
behaviour is judged wrong, an offence against natural law also in
the more specific, stronger sense of a peccatum contra naturam.
Yet viewed naturally or "physically" (physikos) it seems to be a
normal marital act with which we have to deal, at least when
considered phenomenally. This is not the case where a condom
(instrumentum non debitum) is used. The taking of the pill forcibly
creates (sometimes it only guarantees) the condition of infertility
which, however, can otherwise occur naturally (and may and often
should, according to the same moralists, be taken into account
when planning responsible sexual behaviour).
It would seem, therefore, difficult, after all, in a Thomistic
classification, to place use of the contraceptive pill under the sins
of lust or, more specifically, under the sins of unnatural vice,
where use of condoms falls. We must, therefore, try to say what
kind of sin it might be instead. An Augustinian might see it as a sin
of lust in the sense of a seeking of venereal pleasure divorced
from the will to procreate. But not only is it probable that St.
Thomas (however, for his part, we interpret St. Augustine) did not
view the pursuit of this pleasure within marriage as sinful as such,
but we have a sure argument against this theory as follows: a
person "on the pill" or agreeing to use of the pill might not, at
least need not, be seeking precisely pleasure in having such inter-
course (he might think it his or her duty to do it once a week, say).
Nonetheless he is always, according to Catholic teaching, guilty of
a sin if he or she uses contraceptive pills for precisely a
contraceptive purpose. So we can forget about pleasure in this
context.
We notice instead that the sin of contraceptive
intercourse is held to be exemplified as it were indifferently where
either a pill or a condom is used. Yet in the latter case, it seems,
an objective, physical peccatum contra naturam is committed,
whereas it is not plausible to say that previous taking of a pill can
transform normal intercourse into mutual masturbation. We might,
for example, imagine a case where repentance (of the pill-taking)
ensued in between but where intercourse was still humanly and
hence morally required (it may be for some reason the last
opportunity for intercourse), the contraceptive intention
meanwhile falling away. These considerations might show why the
joke about the Irish boy who would not let the prostitute he visited
put a condom on him, because it was a sin, is really no joke at all.
Fornication is seen as much less bad than unnatural vice, as
violating the order of reason, but not the order of nature. Of
course we are prescinding, as does the joke, from non-sexual sins
as involved in many such situations, such as imprudent risking of
disease, which where reaching homicidal proportions amounts to
a sin against justice yet worse than perhaps any of these
unnatural sins. One could even imagine, and one might well
judge, that insisting on intercourse with a spouse for whom
pregnancy would mean death would be a worse sin than this
mutual masturbation. But whether the latter would be worse than
a consequently frustrated husband's adultery we can leave to the
casuists, or rather, in the light of our preferred principles, to the
agent's own creative decision-making, without however setting up
some Hare-type calculus for deciding when such decisions are
"right" or not, this being the old casuistry in a new guise.
This teaching helps to make more understandable the
large-scale reluctance of people in Africa and elsewhere (including
Europe, actually) to use condoms as security against AIDS.
Fornication is part of life, of nature, even if a bit disordered, and is
often experienced as joyous. Sterile perversion, on the other
hand, can be repellant. If, for that matter, the rubber spoils the
experience, spoils the feeling, then it is this same natural feeling
that is spoiled. This, rather than greed for the richest sensation, is
what is more fundamentally involved. So it is merely distracting to
disparage this as the man's point of view. Women, but also men,
are afraid of being infected, but this, again, is a different issue, a
circumstance which may or not attach to those essentially sexual
action-types which we are as such considering. A man or woman
who even suspects he or she is transmitting a deadly disease
commits a great injustice in risking his or her partner in this way,
even, surely, where desire has made the partner willing. We make
these points to forestall misunderstanding, but reiterate that as
accidental circumstances they do not belong to the more
fundamental discussion of sexual morality being conducted here,
but rather to disputes about justice. Even the fundamental
injustice represented by adultery is first to be treated as a species
of lust.202
What is said of condoms would apply equally to coitus
interruptus (the sin of Onan) if we follow the teaching of Aquinas
here. There is today, of course, and doubtless in the past as well,
202
One cannot be too categorical here, however. The reasons Aquinas
gives for the greater wrongness of adultery over fornication (Summa
theol. IIa-IIae 154, 8) all seem to be reasons of justice alone, such as the
harm risked to existing legitimate children and so on. The flexibility goes so
far that Aquinas can say that he who loves his own wife too ardently (at
least as using her dishonourably: inhoneste eo utens) can in some way
(aliqualiter) be called adulterous (ad 3um: the phraseology indicates a
judgment falling short of the literal, though one typical of medieval
sobriety).
a not uncommon feeling that masturbation is perfectly natural in
certain situations, concerning which opinions differ on a scale
from the young person's self-confident decision to release sexual
tension to the sexologist's advice that masturbation helps to
brighten up a marriage. It needs to be remembered, therefore, if
one is inclined to ridicule papal teaching on and, especially,
preoccupation with contraception that this teaching and
preoccupation is occurring in a moral and cultural context where,
as we have been pointing out, all types of masturbation are very
clearly reprobated, as is extra-marital sex. The debate is only
about behaviour between marriage partners.
Aquinas, however, leaves us with the paradox of
something unnatural which is yet, as mollities, very usual and
often the lesser evil among the courses open to a person, it would
seem. One can easily find it a pity, where one is not convinced by
arguments as to masturbation's naturalness (getting to know
one's own body and so on), that young people have to begin in
this way. Those societies might seem better, more joyous, in this
respect at least, where people were married at or around puberty,
a specifically sexual introversion being avoided, even if a lighter
approach to adultery might come to be implied in what would be a
very much longer run. There are, however, figures to suggest that
those marrying very young find fidelity easier. The big objection,
anyhow, would centre around the supposed incapacity of making
an autonomous choice of mate at such an age. Here, however, we
find ourselves involved in a kind of circle, requiring an expansion
of the topic beyond what is appropriate here, while insofar as one
doubts whether masturbation, voyeurism and the rest, to which
we take like ducks to water, are so unnatural after all then the
topic itself becomes somewhat hypothetical. This, however, it
should be clear, would be to give up, or make it impossible to
accept, the papal position on contraception as being, in our
interpretation, a type of masturbation and therefore wrong203,
except in so far as we might say that entering upon the estate of
marriage ruled out masturbation henceforth, whatever exactly our
view of it was in itself. Sex within marriage is bound to the project
of personal union, which must not be divorced from a procreative
potentiality.
It might seem to us, if we return to our original set of
problems, that when Paul VI (in Humanae Vitae) wrote of the
inhibition of the natural purpose of sex either before, during or

203
Cf. our earlier defence of the papal teaching and this interpretation
of it in "Natural Law in Humanae Vitae", Acts of the Congress Humanae
Vitae: 20 Anni Dopo, held in Rome, November 1988.
after the act he was morally equating the two "methods", viz. pill
and condom. In the light of our discussion, however, we can say
that it is rather the case that he was abstracting from the specific
evil of the use of instrumenta, provided, that is, that the pill taken
is not itself viewed as an instrumentum, being an effecting by
chemical means not of a barrier between sperm and ovum204 but
of non-ovulation. The instrumentation is different, however, since
non-ovulation is not in itself unnatural. Hence the same pill, with
this effect, is allowable for therapeutical purposes unconnected
with a contraceptive intention. By contrast, there does not seem
any situation so easily imaginable in which a condom, with its
proper effect, is to be used, provided we assumed the illegitimacy,
as argued by the Church leadership205, of all "harvesting" of
sperm.
It is difficult to see, further, and as mentioned already,
that the couple would be committing a further sin if they should
happen to have intercourse during the time of the pill's
effectiveness, for some good reason. They might genuinely repent
of having taken the pill and still have loving intercourse at that
time for some good reason, e.g. some rare occurrence of mutual
emotion due to the shared repentance and which might help the
husband overcome a potency problem threatening the marriage.
The possibility proves, again, the disparateness between use of
condom and pill. In fact it is only with the pill that contraception
occurs in its pure state, instead of being achieved through a
perverted form of intercourse which is, on the classical view,
independently wrong. So contraception is not necessarily
achieved through perverted intercourse alone. Thus Paul VI
himself mentions abortion, a quite different type of sin, in relation
to contraception. Taking a pill, on the other hand, is not in itself a
sin at all, this lying entirely in the end-purpose of contraception.
This holds, even though one who steals in order to fornicate be
more fornicator than thief (Aristotle's example) and thus the pill-
taking be assimilated morally to contraception. For contraception
204
This amounts to a prevention of a union of bodies, not perhaps
immediately apparent to an observer.

205
Cf. the document Donum Vitae. It might seem too simple to say this,
bearing in mind at least those cases where use of a condom clearly lessens
an existing sin's malice, even, surely, for those who see it as turning the
originally purposed fornication into an unnatural act. In our culture, indeed,
most young people grow up thinking masturbation is less grave than
fornication, but this may be due to a sense, stressed also by Aquinas, of the
dangers to others, even those still to be conceived, inherent in fornication. It
is not, that is, seen as worse qua sexual; indeed it as "naturally" evokes a
certain pride as masturbation often evokes shame, though the naturalness
of this shame may in turn be questioned.
is still not the objectum of the pill-taking qua pill-taking, but rather
in most cases its end or finis, which, as Aquinas says, is a
circumstance of any particular human act, even though it can
specify it morally. Again, even though the sin lies in intending
contraception during intercourse yet such intercourse may be
sinless if the intention changes beforehand. So intercourse after
sinfully taking the pill (because of the intention) is not in itself
sinful, since an act of intercourse cannot itself be directed to
preventing conception, though it may participate in the sinfulness
of the whole initiated course of action.206 Thus Paul VI stated that
any action "specifically intended to prevent procreation" is
"excluded"207 at the same time as he finds it in itself legitimate
that one have an "intention to avoid children and mean to make
sure that none will be born."208 What is condemned, therefore, is
fulfilling this intention by a privative action in relation to
intercourse. Fulfilling it by omission of intercourse at certain times
is ceteris paribus legitimate. At the same time, we have seen, not
all such actions in relation to intercourse make that intercourse
perverted in the moral sense. Hence Paul VI, in the passage
quoted, does not condemn the related intercourse but the action
depriving it of its natural effect.
In pointing out some of the paradoxes of listing absolute
prohibitions here under the theological rubric of sin we have tried
to serve the thesis of the total sovereignty of love, with its
consequent freedom. This might seem to bring us closer to
utilitarianism. Masturbation, for example, seems to come out as
sometimes the best course, and so we can construct the familiar
extreme examples, such as that a person might have to judge it
best on some occasion to lie with some animal, in order to mollify
a tyrant, say, though one could never prove that the stance of
absolute a priori refusal might not be better, and in that case our
premisses would require one to show that such behaviour was as
essentially contradictory of love as we asserted torture to be, King
Cong, Bottom, the Frog Prince and so on notwithstanding, not to
speak of mermaids, though these, of course, were all more or less
rational beasts. But the differences with utilitarianism have been
206
Much of our discussion depends on recognition of a difference
between the natural object of a (type of) act and the more or less
supervening moral intention. This is rejected by Alan Donagan (op. cit.
p.159). Cf. our "Two Criticisms of Double Effect" (The New Scholasticism, Vol.
LVIII,1, Winter 1984, pp.67-83), for discussion of Donagan and Philippa Foot
on this topic.
207
HV 14.

208
Ibid. 16.
specified above. Utilitarian is plainly prepared to sacrifice love and
all human dignity on occasion. It is in fact itself an iron and
inhuman law.

****************************

Here might be a good place to consider erotic attraction in at least

some of its aspects. For it is this powerful factor in human life,
even the most powerful by some accounts, which makes it
impossible, incorrect, to isolate a mere sexuality at the animal and
instinctual level of a need of and duty to the species. Sex is never
just sex, and although erotic feeling may sometimes coincide with
what is judged to be pornographic it is in reality wholly distinct
from it. It occurs through personal awareness and is thus more
likely to begin, and so to be at its most powerful, as a matter of
the eyes, the glance (at times the stare), or, less frequently
(unless in association with sight), the hearing than to actually
begin with touch, even if this sense later becomes, as Aquinas
implies, the matter and focus of sexual temperance. Smell can
also play a part in personal awareness, though sight and hearing
seem able to convey much more.209
When erotic excitement occurs through such personal
awareness but without such eye-contact, say through a sight of a
part of the body shown off through recognizably provocative
clothing, this is often due to awareness, real or fancied, of an at
least implicit invitation. The contrary type of excitement, occurring
through the sense of an intimate view obtained against the will of
the other, seems rather connected with an initial sense of
impotence or even resentment, and so is not purely erotic, if we
remember the root meaning of eros as love, understanding love
as unitive. Thus understood this impulse to rape or "peep" has its
female counterpart in other forms of the wish to dominate or
humiliate.
The erotic current may pass thus through the eyes, as
brought out in a poem such as Donne's "The Ecstasy",

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread

Our eyes upon one double string;

209
It may be felt that the viewpoint here is decidedly male, and
recognition of this limitation (as in our study, above, of our sources) should
reduce its power for distortion. What is male is also fully human, while the
Aristotelian view that gender is not in the soul as forma corporis supports
there being a deep unity in the experiences of the two sexes in this most
basically human field.
the union thus envisaged, all the same, is accomplished otherwise
though this never provides final satisfaction. One might see it as a
sign of a future union in love of the souls (and bodies) of the
blessed, where through the eyes or the whole body one person is
taken into another, a delight foreshadowed in the sexual
"tightening" but able there, through a more complete spiritualiza-
tion, to reach greater intensity without throwing the glorified
organism into disharmony.
Viewed thus, the opposition between agape and eros is
clearly less than absolute. They have always needed one
another.210 Eros and its illuminations and delights belong naturally
with charity211, as the Christian doctrine of marriage maintains.
One might wonder whether such views and expectations
commit one to thinking that in a general resurrection men will still,
as on earth, seek a more special type of union with women than
with other men, and vice versa. Even such a "spiritual" writer as
Augustine insists that the sexual difference, as integral to the
personality, remains. Alternatively, an erotic dimension in one's
feeling for one's own sex, for most people somewhat subdued
here on earth, might open up, the intellectual aspects of such
unions partaking of the erotic as achieving a richer intimacy than
we attain to now. This, after all, is certainly true in the Christian
tradition as regards relations with the divinity, conceived of as a
unity above the sexual difference (God is maternal as well), even
though this divinity condescended to assume just one of the two
genders in Jesus Christ.212 There will be no marrying because the
general union of all with all is so entire. Jung's doctrine of animus
and anima would here find confirmation.
Such speculation refers us back to the initial idea that
erotic attraction even now is primarily intellectual, of the soul.
One experiences a kinship beckoning to an unguessed intimacy,
where heart speaks to heart, cor ad cor loquitur, the sexes
complementing one another. This phrase was Newman's motto,
though we should remember how he objected, in reference to the

210
Cf. Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, Collins Fount, Glasgow 1974, pp.
260-262. "But when eros and agape are regarded not only as distinct, but as
mutually exclusive, this is at the expense of both eros and agape."

211
This is the burden of Dante's Vita Nuova.
212
This belief might seem to have implications for the relation of the
two genders to one another. A man, anyhow (here Jesus), can be the inner
life-principle of any woman. Yet it is surely not just chance, in the tradition,
that the Word became Son, not daughter, while it seems difficult
convincingly to rest such a weighty matter upon defunct Jewish social
attitudes.
poet Coventry Patmore (The Angel in the House), to the "mixing of
amorousness and religion". Here, however, our prime object has
been rather to distinguish the erotic from a morbid, loveless or
purely instinctive sexuality. The transcendental or religious
potentialities of the erotic serve mainly as illustrations of this
thesis.

*********************************

Related to this is the doctrine of concupiscence as being,

theologically viewed, one of the four wounds of original sin,
together with weakness, ignorance and malice.213 The idea is that
erotic arousal is something to be ashamed of as witnessing to the
loss of rational control over this passion and, specifically, over the
genital organs.214
Aquinas develops this doctrine in a positive spirit, and
away from Augustine's original teaching. So he argues that even
if, as is claimed, unfallen man retained full rational control over
sexual passion,215 yet the delight experienced would, for that very
reason, have been greater. This view follows from the thesis that
intellect is itself forma corporis, a view also essential to the
doctrine of the inclinations as a source of law.
The implicit questioning of the Augustinian angle can be
carried a shade further, however. Is the shame to which Augustine
refers, shame at finding oneself out of control, really the central
shame and modesty (verecundia) which we feel about sex? Put
differently, is the reason that one cannot easily bring off an act of
copulation in the market-place (an example of Augustine's) simply
that one knows that one is engaging in a sinful activity? Reflection
suggests not. It is rather due to a fear or dislike, such as even
animals can feel, of exposing one's intimate vulnerability to public
gaze. We can feel exactly the same shyness about our religious
actions. In both cases we acknowledge a total dependence upon

213
Aquinas, Summa Theol. Ia-IIae 85, 3. Aquinas takes
this list over from Bede, who got it from Augustine.
214
Such pessimism is not uncongenial to modern sensibilities either.
Thus in a recent film a comedienne (played by Sally Field) claims that it was
the first occurrence of sexual feeling, with the corresponding loss of rational
control, that destroyed the harmony of Eden, as Adam shouted to his wife,
"Stand back! I don't know how big this thing gets."
215
Here though Aquinas distinguishes between control over the
initiation of a process, such as deciding when to take a nap, and control
through every moment of the process initiated, not compatible either with
napping or with most worthwhile sexual activity.
love. Where this is not so, as in a "gang rape", the incapacitating
modesty is also absent, which supports the point. One who loves
or adores is vulnerable as exposing his own insufficiency and this
is the deeper source of the inhibition against exposing the sex
organs (or a religious propensity). They are the organs of love,
vulnerable indeed in their very physical, boneless structure.
Eros is thus again, pace Newman, associated with
religion. If the Church and ancient Israel at times have seemed to
fight shy of this, then this is because of the real danger of the
erotic taking over, as in the surrounding cults, swamping the
divine intellect and spirituality. But in actual intercourse with God,
as shown in both Christian and Old Testament mysticism, the
continuity with erotic passion is plain to be seen. An
overwhelming intuition of the absolute or boundless, or of what is
unconditionally desired, is what calls forth the erotic response of a
properly helpless longing, as is manifest from the crudest realms
of erotica up to the highest flights of mysticism.216 Dante, with his
"figure of Beatrice" (Charles Williams) is a central figure for our
culture here. The unconditional desire is explained in terms of an
image, on the pattern of incarnation, rather than in terms of
irrational aberration or enslavement. "This also is thou, neither is
this thou."
Hence we have the teaching about avoiding the "first
movements of sensuality", "occasions" of sin and so on. Arousal,
as we saw in the text from St. Teresa, leaves reasonableness
behind. There is at least a parallel, between highest and lowest,
as we call them, and, as we read even in The Imitation of Christ,
"the highest cannot stand without the lowest." We can recall St.
Ignatius of Antioch, "my eros is crucified." Love and death, indeed,
are constantly related, e.g. in what is called the Gospel "passion",
of which Wagnerian Schopenhauerism is a confused echo.217
So if it is true that lack of rational control, vulnerability,
causes sexual shame, yet this shame (like the passion of
verecundia) is not essentially a sinner's shame, but rather a
creature's hushedness before the absolute and at least potentially
holy, even if we happen to be sinners. Avoidance of this
dimension, in the well-meant rush to convince men of their guilt,
was perhaps the first onset of the general forgetfulness of the
transcendent which we call secularism. The authors of Genesis
wished to deny the divinity of the stars, yet Job saw the divine

216
Cf. the discussions of this in C.S. Lewis, Surprised by
Joy or The Problem of Pain (final chapter).
217
On this topic, cf. Denis de Rougement, Passion and Society.
inscrutability in the glory of a creature, a sea-monster, and it was
not only Satan who promised Eve that we could be as God but
also the Psalmist who declared that we are anyhow his true
image. "I have said ye are gods."

***********************************

What has been said so far in this chapter can be taken as woven
round those two most cherished ideals, love and freedom. Their
only competitor might seem to be justice, though this perhaps is
valued not so much for ourselves as for the sake of others, or at
least equally for their sake. We are indeed afraid that we will not
receive justice if we do not give it to others, and this applies also
to mercifulness or kindness, which returns us to love. The Socratic
insight, anyhow, that the unjust man is to be pitied does not
appeal so immediately to us as our desire for love and freedom.
These are in many respects valued both together and above all
else. To be just may be an indispensable condition for human
happiness, but love and freedom are seen as of its essence, while
happiness or beatitude itself, we find Aquinas saying, is, like God,
more noble and "honest" than even virtue. Even though, as Kant
saw, justice cannot be made a means to happiness, yet it is still a
condition for happiness and this is what gives justice its value. In
that sense it is a means, but not in the sense that it should only
be sought for the sake of happiness. One ought rather to believe
that renouncing one's own non-essential good in favour of what is
due to others is uniquely the way to one's own essential good.
Acting justly is in fact a first participation in happiness, this, as we
said, being the condition for its own positive and desirable
character, what makes it a value. This situation depends upon the
fact that we are so made that our happiness will consist in certain
personal relations, so that justice is required for the enjoyment of
love and freedom.218
We should hope that these relationships which justice
presupposes, with God and men, in at least some cases blossom
into love219, understood as a mutual well-wishing and delight in
one another, whether with our relatives, friends, spouses or
lovers. And really none of this is possible without an initial love for
218
This means, of course, that there could never be a total collision
between justice and inclination, i.e. it cannot meaningfully be proposed. One
can indeed "hunger and thirst" after it.

219
We have made clear above that justice not informed
and thus originating in love is in itself deformed and hence
ultimately unjust.
the ground of our own being, which leads some to delight in the
very sand upon which they walk, ground indeed, and which in the
end is love of God.
There are indeed those who aspire to love with an
impatience which excludes justice, obsessed with a desire for
union excluding respect for the otherness of the beloved, as if he
or she (and not God) had somehow become the ground of their
being. This is an illusion with much good in it, but only potentially.
If literally followed through it is already a murder of the other, and
we might ask how this passion, with its insensate jealousies, could
ever have been considered an exalted and even the most exalted
form of love. An answer might be that as creatures brought out of
nothing we each have a natural need for a union with that ground
outside ourselves which will give us all that we lack but which
needs nothing from us. Feeling this, we also feel that nature,
doing nothing in vain, will provide us with such a love, and so, in
the simplicity of youth, we confuse the most worthy images of
that beauty and love, our fellow men or women, with that beauty
and love itself. Hence one may guess that it is those with high
metaphysical sensibility, or so-called religious genius, who are
most exposed to this tragic mistake.
However, such an experience, the falling in love,
prudently handled, can become a way to deeper love of reality, of
God we might say, as traced out par excellence by the poet
Dante. At the other extreme we have Wagner's Tristan. Both
transcend a love-starved world, one in life, the other in death,
although it is in Dante himself that we read that death is the
gateway to life (mors est janua vitae).
One could say much more than we have done about this
eroticism which is but a misplaced and hence treacherous eros,
about the ready sympathy of our organism with such an absolutist
illusion.220 To combat it we need not only the moderation of
passion by reason but also the discernment of spirits.
We can compare our need for and interest in love with our
need for and interest in freedom. There is a sense in which
freedom is merely a means, a condition, for doing anything; it is,
as Hobbes defines it, the state of not being hindered or
constrained. It is apparent, though, that freedom is valued for
itself, as if it had a spiritual quality. It is often those who have
more of it than they seem to need who most urgently want more
220
This can be conceded while still maintaining the more
positive view of concupiscence and the ground of sexual
modesty (verecundia, which Aquinas declares lacking to
great saints as well as great sinners) outlined above.
of it, not only freedom from impediment but freedom to decide, or
to do nothing and remain alone. An absorbing interest in health is
often explicable in function of a desire for that kind of freedom, a
spiritual and not just a bodily good even where the body be its
subject.
Yet there is an apparent conflict between freedom and
love, surprising in view of what we may take to be the oneness of
the human good, if these two are indeed cherished above all else.
Hence the typical notion of freedom in current discussion and con-
versation is one of not being bound, as one is bound if one has a
household pet, or if one is committed to someone in what is called
an "old" relationship, such that it inhibits one from forming new
"relationships". Of course the proponents of this kind of freedom
avoid saying that it is love which inhibits freedom. Still there lurks
here an unconscious cynicism suggesting a genuine inability to
understand which is comparable to an incipient psychopathic
tendency.
For where what is valued is principally newness of
relationship this amounts to rejection of relationship as such and
consequent elimination of responsibility. What remains are just
surface encounters of the flesh, a halfway stopping-place on a
journey of retreat into a sterile solitude, ultimately inimical to
erotic or any other fulfilment. If this were freedom it would be
freedom to go nowhere, best compared with dropping a man or
woman in the middle of Siberia or on the moon, where he or she is
imprisoned without need of confinement.
Even the specific, very real charm of starting new
relationships will not long survive this negative orientation to their
continuance, once both parties understand that there is no
prospect of or capacity for this. The reason is that if one does not
intend to continue with the relationship then one is not starting a
new relationship, a truth mirrored in the requirement of an
intention of fidelity (till death) for the very validity of a marriage.
Without this all encounters will become casual and impersonal, a
devitalization reaching well down into the sexual dimension. It
may however take a few years for the persons making these
rejections to understand them as such.
So we need to understand how freedom is to be achieved
in a life of relationships, of love, given that the freedom to go
nowhere is ipso facto no freedom at all. For freedom of choice
cannot exist without the readiness to make a choice, after which
the choice is made. Does freedom end here? Or does freedom
from unemployment and loneliness now begin?
But one need not postulate a previous unemployment and
loneliness. The biblical pattern of leaving father and mother to
cleave to the spouse recommends a life of uninterrupted
relationship with others (with no bed-sitter interregnum), in any
case always with the world of spirits, so that one behaves with
modesty and decorum even when humanly alone, like the
craftsmen of our cathedrals who did not forsake beauty of form
even when working on those parts where no one was likely to
look. Before the commitment of vocation, in this perspective,
there were always the tasks of the home, the father's workshop
for example. Yet the moment of new choice should not be missed
if one is not to fall out of this pattern of relationship, in self-exile
to a spiritual Siberia.
What then is this freedom of choice once made, twin
blossom, with love, of our dreams of happiness? Not all choices
bring freedom after all, many are commitments to slavery. What
could it be about love itself that liberates?
We may say that if love is the willing of good to another
then it is not separable from our notion of what good is. On St.
Teresa's view, for instance, to love our neighbour is to will that he
or she love God whole-heartedly, become a fulfilled human being
in her terms. On any terms loving someone is willing him or her all
that is good. This means that we do not forget him or her, do not,
in principle at least, switch off the current of love since we know
that it is in itself the greatest good we can bestow. In the end only
love counts, this was the insight of St. John of the Cross. So we
are, as we say, carrying him or her in our hearts. Spouses,
perhaps, or parents, understand this most easily.
What this liberates or frees us from is the closed prison of
self. To love is to be related to another not just externally but in
one's spirit. This setting up of relations is the natural fulfilment of
personality. If it were not then it would not be liberating. So
freedom from relationships does not fulfil personality and is not
liberating. One might as well be free from happiness, or success,
or life, any kind of life.
An exclusive love, however, might seem at first sight to
leave one imprisoned. A man who deliberately only loves his wife
or child is not free. For just as when one knows, then one knows
that one knows, so when one loves must one also love love itself,
and so to love one person must teach one to love others. The
good father does not harden his face against other children, the
good spouse becomes a loving member of society.
Someone might object that by this argument he or she
should love other women or men as he loves his wife or she loves
her husband. This does not follow. The argument shows, rather,
that a man, say, should love the women to whom he is not
married in the way that is appropriate and natural in such a case,
just as a mother does not love her child in the way she loves her
spouse, but loves both equally nonetheless. This may indeed be a
love which is best expressed at times in a certain reserve, as
being that which is most compatible with whole-hearted love for
his wife. We know these things.
From the point of view of these possibilities the desire to
possess seems a limited and deformed type of love more than it is
an exciting alternative. For the love of love and of loving is a
movement out of the possessive self and its saturnine immobility
into a literal ec-stasy. I live yet not I. It parallels the old doctrine of
knowledge where I intentionally become the other without ceasing
to be myself, the remedy for our finitude. Knowledge and love,
indeed, are the defining marks of spirit, as love and freedom are
twin pillars of happiness. "As having nothing and yet possessing
all things."

*******************************

Love, we implied, is notoriously difficult to define. Yet the notion

speaks to us all, at least under the aspect of something desired,
something which we want to receive rather than to give. We do
not at first understand St. Francis's saying "It is in loving that we
are loved" or St. John's "We love God because he first loved us."
The latter statement indeed confirms the initial legitimacy
of wanting to be loved. The difficulty, of definition for example,
seems to stem from the fact that love as such is not to be found in
this temporal and spatial world. What we see and hope for are
mere signs of it (which can however help to establish and streng-
then it), embraces, hugs, spoken or written assertions of it,
directly or indirectly conveyed by style or manner. All these things
can deceive, in the hands of either a Judas or a romantic who
lacks self-knowledge.
The same, of course, might be said of anger or the other
passions or virtues of the soul. But love, unlike many of these, we
wish to remain as a permanent possession or atmosphere.
Otherwise it is no use to us. We may also wish the virtues to
remain with us, though we can never be sure that we possess
them. The virtue of love also we cannot be sure that we possess.
But for the satisfaction of being loved we must be sure that we
have it, sure of being loved.
So what is it, of which the temporal and spatial signs can
never suffice? The desire for love always goes beyond them, and
can thus be truly termed insatiable. Love, in a word, seeks union,
even identification, the abolition of inside and outside inseparable
from material nature. Hence we read, "I in them and they in me,"
impossible in terms of a spatial relationship. "What the spiritual
man seeks is contact," writes a Carthusian author. He should
know.
A connection here suggests itself between the desire for
love, surely foundation for peace and the other goods which the
world needs, and a spiritual reality such as satisfaction of this
desire requires, since material reality does not allow us to
transcend a separate existence which we find lonely.
But even if we grant to one another a spiritual dimension
there might seem little likelihood that two or more souls would
unite with one another for more than certain privileged episodes,
even as mother and child tend either to grow apart with the years
or, at best, bear with one another's shortcomings, from the point
of view of the love desired, gracefully. Even those blessed with a
more enduring love can feel this, more rather than less, mutual
forgiveness moving to the centre of the stage in the way that the
Gospel seems to envisage.
What the longing for love requires, then, is a contact with
the person, even an adoption into itself by some higher being
possessing the first prerequisite for this. This prerequisite can only
be that that being in any case has always lain at the source of
one's movements, free action and selfhood, though not as the
explicit friend we here envisage, one "closer to me than I am to
myself." The active virtue of love as envisaged by St. Francis
might only be possible as the mirror image of such an adoption.
To realise our need for this being, infinite, a spirit, Love
himself, should lead to our progressively withdrawing our hope
from all that is temporal or spatial, all the "things which are seen",
to become, in all the exactness of the traditional phrase, an
interior soul. This corresponds, as giving the meaning, to that
natural process of detachment and calm coming with age and
identified often with wisdom. It can free people to take greater,
not less responsibility.

***********************************

The development proposed here might be described as a progress

from love of the law to the law of love. Here we have done little
more than list the traditional precepts in sexual matters, although
we have not scrupled to point to contradictions and
improbabilities, and not merely "hard cases", which seem to arise.
Many might prefer to read them as a generalized description of
the way of love and fidelity in sexual relations, and one can
indeed argue that moral law is as much descriptive as is biological
or physical law. It is only the epistemological conditions for its
apprehension by the subject that are different, presenting him
with a course of behaviour to be followed or refused. We would
stress the aesthetic element; Aristotle contrasted art, where a law
consciously broken can be a sign of greater mastery, with virtuous
prudence, where ignorance or accident lessens the offence. The
wisest prudence, however, may at times, and even frequently,
appear to the foolish to be simply failing in propriety when it is in
fact following a higher principle hardly able to be called law any
more since it is a veritable hurricane of the spirit. Law, after all,
we noted, is an enunciation of certain proportions (ius) to be
found in reality. It is to be expected that a just response to these
proportions, always between individual things, will at times
require a finer net than enunciative law, its pedagogic purpose
outlived, will be capable of providing. It is here, with the beautiful
action, unable to be provided for in advance, that the area of the
aesthetic is seen in its true extent, as indeed the noblest and most
natural setting for the ethical. Nor need this be confined to the
heroic, the unforseeable act of heroic forgiveness, of solidarity
with the disgraced and so on. It can be a graceful response to an
unexpected claim of one's own nature, whether in a love frowned
upon by the generality or in a perceived need to "let one's hair
down", or even upon that special day when a child or young
person is first astonished and overwhelmed by the previously
unguessed presence of a pillar of fire, a source of power,
demanding actuation, within his or her own body. And so, just as
there seem to be found the most not always self-evidently
perspicuous laws in the sexual sphere, so here there might seem
to be the more scope for what we have called a creative ethic, at
times apparently setting aside one or other traditional inhibition
but which, where it is indeed creative, fulfils without destroying.
One could, indeed, in the other direction, regard religious or
eschatological celibacy as a creative response of this
type.Appendix. The sexual ethics of Aquinas, of the tradition we
might well say, deserved to be looked at more systematically than
we did here, where we began with the topical question of
contraception, going on to make some selected remarks on
concupiscence viewed theologically as a wound of original sin.
The clearest presentation of the relevant ideas of Aquinas
for our project are perhaps found in QD de malo XV, "de luxuria".
In his initial response (art. 1) he first isolates lust as a "capital"
vice (this term is explained in article 4). This vice, one of
intemperance, is clearly distinguished from the separate acts of
injustice, i.e. of what is materially unlawful (they are of course still
classed under intemperance as against the precepts of
temperance), which it may or may not lead us to commit. We
explored this distinction in our chapter on justice.
Lust is the vice opposed to temperance in the latter's
capacity as moderating the pleasures of sexual or venereal touch.
It is opposed by "superabundance" (there is a separate vice of
deficiency or "diminutio", cf. art. 1 ad 9). Aquinas here follows
Augustine, whom he quotes to clinch his case. "lust is not a vice
attaching to beautiful and sweet bodies, but to the soul perversely
loving physical pleasures to the neglect of temperance by which
we choose the spiritually more beautiful, the incorruptibly more
sweet" (from Civitas Dei - Aquinas quotes a somewhat corrupted
text, and his own text here seems incomplete, having only one
member of a vel... vel construction).
This distinction between inward and outward sin or
disorder (inordinatio) is even more of a duality in the case of lust
than in the case of some other vices. Aquinas's first analogy or
example of it is illiberality, the disordered love of and desire for
money, which exists in its pure state where the money is due to
someone anyway, although it can easily lead to acts of theft or
dishonesty inordinata secundum se (art. 1) as having materiam
caritati repugnantem (2 ad 6). Another example is gluttony. One
can have a gluttonous mind where no food is available; still, the
acts of over-eating it leads to are not, he says, sinful secundum
se, i.e. apart from one's dispositions (one might overeat as part of
an experiment).
So in the case of lust the inner act of the vice can exist
alone or it can underlie a natural (or "lawful") act of sex in which
one neglects temperance as directing to one's ultimate end in that
no command of God would stop one, either if one found it was not
one's wife or because one is already desiring another woman at
the same time.221 Yet this sin of desiring one's own wife
"superabundantly" can remain at the venial level if one would still
be ready to abstain rather than break God's commandment.222

221
Messenger point out that Aquinas refers these sins
principally to the way in which an act is initiated rather than
to what happens within the act itself (as in drunken driving,
we might say).
222
Pope John Paul II caused a stir in the Italian media a
few years ago by warning men against looking at their wives
Aquinas here expresses himself in a way that seems to resist our
general attempt to go behind the idea of a divine commandment
(not to "reduce" it). But it can be shown that Aquinas might
express himself differently on his own principles, as we see
already in the case of temperance as such, only "commanded" in
the sense that we cannot love our true good and still be happy
without it.
We pass then to acts of lust inordinata secundum se in
what is in fact the more precise sense of having undue (here
injustice arises) matter repugnant to charity. We have found that
we can see any wrong as repugnant to charity, indeed only this
repugnance (charity being the form of all virtue) is undue, so this
is a definition here of what is inordinate223, not an addition.
Charity, as caring for the good of man, in the first place here of
children, requires all sexual commerce between men and women
to be ordered by marriage to one another. Such commerce must
however be proportionate not only to the education of children
but to their generation. Thus, Aquinas argues, outward sins are
those in general which harm man's life, firstly by taking it away
(murder), or even by taking away goods needed for it (theft) or, he
goes on, taking away what is potential to it, viz. semen. All
inordinatio about this, therefore, is against charity and as such
distinct already224 from the sin of lust giving rise to it. It appears,
furthermore, that all voluntary acts of emission of semen not in
themselves potentially generative are thus inordinate (age,
sterility or weakness frustrate this potentiality propter aliquod
particulare accidens. It remains a real potency in such cases
secundum communem speciem actus so here there is no sin.
Because of this aspect of the common good at which his language
hints Aquinas argues that use of the generative organs is matter
for the "legislator" as eating is not225. But law considers acts only

lustfully. Perhaps he had been looking over these passages.

It seems a pity he did not supply more of the rationale
offered if the subject was to be broached at all.
223
Even Aquinas's ordo amoris is itself constituted by the
intrinsic requirements of charity itself. One would hurt love
itself by preferring a stranger to one's mother who bore one,
and this is presupposed when Christ appears to transcend
this ("Who are my mother and my brethren etc.").
224
There can also be sins as distinct from lust as theft on
occasion arising from it, he points out.
225
Cf. art. 2 ad 12.
in themselves and generally: this might cut both ways).
Two comments: Aquinas's view of emission of semen
seems to depend on its being homo in potentia, and if he saw
sperm as homunculi then this refers to a more actualized
potentiality than what we now know of sperm can grant. Sperm is
potentially man in the same sense as the ovum held back by "the
pill", no more and no less (though this be still "more" potentially
human than a piece of bread or even a quantity of transfused
blood or, probably, a transplanted heart). This weakens, at least
as making less direct, the force of this argument against voluntary
seminal emission outside of a generative purpose. Might it not
apply equally, or not apply, to voluntary retention of sperm due to
celibacy? So much sperm comes out anyway. Secondly, this would
mean that female masturbation, alone or in a group (where not
inciting men to emission), was not a direct offence against charity
of the same kind, i.e. even if the sperm is not a homunculus, since
injustice refers the evil of these acts to injustice via sperm. Nor
does female masturbation affect the ovum. At article 3, however,
Aquinas introduces a "vice against nature" equated with acts
proceeding from a previous lust and from which no generation
could proceed, irrespective of semen. It would follow then that
these acts do not exemplify the vitium contra naturam if they are
ever performed without the inordination of lust. But probably
Aquinas means that they are identified as acts of the generative
organs, and this would include female acts of this kind.226
It is easy today to be dismissive of much of this
reasoning, but a feeling of its general soundness remains, insofar
as sexual preoccupation is indeed intemperance; we cannot
attribute it to those lives fulfilled in intense charity227, even if we
want to say, in "pastoral" spirit, "something must be allowed to
youth" (and indeed to all stages of life, as Freud allowed it to
infants). Here the ideals of virginity and celibacy become
intelligible. As Aquinas says, vehement application of the mind to
a lower power debilitates the higher powers (art. 4), and sex that

226
One can still wonder what makes intercourse with a
sheep, say, worse than masturbation or not just a form of
masturbation. Would the evil of the act be lessened if
performed with a condom, for example (we prescind from
hygiene and health here), or if the sheep were dead. Would
that still be "bestiality"? Probably not.
227
Rasputin might be urges as counter-example to this
statement.
is not vehement is not of much interest to anyone.228
If, finally, these arguments or at least their general drift
are in the main acceptable they point to a life only partially and at
times attained by most people, Christian or otherwise. "The just
man falls seven times a day." So it is not surprising that a positive
religious teaching and appeal to "law" is needed to back it up,
plus perhaps a tendency to rely too categorically upon
questionable arguments (unless we think that there are implicit
premisses to be brought out which would much strengthen these
arguments). In so far as we can see such a situation obtaining (as
we see the daily nastinesses that occur between people in
general) we should be the more open to the traditional way of
going on whereby people accuse and berate themselves over acts
which it is likely they are shortly going to commit again and try to
live with the humiliation of this and a naturally arising hope of
deliverance from this, to which religion claims to offer an answer.

CHAPTER NINE

Morality and Murder

In our discussion of sexuality in the previous chapter we had

occasion to somewhat loosen certain traditional negative
attitudes to this area of life, while in the main approving the
imperatives and prohibitions associated with the Christian
outlook. Coming now to the matter of having a care to protect and
preserve the life of any who are weak, helpless or, as it is often
insensitively claimed, a burden to others, we shall find that a
tightening rather than a loosening approach is called for. Here one
cannot yield to the pressure to relax our responsibilities for one
another if, as will be confirmed, it is the human well-being of each
one of us that is concerned and just therefore the right to life
which belongs to the common good. In the field of sexuality, on
the other hand, the pressure for relaxation derives from the more
legitimate pressure to accept ourselves in our more complete
humanity, as the Christian would say he is accepted in Christ, who
228
Again one might argue that such periodic vehemence
(like the unconsciousness of sleep) might be beneficial to
human nature as a whole and hence to the higher powers,
as again there is "a time to love and a time to die, a time to
embrace and a time to shun the embrace".
made man's well-being his own divine cause and project. The idea
that sexuality as we know it is outside God's original plan for man
is all too suggestive of an ideological re-description of reality for
purposes either of manipulation or of avoiding the necessary
reckoning with one's own problems and fears. The tradition of the
lex fomitis, of the "law of our members" extrinsically constraining
us, which we find in the canonical writings even of St. Paul, can
thus be taken into account only after the naturalness of human
sexuality as we know it is established. One may suspect, indeed,
that this may leave the doctrine, and that about concupiscence, in
a similar situation to that of nulla salus extra ecclesiam among
today's theologians. The language will be preserved, if it is, but
not its plain (or at least previous) meaning, as understood by a
majority of people.
If sexuality has to do with the sources of life, the
avoidance of murder which we more positively call respect for life
has to do with life as a reality in place, in being. It has to do, that
it is to say, with a certain type of being, human being, and is thus
an ontological matter. That of course applies to most matters such
as we have been discussing. The reason it needs here to be made
explicit is that we are faced, in ethical reflections upon the human
condition and situation, with an anti-ontological stance such as is
virtually normative for our post-Enlightenment culture. But such a
stance, we shall see, renders it impossible to demonstrate the
necessity in attitude and behaviour of that respect for life upon
which we instinctively feel our common well-being and good
depend.
The anti-ontological stance, which may also be called the
voluntarist stance, actually stems from an earlier period than that
of the European Enlightenment, but it was systematized by
Descartes and Kant and the Enlightenment in general. For
especially they placed the study of what exists at a second
remove from us, making of thought a study of thought's own
relations with itself, "the connections of our representations with
one another" as Frege's mentor, Rudolf Lotze, put it. With Hegel a
sovereign dialectic was outlined in which (Hume's phrase)
"whatever is conceivable is possible"229 and all points of view give
way in time to their opposites, an approach prefigured in the
Renaissance thinker, Nicholas of Cusa. Thus the men of this
period, transitional to our own, began by imagining that they
philosophized in a traditionless vacuum but ended by surrendering
totally to historical relativism.
As far as ethics is concerned the anti-ontological or
229
Cf. Duns Scotus's distinctio formalis a parte rei.
voluntarist stance is connected with that particular notion of
ethical autonomy which comes to its full flower in the Nietzschean
will to power, the chaos Alasdair MacIntyre so effectively
described,230 faithfully reflected in the chit-chat of today's media
where all say what they "feel", all "have a right" to their own
opinion, but without being obliged, it seems, to have a care that
their opinion should be right.231
A well-known example of this stance is the Kantian "So
act that you can will that the maxim of your action become a
universal law." This is an "as if" stance; act as if something were a
law. It is never able to enunciate or decree an actual law. On a
similar view, again, we are told to prescribe for others what we
would prescribe for ourselves. On such views there are no truths
of ethics; only truths (or falsehoods) about ethics as an
undeniable human activity. There are no truths of praxis, such that
murder is not to be committed, is wrong. Certain meta-ethical
truths, as they are called, are offered to the individual for use in
his practical reasoning; that is all. Ethical theory as such is dead,
i.e. is here abandoned.
All of this follows quite simply from the anti-ontological
stance, since it is quite clear that what must be done or avoided
can only be derived from how man is, a derivation traditionally
called the natural law. The assertion that there is a "naturalistic
fallacy" simply is the assertion, therefore, that there cannot be
such a natural law. It is thus a self-contradiction to try to conflate
this Humean doctrine with a revised theory of natural law, as do
G. Grisez, J. Finnis and their followers.
We need, thinking of Kant's challenge in particular, to
consider the will. Now this will can be considered in two ways. In
one way it is a real faculty of an existing human nature, as when
Aquinas says that

we call men good when their wills are good, because will
determines the use to which everything is put,

this being a physical or natural truth about the will as a faculty or

"power of the soul", not an "analytic" truth concerning the
meaning of a term. Alternatively, will can be considered in itself
and absolutely, i.e. as a concept (at "second level", again)
voluntas ut voluntas, will as will. In this case we move to the anti-
ontological viewpoint, giving will as such a role similar to that

230
A.C. MacIntyre, After Virtue, London 1981.
231
Nietzsche personally would of course have loathed this situation.
which Kant gives to pure reason in his sphere of necessity. For
reason here, like duty in Kant's ethics, is considered apart from
any anchorage it may have in biological reality. The source of the
constraining categories which Kant postulates may be biological,
indeed it must be, and that is the source of the kinship between
Kantianism and materialism. However, and as a sort of
consequential opposite to this, reason is considered as a purely
formal operational system, setting up relations according to its
own laws and not in any sort of natural interchange with reality
and being, just as the will, for its part, is here naturally bound by
nothing. This "pure" way of considering our human faculties had
earlier enabled Descartes to establish reason or the individual
intellect as totally separate (not merely separable) from the body,
a separate reality corresponding to a clearly distinguished idea
since, again, whatever is conceivable is possible, i.e. possible just
as it is conceived, reality parallelling every distinction the mind
may make.
As far, then, as the will is concerned what are excluded
from consideration are the biological conditions for the will's
exercise, or any notion that the will might have a natural object
which it cannot but will (for Aquinas such an object, bonum in
universali, specifies it as rational). This was denied also by Scotus
and most of the late medievals, thus preparing the soil for that
voluntarism plausibly seen as modern culture's defining
characteristic. It is interesting that the occasion of the rise of this
voluntarism was a theological reaction, mis-called Augustinian,
against an Aristotelianism with which Aquinas was all too facilely
identified (the episcopal condemnations of 1277). The idea of the
absolute power of God, as against Greek necessitarianism, was
exalted so as to exclude any natural willing by God, even of
himself, this becoming reflected in man, his image, as the liberty
of indifference, e.g. as between willing good or evil. But whether
there can be a will with no natural object is highly doubtful. The
nature of freedom as itself rooted in the rationality of a world of
stable natures has been missed here. Thus a God who could
choose not to exist is scarcely a God, neither is a God who might
reenact the laws of logic or morality, since these, if they are
anything, are his own reflection in the world.
As with Cartesian scepticism, there is no way back from
these positions, once they are taken as seriously acceptable. Kant,
for example, seems to have believed that the categorical
imperative gave people a method for arriving at the traditional
moral truths, not by means of the heteronomy of conformity but
autonomously, being both laws unto themselves and yet
conforming to the antecedent law. But, it might be objected, a
person with certain desires might well wish, as de Sade had
suggested, that it be a law that we have absolute rights over one
another's bodies, finding the risks to himself preferable to the
constraints of virtue.232 This happens all the time, since not every
evil-doer is a fool, but often a consistent autonomist. Besides his
mistake here, Kant's anti-ontological attempt to base human
dignity, needed for respect for life, upon an indifferent openness
to every kind of choice equally fails, as Sartre has well shown,
comparing Kantian freedom to a not especially dignified hole in
being, as in a cheese. One hole, of course, might flatter another to
bolster its self-esteem, as in Andersen's story of the pot and the
kettle.
So set are people upon the voluntarist course that such
counter-examples often carry as little weight for them as does the
existence of fanatics unmoved by Golden Rule considerations for
R.M. Hare, with his crass mis-observation that "fanatics will always
be few". Sartre himself was not deterred from voluntarism by his
own insight into its moral bankruptcy, preferring to jettison
morality instead.
Regarding murder, then, people too hastily assert as
sufficient argument against it that one does not wish to be thus
killed oneself. How would you like it? They forget that it is just
absence or weakness of this anxiety which typifies the murdering
fanatic, and what murderer is not a fanatic? The argument fails, as
Hare admitted, with the only people against whom it is needed.
Nobody else needs an argument. It is not merely that he cannot
persuade fanatics. He cannot establish, as we have seen with the
Kantian argument for human dignity, that their moral premisses
(the end justifies the means, humans are expendable as means
etc.) are false. But this is precisely the conviction of the fanatics
themselves, and as at least negatively sharing it (he cannot rebut
it even to himself, but hopes merely that not too many people will
care enough about anything to take such a position) the meta-
ethical liberal is in some way assimilated to them as having
somehow lost the good of reason. For it is this, and not his
enthusiasm, which makes the fanatic to be a fanatic. The error
here, also discernible in Hannah Arendt's analysis of totalitarian
criminals, is not to see the kinship in humanity between the
fanatic and ourselves, that he or she, as we, is bound to know and
abide by the same moral truths. It is as if such writers concede the
intellectual case to the criminals (please let them be few) and
232
This would not be an advance along the line of that creative ethics
explored in previous chapters, insofar as it is clearly impossible to view it as
at some time or place an embodiment of love or spirit.
merely add that this is so much the worse for intellect, as if it
were a totally depraved faculty on the old Lutheran model.
Fanatics apart, this ad hominem appeal to the agent's
own wants also leaves one with no argument against murder by
consent of the victim. This might not much trouble those who
claim a right to terminate their own lives, but it ought to trouble
them if they reflect how one can move from this position to
justifying murdering many people without their consent, if one
might oneself rather die than descend to the situations in which
one's victims, one's "patients", find themselves. This might have
been the reasoning of the killer specialized in bumping off
deformed women, or of the murderers of Brazilian street children.
There will be even less security for those victims who are
not only caught in an unenviable situation and are henced
deemed murderable but whom one can expect to kill without their
feeling distress, pain or any other frustration of wishes, either for
themselves or their relatives and friends. Sheer existence, after
all, is not a quality of which one deprives an existing individual
since it is only as long as he exists that he can be deprived of
anything at all, that he can even wish to go on living, though we
are supposing this wish absent. We will return to this point.
One asks, meanwhile, whether these findings need be
matter for concern. Can we not simply attune outselves to the
anti-ontological stance, as we prepare ourselves to "liquidate" the
unfit, the aged, unwanted or handicapped infants, born or unborn,
excess female children, lingering AIDS victims? Would this not be
a natural field for that creative ethics of which we have been
speaking?
Evidence that such an attunement can be fairly smoothly
managed is suggested by the development of corresponding
fashions in humour, or by the ease with which society adapts to
the removal of severe penalties for at least some murderous
activities. These penalties clear fulfilled a teaching, and not just a
deterrent role in communicating horror of the behaviour judged to
deserve them. Yet we can see how easily sizeable minorities of
populations in concerned areas seem to learn how to commit or
accept with equanimity actions reckoned monstrous in more
peaceful periods. Murder is all too common, as is, therefore, the
requisite attunement to it. Croats, Jews, the unborn, the hostage,
the Ulsterman, the terminally ill, all come to seem "fair game" as,
for the utilitarian "humanist", do all those no longer deemed a
paying proposition. Media men and women parrot the term "ethnic
cleansing" without batting an eyelid.
We do not perhaps believe literally in a progress by
negations as envisaged by Hegel or Marx. But our culture remains
dominated by voluntarism, by a freedom of opinion seen more as
a right of will, that is to say, than as an intrinsic property of
intellect. In such a climate any natural determinism, of human
nature or of things generally, is almost hysterically resisted, e.g. in
sexual matters. Where will is thus divorced from intellect,
furthermore, one can expect that every thesis once accepted will
be negated after some time. Consciousness of this parameter
must then lead to nihilism (misnamed relativism), as consequence
of the anti-ontological stance.
A society thus open to any ethical point of view would
gain, for a while at least, a unique versatility, given up to an
almost comical veneration of pure change. Ethical constraints
upon technical progress would be progressively removed, the
ethical dimension of progress itself getting lost to view. But in so
far as this is a mistake, the separation of the ethical from the
physical as knowable by intellect, nature will tend to revenge
itself, with dustbowls or psychotic children and ruined family
happiness, for example, or financial disasters consequent upon
unrestrained currency speculations stifling all sense of a need for
productive work.
Such a voluntarist society would not long be bound by the
traditional prohibition upon all forms of murder. This was enforced
during these twenty centuries by the Christian movement upon
societies long inured to murders of convenience. So we do not yet
have today a society totally blinded to that permanent, so to say
legislative order which is reality; we never could have it so long as
men remain men. Nevertheless the process of denaturing, of
rejection, depending upon the anti-ontological stance of freedom
from essence, a principle, with esse, of any being whatever, is
already far advanced. As doctors in Sweden (1997) and elsewhere
clamour to experiment upon fetuses even before they are aborted
we are not warning merely against something which might
happen.
We are not, that is, drawing a Brave New World233 or The
Abolition of Man234 scenario, while we are well past 1984.235 We
might consider instead some products of the mid-century British
cinema, such as Kind Hearts and Coronets or Chaplin's Monsieur
Verdoux. In the former we are invited, indeed caused to laugh as
233
A novel by Aldous Huxley (1932).
234
A set of three lectures delivered at Durham University by C.S. Lewis
(1943).

235
1984, a novel by George Orwell (1949).
Alec Guiness, in a variety of characters, is repeatedly murdered
without, however, having much idea of what is happening to him.
This facilitates the mirth and equanimity in the face of evil deeds
thus not felt to be evil, but at most "naughty", as is behaviour
transgressing a traditional standard which is no longer respected.
It is cathartic, one might think, of our more lethal repressions. All
the same, it is different from such representations in Hollywood
cartoons or in fairy stories involving purely evil figures, or, of
course, from tragedies where we sympathize with the victims or
applaud the evil-doer's just punishment. There seems in fact no
parallel to this brand of humour, as it were an imaginative
condoning of murder, in Shakespeare or Chaucer, though we can
find in them some rather hard-hearted mockery of tiresome
husbands, we might think. Where the cuckolding extends to
murder the actor loses our and the author's sympathy. In our time,
however, we are offered tales such as Doktor Glass236, where the
young doctor benevolently poisons the over-demanding husband
of one of his young patients, thereby showing himself to be a
liberated existentialist philosopher. We have, if nothing else,
grown more heartless. I do not urge that such works be banned,
merely that they portray, but also betray, a weakened sensibility,
as would a return to entertainments of the type of the old Roman
circus.237
Thus in Monsieur Verdoux the old rogue238 is on trial for
the murder of several hapless and defrauded wives, whom,
however, he treats with kindness to the last, so that they die
without rancour or sorrow. He excites only our sympathy, plus a
few belly-laughs, as, in the accents of a gentleman, he makes his
last speech from the dock, morally berating those preparing to
condemn him, for all the world like Jesus addressing the pharisees.
One might call this, again, the freedom to go nowhere. As freedom
it attracts, and this is the appeal of such creations, until we see
that it is the freedom of having given up, not of having moved out
of and above a too constricting moral frame. The humour may still
of course be unreflectively enjoyed.
One might argue, for example, that these are exercises in
236
Hjalmar Söderberg, Doktor Glas, Stockholm 1905.

237
The test, going by what we said in earlier chapters,
would be that of whether the young doctor could be seen as
performing a work of love towards both the young woman
and her importunate husband. But he is more likely to say
with Meursault, in Camus' L'étranger, "it doesn't matter".
238
The story is based on the case of Henri Landru, earlier in the century.
elegant moral paradox, comparable to De Quincy's essay on
murder as a fine art or the "Heartless Rhymes for Heartless
Homes" of almost as long ago now, and there might indeed be a
continuity. We did say that the process was well advanced. G.K.
Chesterton in his day, for example, though by no means
humourless or narrow-minded as regards creative liberty among
artists, found distaste appropriate in reacting to this kind of thing,
as is recorded both of his conversation and of his reaction to
jingles such as

Why does she walk through the field without gloves,

The fat white lady who nobody loves?239

Regarding the films, someone fresh from Belsen would understand

at once that here was no paradox, but mere regression. The
incongruity at the basis of the humour lies in the gentlemanly
character of the murderers, which is more than just the pose of
the really cruel as often portrayed in films. The gentleman class is
generally perceived as bearer of our moral standards, which is
why the middle-class Nazi movement seemed a more insidious
moral treason than that of the uncouth Bosheviks.
Monsieur Verdoux, it is worth noting, is guillotined, while
the British murderer of Kind Hearts escapes the noose. For British
audiences, at least, it would remain difficult to dissociate from
infamy even an innocent victim of hanging, whereas the guillotine
was itself rather more discredited through its past role of
eliminating aristocrats and gentlemen in particular. Many older
people may recall how hanging for murder, in a country such as
England where the law then enjoyed great respect, confirmed the
shame and horror of this crime. This can be reduced where the
punishment, together with sympathy for the victims of this
enormous injustice, becomes less. It would follow that the life
which murder destroys is devalued in estimation as well. So
punishment, again, can have a teaching as well as a deterrent
function, or perhaps the deterrence is partly by way of teaching.
Nor need one accept any statistic as overturning the self-evident
proposition that a threat of infliction of death has a deterrent
tendency, even as it has such an intention.240 These

239
See G.K. Chesterton, "The Fat White Woman Speaks", in Works
(Wordsworth Poetical Library), Ware 1995, p.32.

240
To this argument from self-evidence (no statistics could ever be
advanced to disprove that jumping from high places produces broken limbs:
if they did not then we would assume that other, preventive causes were
operating) we can add that in any period without capital punishment,
considerations, anyhow, are distinct from the question, to which,
however, they are very material, as to whether a state has the
right, to be tempered by mercy, of protecting itself in this way.241
The urgent disgust, anyhow, the imperative, animating police and
people, to hunt down like a beast one who has thus brought
shame to the humanity which he or she shares with us, is not with
us as it once was, something not solely explicable by appeal to
that new and mysterious lack of "resources", an appeal made all
too readily in connection also with those needing a more special
health care. Babies, for example, may be left to starve to death,
though many far poorer societies would never take that course.
The anti-ontological stance is thus bound to foster
heartlessness in so far as it makes it impossible rationally to
oppose all forms of murder. It is no coincidence that the stance
goes hand in hand with a reluctance to find anyone personally
guilty of those murders which are still opposed. One who does
such things, it is claimed, must be ill, not responsible. Rather than
say that he may not, is forbidden to will what he has willed we try
to suggest that he only willed it as part of some functional
disturbance, requiring treatment or preventive detention. What is
harmful or inconvenient is thus, as a notion, separated from what
is morally bad, and this is in itself a confusion facilitated by the
divorce of the ethical from the dictates of physical reality, of value
from being. Yet there is no value, there is nothing at all, without
being. The truth that the ethical is itself, virtually by definition,
what will teleologically perfect man and society in their proper
being (so that the unethical or morally evil is ipso facto harmful)
has been quite lost from view.
In fact we cannot in the end so easily adapt to the
situation described, where we may murder when, according to
these values, we may reasonably wish to do so, as a heathen
Anglo-Saxon might murder if he paid the wergeld, i.e. the man-
money. We must then find something wrong with this stance,
these values, to which we cannot adapt. So we will have to return
to finding the wrongness of murder signalled in some physical or
natural truths about how man is in himself. That is, we must
overcome our attachment to the doctrine of the naturalistic
fallacy. The fact that I can conceive "ought" apart from "is", in an
whether the murder rate is greater than at an earlier period (it is) or not, no
one can know how many murders would have been committed in that same
period but with capital punishment as the rule. One cannot make the
controlled experiment that would be required. At the most obvious level we
can say that the non-executed murderer is able to kill again, as the
executed one is not, surely a statistic.

241
See our remarks on this at the end of ch. 1.
ontological vacuum indeed proper to thought, to ideas as such, by
no means entails that our real duties must exist in such a vacuum.
Since the laws of human behaviour parallel the teleological laws
of all other things, as a tree needs water and sunlight and to avoid
herbicides, so our duties cannot be divorced from our needs. So
what has to be shown is that for the common good it is needed
that we stop treating one another as units disposable under
certain conditions, evaluable by ad hominem, intra-subjective
criteria.
The argument against the adequacy of such ad hominem
ethics is well set out by Robert Spaemann:

All attempts to understand men as ends-in-themselves only in the

sense that man is for men the highest earthly being fail to
approach the specific concept of human dignity. Such a
view can understand principles of mutual respect and so
on only in relation to the rest of the world.242

There is nothing absolute established here about such a dignity, in

other words. Man seen thus is only a value for himself, not a value
in himself, apart from his own subjective interests. The jump to
being an end in himself, like God, is not justified. But if a person
were only a value for himself, yet not having a value in himself,
then, Spaemann continues, the painless murder of a man without
relatives (or friends) would be justified and all trust would be lost.
The reason is that if this subject, for whom alone the life had
value, is no longer there, then nothing is lost and no values, thus
defined, diminished. These had depended exclusively upon the
subject and his willing. Existence, again, is not a property through
the loss of which one becomes poorer.
For one's life, one's personal being (one has no other), to
have a value in itself of an absolute kind, giving that inalienable
right to life of which some constitutions speak, so that it is
inviolable or "untouchable" (German unantastbar), it must in some
sense be considered sacred. This word, however, means
consecrated, made over to something or someone, set apart, from
the cluster of perishable beings any of which we can one day have
sufficient reason to destroy, whether a plant, an animal or,
sometimes, an arrangement such as a lake or meadow. For what
we require is not just that man be a value in himself but that this
value has such a dignity that it is not to be sacrificed (it is already
sacred) to some other. This could only be, it would seem from the

242
Robert Spaemann, "Über den Begriff der Menschenwürde",
Scheidewege 15, 1985-6, p.25ff. (my translation).
argumentation, through some kind of correlation (through being
sacred to) with some non-perishable or eternal being of at least a
much higher value than things temporal, such as we generally call
God. Hence it is that Horkheimer and Adorno claim in their
writings that there is only a religious argument against murder,
the concept of such a dignity being essentially sacral.
So we certainly need to put man back into the forefront of
today's ecological considerations. If forests or endangered species
have intrinsic value and demand ontological respect, unaffected
by what they can will, viz. nothing,then the being of the rational
creature, as such a being, and not just in virtue of individual
subjective desires, demands a respect such that we cannot make
him or her a means to ends of our own, as we do when we kill him
or refuse to help him in his extremity. Nor is this to deny that God
can take back his life. God, after all, cannot be thought of as
respecting some value outside of himself.
So if it is only men who put value upon other men, or
upon themselves, then there is no independent ground upon
which to establish man's value and dignity. A claim for
unconditional respect can no longer be made. It then lies in the
logic of things that one claim to autonomy will clash with another,
one man making another a means to his ends, as aged relatives
needing costly medical attention or simply much personal
patience are pushed aside (or under a pillow), infants or the
unborn are drowned in a bucket (the favoured method in poorer
countries) or aborted, and so on. The pains of pity are also too
hastily, if understandably, quenched, without the brake of a
worshipful respect for one another, as in the easy euthanasia
portrayed in films such as Betty Blue or One Flew over the
Cuckoo's Nest, while the life-affirming reasons forbidding a right
to suicide are no longer understood.243
Men and women, this is to say, take it upon themselves to
decide who is and who is not a person, as a grim praxis
submerges all theoria. But effectively, under such circumstances,
no one is a person, there is no respect for persons, and each is to
count for one and none for more than one, as Bentham put it. The
unconditional respect for personality, as biologically founded and
upon which alone the prohibition of murder can be founded,
243
If these cases be compared with our criterion of love,
then we have to ask whose well-being we are considering
when we solve our more agonizing problems in these drastic
ways. It is a peculiarity of the wish for extinction, after all,
that one can never satisfy it, the recipient being no longer
there to be satisfied.
however, demands that each is to count for all and none for less
than all. This is what is meant by the common good, as distinct
from, prior to and superior to the aggregate good.244
There can, in other words, be no question of our deciding
who is a person and who not. Personality, indeed, is something of
which each of us is conscious, but as known and not as a mere
concomitant to consciousness itself. We know that we have it
while we sleep, for however long, as the mother knows it of her
sleeping child. Rip van Winkle or the Sleeping Beauty are correctly
portrayed as sleeping persons. We cannot, again, be just coopted
(by the others) to the human community, allowed to remain in it
merely by the will of other human beings. Such a conception is the
polar and essential opposite of the very idea of human rights. But
this is a true idea.
Pascal was wrong, for once, in saying that "We never love
the person, but only his qualities." What we love (if and when we
do) is the existing human being, the failure of whose "qualities"
can thus grieve us, and it is this act of being or of subsistentia
which makes a person to be such. Hence there are no merely
possible persons, a concept quite different from that of an existing
person's potentialities. Every individual possessed of our common
rational nature has ipso facto the inherent potentiality to be free,
to take charge of his own existence. He has this purely and simply
as a member of the human species genetically defined, a spiritual
being in the old, often misunderstood terminology, i.e. one
capable by nature of a scientific grasp of the whole of reality and
thus free, not determined within a fixed cognitional and sensory
environment. Head, hand and sense cooperate in devising ways to
overcome the finitude of these natural endowments themselves, a
variant perhaps of being capax Dei.245
In effect, if it is laid in the hands of a majority to decide
who becomes, or when, a member of the human community, then
human rights have already been abolished. The idea of such rights
presupposes that one, everyone, has already a right to
membership of that community, and that can only be through
biologically belonging to the species. There is no real question as
to who is a person, who not. Even in Christology, if Christ be not a
created human person it is only because he is a divine person.
The dignity of personality thus outstrips that of merely being
244
Cf., again, Sullivan & Atkinson, "Benevolence and Absolute
Prohibitions", International Philosophical Quarterly, September 1985.
245
There is no Pelagian implication here. It is because man is naturally
open to the transcendent that the transcendent can itself reach down to
him.
human, in Christian thought at least, something countering the
charge of "speciesism".
Talk of animal rights, however, obscures the issue. For if
we are of more value than many sparrows this is not a matter of
respecting our species simply because it is ours. The anti-
ontological stance consistently pursued, on the other hand,
respects no species at all and the furor over animal rights is best
seen as a back-handed confirmation of that. Yet the friends of the
furry, like those of the earth, might be saying that if people do
respect our species then this has to be part of a wider ontological
stance in which all things are good, i.e. have a value.
It is true, indeed, that a consistent "ontological stance"246
is one respecting all reality. Even a domestic pet or a glass of beer
resemble God as having a value in themselves and not just for us
(contrary to what we found the voluntarists holding even about
human beings). The idea of anything having value just for us is in
the end incoherent. Even the beer, just because it is so good for
us, attains an authentically high worth in itself, so that we
reprobate its wastage.247 Anything good for human beings is to
that extent already good in itself, since we exist. This does not
imply that that same entity would not be good did we not exist.
The whole ethos of our attachment to or delight in animals
depends upon an appreciation of the value and beauty which
these creatures have in themselves, more apparently in some
than in others. Even the arachnophobe cannot deny the beauty
and grace of the tarantula's to us ghastly movements, its web-
spinning activities and so on. So even at this low level the
ideologists, in so far as they make things pure means in a social
struggle, fall short of philosophy and of religious or ecological
reverence, while experience teaches, against the animal rights
lobby, that one can love what one eventually eats, a possible
argument, it might seem, for cannibalism which, however, for
reasons sufficiently stated above, could never carry the weight
required.
The point about beer, cats and this whole material world
is not that they have no ontological worth but that they have a
limited or finite worth, so that they may on occasion be destroyed
to preserve or enhance a being of greater value.248 Beer found in
246
The expression is constructed on the analogy of an anti-ontological
stance. But it is not a literal stance but simply the natural attitude.
247
This view as to beer is contested by many, but on the ground that
they do not consider beer good for us and can see no further use for it. So
there is no counter-argument here.
248
This would not apply to matter as such if, with Aquinas, we consider
the hands of an alcoholic may be poured down the sink, animals
may be killed for human food or clothing, parts of the human body
removed and so on. We thus condemn wastefulness as destroying
goods without need, cruelty to sentient beings as injuring them
wantonly, i.e. without sufficient reason,249 such behaviour being
insulting to our own rationality and consequent diginity.
So when we come to human beings the fault of the anti-
ontological, exploitative stance just becomes more glaring. People
are prepared to treat others as they wouldn't treat a dog, i.e. as
merely disposable. It is this that horrifies the average Westerner
when he comes upon the indifference shown by many (not all)
other peoples to the condition of their animals, when they are not
worshipping them. Closer contact with such people can even show
that they practise such things as human infanticide, as a group,
without losing any sleep over it.
What is to be concluded from these negative phenomena
in other cultures, or our own, is not that ethical standards are
relative or subject to cancellation in changed conditions, which
means that they are never mandatory. To adopt such an attitude
to them is to refuse to acknowledge real value in anything. Where
there is an indifference to the theoretical, a reckless cult of one's
own individual or collective satisfaction beyond all justice, one has
simply to register and deprecate this. It is genuinely philosophical
to condemn indifference to being, truth and beauty; thereby one
avoids nihilistic relativism. "You have not dealt thus with other
nations; you have not taught them your decrees," we read in the
Psalms of David, and this might encourage one to an impossible
theological positivism in the voluntarist mode. The thought
expressed might rather be, however, that the "people of the Book"
have uniquely activated potentialities common as natural to all
human beings in all cultures. Thus, for example, when the miss-
ionaries came to China or, for that matter, to Scandinavia the
resentment of those peoples against the missionaries'
condemnation of their truly murderous inhumanity to children and
the helpless found no argument to keep it alive, though these
things tend to resurface as and when the tide of Christianity, with
its moral pressure, its affirmation of and care for human well-
being, recedes.
It seems, in fact, that the anti-ontological, voluntarist
stance reduces to a purely practical stance. Murderers can be the

it a "necessary" being or one that, once created, must, like the human soul,
always be.
249
Harming and hurting equally deprive an animal of a good, be it
bodily integrity or the feeling of well-being.
most practical people; nothing must hinder a goal once proposed.
We become, anyhow, locked into that system of merely
apportioning value to one another, while it falls to those ready to
sacrifice their own lives "for the revolution", Marxist, religious,
ecological or what, to expose this pretence in its empty circularity.
One can opt out of this system of apportionment, and then it
becomes logical to see the class-enemy as "insects", to speak
only of liquidating undesirable "elements" (which we do not value
or will to exist), not of killing persons. Our life thus depends on the
desire of others, who may or may not co-opt us into that closed
system which they have preferred to life and being, with a power
that is no longer "the morality of those who stand out from the
rest", but which "grows out of the barrel of a gun," also a way, if
all else fails, of distinguishing oneself, notoriety compensating for
an unachieved fame or glory.
What is destroyed here is precisely the common good.
Men can no longer put an absolute value upon one another, or
promise each other loyalty, support, kindness, respect, protection,
"for richer or poorer", "in sickness and in health", "till death us do
part", they themselves being too ready to play the role of death,
no longer a dread messenger from outside, for one another. The
very meaning of love becomes unintelligible here.

Some of us are sick to death of murderers getting away with it.

We're sick to death of people in high places who let them
get away with it... People who instead of giving us more
men and more power, dream up new ways to make our
job more difficult... The point now is - whose side are you
on?... Governments mess about with the law,... They
abolish the cat and the noose. They make prison a home
from home. They give more and more power to the head-
shrinkers and social workers, who are all Communists
anyway. They bring in suspended sentences, and what
villain's frightened of that? They bring in parole, so
there's always a chance the bastards won't have to serve
their full sentences anyway. They make our job more
difficult in every way possible...250
250
Spoken by an exasperated policeman in John Braine's
novel, Finger of Fire, London 1977, pp.111-112. The anger
conveys a sense of the good that is lost and of the
corresponding need for a remedy, whether or not what this
character seems to desire harmonizes with our views as
outlined here. A beginning might be to stop the tasteless
patronization of those bereaved by crime on television.
 CHAPTER TEN

Ultimate Happiness

We have stressed the uniqueness of each human being and,

consequently, of the vocation of each human being. Such a
conception is so far from contradicting the presence of the natural
law that it belongs to its content, evoking a need in the human
person for corresponding virtues both of discernment and of
execution, but above all for the supreme virtue of love, ever
active, creative and spiritual, i.e. not enslaved to the letter. It is all
the more necessary to unveil now the factor unifying these
different beings and their destinies, that as they have a common
cause, so they have a common last end or goal in which they find
the fulfilment they were born desiring. No one chooses such an
end, for it is natural and from it, therefore, there flows the first
precept of the natural law, viz. the precept that good, bonum,
which, as Aquinas confirms, is one with the finis ultimus or Last
End, is to be pursued and evil, in consequence, to be avoided. All
the same, one can choose, more or less, to cooperate with one's
natural inclination, to let go, to care for one's own soul, to trouble
to discriminate, for example, between central and superficial
needs and desires. For this task, the perfection of one's being as
lying in one's own hand, virtue, both moral and intellectual, is
required. Thus, in the Aristotelian democracy, there is no class of
intellectuals distinct from or smaller than the class of human
beings, just as morality too can never be made the privilege of the
few, since it charts the pattern of all conceivable human activity.

**************************************

The finis ultimus is less often considered as such in contemporary

non-Thomist philosophy than it is considered in consequence of a
broaching of topics such as happiness and "the meaning of life".
Happiness, indeed, as beatitudo but also felicitas, is identified by
Aquinas with the ultimate end of life,251 the "getting whatever it is

251
As a concept (or in communi) the ultimate end or goal is distinct from
happiness, but the getting of this final end (i.e. of the res aimed at) is what
we mean by happiness (Summa theol. Ia-IIae, 1, 8 ad objecta: beatitudo
nominat adeptionem ultimi finis).
that one wants and finding it worthwhile when one gets it."252
Discussions of this topic, however, are often couched in
terms of plans of life, of inclusive versus dominant goals, chunks
of time and so on. Theories of "transcendent happiness", as it
(what?) is called, tend to be dismissed as not relevant to
"contemporary theorizing",253 a perhaps surprising judgment as
being itself when uttered contemporary with that best-selling
praise of inwardness, Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance.
The professionals go their own way, however, and more often than
not a programme of moderation is set forth as a way of getting
the most out of what the world has to offer.254 Mention of the
world, though, can set off those scriptural resonances with which
we are all more or less familiar:

What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his
own soul?

This certainly contains a theory of happiness, but loss of the soul

perhaps falls under that transcendence which has been set aside.
Yet the theory played a or the formative role in our culture and
theories of happiness do belong to cultural philosophy.
Of course, to consider the reference, a man cannot
anyhow gain the whole world, even if, by knowledge, he might
somehow be the whole world, as microcosm or, as they say,
intentionally, and thus gain it in a certain way, the soul, again,
being quodammodo omnia. But the programmes which we
mentioned first counsel rather as to how to gain the maximum
possible, at the price, often, of moderation in all things.
Happiness, that is, is assumed to be a matter of quantitative
satisfaction, at least for the most part, though this is not necessa-
rily a crass endorsement of the craving for external goods, to the
neglect of all else. Internal goods are considered too, and a sort of
balance or concursus is struck. Thus we must have the enjoyable
sense of having a cultivated mind, they say, and we must have a
suitable "life-companion". This anaemic term sounds like the old
lady's companion, a most mild asset, falling short of friendship but
without much erotic compensation. One surely wants at least a
"worthy bed-fellow", in Thomas More's phrase, but perhaps
"suitable" discreetly includes that. Whether it does or not,

252
T. Benditt, "Happiness", Philosophical Studies XXV (1974), pp. 1-20.
253
Cf. Douglas den Uyl & Tibor R. Machan, "Recent Work on the Concept
of Happiness", American Philosophical Quarterly (April1983).
254
E.g. by John Kekes, "Happiness", Mind XCI (1982).
however, we must, to be happy, be free of that poverty which
might sour the relationship. We further require, such philosophers
go on to specify, a relative freedom from fear of loss of these
things through disease, war, infidelity or inflation.
From these requirements, their type, it would seem to
follow, so that one must not be thought merely sarcastic for
saying so, that it would also help if we could be placed, with our
life-companion of course, on an island where the sound of the
misery of others would not reach us, unless that sound might
perchance add to our sense of good fortune, given the
fundamental individualism assumed in such enquiries.
A weakness in this calculation is that it ignores the
potential for contradiction and conflict should, for example,
passion enter the picture. If someone's work, studies or creative
zeal take hold of him to the extent that family (if he has chosen a
fertile life-companion) and finances suffer, where then is such
happiness, where the sober balance promising a greater return of
the goods of life than through surrender to any one particular? Or
to fall in love, what havoc that would work with this "plan of life"!
The will to happiness along these lines, indeed, seems
allied with a will to mediocrity, since great creativeness or great
love are excluded. Love necessarily costs, as the "suitable life
companion" is not seen as doing. We note with reverence the
sufferings of the great, how they were rejected, misunderstood
and so on, but do we not also often envy them, wish that we too
had an extraordinary gift, whatever its potential for tragedy? They
seem often, indeed, to show us up as not being happy, since most
would rather be Hamlet than Rosencrantz, or even G.E. Moore
than his pig. Tolstoy even goes so far as, on the first page of Anna
Karenin, to say that happiness is of little interest since it has no
history. Yet everyone wants to be happy and so one can think of
Wittgenstein's exclamation at the end of his intense, ostensibly
tortured life that it had been "wonderful", an adjective scarcely
applicable to the successful completion of the life-plan outlined
above. It is as if this dying thinker possessed all his "wonder" up
to the end.
But if that "philosophical" mode of happiness, as they
invite us to call it, does not carry credibility, if it is just too
heartless for such a name, then either happiness is not, after all, a
matter of such quantitative satisfaction but something else or it is
impossible.
Our natural tendency, after some experience of pain, is
indeed to draw up a plan for happiness identified or confused with
a plan to exclude all pain. Yet the two projects are not identical,
but indeed two. Thus even if we take into account the great pain
of being without happiness yet the quieting of that pain can con-
ceivably be achieved without the cessation of all pain whatever. It
is possible, then, that eagerness to exclude all pain has prevented
us from allowing non-chimerical approaches to happiness which
might include a measure of pain. Resentment can cloud vision, as
if we had never heard, for example, about the massive popular
cult of glorified and hence happy martyrs (witnesses) to divine
truth displaying the instruments of their sufferings. What they
witness too, however, is of course extremely "transcendent", since
they have to die first. Yet this, after all, is an example of how
happiness can be achieved under conditions of temporality,
granted that we do not start out from but travel255 towards
happiness, and the prime image and symbol of this would be the
stresses and strains of adolescence, which have to be sustained
by hope and not seen as diseases snatching one from an infantile
joy which left nothing to be desired. Even those, like Wordsworth
or Vaughan, who stress the negative aspects of this development,
the accumulating "shades of the prison house", see the childhood
which they perhaps idealize as a type of something eternal, to be
returned to, perhaps, but at a higher remove. There is, in other
words, a process of growth involving at least some openness to
pain, which is why courage, defined as a readiness to face death,
along with hope, is a virtue needed for the attainment of
happiness.
We might consider one of those states which we listed as
excluded from the rationalist plan of life model, not the unusual
plight of genius but the near universal experience, in our culture
at least, of love, falling in love, at its strongest as something felt
by the sufferer as closely connected with happiness in the
phenomenon of "first love", typically of a boy for a girl, a girl for a
boy, this consideration (of what is typical) again associating the
sexual impulse with the divine or "transcendent" beckoning of our
ultimate goal. We have already noted in an earlier chapter a
connection between a comprehensive inclination and directive to
love and the creative fulfilment of vocation upon which life's
satisfaction will depend.
Such a lover, then, may be still a child, or an adolescent,

255
The analogy of life with a journey seems unavoidable. But one must
not forget that this is no more than an image, that life cannot be a journey
since all journeys are events within life consisting in local movement or
changes of place. Time, on the other hand, is a measurement of change in
general. We cannot travel through time with H.G. Wells because we do not
even travel through our own lives. Each life is whole in each moment and it
is there alone, as actual, that happiness can be sought.
or any age at all. He or she becomes, it only seems
unaccountably,256 transfixed by another person, even by some
aspect of that person, in ways ranging from the noble to the
ridiculous.257 It seems that thenceforward this is all that matters to
him, and the this may be variously interpreted as merely the
liberty to think about that person all day long, write poems, or
perhaps just be with him or her. It is like a light that has arisen in
the mind making all else darkness, of no life or interest. It is here
alone, in the eyes of the beloved, that the immortal is reflected,
as Dante saw it long ago and as Plato explained it before him.258
This is the point, that the young lover, typically young at least,
now feels, to revert to our cited text, that the whole world is truly
not worth gaining, that in this pain (which may also be ecstasy) he
has discovered his own soul, the unique key to his particular lock,
or lock for his key perhaps. At a stroke he is delivered from
ambition, envy and all the rest of it.259 He feels nausea, distaste,
for his previous carefree life, at most a sham happiness, before he
knew love, and pities the crowd who cannot feel as he feels as he
looks in at the casement of beauty, beauty itself as far as he is
concerned. Once again this is only explicable as being the natural
way by reliance upon the ontology (of the indivisibilityof being)
sketched earlier. Otherwise it has to be explained away or
dismissed as morbid sickness, though such a dismissal is, we
know, difficult to carry through and, much of our literature would
attest, wrong-headed.260
The state, of being in love in this way is not, in its
entirety, likely to last. No human being, we want to say, can be
more than the temporary bearer of such a vision. Such worshipful
eros, anyhow, seems a different matter from the project of sharing
a life together, and so such lovers are generally regarded as
doomed. Society hopes for at least a compromise, such as even

256
One must account for it in the way sketched earlier, according to
which each thing, each being, is just that, being, which cannot be parcelled
out or divided.
257
This was the theme of Resnais's film, Le genou de Claire. The idea of
fetichism would not exhaust all that was mooted in this scenario.

258
Cf. Josef Pieper, op. cit.
259
Jealousy, indeed, may enter in, but only through a negative
development of the process.
260
It would take us too far afield, even if one were competent, to
attempt to specify how the experience might differ, if at all, for men and
women respectively. I am, however, considering the experience as vision, in
separation from the urge to find a mate.
the course of nature itself seems to urge should the sharing of a
bed become internal to the experience, love producing the love-
child, with his or her distinct rights and needs. In romantic and
latter-day Christian tradition an attempt has been made to portray
and also live out the state of marriage as natural fulfilment, and
so not a compromise, of such an experience. In that case the
sense of doom which witnessed to the opposition between the
everyday or "bourgeois" and the serious search for human
fulfilment is at least softened, while at best a corresponding
splendour might be attributed to at least these kinds of marriages
qua marriages.
The lover, anyhow, knows that he has found that261 which
his soul seeks. All else is dust and ashes, and love is to be fed by
withdrawing in ever greater contempt from this dust and ashes.
Such is the mentality, apparently irrational, of passion. Awareness
of analogy, however, can lessen conviction as to its irrationality,
since, as we have said, if each being is unique before being cast
as member of a class (just one more human being) then just one
person might conceivably be the key to life's riddle, as in the myth
of the severed androgyns. This passion, anyhow, is so absorbed by
what it hopes for that it typically forgets to be urgent in attaining
it. Happiness has thus in a way already begun, whatever misery is
to follow, and in the years ahead the memory of it may seem like
time spent in another world:

There long ago we played

By the greencut sky,
And the sun shone from your face.

*******************************************

Love is indeed a fascinating and important topic in itself. Our

purpose in introducing it, however, in sketching the state of the
lover, was, firstly, to open a more natural, less elective alternative
to the "plan of life" model, even to point up the unsuitability of the
latter. We find instead, to generalize, the "model" of a search
among a series of indifferent objects making up a world, until the
unique pearl (of great price) is found. Love, once experienced,
urges that that is how one should always have seen things, as one
seeking a worthy master. One blames one's earlier superficiality,
and in some religious variants of the experience even weeps for it
in a lifelong self-disgust, called repentance.

261
He or she has found her or him, says the Song of Songs, in itself a
suggestive title.
 If one began with such a picture then the plan of life
paradigm would not begin to engage at all with one's view of
things. One would dismiss it with as much disgust as Socrates in
the Phaedrus dismisses Lysias's praise of the non-lover. For the
lover is quite certain that happiness is not achieved through a
plan of life facilitating the heaping up of the greatest amount and
variety of goods. It is closer, rather, to the attainment of some
kind of union, such as vision, knowledge or a compenetration of
touch, with a beloved, commonly personal substance, in whose
company one may as it were swing the whole world as a cheap
trinket at one's wrist, a liberty which the prophet Isaiah would
reserve for Yahweh.
Something at least of this intense experience can last,
and thus one might press the claims of amicitia more forcefully
than has lately been done as needed for happiness, after the
example of Aristotle (and Cicero). This indeed, as calling for
fidelity, the for richer or poorer, better or worse, in sickness or
health till death us do part of the old English marriage vows,
makes short work of the inclusive plan of life idea.262 To press our
point, however, we need to justify such a view of the world
independently of any particular lover's experience, it might seem:
the view of the world, that is, as a collection of goods from which
we do not choose procedures in a state of "ontological
subjectivity"263, but in which we find or are found by something
bearing no proportion to the rest, the "pearl of great price" or
even the personal vocation of which we have been speaking. The
state of mind is exemplified in the account of Edith Stein as
reading the autobiography of St. Teresa and thereupon exclaiming,
"This is the truth", i.e. not merely this is what I want (omitting the
question of why one might want it), or what will suit me. The
lover, to be such, believes in the sovereign truth and beauty of the
beloved, and this is the indispensable basis for the vows essential
to love (one is not merely referring to the marriage vows). A
wrong choice, an unworthy love, is clearly conceivable, as one can
back the wrong horse; our point would stand, though, that the
inherent logic of the notion, necessary to us, of happiness imposes
a behaviour of search rather than of calculation, if only because
before we are happy we have not found what we are looking for.

262
One may note an analogy between what is negatively viewed as
being "stuck" with a partner and the more inward view of happiness as
consequent upon having taken possession of one's own being, having
"become the path". In both cases a certain fragility, a certain anxiety, is left
behind.
263
Kekes, op. cit.
One who calculates, by contrast, has all his options present to
him.
The "plan of life" man, universally moderate, will want to
object that the world, in fact, is all that we have. Many Platonic
texts would rebut this, but the worldly philosopher will isolate
them as "a Platonic way of speaking".264 Certainly Plato speaks in
his own way and Aristotle was at one with him on this. For he too
speaks of the lover of wisdom as practising a kind of death
(athanatizein), siding with the immortal part of himself against the
more ordinary human concerns, looking past, as we have said,
much of what is to be had in the world. We even find word of a
lover, after all, in the very name philosophy. A lover or friend of
wisdom, typically falling down wells with Thales, designated as
one who wonders, is the last type of person to seek happiness in
that plan of life which nonetheless he perhaps, more in error than
wisely, enjoys outlining.
Wanting just one thing excites disapproval. People regret
that Aristotle seems to have understood the dialectic of ends thus,
and try to soften the scandal by a distinguishing between
"inclusive" and "dominant" ends. In today's spiritual climate one is
not willing to think that it could be reasonable to stake all on the
unum necessarium. Anyone who does so must be confused, and
wanting just one thing is even assumed to be a vice in itself rather
than because of the insufficiency of most objects thus idolized.
This, however, contradicts the whole Jewish and Christian
tradition, from the first commandment of the Decalogue, viz. to
love God with one's whole soul, to St. Paul's saying "I count all
things dung that I may win Christ." What is missing is an argument
to the effect that there is no such summum bonum.
One might question also the lack of symmetry between a
plurality of goods and the unity of consciousness, or between
unitary second-order and multiple first-order satisfactions, as
Kekes, again, has it, following the idea of the search for happiness
as the one aim of getting the many things that one wants. But
there is something distasteful, all the same, about this cold
heaping up of delights, exciting that age-old animus against "the
many". May it not be that a man who would win through to
happiness, if any can, would be one who disdained such a
calculation, beholding a single object of which he judges, "This
alone is desirable for itself"?265 This would have to be argued as,
historically, it has been.
But first we would need to distinguish happiness from
264
R.M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (Oxford 1963), p.147.
265
Augustine of Hippo, speaking of contemplation.
bewitchment. For a man may feel happy without being happy.
That, after all, is the principle a sure possession of which alone
allows our societies conviction in the fight against drugs. But the
distinction which it makes, in which it consists, depends upon a
theory of the object as cause of happiness, in the absence of
which happiness is only a semblance of itself. One can hardly be
more objectual than that. If there were no such object then there
could be no distinction between happiness, as human fulfilment,
and a drugged ecstasy able to last up to life's final moment. Such
a cause cannot be merely the inward consistency of achievement
with plan of life. The latter is itself subject to the criterion of the
object, since perpetual self-narcosis is one plan of life amongst
others, is itself an object. What, though, will explain the necessary
connection of happiness with this one object unless we can invoke
some kind of identity of the two? We speak indeed both of being
happy and of possessing happiness, just as we explain happiness
as a state of getting what we want yet also say, quite naturally,
that happiness itself is what we want most of all, without any
consciousness of switching to a supposed second-order discourse.
But this is to anticipate the argument, to which we now turn.266

*****************************

The argument is most conveniently studied as it is presented by

Thomas Aquinas, most schematically in his Summa Theologica Ia-
IIae, I, 4-6. This is claimed to be a demonstration, a proof, that the
structure of human purposeful activity requires and hence shows
that just one thing, called happiness, is aimed at all the time.
Happiness (beatitudo) here, however, is not reducible to the so-
called second order state of getting all (else) that one wants267 but
is just one thing to which all else is a means. Obviously getting a
plurality of things could not be just a means to a uniquely desired
state of having got all of them, unless one implies that each
several thing is first wanted for its own sake, which the argument
aims at denying. It is because of the argument's conclusion that
Aquinas is able to say that moral evil, comprehensively, is not
ultimately explicable as a matter of disobedience to law but of
"unsuitability of action to end", missing the mark, hamartia.268
There is a widespread impression that this argumentation

266
See, however, Theron, The Recovery of Purpose, Frankfurt 1993, ch.
7, on teleological explanation as applied to human life.
267
Not even felicitas is just this.
268
Aquinas, Comm. in Sent. P. Lombardi, bk. 4, d.33, q.1, art. 1c.
has somehow been discredited. Aristotle, whom the Thomistic
argument is too easily assumed merely to repeat, is accused of a
"clearly fallacious transition", called the quantifier shift fallacy269,
when he argues as follows:

If then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for
its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake
of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake
of something else (for at that rate the process would go
on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and
vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good.270

The fallacious transition in question is formalized by Anscombe as

a transition from

For all x, if x is a chain of means to ends, there is a y such that y is

a final end and x terminates in y

to

There is a y such that y is a final end, and for all x, if x is a chain of

means to ends, x terminates in y.271

One might well agree with Anthony Kenny that pointing to the
fallacy of such a transition is an Aunt Sally and even an ignoratio
elenchi as not being directed at Aristotle's argument in the quoted
passage, since he presupposes "some end of the things we do".
That is, he does not make this transition. Kenny, however, goes on
to say that the fallacy of which he finds Aristotle guiltless

entrapped some of his followers, notably Aquinas (S.T. Ia-IIae, I, 4-

6).272

Let us see if this judgment is correct, at the same time as we

expound and comment upon the argumentation as found in
Aquinas.
We begin with the fourth article of the first quaestio of the

269
Cf. P.T. Geach, "History of a Fallacy", Logic Matters, Oxford 1972.
270
Aristotle, Nicomachaean Ethics 1094a 18 (tr. Ross).
271
G.E.M. Anscombe, An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus,
London (HUL) 1971, p.16.

272
A. Kenny, The Anatomy of the Soul, Oxford 1973, p.52.
Second Part of the Summa Theologica273, which is also the first
quaestio of the short treatise (five questions) on the last end,
prefacing the much longer part (two hundred and ninety eight
questions) on "those things which are ordained to the end". St.
Thomas does not, that is, speak baldly of means to the end here.
Article Four is entitled Utrum sit aliquis ultimus finis
humanae vitae, whether there is some last end to human life274,
which misleadingly suggests that the main point is going to be
settled here. Article Five, however, asks whether there can be
several ultimate ends for one man, which would be a superfluous
question if it had already been settled that there was one ultimate
end of human life in general, while Article Seven asks whether
there is one last end for all men, which seems scarcely to differ
from asking whether there is some last end to human life, as at
Article Four. Yet what Article Four really addresses itself to, as is
clear from the body of the article, is the question whether there
can be an infinite means-end series. It is the negative answer to
this that leads on to Five, whether one man can have several last
ends. Since he or she can only have one, it is concluded, Article
Six next asks whether a man wills all that he wills on account of
that one last end. Finally it is asked, at Article Seven, as we noted,
whether all men have the same ultimate end, i.e. whether there is
one ultimate end of all action. We should note that in Aquinas's
text this whole nest of arguments is kept separate from the
explicit treatment of beatitudo, being concerned rather with a
final end as such. It is not therefore possible to neutralize the
force of the arguments by applying them to a "second order" end
consisting in satisfaction at gaining a plurality of first order ends.
These will not ultimately be ends at all if it can be proved that
only one thing can be ultimately aimed at, which by the same
token could not then be reduced to satisfaction at getting the
other things.
So the chain of argumentation goes like this: a) an infinite
means-end series is impossible; b) any one person can only have
one ultimate purpose; c) he wills all that he wills for the sake of
that; d) this ultimate purpose is common to all human beings.
If these points were established they would dispose of the
idea either of an ethical freedom from the ends of human nature
(the soil of the plan of life project) or of calculation over a plurality
273
This Second Part of the Summa Theologica treats of man as using his
freedom of choice, according as he has God for his last end and through free
actions can come to that end or fall back from it.... (cf. Prologue to Ia-IIae).
274
Construing the last two words as a dative of advantage seems
preferable to the possessive genitive.
of desired goods as being the rational or viable path to happiness.
They thus seem to commit one to a certain inwardness in one's
approach to life, inasmuch as the one ultimate good of beatitudo
does not depend on an acquisition of other goods and yet is not
identifiable with any visible or material thing. Even our example of
being totally in love with a concrete human being was only meant
analogically, to show how native to us is the psychic structure
involved, of a search for one priceless pearl. It is true that Aquinas
defers at some points to the Aristotelian concept of active
happiness (felicitas), but this is clearly not man's last or ultimate
end275, which he is here arguing is sought not only as a quasi-
temporal (in the sense of post-temporal) crown to life's activities
but also from moment to moment, i.e. in any action whatsoever as
being its ultimate motive power. It is thus truly our life's passion or
what we most deeply want. Hence the urgency of knowing what it
is, as he goes on to ask in a following question. Hence also his
disagreement with Aristotle in stating that it is necessary for man,
for his or her living well, to know what the ultimate end of life is.276
We should try then, as he does, to discover this, since it seems
this is ultimately an effort at self-discovery. But at the stage of
argumentation we are now examining what this beatitudo consists
in has not been disclosed and ceteris paribus it might seem that a
person could accept these arguments and go on to conclude, as a
genuine absurdity, that man is necessarily driven by an end
natural to him but which cannot be attained since its existence is
impossible. Aquinas's own discussion appears to assume the
success of the arguments for the existence of a perfect and
infinite good, God, at the beginning of his magnum opus. At this
stage, however (Ia-IIae Q1), one might still identify the necessary
ultimate end of action with pleasure or riches, say, or several
different individual ends if one rejected the argument of Article
Seven that there is a common last end for all men. Question Two,
however, if accepted, would show negatively that the ultimate end
cannot consist in these things and even that men are not in fact
275
One must distinguish carefully in this treatise between imperfect or
"active" happiness, as conceived by Aristotle, and the imperfect
participation in beatitudo or happiness properly speaking which is all that
can be had in this life (Ia-IIae 5, 3 ad 1um) and which is treated as such at
Question 69: De Beatitudinibus, cf. art. 1: Dicitur enim aliquis jam finem
habere propter spem finis obtinendi: someone is said to possess the end
through hope of getting it, this hope arising through approaching the end by
action of the type specified in the Dominical beatitudes of Scripture
("Sermon on the Mount"). This is theological confirmation of our
philosophical thesis that hope is internal to virtue.
276
Aquinas, Sententiae Libri Ethicorum, Rome 1969, Bk. 1, lesson 2, p. 8
ll.52-71.
driven by these ends which they falsely propose to themselves, a
conclusion which would then lead to an acceptance of Question
Three, Article Eight, that happiness as here conceived could only
consist in the vision of the divine essence, even on the part of one
rejecting the existence of such a thing. This is to say that the
soundness of Aquinas's arguments here do not depend upon the
theological project which he himself employs them to work out.
They demonstrate, if valid, the tragedy of unbelief, since they
demonstrate that motivation by an at least ideal infinite and yet
unitary good is naturally necessary to man.
Article Four in itself is not very controversial. It concludes
that

per se loquendo, impossibile est in finibus procedere in infinitum

ex quacumque parte, i.e. it is properly speaking
impossible to move towards an end through an endless
number of steps.

This conclusion, we may note, is the premise of the fallacious

argument set up by Anscombe and Geach. Every chain of
purposes has a last number. This turns out to be an "analytical"
point. Having settled it Aquinas goes on to ask (Article Five)
whether a man or woman can have more than one ultimate
purpose, concluding that it is impossible that the will of one man
be directed to a simultaneous plurality of ultimate ends
(impossibile est quod voluntas unius hominis se habeat ad diversa
sicut ad ultimos fines). The language is quasi-physical rather than
psychological, as being directed at a spiritual substance rather
than at a supervenient state of mind. Aquinas offers three
arguments.

The first argument: since the ultimate purpose of

anything is a fulfilment leaving nothing further to be desired, then
if something further is desired (as an end) it cannot be a question
of the ultimate purpose.

The second argument: The source (principium) of any

willing, that which elicits an act of will, is that which is naturally
desired, but natura non tendit nisi ad unum (i.e. any one nature
essentially embodies one characterizing tendency), and this one
thing (unum) is the ultimate end (of that nature).
The third argument: voluntary acts are specified by their
ends. So the ultimate end of any given means-end chain specifies
all the acts of that chain as being to that end (e.g. as thieving or
adulterous but not both equally). But since all willed or willable
acts are as such of one kind or species therefore the last end
which specifies them as one genus (viz. that of voluntary acts,
directed to satisfying the will) must itself be one.
Of these three arguments the third approaches closest to
the core of the matter and, if valid, could stand alone. The
quantifier shift fallacy is not to be found, it seems, in these
arguments. The last two arguments, for example, depend on
premises (natura non tendit nisi ad unum and voluntary action is
specified by its end) which would make the fallacy impossible to
commit here.
These arguments, we noted, occur in a context of moral
theology. This, though, is a humanistic context. For it is man's
creation in the divine image which entails his too being free and
having power over his own actions.277 Hence Aquinas asks after
our ultimate purpose, which he says is taken (ponitur) to be
happiness. The idea that this ultimate purpose might itself be
determinable by our freedom, issuing in plans of life, is not
considered. Nor was it by Aristotle. As our determinate physical
structure witnesses, we are creatures of a certain kind, a truth not
likely to stop at our physical make-up alone.278
The notion of finis as such would repay further
examination. The background to Article Four, for example, is to be
found in Aristotle's Physics.279 Aquinas argues that if there were no
final end nothing would be desired nor any course of action
terminated, giving as his reason that in practical thinking the final
purpose is the first in intention.
We might note here, thinking of the charge of a quantifier
shift fallacy, that the notion attributed to these thinkers of an
initial disconnected plurality of means-ends series seems just not
to arise at the level at which Aquinas's thought is moving, as if he
might start to reason from it. He seems from the start, rather, to
conceive of human living (vita humana), or of a person's life, as a
chain, one chain, of means to an end, somewhat parallel (but not
identical) to the conception of it as a unilinear chain of temporal
moments leading up to the "ultimate conclusion" or finish of this
chain. Purely as temporal this series might be one of means to an
end only per accidens, and in such case, according to him, the
series could be infinite (in length). Hence he allows a possibility of
277
Cf. Prologue to Ia-IIae.
278
For further reasons for this, cf. Ia-IIae 10, 1.
279
At VIII,5.
the temporal infinity of the world, the First Cause, like the first
intention or the finis ultimus, being present and active now. This
distinction neutralizes the charge of a gross equivocation upon
finis, although viewed in this way the finish of human life is or
might be the purpose, insofar as death might indeed be the
perfection of life, the supreme moment for which we are
preparing, able to yield entry to immortal beatitudo. This,
however, is conditional upon the series of intentions and the
actions following thereon, including our responses to the other
causes which impinge upon our personal history, which are thus in
themselves only a per accidens causal sequence, finishing at
death which the good man, inspired by fortitude and charity,
makes it his first intention to accomplish worthily, whatever the
unforeseen circumstances. In Augustine's clear speech:

when we now speak of the Final Good we do not mean the end of
good whereby good is finished so that it does not exist,
but the end whereby it is brought to final perfection and
fulfilment.280

These writers are not so easily fooled by mere ambiguities of

language. Thus in Article Four Aquinas is considering any and
every means-end chain, of which the living of a human life as a
whole (i.e. as a series of intentions) is just one, in order to show
that no such chain can be infinite.
The objection is often raised, nonetheless, that the final
purpose of many activities, such as dancing, is not achieved
uniquely at the end. The theory places no obstacle against
granting this, although it will go on to argue that the ultimate end
of human life is not an end of this kind, since we never quite
achieve it. Through time we can only move towards it, so that
meanwhile a condition merely of hope, not of beatitude, is
possible.281 What we might call the Christian theory, at least,
seems decisively to reject the treating of one's terrestrial life as a
prolongued dance, and the rich man in the parable who arranged
optimal comfort and security for himself (the philosophical
prescription discussed above) was called a fool, just for the reason
that that night, as on any night, his soul might be required of him.

280
City of God, XIX,1.
281
For a vivid example of how hope can include real participation in the
final delight one need only consider the life-giving act of sexual intercourse,
intoxicatingly pleasurable from the first moment but still unambiguously
directed to climax, in default of which disappointment is experienced. For
the joy is precisely a joy that it, the finis, is coming, as we say.
We do not have the security of possession which present
happiness would require. At the same time a happier life even
now is promised, as it were incidentally, to those who place their
happiness elsewhere, and in that way, also on the Christian view,
life can become like a dance, based now on the surer foundation
of confidence and hope. Hope, anyhow, is ineradicable even on
the most earthbound views of happiness, since man is always tied
to a future, be it long or short.
In regard to the three arguments of Article Five, the first
argument begs no question in saying that my purpose is not my
final purpose if it is not my whole purpose. Russell, however,
would object that it satisfies us not to be satisfied:

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part

of happiness.282

If this were so, however, it would itself come under the list of
things wanted, as

(I want) to be without some things that I want,

and not

(I want to be without) some things I want,

which Russell felt able to offer as a counter-example to the claim

that there is one sole thing ultimately wanted, the getting of
which gives final, unquenchable happiness. It thus becomes a
back-handed way of asserting that one might be not just making
the best of it but optimally happy in the shifting conditions of this
life. We need to consider this at greater length.
If one wanted incompatible things then one could not
satisfy all one's wants, and this state of mind does not become the
less sad through being felt to be inescapable, evoking a wise
policy of general moderation, for example, as against "crying for
the moon". Less wise, if more plausible to more urgent spirits,
might be this argument of Russell and others that a state of
happiness itself requires that there be some wants not yet
satisfied, some satisfactions to look forward to. A formulation such
as

It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive,

282
B. Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
however, would almost seem to give the game away, since it is
certainly better to arrive. Plausibility, anyhow, is commonly
associated with deception, and if these satisfactions are looked
forward to then they must be hoped for. But to hope for something
entails wanting it to be had. If I say I will be less happy having got
it than when I aspire to it then I deny that I am hoping for it. We
cannot desire a diminution of happiness, this being the fulfilment
of desire.
It will be rejoined that what is required for happiness is
that as wants are satisfied other wants should arise. How, though,
do we distinguish this from the treadmill of unhappiness with
which we are familiar. One is reminded of the old Punch cartoon of
one man scowling at everything the other man finds funny. We
might then just say that dissatisfaction following on the heels of
satisfaction is the common pattern of life, discouraging to the
pessimist but evoking perpetual hope in the breast of the optimist.
Since the pessimist concedes the objection to the
Russellian view the optimist needs to show that this hope can be
maintained as a constituent of happiness even if it is not seen to
have a term. Is not a hope that is known to be unfulfillable a cause
of certain unhappiness, in so far as we steadily contemplate that
knowledge, as we should? For to ignore what one knows is a prime
cause of neurotic silliness.
The optimist replies that this is not his case. He is talking
of a series of distinct hopes, each of which is fulfilled as it arises.
The question is, is this enough? It partly depends upon how much
a hope is specified as a hope by its object. This seems not to be
the case283 but what we have, rather, is a situation in which men
suffer a generalized state of being in hope, less or more confident,
which not only is to be resolved by a general attainment but which
is saved from becoming despair, its contrary, by the belief that
such an attainment is possible.
We seem to be saying that the things which we desire are
significant to us, evoke hope, not because they are whatever they
are but because we desire them, even if what is desired is
necessarily the res and not possibly the mere having of the res in
separation from what kind of thing it might be. I desire a thing
because of what it is, but what it is would not signify for me if I did
not desire it. Is there not a contradiction here?284 What resolves
283
It is rather the case that hopes are all specified as hope by being
hope of the good, which is thus, again, the last end, as Aquinas says (e.g. in
his third argument here) about acts of the will generically considered.
284
For more detailed treatment of this question, cf. our The Recovery of
Purpose, Frankfurt 1993, Chapter Seven.
the contradiction is the concept, or rather the reality, of the good,
bonum, which, although an ens rationis insofar as the term
signifies a being (ens), is still, as related to the will and by the
same token, a being. Hence Aquinas says that

the possession of money is only a good because money itself is a

good (non enim possessio pecuniae est bona, nisi propter
bonum pecuniae).285

It is always a being which initiates desire, which elicits an act of

will, but a being seen as a good. Aquinas says it is manifest that
the ultimate end is the thing itself (res ipsa), even if this can be
presented in the mind as one's having of that thing. For it is also
true, as he says, that "the miser only seeks money so that he can
have it." It is the end as res that is instigator and cause (causam
vel objectum) of practical reasoning.
So whisky gives no satisfaction, is not hoped for, by
someone who dislikes it, for whom it is not a good, a bonum
delectabile. From this point of view whether what arouses desire
and hope in a person be a string of disparate objects or a uniform
quantity of some one thing over a period of time might seem a
non-signifying difference with respect to happiness. What signifies
is whether or not the person is in a state of fulfilment of his
desires. This is why it was important to distinguish what we most
deeply desire, which we claim here is natural and not a matter of
election. But what does also signify is whether getting to that
state is conceivable in either of these cases. Can the optimist
claim a happiness compatible with the endless occurrence of new
wants, of want, since he is never satisfied?
He has to claim that he is satisfied with this very
condition of never being satisfied, as we found Russell indicating.
It is not, after all, a contradiction, since one is not satisfied and
dissatisfied in the same respect. The same applies to the saint,
who does not love suffering as such, an impossibility, but who can
nonetheless love to suffer, love the privilege of enduring what he
285
Aquinas, Summa theol. Ia-IIae 16, 3. In fact it is the intellectual
inclination (it is only possible to an intellect) to the whole of being, which
thus becomes the good in general, which itself constitutes a will. Thus what
we desire, by our very constitution, is premissed in advance as a good,
which is why formalistic rationalist programmes (such as that of D. von
Hildebrand in Christian Ethics, London 1953) which attempt to establish
"values" to which desire is irrelevant are misconceived. We should rather
attend to what we most deeply want and need, the divine sovereignty
indeed having no more fundamental interest in us than that, as the simile of
bearing fruit (fruit nourishes) ought to show to those pressing a religious
suit.
does not love, for some end known to saints. The (Russellian)
optimist, indeed, is a sort of caricature of such a saint. For a cheap
price he has bought a sham happiness which, as doing violence to
his rational nature (travelling hopefully without hope of arrival),
cannot last. It is essential to being happy that one knows that one
will always be happy, a Boethian proposition which one might say
is nota per se, even if we should feel that this makes happiness
impossible. We cannot cut our coat according to our cloth in this
matter. It is with happiness as with the state of being germ-free;
this state is what it is, even if no creature were or could be germ-
free.
The saint can adduce extraneous theological reasons as
to why he loves being without what he loves. But the optimist has
no reason to be satisfied with never being satisfied, given that this
description encompasses the whole of his psychic life, if, unlike
the saint, he is not enduring this state as a dissatisfaction for the
sake of some other, transcendent good. He is clinging to that
variety of goods which we have argued to be non-significant, since
it is in their common character as goods, and not in their variety,
that things satisfy (even if one were to make of variety itself such
a good, thus reinforcing the point). It is the graph of fulfilment
which is significant, and here the constant replacement of old
wants by new ones entails that each satisfaction, qua satisfaction,
withers in proportion as it is had, at least under its aspect of
ending the state of desire (as contrasted with desire for just that
thing). The heart, Blake said, is a bottomless gorge.
We should add here, though, insofar as our last remark
might appear one-sidedly incomplete, that the fact that not all
satisfactions wither as they are grasped, even in this life, itself
argues for a final fulfilment as goal of human activity. The good of
marriage resides precisely in its relative permanence, and its
delightfulness does not consist essentially in looking forward to
future as yet inexperienced satisfactions within the marriage (as
would seem to be necessary on Russell's theory) but merely in
present happiness understood as continuing and, through the
promises of fidelity, as relatively assured in the way stressed by
Boethius. It is the uncertainties, risks, and eventual finitude of
marriage, however, that prompts people, whether married or not,
to aim beyond marriage. Where they do not it will be threatened
from within by jealousies, uxoriousness and neurotic denial of the
general mutability of life. Other family relationships can also be
cited as examples of this relative permanence, as can the secure
placement in a profession and all that is abiding in life. But none
of these can be made the final end of human living, nor, analo-
gously, can a generalized state of passing from one satisfaction to
the next, as if grief itself were no more than momentary.
What the optimist enjoys is living through the series as a
whole rather than the particular successes within it. His general
mood, therefore, surmounts the failures. He only needs these
successes insofar as they are needed to make the series itself one
of this type (viz. a series of satisfactions). So he represents his life
to himself as being like a piece of music, unable to stop at any of
its moments, but completely satisfying as a whole.
He is thus suffering from a kind of transcendental illusion,
thinking of his life analogously to how one might think of an
episode within one's life, such as listening to a symphony. Yet he is
nothing more than his life. He cannot stand outside or over and
above his life in the same way as with the symphony. If his life
progresses to its end like the music he will never have been
satisfied, any more than the conductor will have stopped beating
time throughout the piece, and if it goes on for ever his condition
will be still worse, for he will never rest in satisfaction, as we do
relative to the end of a good musical performance. This analogy is
therefore false on the crucial point (relative versus absolute
satisfaction), unlike our analogy of marriage, where delight in
permanence leads to an appetite or at least dream of a more
absolute permanence. The optimist's situation is Sisyphean. One
can, in any present moment, aspire to full satisfaction, such as our
optimist confessedly does not find. Yet he cannot lay claim to a
superior, second-order type of satisfaction based on the fictitious
construal of his life as a contemplated object.
But if it makes him happy, as we say? If he feels happy
with it, then is he not in truth happy? We have already
distinguished happiness from bewitchment or narcosis. Such self-
deception does violence to the man's rational nature, just as, for
example, does a similarly absorbing fanaticism in other cases. The
murdering fanatic wants no other kind of life, but the good of his
humanity is deeply impaired. Nothing, anyhow, can remain
indefinitely in a violent state, i.e. a state contrary to such a thing's
nature, in this case human nature. Hence such a caricature of the
good life does not confer happiness. Novels such as Waugh's The
Loved One or Huxley's Brave New World attempted to bring out
the deception involved in at least some brands of American, or
Americanist, optimism. The soul, the cleaving to the finis ultimus,
is there lost, but neither is the whole world gained.
One might just as well compare the satisfying of each
want as it arises to the continual taking of aspirins for a perpetual
headache. We are in want, but can live in hope. The optimist,
anyhow, needs to top his plea with some argument dealing with
the problem of death. Even if he pleads, somewhat sophistically,
that no man experiences his own death (Wittgenstein), yet we still
experience the knowledge and first breath of it, the "dark wind
blowing from the future" (Camus).

*******************************************

Aquinas's second and third arguments, in Article Five, for any

person's only having one ultimate purpose motivating him to act
or live at all, are closely related to one another. The ground
covered in the second argument by a method belonging to the
philosophy of nature or physis is covered again in the third at the
level of conceptual analysis. It, the second argument, brings out
how we start exercising our wills, both as a temporal beginning
and by way of causality (principium includes both notions), only
because something is naturally desired, thus leading us to desire
the things we choose, as we cannot choose what is by nature.286
But the fundamental tendency of a unitary, definite nature is a
unitary and definite tendency, i.e. it is to just one thing. Therefore
whatever is naturally desired is subsumable under one intentional
object of will. Not only that, but the principium of willing, because
of the structure of practical reasoning, is its ultimate purpose (cf.
Article Four), so there is just one of these for any individualized
human nature.
Assessing this argument properly would involve one in
assessing just about the whole philosophical tradition up to
Aquinas, but it certainly includes too much in its premises to give
play to a quantifier shift fallacy. Its virtue lies, rather, in the perspi-
cuous setting out of these premises.
The third argument might seem to be more telling. If
voluntary acts are specified by their ends (Article Three), then
there is one end, ultimately, which specifies the class of voluntary
actions as one unitary class (a fine ultimo, qui est communis,
sortiantur rationem generis). Of course what specifies a particular
voluntary act, for example a surgical operation, as being that of a
healer is the intention or end of healing, while what is said here is
that what makes it voluntary at all (in the first place) is some one
286
Cf. Dewan, op. cit., p.579 and note 49: "the elective
movement of the will is the effect of the ontological wealth
of the natural movement (cf. ST 1.60.2...). The natural
movement cannot be brushed aside as though it were not
yet true willing, as though true willing only came on the
scene with the advent of election."
essential feature, viz. that it has an end at all. This, as proceeding
to some one end which all voluntary acts have, might look like the
quantifier shift fallacy. But what Aquinas can be seen to be
meaning, in a compressed way, is that common to all these
particular aims is the aim of the agent to achieve his aims; it is
this aim which has to be present for an act to be voluntary, not
stipulatively but as a logically necessary condition, given that we
understand the meaning of "voluntary". To will something implies
willing the satisfaction of one's willing, formally or as such as well
as materially. This indeed is the second-order satisfaction which as
an account of happiness we rejected above. It belongs instead
here, as necessary foundation of the unity of human striving.
One might make the further objection that it does not
follow from voluntary acts being severally specified by their ends
that an act be specified just as voluntary by a concrete or
particular end in the same way. But what the argument most
directly claims is that what specifies this genus (voluntary acts)
must be one and what else could this one thing be but an end,
given that any act at all, on a teleological account of nature, is
specified by its end?
One can remark here on the prominence Aquinas gives to
the formal element in willing which we have just highlighted,
following his argument. Aristotle, placing happiness in the
exercise of man's highest or spiritual faculty, nonetheless gave it
particular or material content, thus incidentally making it
available only to the leisured class. For Aquinas, however, the
ultimate real aim of man is in fact also the formal aim of all willing
as such, which means in turn that his theory of happiness is not
separable from, is even a formal guiding element in, his theory of
human reason as such, in particular of practical reason. He has no
truck, we need to remember, with any theories of the will as being
somehow independent of the reason. Voluntas sequitur
intellectum and a free nature is ipso facto a rational nature (and
vice versa).
Aquinas is thus able to account for what is otherwise
inexplicable, that the concept of happiness is ambiguous over
form and content, it is at once a blank cheque and a real, naturally
determinate object. In his theory all the satisfactions we strive
after are the strivings of our nature, of natural inclination and not
merely of an abstractly "right" reason. This striving, all the same,
is determined in part by our intellectual universalizing conscious-
ness, since this too is part of our nature. The intellect, however, is
determined to happiness as the stilling of all wanting, indeed of all
want, the bonum in universali. Such a stilling is not compatible
with desire for goods not possessed, with the very principle of
desire. Delectatio, however, remains, since goodness not
savoured is not possessed. So happiness formally considered is,
as liberals say, getting what one wants, yet the theory implies
that until one comes to understand what one wants one will not
get it. This want, however, is one for all, as common and generic.
The evil-doer mistakes his end in some particular. His action is not
suited to it, and whether or not he knows or can know this is, from
the point of view of the present enquiry, a subsidiary question.
Hence Grisez was right in formally interpreting the
"synderesis rule", bonum est persequendum, as simply meaning
that we are to act purposefully.287 Any conceivable end is ordered
to that ultimate end which is here identified with God, who must
be conceived as one with his happiness, in which we, like any
conceivable rational creature, are born desiring to participate,
since God alone is infinite, and so existentially proportioned to
bonum in universali. The truth of this is not impaired by the
necessary corollary that of our own nature we are impotent to
achieve this participation. The paradox of created rationality
parallels the better known paradox of created freedom.288
Article Six, where it is claimed that all that a man desires
he necessarily desires for the sake of the last end, brings us to the
hub of this matter. Aquinas offers two arguments for the thesis,
one from the formal nature of an object of desire as such, the
other from that of desiring. Whatever is desired, firstly, falls under
the notion "good". So it is either the perfect good, satiating all
desire, or it tends towards it. So a man's satisfaction in having
eaten takes form either in going to sleep or in feeling that now he
can get on with the other things which he wants to do. Thus
hunger (like sleep) is an obstacle to be got out of the way on our
march towards happiness.
The second argument pinpoints the matter further.
Aquinas premises again that the ultimate end is first mover of
appetite (here he takes it as established that human living has
one ultimate end). But secondary movers of appetite do not, since
they are secondary, take effect independently of the first.
Therefore this initiates all desire and moves all appetite. All
appetition is for its sake. I cannot want to dance or eat a bun
unless under the aspect of their each being what I want.
287
G. Grisez, "The First Principle of Practical Reason" in Aquinas, ed.
Kenny, London 1969.

288
Cf. Dewan, p.581: "willing is an intrinsically infinite
action, because it has the good as its object" (referring to Ia
54, 2 and associated texts in the Summa).
 It is not necessary for having an ultimate end, Aquinas
explains, that one always think of (cogitare) it. What has been
shown, rather, is that it is the power or virtue of the first intention,
i.e. of the ultimate end, which is decisively present (manet) in any
desire (for anything) which is able to maintain itself in act. One
does not stop walking on the road when one ceases to think of
each step, a pertinent analogy since this part of the Summa has
as subject homo viator. Here also there is no sign of the quantifier
shift fallacy.
Article Seven, we note, concedes that not all agree on
what the last end is, so that not all desire it expressly. The real last
end is that desired by those with well (bene) disposed affections,
as good follows being. Such affections will be in accordance with
reality as disclosed by the foregoing analysis. Satisfaction will not
be achieved elsewhere.
It is the formal nature of the Thomist concept of
happiness as that which initiates and gives point to willing as such
which enables us to dispose of problems posed by certain
altruistic theories. A unified account of ethical values is presented
within the context of human living. Yet it is only because Aquinas
identifies happiness with God, at once real and ideal, that he is
able to explain happiness as being both a formal notion as first
principle of action and yet full of particular content. But this is just
the bipolar nature of the term in daily life too.

**********************************

The argumentation suggests that what we might call the maximal

concept of happiness is incompatible with temporal existence. The
most one might imagine is a situation, different from our own but
still temporal, in which security of possession is absolutely
guaranteed and in which there is certainty, not just hope and its
attendant fear, of things getting better all the time. This, however,
is less than that maximum which, it has been argued, we
principally desire as intellectual beings. Even a guaranteed
unfolding of joys could not still all desire towards the future.
Patience, a virtue of coping with difficulties, would be required. It
is true that desire without fear of loss is often seen as pleasurable
anticipation, as we noted above, but this is merely by contrast
with our habitual deprivation and hunger. Contrasted with the joy
of possession it is a lack.
Yet one might argue that the expectancy of what is to
follow is to be distinguished from desire and might be an element
of a present maximal state. Is this not the ideal experience of
hearing a piece of music? It is an apotheosis of time, rather than
its suspension by the eternal. The music forms a perfect whole,
like a clean concept. It is only with respect to the material sound
that it unfolds successively what we behold formally neither in
parts nor in an instant, but in some third way, best corresponding
to a sentence, cursive as the corresponding thought is not, even
though the aim of meaningfulness requires that the cursiveness
be disregarded.
It is typical of music that we know how it will end, and
certainly that it will end. Of an eternally unfolding life we would
never know the end nor, hence, how to assess what has unfolded.
Against this limitation on happiness, implied by any call for
patience, a bold spirit at some time might in principle exclaim "I
want it all now", a clear case of discord.289
If one takes these conclusions seriously then one is bound
to explore, even with a certain practical concern, the possibilities
concerning non-transitory goals, which the argument shows that
one is anyhow pursuing. One starts out, in such case, from the
datum that human life itself is apparently transitory. On one view,
let us call it communalistic, this restriction is overcome by correla-
ting the goal of happiness with an enduring human community
rather than with the transitory individual. In our non-Aristotelian
world, however, prefaced by human emergence from the non-
human, the human community itself could as well be as transitory
as the individual. It is itself an individual. We would have to open
ourselves, again, to the possibility of eternal life beyond the
bounds of the whole age of history, as in the Christian, Jewish and
Islamic traditions, though they see history's meaning as being the
preparation of this. The Marxist view, however, gets no grip on
happiness as analysed here, though the communal dimension
highlighted in such sociology may well belong to it. For any
person, as subject of such happiness, is essentially related to his
community, as the bonum in communi which he is born desiring is
the same in the end, as constitutive of it, as the common good or
bonum commune.290
Since we do die we must think in terms of our essential
personality surviving death, if happiness is necessarily a property
of John or Mary and if we find the desire for it natural and hence
289
This might appear Satanic, but the fall of Satan is conceived of as
occurring before establishment in final happiness, since this excludes in its
idea all chance of revolt and loss.
290
It was a fatal error of the utilitarians to reduce this to some kind of
aggregate good. Cf. Sullivan & Atkinson, "Benevolence and Absolute
Prohibitions", International Philosophical Quarterly, September 1985,
pp.247-259.
capable of fulfilment.291 There are in fact various arguments for
the immortality of "the soul" and these need not depend upon the
Platonic anthropology. The main arguments of this type are
compatible with the soul's not being the whole man, with the
body's being essential to our humanity, since they depend upon
the substantive spirituality of even the human intellect, upon the
insight that universal conceptual knowledge, however much we
may depend upon our senses and internal organs in general for
the operation of such a capacity, cannot in itself derive from or be
essentially bound to a material body of any kind. If this is so,
however, then a reason for expecting a reversal of death by divine
act (no other could suffice) offers itself on the basis of the premise
that nature leaves nothing in a violent state, such as that in which
a surviving human soul would, on a non-dualist anthropology, find
itself. There are of course alternative attempts to get to grips with
the spirituality of mind, such as the view according to which one's
thoughts are not one's own, as in Averroes, Frege or even Hegel,
against which Aquinas penned his hard-hitting opusculum, "On a
Common Intellect".
Happiness, anyhow, has to be "transcendent". This is not
some special type of happiness which philosophical discussion can
bypass.292 The transcendence issues from the internal
requirements of the concept of happiness. It does not follow from
this fact that the notion is incoherent, even if one should think
that there is no hope of attaining happiness.
For what is required to say of a person that he is happy?
This is, of course, a misleading, Oxford-style way of approaching
the matter. We are not to be stopped in our tracks by portentous
observations about how we "generally use the word". Yet some
words, more than others, connote an ideal state. To be called rich,
or cold, only a certain amount of money or absence of heat is
required, after which one can be more or less rich or cold.
But being healthy, say, is a less clear case. If I am less healthy
than another then my health is questionable, whether or not we
generally accept with resignation a measure of ill health, which
leaves us healthy enough, as we say. Still the idea of being
healthy is the idea of being in perfect, ideal order, whereas the
idea of being cold has little in common with the absolute zero.
This remains so even when we might seem critical of someone as
291
The underlying premise here is that of basic trust in reality, of which
Hans Küng speaks in his On Being a Christian (Collins, Fount, London 1978,
esp. pp.70-79). Perhaps unlike Küng, the Thomist would claim that there are
rational grounds for this basic trust and for the act of faith which it elicits.
292
Cf. Den Uyl and Machan, op. cit., for an attempt at this.
"disgustingly" healthy, just as we might find someone indecently
happy. It still belongs to our happiness that we become absolutely
happy, in the way indicated by Boethius, a way not realizable in
the life we live now, a temporal life. We are bound to desire to
have all we want, simultaneously, without risk of loss. This could
only occur, though, in a state free of the restrictions of the
temporal, an eternal state, whether such a state is realisable or
not.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Beatitudes as our Natural Plan of Life

The crisis of ethics in our time calls for a synoptic view capable of
kindling confident teleological motivation, in persons and
societies. It is futile to search for the "clear and distinct idea" in a
field of such universal importance as ethics, for which the ordinary
discourse of humanity is well suited. Rather, our notions must be
open, open to the analogies in things and situations, and open too
to the real human situation in all its depth and breadth, such
things as the desires of the human heart, the burdens of finitude,
misfortune and death, the polarization of the sexes, the insights
and traditions of religion, the exigences of politics, the compelling
witness of the arts and of literature.
The reason for this universal importance, such that a field
of discourse considered especially intractable or even (by J.L.
Mackie) "queer" cannot be isolated as if somehow less scientific
and hence inherently problematical or "emotive", was clearly
stated by Aristotle when founding this science, this theoria of
praxis. It is that ethics is concerned with the nature and end of
man, with man, that is, in view of his characteristic action or
praxis. That is to say, in view of what we said earlier, it is the
science of human happiness, of how to be happy. But this is the
object of all human endeavour without exception. Hence, if a
content to happiness were ever to be identified, e.g. as the
knowledge, vision or attainment of God as, it might be, of some
analogue of friendship with this infinite being, then it would follow
that this content is the ultimate aim of all our civil and social
arrangements, a conclusion that St. Thomas unhesitatingly
draws293 but which can at once arouse our fears regarding civil
and religious toleration. But there is no reason why what has been
achieved in this field cannot be integrated with a programme of
following the Thomistic insights, a work already outlined in More's
Utopia and one in fact deriving from Aquinas's own principles,
even though he lived under more restrictive regimes himself.294
Such an identification, however, of our desire, before it
would explain the hidden motor of society externally considered,
would more proximately explain ourselves to ourselves. And so
the young person reading for the first time the treatise on
beatitudo in the Summa theologica is led within himself to that
state of mind so habitual to, say, St. Augustine, when he wrote

You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it
finds its rest in thee.

There are any number of phrases from the Psalms of David (or the
poems of Wordsworth or Emily Bronte, or the writings of those
rather misleadingly called mystics) which suggest the same thing.
For what is here logically and metaphysically grounded by St.
Thomas is actually the most natural of our inclinations, whereby
we are not merely open to the transcendent but crying out for it,
so that the eye looks on at the passing show of this world forever
unsatisfied. The most natural of our inclinations is to the
supernatural, from the side of which we long for an initiative, if
only we might hope for such a thing. There is no ultimate human
beatitude short of that, and hence it is that when we read the
touching pages of Aquinas, somewhat constrained by a literalist
theological tradition we might think, about the fate of infants who
have died unbaptized, i.e. in "original sin" and without
supernatural grace or "baptism of desire" on the dominant
traditional view, we find that the purely natural felicity which he
there attributes to them (they do not share the divine life) is

293
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles , III 37.
294
See Maritain's True Humanism for suggestions and
insights in this regard. It would indeed be unfair not to
mention that such ideas are frequently embodied not only in
documents of the modern Roman Catholic Church and other
specifically Christian bodies, but even in less specific
documents including, in a measure, the constitutions of
some states, whether, Islamic, secular or of some third
variety, as well as some other international documents.
ultimately a species of hell, i.e. of deprivation of the fundamental
human hope, though these one-time infants are unaware of this.
But to speak of the most natural of our inclinations is to
concede that we have a plurality of inclinations, among which,
however, there has to be a certain order, both because order itself
is something to which we are clearly inclined and because that
inclination to universal good (bonum in commune) which we have
already picked out, identifying such a good or end both with that
end which in fact specifies the human will in its being as a will and
with the vision of God, is already sufficient to order the rest.
We might ask how it is that we can have this plurality of
inclinations if inclinations are to perceived goods and "good" has
the meaning of "end", if there be just one ultimate end not only of
all human life but even, we have found in our previous chapter, of
each and every human action. Here already, I believe, is the place
to introduce the essential notion of participation. Human beings
are so situated that there are a variety of ways of participating, of
taking part in, the universal goodness of beings, whether in the
order of learning or in the order of desire, use and enjoyment. The
basic realities of birth and education to maturity are sufficient
evidence of this. Before one even asks the question why do I live,
how shall I be happy, not to speak of answering it, one has lived
some years with one's energies bent upon nourishment, play, the
search for love, or whatever it may be. This is why we quoted the
scripture, saying that there is "a time to love and a time to die... a
time to embrace and a time to shun the embrace." Again, after
those first, typically adolescent days of spiritual enlightenment in
which, it may be, one discovers one's eternal destiny and the
dignity of one's own soul as a necessary being, after those intense
days of conversion the exhausted spirit will be forced to
remember its continuing need for, and hence inclination, at least
at some level of its nature, towards those finite goods which in its
ardour it had forgotten, a recurring pattern to which we must not
forget to add the need for healing and forgiveness of our own
wounded being.
In all these ways we can participate in the ultimate good
which draws us to itself like a force of gravity, pondus meus, and
so it is only good for us to use these other goods when they do, in
the particular circumstances as evaluated by the virtue of
prudence, constitute such a participation. Hence we are advised
never to seek fulfilment in them on their own, and even that such
a desire defiles the soul. It is possible, however, to abstract such
goods in the mind for separate consideration as to what is or is
not to be done with respect to each, assuming the circumstances
are otherwise right, and hence we arrive at those formalities of
justice which are enunciated as laws.
It is indeed characteristic of the legal mode that it be
analytic, considering each element on its own. Nor is there
anything wrong with such a mode. Hence if it be said that there is
a law such that adultery is forbidden, then, as law, this will hold
without respect to circumstances of place or person. The example
is Aristotle's295, and we may say that the whole thrust of the
Kantian ethic, for example, arises from Kant's insistence upon
viewing matters of behaviour exclusively in the legal mode, this of
course being in pronounced tension with his wish to deny any real
role to an external legislator, so as to secure "autonomy".
The tension is pronounced because it is this external
reference that specifies the legal mode itself, and which is the
reason why, as we said, laws, whether moral or societal, do not in
themselves reflect consideration of the total situation or intrinsic
aims of those subject to these laws, this being the very ground, in
fact, upon which Kant praised the dignity of duty.
It cannot be denied that this is the mode under which
morality is often presented to us in scripture, at least to begin
with, precisely in consideration of the infinite dignity of the law-
giver. Even if we see the wisdom of a given commandment and
how it will help us to attain our ultimate end, yet that is not the
reason why we are to obey it in so far as we are religious. Justice
though the heavens fall, we are inclined to say (the deeper truth
being, however, that justice is itself necessary for attainment of
the end).
In this perspective the doctrine of natural law faces in
both directions at once, preserving that complete reality which is
deformed in one way or its opposite by the positivist theologian
and philosopher of duty or by the consequentialist humanist
respectively. We have stressed the doctrine's analogical character
as a legal theory. Yet the claim stands that our inclinations really
promulgate to us laws (of nature), as arising from the reflected
divine light in our immortal souls, whether or not it be through the
weakness of our minds and not because of some positive open-
ended quality, of at least the more specific or "material" laws
themselves, that we for the most part do not, prior to
metaphysical analysis, perceive them as laws. "What is in fact law
is only inferentially grasped by us as law"296. We simply grasp,

295
Aristotle, EN 1107a16.
296
Cf. L. Dewan, "St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the
Moral Order", Angelicum , LXVII (1990), p. 304. It would be a
straight off, the goodness of being, a seed in the mind which the
mind, after some labour according to its own laws, will come to
see as the law of loving God more than oneself, something which
we in fact do without realising it in that initial grasping of the
goodness of being. And so with the other laws in their proper
order. An angel, says Dewan, would know from the first that these
are laws, and we can add to that the Aristotelean (and Thomistic)
caveats regarding the variability of the matter with which such
laws are concerned, this indeed tying in with the teaching on love
as a higher justice (even higher than equity), "covering" all things.
No doubt these angels know that too.
The strength of natural law doctrine, however, lies
precisely in this internal derivation of law from inclination, since,
as we have explained, law is superficially the opposite of
inclination, as what comes from outside is opposed to what comes
from inside. The claim is that in coming to know our own
inclinations, and there is no human inclination that is not a known
and indeed willed inclination, we are having the creator's law
promulgated to us. We are not just using our inclinations as a way
of working out what ought to be done.
In fact what Kant and St. Thomas have in common, as
philosophers in the Christian tradition, is just this insight both that
law must be preserved in all its dignity ("not one jot or one tittle
shall pass away") and that it must and can be internalized ("I will
plant my law within their hearts"). Now Kant's solution internalizes
law by the simple expedient of transferring the alienation
experienced by the subject of positive law into the depths of the
human soul itself. So it seems, at any rate, to most interpreters,
this being the effect of proposing a nobler end than human
happiness to the point of an absolute altruism divorced from all
inclination.
It is clear though that no other consistent outcome can be
expected once one has accepted the Suarezian definition of law as
something proceeding essentially from will, as a compulsion from
outside (which can then only be quasi -internalized in all its
externality, so that reason itself becomes the heteronomous
enemy of any natural appetite). If, however, law be understood as
a principle of rational order, intrinsic to reason in the first place,
reason as in its own intellectual nature being the cause of the very
faculty of will, then it becomes possible to understand the
Dominican and Augustinian view according to which the New Law
of the Gospel is not written down but poured into the depths of

mistake to interpret this as support for moral absolutism

(moralism) of the kind we have been criticizing throughout.
our own hearts severally by the Holy Spirit. We can then
understand, furthermore, in virtue of this, how, in the very being
of man himself prior to this infusion of divine law, there is
implanted a law which is nothing other than a reflected divine
light in our souls whereby we know good from evil just as
participants in the eternal law which is God himself creating and
governing his creation. It is the view of the nobility of intellect and
of its potentially directive role which is paramount.
Nor is this in any sense part of a project of reducing the
majesty, the uncompromising demand in particular of divine law,
in general of any law. Despite what we have said one should not
feel bound to view natural law as an analogy in the restrictive
sense of a mere way of speaking, so that we might describe
natural law, with Vasquez, as lex indicans only. Analogy, indeed,
rightly understood, extends to all things, and what is called
natural law is lex praecipiens ; it consists of precepts and even,
says St. Thomas, of enunciations, corresponding, for example, to
the Ten Commandments. He adds, however, that it belongs to the
very ratio or essence of a precept that it be given for some end297,
and this, as much as anything else, is a doctrine of God, that God
is wise, good and loving, and not evil, stupid and indifferent.
Indeed one might say that this is the only intelligent doctrine of
God as promulgating any kind of law and that any other view, as
history has demonstrated, is simply a camouflage of the loss of
God under a cloud of theological or even merely legal language.
Thus, in his discussion of the nature of law, which includes the
eternal law which is God himself, St. Thomas, clearly thinking of
God himself as preceptor and law-giver, writes:

Ex hoc enim quod aliquis vult finem, ratio imperat de his quae
sunt ad finem ,

adding to this that

alioquin voluntas principis magis esset iniquitas quam lex .298

The giving of law, then, derives from God's eternal willing of

himself just as universal good, in virtue of his nature as universal
being, ipsum esse subsistens . A God who does not will good, not

297
Summa theologica Ia-IIae, 99, 1.
298
Ibid . 90, 1 ad 3um. I.e. where an end is sought it is
reason that lays down the means for attaining it... Otherwise
a prince's will would be more iniquity than law.
as set above him but as grounded in his very nature as end of all
things, is not even a possible being.
This, indeed, is the only possible solution. Kant would
seem to have enthroned law to the exclusion of God and hence of
that happiness which is ultimately founded in the divine being. He
could see no other way to preserve its majesty, due to the
voluntarist conception of law just referred to. But then law loses
the very majesty which he is emphasising, being now immanent in
a human reason which stands alone, no longer reflecting the
divine, and which seeks to exalt itself as an absolute end in virtue
of a purely negative freedom from even the first determinations of
a thing's nature. Aquinas, by contrast, had stressed that just
because intellect is open to all being, able to have the form of the
other as other, it needs, since it is a nature, and a very exalted
nature, to have, like God himself, its own natural inclination, from
which proceeds the faculty of will as such and, indeed, all the
inclinations of our nature.299
Before we go on to examine more closely the nature and
role of the inclinations, however, it is desirable to remove a few
remaining doubts and ambiguities. It was perhaps the fear of Kant
and his predecessors that the law, in Aristotelian and Thomist
perspective, had been made the servant of the inclinations and of
happiness in utilitarian and consequentialist fashion. There is a
certain imputation of guilt by association here but in fact, and
whatever the tendencies of Aristotle in this regard, St. Thomas,
guided, we may suppose, by the light of revelation, is perfectly
free of them, as may be seen, for example, in the different
emphases in the doctrine of epieicheia as presented by the two
thinkers, or in the way that St. Thomas stresses, in contrast to
Aristotle, that to live well it is necessary to know what it is in
which man's ultimate end consists.300

St. Thomas, again, is more definite about man's natural

inclinations and their role, thus resolving Aristotle's circular

299
Cf. St. Thomas, QD de veritate 22, 10 ad 4um; Summa
theologica Ia-IIae 9, 1 ad 2um; 49, 4 ad 2um.
300
Cf. St. Thomas, Sententia libri Ethicorum, Rome 1969,
Book I, lesson 2, p. 8, ll. 52-71. See also L. Elders, "St.
Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on the Nichomachaean Ethics
", Autour de saint Thomas d'Aquin , Tome I, Editions Tabor,
Paris 1987, esp. pp. 78-79. See also Theron, "St. Thomas
Aquinas and Epieicheia", Lex et Libertas (ed. Elders &
Hedwig), Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Rome 1987, pp.171-182.
definitions of right reason and right appetite in terms of each
other merely.301 These inclinations, consequently, are presented
as a real, majestic and all-demanding law, to which, however, man
is inclined in the depths of his own nature in its noblest aspect,
viz. its aspect as a reflection and image of the eternal law, under
which aspect, specifically, man is called upon to be a providence
for himself in the freedom of individual personality.302
On this view of law as proceeding from the divine
goodness happiness, in the sense of living well, flourishing,
personal fulfilment, is in fact the highest development of life
according to law, of morality, and the fulfilment of all the virtues.
Hence St. Thomas will describe charity as the end of all precepts
and moral life. It is a question not of being for or against the
relevance of happiness in a moral context but of what view one
holds of happiness, that is to say, of motivation, without which
there can be no meaningful consideration of law in the first place,
if law is given to agents and if indeed it is a physical truth that
every agent acts for an end. Practical reason as practical is
inseparable from the question of motivation. For practical reason
as reason takes part in decision-making, as law itself belongs to
reason. Hence in this field, again, specification is not wholly
separable from exercise.
Now Aquinas, inspired by the Gospels, holds the very
highest view of happiness. To accuse him of an instrumentalist
eudemonism is to miss all that he has to say about that
participatio which we mentioned earlier. He is quite
uncompromising in saying that beatitudo is not to be had in its
perfection in this life, not even in the practice of virtue. One of the
virtues, in sign of this, and indeed it is a theological virtue of the
highest dignity, is hope, hope indeed of a praemium , a reward.
This reward, however, is intrinsic to virtue in so far as virtue, as
we know it on earth, is already an initial participation in this
reward which it thus genuinely merits, as a light growing ever
stronger, or rather as a sick body recovering vigour in such a way
that each new access of strength is itself used to develop more of
the same, the compound interest principle so to say.
Such is St. Thomas's perspective on the beatitudes of the
Sermon on the Mount, to which we referred in our previous
chapter and which, with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, hold a central

301
St. Thomas, ibid. Book VI, lesson 2, p. 337, ll. 109-
127.
302
Cf. St. Thomas, Summa theologica, Pars secunda,
Prol.
place in the Pars prima secundae , the first part of the book of
man as on the way to that same beatitude. For St. Thomas, in fact,
takes his conceptions of happiness from this most Christian
source, the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. Once we have
realised this then the strictures upon his teaching as unworthily
eudemonistic appear misplaced and even uninformed.
For what we are presented with is an exact replica of the
Gospel teaching upon human blessedness303, that same Gospel
which Kant (like J.S. Mill or R.M. Hare) had claimed to translate into
philosophical terms, but with lamentable effect. St. Thomas
claims, in sober truth, that they are happy who are poor, meek,
merciful, pure in heart, who mourn over their sins and hunger and
thirst for justice, who seek to make peace and who are persecuted
and reviled by the generality of men. This last characteristic, in
fact, shows that it is an aristocratic account of happiness,
correlate with the view that pauci sunt salvandi , at least in the
sense that each person must detach himself from the crowd and
enter by the narrow gate, this move being in itself, however,
natural to the dignity of personality and not peculiar to the
Christian dispensation in any particularist sense, a sense, anyway,
under which Christianity, of which Catholicism, viewed by de
Lubac as "religion itself"304, claims to be the normal form, should
perhaps never be viewed.
If it seems paradoxical that these categories, in various
ways categories of suffering or at least of painful effort, are the
categories of happiness here on earth, then this is so in proportion
as it is stressed that beatitude, in which they participate, lies
outside the world, simply because it lies in God, whom no man
may see and live, in the kingdom of heaven, to be peopled by
those who shall inherit the earth, who shall be comforted, who
shall obtain mercy, who shall be filled with justice, who shall see
God and be called his children and who now rejoice in being
persecuted like the prophets before them as a sign, they may
hope, of their predestination. In St. Thomas's conception this
Christian vision follows as it were naturally upon consideration of
the greatness of God in comparison to the creature, of eternity in
comparison to time, considerations which of course this teaching
in turn fortifies and confirms.
The idea that the purity of virtue is somehow
compromised by its association with these hopes springs from

303
Ibid. Q 69, esp. art. 2.
304
Henri de Lubac, Catholicism , Universe Books, London
1950, p.157.
that same failure to see that they are internal to virtuous living,
as good and the end are internal to law. Hence indifference to
hope, like despair, is a sin, a vice, sloth perhaps. Indeed, if the
patristic doctrine common to St. Augustine, St. Gregory and St.
Anselm, that to live according to the rule of rectitudo voluntatis
propter se servata is just to live secundum Deum , a doctrine
which St. Thomas's endorsement of the eternal law shows that he
too teaches, besides his explicit affirmations of it, then indeed the
blessedness of divinity cannot be other than intrinsic to the moral
effort, to the arrow aimed at the unseen glory above the clouds
not merely at the same time but inasmuch as it is aimed at that
visible point which is purity of heart. For this aim of its nature
participates in the other, as was the doctrine of Cassian and St.
Benedict and indeed of St. John the Apostle when he said that a
man who loves God cannot be other than a man who loves his
brother, whom he has seen, as well. Since he cites love of the
brethren as proof of love of God305 he cannot mean, as is
sometimes supposed, that the former, love of the brethren, could
be the foundation. That desire for God is intrinsic to moral
rectitude means that the latter must be understood as religious,
as participating in the transcendent, or else become a form of
spiritual vice. This vice indeed is present where one seeks to
misrepresent these texts as primitive foreshadowings of secularist
altruism in the manner of Feuerbach.
Thus St. Gregory the Great explicitly denies that there
can be a rule of right which abstracts from the law, cult and love
of the true God306 while, conversely, St. Augustine states, in tune
with St. Thomas's endorsement of the beatitudes, that those are
happy who have wished, not merely to be happy, as do all men,
but to live recte, hoc est secundum Deum, quod mali nolunt.307
This is why Aquinas says, as we noted, in correction of
Aristotle, that to live well it is necessary to know in what our
ultimate end consists. And this, incidentally, explains those Gospel
paradoxes about losing one's life as a condition for finding it; not,
be it noted, as a means to finding it since that would be the
seeking to find or save it which we are told will fail, but as a
participation in the new life by losing the old, something only to
305
I John, 3:14 et passim.
306
Gregory, Moralia 5, 37.
307
Rightly, i.e. according to God, as bad persons do not
wish to do. St. Augustine, De libero arbitrio I, 14, Civitas Dei
XIV, 9. Cf. St. Anselm, Ep. 156, p. 20, 86-86: quae in Deo
fiunt, secundum Deum, id est, recte fiunt.
be explained by what God is, the total good to which one can only
give oneself totally, as being the secret of one's own being
("closer to me than I am to myself"), and what we are, viz. images,
reflections, of that supreme good, who find our fulfilment in the
return to our common exemplar.
The Gospel, that is, never fails to promise a reward to
those who live in this way and it is indeed this reward, like Christ's
own resurrection, which is the essential justification of virtue, the
proof that the wicked were mistaken in despising it. This reward,
however, is itself, in the divine wisdom, the intrinsic flowering of
the virtues, a doctrine which in some form the virtuous man is
required to believe, at least through some commitment to the
beauty of virtue, beauty of life being unintelligible except as some
form of participation in blessedness, in that which pleases. But
any such concession to fides implicita should in no way be
confused with making of the religious or transcendent dimension
of ethics an optional superstructure. Our position, rather, is that
the Patristic era was in historical and cultural continuity with the
insights of Plato and Aristotle and others in the classical tradition.
This depends on our view that the idea or even the reality of
grace, of revelation, as something to be looked for from a
transcendent being, can be treated philosophically, since what is
taught as coming from outside is always open to rational
consideration upon its own merits. It was the error of rationalism
that it did not acknowledge this. Much of the philosophy of the
Enlightenment, furthermore, rests tacitly upon the Patristic
advances and is unthinkable without them, as, consequently, is
the contemporary philosophy
of human rights or certain aspects of the "scientific" mentality in general.308

CHAPTER TWELVE

Natural Inclinations and their Order

We drew a parallel, earlier on, between laws and inclinations. So

just as there is one form of all the virtues, and hence one basic
law, viz. love, so there should be one controlling inclination,
determinative of our ethical nature, i.e. of our nature as agents.

308
Cf. Theron, Africa, Philosophy and the Western
Tradition, Frankfurt 1995.
Charity, we have stressed, is the form, the originator, motive
power and orderer of virtue. Forma dat esse, says Aquinas. Love
fulfils the law to the point that law and behaviour are deformed
without it. We affirm, again, that what are called the precepts of
natural law correspond, to the point of identity as regards their
order at least, to the settled inclinations of our nature. Now as
regards these inclinations, the first or controlling inclination, we
saw, is that to the last or ultimate end, for the sake of the
attainment of which anything whatever that is done is done. We
have found Aquinas calling this end variously happiness, the good
generally considered (bonum in communi) or God. This first
inclination, then, is clearly one with the inclination of love, and as
man seeks the good which Aquinas identifies with God as his
ultimate end and first mover of his or her actions, so this ultimate
inclination is one with that first controlling precept of the natural
law which is the love of God, as we find Aquinas interpreting this
Old Testament command, viz. it is a and even the precept of
natural law, which can be so to say secularized to mean the
pursuing of the good in general, bonum in communi. Good is to be
pursued and evil avoided. This precept, at least on a religious or
even correctly metaphysical view of reality, is one with the
command to love God. Thus it was given in the Old Testament
without any connection with the later developments of the offer to
share in the divine life, although we have interpreted this
transcendence as fulfilling the ultimate aspirations of our nature,
which extend as it were naturally beyond what can be hoped for
as owed by right while, conversely, this "supernatural" fulfilment
is foreshadowed in Jewish (and other) tradition from the
beginning.309
So it is these inclinations which dictate the direction, the
energy, the passion and the virtue of love, itself the prime
inclination, for the passion of amor becomes the virtue of caritas
to the extent that it is rightly (recte) ordered, i.e. to the extent
that it follows the order of the natural inclinations, the total love of
God being, again, a natural norm.310

309
Cf. Aquinas, Summa theol. Ia-IIae 100, 3 ad 1: the two
commands of love and neighbour "are the first, general
precepts of natural law" (sunt prima et communia praecepta
legis naturae, quae sunt per se nota rationi humanae vel per
naturam). He adds vel per fidem, supporting our general
contention. Cf. also Ia-IIae 44, 1.
310
Theological disputes have obscured this, but we
cannot turn aside here to contribute further to such
 If these are indeed the premisses of Aquinas's argument,
his vision, if, moreover, they are demonstrably true, then we
should be able to show, and to find in his text, that our human
inclinations are indeed structured in this way, that this is our
nature. This will follow in turn, as it were physically (phusikos),
from the intellectuality of that nature, from the truth, with which
Aquinas was identified to the point of scandal but which was
accepted after his death by the official Christian community
(Council of Vienne, 1317), that this intellectual soul, and it alone,
is the form of the human body (forma corporis). Aquinas finds that
the Aristotelian principles, which he considers sound, permit no
other conclusion, whatever difficulties they may cause for
theology.
It has been claimed311 that St. Thomas's treatise on the
Last End is not well integrated with his treatise on law; in
particular it is felt to be not well integrated with what he has to
say about the natural inclinations as having an order which gives
the order of the precepts of natural law. So it is important to show
how this integrated unity reaches right down to the metaphysical
core of his conception.
We find, accordingly, that in the Summa theologica, at Ia-
IIae 94, 2, a table of inclinations is set forth which many interpret
as proceeding from a basic tendency to individual self-
preservation, through the inclinations to sexual intercourse and
founding a family, to what is most specific to man, viz. the
intellectual tendencies to such things as knowing the truth about
God and living in society. This, however, does not seem to fit in
very neatly with the questions on the Last End of man, where it is
argued that the vision of God, universal goodness, alone fulfils
human nature.312 It even seems to positively contradict what we
have found Aquinas saying about the order of charity. If by nature
we love, and should love, God more than ourselves,313 then how
can our first and foundational inclination be to individual self-
preservation? Again, there are arguments in the Prima Pars to
show that we, as rational beings, naturally love more what is
common in us than what is individual.314

disputes.
311
By G. Grisez, writing in the New Catholic
Encyclopaedia (McGraw Hill) on our last end.
312
Ia-IIae 3, 8.
313
IIa-IIae 26, 3.
 The quasi-Hobbesian interpretation of Ia-IIae 94, 2,315
supported without question by the formidable authority of Joseph
Gredt, has not gone unchallenged.316
It may even be that there are graduated levels of meaning in the
text, not all of which need to be brought into play for all purposes.
Gredt, for instance, cites a passage from the earlier Commentary
on the Sentences which suggests a tendency to keep the idea of
natural law at the level of "that which nature teaches all animals",
which certainly would give prominence to individual self-
preservation.317 There, however, where St. Thomas is discussing
polygamy318, he certainly goes on to introduce rational
considerations pertaining to man specifically, such as the need for
education, avoiding quarrel in the household and so on.
In any case it is quite clear in the treatment of natural law
in the Summa theologica that we are dealing with the first
precepts of the law as recognized by practical reason as true,
nota per se. That they are thus true, and hence constitute a law,
is guaranteed by the explicit consideration that such an
apprehension of the first notions, corresponding to seminal
realities319, is made possible by the divine reason's reflecting itself
in our own nature. So here there is no possibility of somehow
restricting natural law to the lower reaches of ethical theory. It
orders our nature as a whole, in its practical aspect, which, qua
nature, tends to what is good, i.e. to its end.
A pointer to what may not be more than the insufficiency
of what I have been calling the Hobbesian interpretation of the
first of the three sets of inclinations in 94.2, besides the clash with
parallel treatments of charity and of the last end which I have
mentioned, is that it makes it impossible to see the argumentation
of this long article as forming a coherent whole. Hence J. Finnis320
refers to the table of inclinations as an irrelevant speculative
314
Ia 60, 5.
315
Cf. Th. Hobbes, Leviathan I, xiv.
316
Cf. Lawrence Dewan, "St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights,
and the Moral Order", Angelicum LXVII (1990), pp. 285-308.
317
J. Gredt, Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-
Thomisticae, 3rd edn., Freiburg 1929, 939.2, 940.
318
IV Sent., dist. 33, q., art. 1 et seq.
319
Cf. Ia-IIae 51,1; Ia 115, 2.
320
Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford 1980.
appendage, which would certainly be unusual in St. Thomas's
works, concerned as he was for order. And, in fact, up to the point
where the schematization of inclinations is introduced we seem to
have a most ordered presentation and a progression of a type with
which the notion of individual self-preservation as the basic
inclination clearly clashes.
Thus, in the article, Aquinas declares the precepts of
natural law to be the principles of practical reason as per se nota,
and by this alone we can see that these precepts of natural law
are themselves, together with the first principles of reason as such
(i.e. of both the knowable and the knowable as do-able),

certain seminal principles of the intellectual and moral virtues,

inasmuch as there is in the will a certain natural appetite for
good, which is according to reason.321

I.e., practical reason moves the will from the start by conceiving
the good, sicut praesentans ei objectum suum, i.e. precisely as
presenting to it its object, which means that it presents the good
as a being , since nothing is otherwise intelligible (than as a
being).
It is quite wrong to make natural law consist in those
precepts which human reason devises, taking the inclinations as
mere "starting-points". We can see here that the precepts of
natural law, clearly meant to be taken as a whole, are identified
with those first principles which are naturally known to all, and
this is precisely why St. Thomas states in the next article that not
all virtuous acts belong to the natural law:

For many things are done according to virtue to which nature does
not at first incline us; but through rational investigation men
discover them as useful for living well.322

So for the precepts of natural law we must look for what is in us as

per se nota :

321
Ia-IIae 63, 1: [Q]uaedam seminaria intellectualium
virtutum et moralium, in quantum in voluntate inest quidam
naturalis appetitus boni, quod est secundum rationem.
322
Ia-IIae 94, 3: Multa enim secundum virtutem fiunt ad
quae natura non primo inclinat; sed per rationis
inquisitionem ea homines adinvenerunt quasi utilia ad bene
vivendum.
virtue is natural to man according to a certain incomplete
beginning: according indeed to the nature of the species,
inasmuch as there are naturally in man's reason certain
naturally known principles of both knowable and do-able
things.323

For St. Thomas indeed such natural principles are needed in

rational beings to balance the, so to say, self-transcending
powers of cognition and rational will:

But just as in active things the principles of action are of necessity

the forms themselves, from which the characteristic
operations go forth as fitting to the end, so in these things
which participate in cognition the principles of activity are
cognition and appetite. Whence there must be in the
cognitive power some natural conception, and in the
appetitive power some natural inclination, by which the
operation suited to the genus or species may be rendered
competent to its end.324

Thus there is this clear sense of natural law as what is naturally

known to us in a way contra-distinguished against what reason
has especially found out or devised. We see it in St. Thomas's
treatment of religious sacrifice:

in any age, and with whatever human nations, there was always
some offering of sacrifices. But what is found everywhere
seems to be natural. Therefore even the offering of sacrifices
belongs to the natural law.325

Dewan comments that the argument means that offering sacrifice

is not one of reason's extensions of the natural, but is a

manifestation of our very nature and the natural order of
things.326

323
Ia-IIae 63, 1: virtus est homini naturalis secundum
quamdam inchoationem: secundum quidem naturam
speciei, in quantum in ratione hominis insunt naturaliter
quaedam principia naturaliter cognita tam scibilium quam
agendorum. Cf. 51, 1.
324
IV Sent., dist. 33, 1, 1.
325
IIa-IIae 85, 1, sed contra; cf. Contra gentes III 38.
The same distinction is applied in the treatment of the peccata
contra naturam, as their name would indicate, and there is little
doubt that this sense, whether or not we find it personally
appropriate, is intended by the Popes in their repeated
condemnation of contraception as unnatural. They are not just
saying that it is unreasonable; they are giving a reason for saying
this. Natural law, in general then, is in the reason rather than
being a construction of reason. It is our own conception of the
ends and first movements (inclinations) of our nature, and this is
its justice, being ius before it is lex.
The whole discussion of Ia-IIae 94, 2 should thus be seen
as controlled by this statement at its beginning concerning the
nota per se or foundational character of the precepts of natural
law, i.e. all of them, as distinct from conclusions drawn from
them.327 This statement, in turn, should be related to the
statement at Ia-IIae 10, 1 that there are three types of thing from
which, as naturally willed, voluntary movement arises:

The principle of motions of the will needs to be something

naturally willed. But this is universal good (the good in
common), to which the will naturally tends... and also the last
end itself... and universally all those things which are suited
to the one willing according to his or her nature.

As we know, the first two of these will be found to be idem re, the
same in reality.328 The third is due to the fact that the other
faculties of man, who is volens, the one willing, besides the will
itself, which has bonum in communi as its own natural object,
have their own natural objects which are thus equally the objects
of the man as a whole.

For we do not only desire through the will what is proper to the
faculty of will itself, but also what is proper to the other
powers and to the whole man.
326
Op. cit. p.299.
327
Thus article 4 of the same question cites acting
according to reason as one of the common principles equally
known to all, and acting according to reason is taken from
the third level of the principles of practical reason in 94.2.
For such a commitment of course exists prior to any
deliberate following of what reason may decide.
328
St. Thomas speaks of "universal good, which is not
found in anything created, but only in God." Ia-IIae 2, 8.
Hence it is that man, in and through these other powers, inclines
to these objects as well as to bonum in communi and the finis
ultimus, and this is the situation reflected in the table of
inclinations at 94.2, but provided for with perfect consistency here
in question 10, article 1, where the natural movement of the will,
as distinct from the natural inclinations of man as such, is
discussed:

Whence man naturally wills not only the object of the will qua will,
but also the other things which belong to the other powers;
such as knowledge of truth, which belongs to intellect; and to
be and to live, and other things of this kind which look to
natural perdurance; all of which things may be
comprehended under the object of the will, as certain
particular goods.

So what we are discussing primarily is what man naturally wills,

even though, as St. Thomas declares elsewhere, it is will in man
which determines the use to which everything else is put, so that
a good man is a man with a good will but, even so, a good man is
more and other than a good will. This distinction is essential to a
doctrine of the precepts of natural law as hierarchically based
upon the natural inclinations. Hence it is that these inclinations
listed, as we can now see, correspond strictly to the natural
objects of the various faculties, and so give rise solely, but in their
entirety, to the primary, nota per se precepts of natural law and
not to extensions imposed or devised by reason. The order of
natural law lies in the ordered set of the inclinations themselves,
which of course includes the inclination of the rational will to
override anything hindering its pursuit of man's ultimate end. For
this phrase indeed reminds us that if the ends of the other
faculties may be spoken of as ends of the will, indirectly as it
were, yet the will's proper ultimate end is truly the end of man as
a whole, as the pagan philosopher well understood when he said
that even a little of this highest good is better than all the rest put
together.
St. Thomas goes on, in question 94 article 2, to which we
now return, to treat of different senses of notum per se, and here
he makes us aware of the priority of an understanding of terms
over an understanding of principles or of sentences as enunciating
principles, as abstraction is prior to judgment. This position would
seem to separate St. Thomas entirely from the Anglo-American
analysts of today, with their espousal of the "contextual theory of
meaning" (M. Dummett, L. Wittgenstein), that words only have
meaning in a context, such as a language or a sentence, or even a
form of life; yet St. Thomas's theory of meaning is also relational
in so far as it is based upon the definition, this being a process of
giving meaning to terms (not sentences) by relating them to a
wider category, the genus, and to species.329 Of certain terms,
however, such as "being", ens, there can be no definition, since
being is in no genus and itself forms no genus, being analogical.
Yet being must be understood before anything (we cannot say
before anything else of course) can be understood, even, or
especially, the principle of non-contradiction, of which being forms
the subject. The understanding of being, St. Thomas repeats here,
is included in the understanding of anything whatever, as, in any
and every act of apprehension, primum quod cadit in
apprehensione simpliciter, simply the first thing that falls into the
understanding. Hence it is that it is included also in the
apprehension of "good" as the foundational notion of practical
reason.
The object of this particular article, all the same, remains
precepts, enunciations, rather than notions, terms or concepts. Yet
goods and their contraries are to be pursued or avoided (or, where
the good happens to be an action, performed), in accordance with
the first precept, precisely because, as goods, they are fines,
ends. For when we are acting for the sake of our end, as indeed is
proper to agency as such, then we are relating to bonum, that first
practical concept. Hence it is that actions which fall under these
precepts of natural law as "to be done or avoided" have as their
ends just those things "which reason naturally apprehends to be
human goods".
One should stress, again, naturaliter ("naturally"). These
things are just what our nature inclines to in the inclinations as
listed, and they are objects of inclination just because goods are
ends (bonum habet rationem finis).
Now the fact that reason naturally apprehends these
things as goods, i.e. they are truly such, means that the
inclinations are rational. They stand in no need of order from
without, and indeed the order of precepts is "according to the
order of the natural inclinations" (secundum ordinem
inclinationum naturalium).
Thus, there is an order of the inclinations which supplies
the order of the precepts, and not vice versa.
Hence it is that the principle that "good is to be done and
329
Cf. Theron, "Meaning in a Realist Perspective", The
Thomist 55 no. 1, January 1991.
pursued, and evil avoided" is not only the first precept of the law
(and no mere preliminary to it), but it is upon this that all the
others are founded, as St. Thomas clearly states. Bonum, that is,
is included in the practical understanding of anything, as is ens,
more generally, in any kind of understanding of anything at all.
At this point, if we are to understand anything , we must
ask why it is that "it is good which all things desire" (bonum est
quod omnia appetunt). If, as is sometimes fancied, this were a
simple "analytic" statement then it would not bear the weight
being put upon it, nor would anyone have been tempted thus to
apply it. Such a view, one feels, betrays complete metaphysical
blindness, plus a lack of feeling for the Thomistic corpus as a
whole.
Bonum, as we said, has to be viewed as a being in order
to be understood at all by any intellect. It flows from the concept
of being, just as, and even in the moment that, will flows from
intellect and just as, again, intellect itself, a power, has flown
causally from the substance of the soul, from its immateriality and
purely formal character. Hence it is that practical reason is
essentially related to will, the appetitive faculty, but as preceding,
not as reflexively succeeding it. It presents the will with its own
object, the good. For ratio enim boni in hoc consistit quod aliquid
sit appetibile (the meaning of good consists in something's being
desirable), we read in the Pars prima , question five. Anything, he
continues, is "desirable according as it is perfect; for all things
seek their perfection", i.e. all the time, as finis ultimus. But

to the extent that anything is actual it is perfect. Whence it is

manifest that to the extent that something is being it is good
(in tantum est perfectum unumquodque, in quantum est in
actu. Unde manifestum est quod in tantum est aliquid
bonum, in quantum est ens),

from which it follows that "good and being are the same in reality"
(bonum et ens sunt idem secundum rem).
So good is explained in terms of being and in terms of
act, or being in act, under the aspect of a thing's perfection as
giving the ratio of appetition. For appetition is for what completes
one's being. Therefore it is with this aspect of being, and not with
some irreducible logical difference of the practical such that good
is its absolutely first concept, that we are dealing when we say
that it is upon bonum that the first foundational precept, upon
which all the others are founded, is built. Fundare is used twice in
the text.
 We are perceiving being as appetible, which we convert
into the ens rationis of bonum, whereby the intellect (and not
merely the blind will) becomes practical. Everything then is first
founded not upon a precept but upon a term used in the precept
but first grasped, in the human case, by abstractio. A term such as
ens (and, mutatis mutandis, bonum), however, is grasped as a
seed of all the sciences, pondered and penetrated by the
intellectual virtue of sapientia, which is more noble (nobilius),
because more fundamental, than is intellectus, i.e. the virtue of
the understanding of principles, because sapientia judges of the
terms of these.330
This is why St. Thomas speaks of the habitus or habit of
intellectual understanding, synderesis in regard to practical
principles, as only partly inborn, inborn as an inchoate habit.331
We have to get to know ens and hence, in the light of the above,
bonum, as

first conceptions of the intellect, which immediately by the light of

the agent intellect are known through species abstracted
from sensible things.332

It is these "incomplex" notions that the intellect immediately

apprehends. St. Thomas here remained faithful to the account of
Aristotle's given in the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics.
The virtue of wisdom, embracing knowledge of being and
of the good, is more noble in us than the other virtues precisely
because it functions as the principle whereby we build up other
knowledge and virtue. In this way the agent acts on himself,
building up virtues by means of the seminal, nota per se precepts
of natural law founded in turn upon this original sapiential seed:

certain seeds of the acquired virtues, as principles according to

nature, preexist in us.333

Why does it belong to wisdom, the most noble virtue, to consider

ens as such? Simply because ens commune is the proper effect of
God as subsistent being itself (ipsum esse subsistens). Ens itself is
330
Cf. QD de veritate XI, 1; Summa theol. Ia-IIae 51, 1 &
2, esp. ad 2um; 63, 2 ad 3um; 66, 5 ad 4um.
331
Ia-IIae 51, 1.
332
De veritate XI, 1.
333
Ia-IIae 63, 2 ad 3um.
the ultimate seed of wisdom, and it is in this way too that God
moves the will as being immediately ordered to him, as in every
inferior nature there is movement by something superior to it.334
The very sign of this immediacy (to divine motion) is the will's, as
the intellect's, attaining to something universal or formal, the
ratio entis (or notion of being) being the most universal and
formal of all:

The created rational nature has an immediate order to God:

because other creatures do not attain to anything universal...
inasmuch as it knows the universal meaning of good and of
being it has an immediate ordination to the universal
principle of being.

Elsewhere St. Thomas makes clear that the inclination of the

intellect to this universal good, to bonum in communi, actually
constitutes the will as a power flowing, emanating, from the
intellect, something further illuminated here as the very divine
creative ordering of the will as such.
Now this central, weighty vision can be no mere side
aspect of that sapiential Thomistic vision of the ethical realm for
which the contemplation of natural law strives. We are speaking of
the central, constitutive inclination of the human will, and that
cannot be forgotten in a text where St. Thomas tells us that

all those things to which man has a natural inclination, reason

naturally apprehends as goods, and in consequence as things
to be pursued, the while their contraries are to be avoided as
evils.335

The first, main inclination, as we have seen, is to ens in communi,

thus, qua object of inclination, become bonum, and this is indeed
the finis ultimus336 from which, together with all to which the other
parts of human nature are naturally inclined, movement of the will
naturally, i.e. natural movement of the rational will, arises.
Hence it is that at the head of the table of natural
inclinations337, giving the order of the precepts of the law, we
would expect to find mention of universal good. Indeed the logic
334
Cf. Ia-IIae 9, 6; IIa-IIae 2, 3.
335
Ia-IIae 94, 2.
336
As we saw above, from Ia-IIae 10, 1.
337
Last paragraph of the body of art. 94, 2 of Ia-IIae.
of the paragraph suggests this, since we move from what is
common to all substances, bearing in mind that all things seek
the good, down through the generic nature of the human
substance to the specific quality of rationality.
Now, as has been mentioned previously, the first item
listed here is often taken to refer to an inclination to individual
good, as the text on its own might indeed suggest. But there are,
all the same, many reasons not to accept this interpretation. Not
least there is man's natural inclination, following immediately
from all that we have been discussing and affirmed by St. Thomas
many times over, to love God more than himself:

each thing is inclined not merely to conserve its own individual

substance, but also its own species. And much more does
each thing have a natural inclination towards that which is
the unqualified universal good.338

If this were not so, says St. Thomas, in the body of the same
article, then natural love would be perverse, and hence not
perfectible by charity, which would rather destroy it.
This last, strong statement suggests that it might not
even have occurred to St. Thomas that someone might take him
as positing conservation of individual corporeal existence as the
first precept of law, which, on the contrary, is always focussed
upon universal good, to the point that the life of man is by law to
be preserved in common, as pointing to the whole destiny of the
rational creation:

nothing is solidly performed through practical reason unless

through ordination to the ultimate purpose of life, which is
the common good. But what is ordained in this way is an
exemplification of law.339

The reference here to all substances (in qua communicat cum

omnibus substantiis) can rather be seen as linking everything in a
communion of inclination to the finis ultimus, "in existing merely...
in living and in knowing individual things," or, in the case of
rational natures, such as we are, through and through, in an
"immediate ordering to the universal principle of being"

338
Ia 60, 5 ad 3um. See also what we found him saying
about prudence as, in perfecting individual nature, having
always to be also "political" or looking to the common good.
339
Ia-IIae 90, 2 ad 3um.
(immediate ordinem ad universale essendi principium).
This indeed has been stressed in this very article (94, 2)
as establishing the first foundational precept as we have
investigated it here. But it is not the intention of the table of
inclinations to leave that out, since that is what is primo, i.e.
foundational. The first inclination is the inclination of the will as
such , before we come to the inclinations of the other faculties
achieved by its means, where St. Thomas is for once prepared to
place intellect after the generic inclinations, simply because he is
following an ontological order from the universal to the particular.
Thus it is clear that under intellect he intends to treat of
something very specific. He speaks of knowing the truth about
God, living in society, and so on, rather than of the achievement
of the finis ultimus. That is included rather under "the inclination
to good according to his nature in which he communicates with all
substances" (i.e. at the first level of the table of the inclinations
given in 94, 2), since under "the conservation of his being
according to his own nature" (conservationem sui esse secundum
suam naturam) is included that perfectibility connoted by bonum
and, we saw, sought by all, although in the rational nature it
requires possession of bonum in communi as constitutive object of
the will.
Certainly conservation of one's own being would be
included in this perspective, bearing in mind that man according
to his nature is primarily a spiritual being, and this indeed accords
with St. Thomas's teaching that although man by nature loves God
more than himself yet he loves himself more than other men,
since they are not above him in the order of substance. Thus in
the order of spiritual good he might be led to sacrifice his own
body, but never his own spiritual good, for others. The latter, and
hence his spiritual being, is indeed enhanced by the former type
of action.

Again, it is quite in order for St. Thomas to indicate here the lower
reaches of this universality. The highest does not stand without
the lowest and the inclination to bonum in communi as ultimate
end can be thought of without violence as including preservation
of that being for which one is most immediately responsible, out
of a rational consideration presupposed to any inclination
qualifiable as human.
The idea of inclination, after all, presupposes the idea of
truth, the bonum apprehensum in mente, then sought in reality.
And again, we have to do here with
natural appetite, or love, an inclination which nevertheless (i.e.
despite being natural) is found differently in different
natures... in intellectual natures it is found according to the
will.340

Man, of course, for St. Thomas, is an intellectual nature, since his

unitary intellectual soul is his form. But we have to do specifically
with how this appetite (for the good) is found in the intellectual
soul or form of man, which form reaches right down to that in
which man "communicates with all substances",in accordance,
again, with the doctrine of the unicity of the substantial form.
All I am saying here is that this first level of inclination, as
universal, should not be restricted to this lowest, so to say
distributive application, after the manner of Hobbes, since this is
manifestly contrary to St. Thomas's constant doctrine and,
specifically, quite distorts the structure of this article (94, 2),
which is otherwise seen to be most perfect.
There is, we might conclude this chapter by noting, an
interesting parallel between the hierarchy of inclination, as St.
Thomas presents it, and the hierarchy of the four forms of law in
this treatise. In the order of inclinations we move from what is
most universal, just as, in the parallel order of precepts, we
started with the apprehensio of being and good. This universality,
that is, derives most immediately from the highest apprehensions
of the mind, in

a zone of inclination which links everything whatever in a

communion: in man, such an inclination is present in the
mode called "willing" and in the mode of the intellectual
nature... The deepest level of natural law is that whereby we
are in communion with the principle of all being and
goodness, naturally in our own mode, which is according to
intellect and will.341

From here we move to a more special level of inclination,

corresponding to the generic animal life which man shares, again
in his own rational mode, with all animals, coming finally to what
is proper to man and which thus seems to reverse the descent in
dignity from the first to the second level, if we understand the first

340
Ia 60, 1.
341
L. Dewan, "Jacques Maritain and the Philosophy of
Cooperation", L'alterité, vivre ensemble différents (ed.
Gourgues & Mailhiot), Montreal & Paris 1986, p.116.
level as interpreted here. We go from man as being to man as
animal to man as rational animal.
Similarly the four types of law, forming a set which is
surely in itself analogous, begin with that most universal of all
laws, the lex aeterna or eternal law, embracing all creation from
highest to lowest. We then pass to that law proper to man in all
his aspects, the natural law, before passing to the particular
aspect of law in societies (human law), spoken of in places as an
addition to natural law, before rounding off the list (in some sense
a circular one therefore) with what is at least equal in nobility to
the first but which is in a way the most particular law of all342, the
lex divina or divine law proceeding from Israel, ultimately uniquely
personified in Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. We can thus
recognize that a hierarchy having a kind of dual or even spiral
direction, such as we seem to be finding in the table of the
inclinations, was congenial to the mind of St. Thomas.
What is a consciously universal communion and self-
transcendence in the rational creature is in inanimate beings also
a participation in the divine, at which all things aim, but solely in
essendo, this being the reason that things don't immediately fall
apart. Bonum, like esse, is at once the highest and most perfect in
all things and yet, by the same consideration almost, that which
each and everything must have at the basic level of existence.
Even bread must be good.
Yet here this aspect of universality is clearly implied by
what has gone before. For if the order of the precepts is according
to the order of the inclinations and the first precept is "good is to
be pursued" then the first inclination is to the good, as explained
above. The inclinations in question are never "brute urges", and in
so far as man is subject to these he falls away from the integrity
of (his) nature.
For it has been contended here that ethics in
contemporary life, so attuned to analysis, will only be conserved if
this whole perspective of man's nature and destiny be taken into
342
It is particular in not being the law of nations, but the
law of one nation. One could, however, urge a distinction
between the form and content of the divine law as it has in
fact been given (as very particular by divine choice) and the
category of divine law, of revelation, in itself, as in fact lex
divina is generally treated in the earlier Summa contra
gentes of St. Thomas. But even granted this distinction it
would seem that a law of revelation would be essentially
more particular than the other three types (cp. Theron,
Africa, Philosophy and the Western Tradition, final chapter).
account, a perspective which saves us from viewing the final
paragraph of Ia-IIae 94, 2, in the Summa theologica, as an
irrelevant "speculative appendage" and hence saves the particular
precepts of natural law from being presented as a disordered set
of restrictions upon human spontaneity imposed by a "reason"
which is rationalistically alienated from man's most natural and
hence most noble aspirations. But rationality characterizes man
as such, the whole man.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Natural Law and Physical Reality

Substantial form, last end, charity, this book has served to depict
the analogy between these three in philosophical anthropology,
action theory and ethics respectively. It is the ultimate or specific
difference which perfects or accounts for all that is in man, such
as his animal or sensitive nature or anything else. It is the
ultimate end of action which accounts for and sets in motion any
action at all. It is the new and ultimate law of love, the "good
wine", which perfects and frees from deformity or falsity any
previous ideal of justice or any other virtue. Our purpose,
however, was the application of these metaphysical goods, as I
may call them, to the existing tradition of natural law and our
thinking about it. I believe this has been done. It may help,
however, if we here single out three of the topics already treated
for further consideration on their own. There follows, accordingly,
a critique of certain theories of autonomous value and, in
particular, of attempts to harmonize them with Thomism, a
discussion, secondly, of the relation of human reason to human
nature as a whole while, thirdly, some further reflection upon the
role and nature of the end or telos seems appropriate. These three
topics are internally related to a high degree and upon their
combined resolution the possibility of any properly ethical
knowledge seems to depend.

****************************

The confusion reigning in modern moral philosophy has not only

been exposed343; it has also been analysed in a cultural and
historical perspective344 in a way which has provoked extensive
debate over the past decade. It is by now clear that this confusion
is linked to the unworkable simplicities of Cartesian dualism and,
more generally, to the replacement of teleology by mechanism,
whether in human physiology or in any other field. Thus MacIntyre
judges it as quite certain, prior to the collapse of the tradition into
incomprehensibility due to an over-running of the field by late
mediaeval and Reformation (inclusive of Jansenist) theologies,
that the "general form of the moral scheme" was, as analysed by
Aristotle, threefold in its presuppositions, viz.

"some account of potentiality and act, some account of the

essence of man as a rational animal and above all some
account of the human telos ."345

This scheme, the essential pre-condition for any doctrine of

natural law, was "added to but not essentially altered"346 when
placed within the framework of one or other of the main theistic
343
. G.E.M. Anscombe, "Modern Moral Philosophy",
Philosophy , 33, 1958.
344
. A. MacIntyre, After Virtue , London 1981.
345
. MacIntyre, op. cit. p.50.
346
. Ibid. p.51.
beliefs. The theological premises rendering it irrelevant were
those early modern notions affirming the total depravity of human
nature and the consequent arbitrariness of any conception of a
divine being as conceived from within that nature. Human reason
thus conceived can say nothing of value about ends347, and this
became the favoured, even the canonized position, in natural
science.
We can add to the above diagnosis the phenomenon of
voluntarism, which has roots in earlier post-Thomist speculation
on the absolute power of God. Such voluntarism, denying any
natural end to the rational will, has made it impossible to
understand the nature of practical reason in particular, though
this is necessary for any scientific theory of ethics since this must
base itself upon a correct theory of human action.348
Symptomatic of this dualism is the gradual disappearance
of rational psychology, of the study of mentality as a form of life.
The contemporary philosophy of mind has instead tended to
reduce the mental to a closed network of relations349 abstracted
from all biological basis. Again, the renewed interest of many
philosophers in the implications of neuro-physiology may be
heralding the decline of this attitude.
For Thomas Aquinas one could not investigate intellectual
life without relating it to sensitive and vegetative life since man,
and hence his principle of life or form (forma) is one. It is indeed
identically the individualized form of humanity by which a man is
a man which is also his intellect350 or, in other words, his capacity
himself to have the form of the other (any other) as other, i.e. to
know things as they are. But this is to say that knowledge is
explained in terms of being, whereby the mind (i.e. the man
himself formally considered) intentionally becomes "in a way"
(quodammodo) whatever is intelligible in other things. All thinking,
indeed all language, where theoretical, is for the sake of this
knowledge, which is explained as the act of being of object and
347
. Ibid. p.52.
348
. On voluntarism, cf. G.M. Manser, Das Naturrecht in
Thomistischer Beleuchtung , Freiburg in der Schweiz, 1944.
349
. "It is never anything but the connections of our
representations that constitute the subject matter of our
investigations." Lotze, Logik, 2nd edn. 1880, p. 491.
350
This is true even if, strictly speaking, intellect or
understanding (intellectus) is a power of the soul rather than
the soul itself.
knower in union. It is only those substantial forms most immersed
in matter which do not have this natural capacity to have the
other forms as other, to unite with them in this "intentional" way,
a view of things later echoed in Leibniz's at first sight fantastic
metaphysics.
Now the contemporary philosophy of value, this term
being defined by its divorce from the factual as the Cartesian
mind is divorced from the machine-body, is clearly linked to the
absolute dualism between thinking and being which Thomas
rejects, since anything not a being is not anything, if being is the
most universally general concept of reality, transcending all
particular categories. All other transcendentals, St. Thomas
accordingly makes clear, such as truth or (our present concern)
goodness, are mere beings of reason (entia rationis), modalities of
being in so far as being itself, any being, is presented to the
intellect or will respectively. Something is added to being
according to reason only (secundum rationem tantum), and this is
a relation supplied by our thought to one or other of these two
faculties which are naturally referred to reality in general. This
universal reference is what makes truth and goodness, like unity,
to be transcendental concepts.351
It is thus an error to see goodness as competing with
being on its own level. It leads to a devaluation of the significance
of being, as we cited Marcel as saying earlier, and indeed destroys
the spontaneous liberty of human ethical life in typical rationalist
fashion352, duty no longer being derived from how man and the
world are.
Recently some writers imbued with rationalist principles
have tried to recast St. Thomas's thought in a way allowing for
these supposed new insights (the fact-value dichotomy, no
"ought" from an "is")353. But no compromise is possible, since to
say that no "ought" is derivable from an "is" just means that there
is no natural law, that human nature cannot be a law. The same
applies to the attempt, from within the logic of Frege and Russell,
351
. Aquinas, De Potentia 9, 7 ad 6. Cf. S. Theron, "Ens
Rationis I: Medieval Theories", Handbook of Metaphysics and
Ontology, Munich 1991, Vol. I, pp. 245-246.
352
. Cf. A. de Muralt, "The 'Founded Act' and the
Apperception of Others", The Self and Others (ed.
Tymeniecka), Dordrecht 1977, referred to above, ch.4.
353
I refer to the work of John Finnis, Germain Grisez and
their followers. One prescinds here from much that is of
value in their impressive output.
to re-explain teleology as propositional or "intentional"354, since for
natural law there has to be a real object exerting final causality by
way of natural inclination, whether in animal or in intellectual
nature. Thus St. Thomas speaks of

ipsae naturales inclinationes rerum in proprios fines, quas

dicimus esse naturales leges... consoni naturali appetitui effectus
(the natural inclinations themselves of things to their own ends,
which we say are natural laws... effects consonant with natural
appetite).355

There is no question of Thomists confusing ethics with physical

biology or with metaphysics. For that human or some other
nature, how man is, dictates the conclusions of ethics does not
submerge ethics within biology, if only because ethics is a theoria
about praxis, which entails freedom, and not about the
determinate natures of substances.
Aristotle had claimed that ethics was a practical science
ordained to producing good actions. So Aquinas can claim to
follow his true mind when he rejects Aristotle's view that the
determination of man's last end is probable rather than certain,
depending on each man's character356, and states that knowledge
of one's last end is necessary for living as one ought.357 Again, he
modifes Aristotle's dictum that the purpose of ethics is not
knowledge but actions, merely claiming that ethics does not only
aim at knowledge, i.e. he asserts that it does so aim.358 That is, he
distinguishes more clearly between the theoretical science of
ethics and practical prudence.
So whereas ethics is not an art, yet neither is it the
philosophy of nature (or psychology), which studies the order
present in the universe (and in the soul), as logic studies the order

12. P.T. Geach, "Teleological Explanation", Explanation

354

(ed. S. Körner), Oxford 1975.

355
Aquinas, Expositio Dionysii de divinis nominibus, cap.
x, lect. 1.
356
Ibid. 1094a 22.
357
St. Thomas, Sententia libri Ethicorum, Rome 1969
(Leonine edn.), I, 2, 8, 52-71.
358
Ibid. I, 3, 12, 144; II, 2, 80, 25.
in the acts of the intellect (in second intention), but it directs
man's free acts, i.e. it orders them to his end. This, however, is a
scientific knowledge, like any other, about a certain order, and

"it is a feeble argument indeed to infer that because the ultimate

purpose of normative science is to order certain things to be
done, therefore, it is impossible in normative science ever to
attain any such thing as a real knowledge of what ought to be
done or ought not to be done."359

St. Thomas, in agreement with St. Augustine, claims that man can
and even must discover that he is made for the enjoyment of God,
the transcendent and infinite, even if he cannot know much about
this final goal.360 Hence he repeatedly characterizes the happiness
outlined by Aristotle as imperfect, and hence not proper happiness
according to the received definition of it by Boethius as a perfect
possession.
Whereas ethics as, in the above sense, a practical science
belongs to reason alone prudence as a virtue involves the will as
making use of a knowledge of ethics. St. Thomas points out that
Aristotle's remarks about the results of ethics being subject to
change apply more truly to individual actions as left to one's own
prudence.361 Again, the apparent circularity of Aristotle's view that
while the practical intellect is true when it agrees with right desire
yet the latter is only right when it follows right reason362 is
overcome by St. Thomas's pointing out that what is desired is
determined by nature, just the point so contested by modern
voluntarism. It is not open to reason, as determining means to the
end, to determine what the end shall be, the empty pretence of
Sartrian or Nietzschean existentialism. Such choices, where
perverse, satisfy rather the natural, and hence pre-determined,
inclination to indulge one's own will, albeit beyond due measure.
Hence they will not attain the end.
The desire of the last end, for Aquinas, must be natural
and hence involuntary, and here he claims to be true to Aristotle.
359
Henry Veatch, "Concerning the Distinction between
Descriptive and Normative Science", Journal of Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research, Vol. VI, No. 2, December
1945. Cf. pp. 293-294.
360
Ibid. I, 9, 31, 50; 16,60, 222.
361
Ibid. I, 2, 81, 71-78.
362
Aristotle, NE 1130a 23ff.
Even if all men can know that happiness is the ultimate purpose of
living, this being what drives even the professed altruist as the
very name of motivation (he prefers not to betray his ideal), yet
not all know in what it consists. They make mistakes about it.
So whereas Aristotle might, with Vasquez, have spoken of
natural law as lex indicans, yet for St. Thomas it is lex praecipiens,
and here he thinks of the constant intention of the divine
legislator (lex naturalis being defined as the reflection of the lex
aeterna in the rational creature363) in a way brought out in his
treatment, contrasting with Aristotle's, of epieicheia or equity.
Whereas Aristotle considers human actions as variable materia
preventing there being a uniform law for all times, places and
persons St. Thomas will only grant this as applying to positive
laws not including the legislator's intention, which is truly
universal, and so he prefers to understand material variability not
of actions but of incidental deformities of intellect or nature, due
to matter in the literal sense.364 But all this is related to his
emphasis on the just thing (iustum) in reality as that of which the
law (lex) in the reason, as intentional, is truly and only a sign
(signum formale), this just thing as universal in rebus being
mentally apprehended by repeated acts of epagoge in (sense-)
experience:

lex non est ipsum jus, proprie loquendo, sed aliqualis ratio juris.365

Social and educational factors, for their part, are no more than
instances of this empirical information. Hence the quasi-
innateness of synderesis is offset by the claim that it can be no
more than an inchoate habit (secundum inchoationem).366

*************************************

363
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia-IIae, 91, 2.
364
Aquinas, In III Sent. 37, 4 ad 1um, ad 2um; cf. Theron,
"St. Thomas Aquinas and epieicheia", Lex et Libertas (ed. L.J.
Elders & K. Hedwig), Vatican City 1987. On either view the
individuality and creativity discussed earlier will remain the
crown of ethical endeavour.
365
Aquinas, Ibid. IIa-IIae, 57, 1 ad 2um. The law is not
that which is right in itself, properly speaking, but a certain
rational statement of it.
366
Ibid. Ia-IIae, 51, 1: Utrum aliquis habitus sit a natura.
Lex naturalis, in the context of Thomistic thought, is the lex
humanae naturae. This nature carries authority precisely because
it is a reflected divine light, i.e. because human nature images
divine nature. How man is sets the standard because he (she)
reflects how God is, which in relation to his governing the world is
the lex aeterna, ordering all things to their end.367 If anyone
should ask why how God is should be the ultimate standard
(expressed in scripture as the precept of total love of God, later to
be explicated in terms of imitating Him) then the only possible
reply is that God, as First Cause, is the end, exemplar and
controlling reality of all things, intimate key to our own otherwise
opaque personalities.368
It is significant that the definition quoted above says that
natural law reflects eternal law in the rational creature. It does not
say that it is reflected in reason alone, as on the rationalist and
implicitly dualist interpretation. All the same, law qua law is
primarily in the reason, but this is because the intellect is itself
the form of our human nature, i.e. it is the substantial form of the
substance man, through which unformed matter is shaped into
the human body with all of a man's bodily powers. This body does
not exist as a separate entity (with its own forma corporis) upon
which a purely rationalist system can then impose truly violent
demands, and this, conversely, is why natural law is also present
in man's generic and animal nature, creating the possibility of the
peccata contra naturam, but also, more positively, giving that
nature its iconic dignity.
It is not therefore a question of an imposition of a rational
order from without. Reason indeed sets up an order,

sicut ordo rationis rectae est ab homine, ita ordo naturae est ab
ipso Deo,369

but only so as to cater to reason's specific manner of

apprehending reality as it is. There is no ethical order divorced
from a natural order dependent upon the human essence with its
natural inclinations. Hence St. Thomas states that it is sufficient
for an act's rightness that it proceed from a power of our nature
367
Aquinas, Summa Theologica Ia, 103 & 104.
368
Cf. S. Theron, "A Necessary Condition for the Truth of
Moral and Other Judgments", The Thomist, 55, 2, April 1991.
369
As the order of right reason is from man, so the order
of nature is from God himself. Aquinas, Ibid. IIa-IIae, 154, 12
ad 1um.
according to natural inclination:

Quando ergo actus procedit a virtute naturali secundum

naturalem inclinationem in finem tunc servatur rectitudo in
actu (When therefore an action proceeds from a natural
capability in accordance with a natural inclination to some
end then this behaviour is in itself all right).370

He adds in qualification that in voluntary actions

regula proxima est ratio humana; regula autem suprema est lex
aeterna (the proximate rule is human reason, but the
supreme canon is the eternal law).

It is clear from context, however, that it is reason's business, as

mention of the eternal law as ordering nature makes doubly clear,
to order things according to the ends supplied to it by nature in
the inclinations, which indeed include an inclination to do this very
thing371. In other words, voluntary agents are a species of those
agents he has just mentioned which act according to nature and
not a contrast to them:

quae quidem regula in his quae secundum naturam agunt, est

ipsa virtus naturae, quae inclinat in talem finem (which rule
indeed is in these things which act according to their nature
the drive of their nature itself which inclines them to such
and such an end).372

Hence under this general case he can include the voluntary

sinner, writing

quando autem a rectitudine tali actus aliquis recedit, tunc incidit

ratio peccati (but when someone falls away from such
naturalness or uprightness in a given act, then sinfulness is
ipso facto incurred),

before going on in the same article to consider voluntary acts

specifically (In his vero quae aguntur per voluntatem).
Unfortunately it is nonetheless easy to suppose that what
370
Ibid. Ia-IIae, 21, 1.
371
Ibid. 94, 2: inest homini inclinatio ad bonum secundum
naturam rationis, quae est sibi propria:
372
Summa theol. Ia-IIae 21, 1.
is enunciated by reason (aliquid ratione constitutum) must be
something very different from what is found in reality. This
however is to forget that St. Thomas was an epistemological
realist. His view is that the very same being (ens) which exists in
the world with esse naturale exists in the mind with esse
intentionale. What the mind constitutes are intentiones, i.e.
intentions of real things. So although the mind cannot do other
than set up an intentional order, yet the point and value of
intellect is precisely due to its not being this order itself of which
the subject first has knowledge, but, rather, that which it intends,
viz. the reality considered just as it is, which he knows through it
(id quo, not id quod373), without, in the first instance, knowing the
mental constructs at all. He only knows these by a reflection, a
second intention (though here again he depends utterly upon a
first intention precisely of these second intentions, so that such
knowledge is no surer or more immediate than any other). Hence
this rational order which man sets up does not get in the way.
Hence the rational precepts of natural law manifest the human
essence with its inclinations (operatio sequitur esse), just as it is.
These precepts are judgments or enunciations (reason's
second act) but a judgment, for St. Thomas, just like a concept, is
a verbum cordis, an id quo or that by which the res, in this case
the ius or iustum, is known.374 Although not a conceptus (got by
apprehensio, reason's first act) it is a conceptio.
Hence it is that the inclinations must not be seen as mere
raw material presented to reason to be ordered, in the sense that
reason alters or does violence to what it apprehends. Such a view
would ignore that, as we noted, in St. Thomas's list of the
inclinations which make up natural law (in Ia-IIae 94, 2) there are
found inclinations to know the truth about God, or to live
peaceably and reasonably in society, i.e. certain principles of
order are presupposed among the inclinations themselves. They
are not blind urges, since man is a unity. It is the inclinations
themselves which include the work of reason as the specific
difference of our nature. To this extent it is not a critical reason set
above our nature in the manner of a rationalist methodology.
So nature and natural ends are presupposed to making
sense of the work of reason. Hence there is a clear sense, for St.
Thomas, in which sins of unnatural vice are not merely wrong in
consequence of being contrary to reason and its order, but by

373
Ibid. Ia 85, 2.
374
Cf. Summa Theologica Ia 85, 5; QD de veritate 4, 2c;
de potentia 9, 5.
directly violating the more immediately God-given order (by the
lex aeterna) of our generic nature.375 What specifically violates
reason as a natural faculty, by contrast, is the sin of lying. To lie is
not just to act against reason, as with theft, say. It is to violate
reason, a faculty or power of the soul.
Related to this is the Thomist empiricism whereby we do
not start off with a knowledge, presumably innate, of principles or
laws but have first to understand the terms (termini) of these
enunciations in apprehensio, the first of the three acts of the
understanding enumerated by Aristotle in his Peri Hermeneias.
Hence

cognitio principiorum provenit nobis ex sensu.376

The concrete data of our nature are thus prior to ratiocination

about them and whereas, as St. Anselm says, all lies contain some
truth in order to say even something false, i.e. they are not
gibberish, yet it is possible to pervert the real qualities of our
nature themselves, e.g. the generative organs or the tongue.
It follows from this account that to say something is
against natural law is more than just a way of saying that it is
morally wrong (the rationalist mis-interpretation). It says that it is

375
If this is so then, by our principles as elaborated in
earlier chapters, it would be up to love to find this out.
Otherwise Thomism appears, in today's climate particularly,
as a kind of sterile rationalism maintained against all vital
liberty and spontaneity, since it is indeed easy to feel that
the argument here from teleology is fallacious (cf. P.T. The
Virtues, p.138), or at least not the last word. Yet in the
Summa texts on these matters Aquinas considers our
generic nature in the light of a sacred trust from God, i.e. he
considers it theologically, himself exercising and inviting in
us an impulse of response to the love of God qua our
creator. Whether this same love might prompt to
superficially deviant behaviour on occasion (e.g. propter
defectum materiae) is a separate question. All the same, in
so far as the texts are interpretative of love, including
therefore any "human" love (of self or neighbour) in a total
vision, they cannot without distortion be seen as essentially
opposing or limiting it (see chapter 8 above).
376
Aristotle, Post. An. II, 19, and quoted with approval
and supporting argumentation at Summa Theol. Ia-IIae 51,
1.
acting against how man is, in a way which is most directly seen at
the biological or generic level, where such acts are deformed or
perverse in a double sense (specialis ratio deformitatis...
dupliciter). They are not only repugnant to right reason but to the
natural order itself377, thus injuring God himself as its creator
(iniuria ipsi Deo ordinatori naturae). If this is so, then it is all the
more incumbent upon society to create conditions where love
between men and women can flourish without bitterness, leading
to family and pre-family atmospheres less likely to encourage
obsessive or settled behaviour here termed unnatural. Insofar,
however, as homosexuality, for example, might be found to have
a genetic basis the problem would lie deeper, though the
consideration that also male infidelity finds genetic support might
tend to neutralize the objection. Genes don't set the standard, as
genetic inheritance of what are unambiguously diseases makes
plain. Genes, that is, are not nature in the sense discussed here,
even if they might seem to many to be its ultimate building
blocks. Nature, that is, is a form in the philosophical sense, more
determining than determined by genes.
The idea of making a lie out of nature, it is interesting to
recall, was just that used by St. Paul in defining idolatry as making
a lie of the divine nature378, this wilful religious ignorance then
causing one to pervert one's own nature. For our purposes what is
noteworthy about these perspectives being found in St. Thomas
(apart from its witness to the coherence of the tradition) is that
they are a direct consequence of his freedom from dualism, his
view of intellect as a form of being (intentionally being the other
while remaining oneself) and living not separable from human
living in general.

************************************

St. Thomas states that it is the ends of actions which oblige

primarily and per se; actions themselves oblige only propter aliud,
with these ends in view. At the same time, we found, the end is
itself part of the actus humanus as morally specifying it as what it
is. So the obligatory necessity of a given precept arises from the
necessity of the end in question, whatever it is, for man.

Alia autem est necessitas ex obligatione praecepti, sive ex

377
repugnat ipsi ordini naturali venerei actus, Summa
Theol. IIa-IIae 154, 11.
378
Romans 1.
 necessitate finis, quando scilicet aliquis non potest consequi
finem virtutis, nisi hoc faciat (It is otherwise with the
necessity arising from an obligation of precept, or from the
necessity of the end, when namely someone cannot obtain
the end of virtue unless he does this).379

Here obligation is introduced to show that the necessity of justice

is not a necessity of compulsion, and hence that it can be
meritorious and thus a virtue despite such necessity. The end,
virtue, is here thus a habit, not a precept or anything propositional
or "intentional", but a real quality corresponding to that perfection
of nature to which a thing's form, in this case the soul of man,
naturally impels it. Hence St. Thomas explains moral evil not
primarily as disobedience (one species of it) but as "unsuitability
of action to end".380
It is realities which both actuate and oblige human acts
whether morally or physically (sc. practically) considered.
Praeceptum importat rationem debiti.381 Debitum, which we
translate as duty, actually means thing owed, as in "debt". But
again, something is owed per se or propter aliud.

Per se quidem debitum est in unoquoque negotio id quod est finis,

quia habet rationem per se boni (What is due per se in any
transaction is the achievement of its purpose or end, for this
is what it means for it to be well done).

This end, however, as intrinsically specifying the moral act,382 is

not something extrinsic to which the action is hypothetically
directed, as in utilitarianism. This helps to explain why St. Thomas
teaches the necessity of knowing the end. Although all actions are
to be done so as to attain our natural end, i.e. on the hypothesis
of the desire of this, yet this desire is not negotiable. It draws
even those who don't know what it is, though they be more
vulnerable to error and sin on that account. Yet this does not make
the necessity of the ultimus finis a necessity of compulsion, since
it is of the ratio of compulsion to come from without, whereas the
natural desire of the rational will is intrinsic and, in fact,
corresponds to a necessity of obligation, as expressed in the first,
379

380
Comm. in Sent. IV, 33, 1, 1.
381
Ibid. IIa-IIae 44, 1.
382
Ibid. Ia-IIae 1, 3 ad 3um; IIa-IIae 64, 7.
controlling precept of the natural law, bonum est persequendum.
Even this precept has its end, bonum, towards which and
for the sake of which est persequendum states that there is an
obligation, viz. of pursuit. Hence, again, it cannot be this pursuit
itself to which we are primarily obliged, but the good which we
pursue. St. Thomas implies that calling the ultimus finis an action
(usus vel adeptio) cannot be literally true, whatever we say of
beatitudo:

manifestum est quod, simpliciter loquendo, ultimus finis est ipsa

res; non enim possessio pecuniae est bona, nisi propter
bonum pecuniae.383

Again, if all action is for the sake of an end, then the last end
cannot be an action or, if it were, then that action too is for the
sake of an end.384 What is to be enjoyed cannot be that enjoyment
over again.
A further reason for this is that in any real final causality
the end as cause has to be an unambiguously real thing and not
some ens rationis. An intentional object desired in the mind is
caused by some perception of a real object, thus functioning also
as causa efficiens. In this sense it is claimed there is a First Cause
of all desire and consequent action, which is also the final aim, i.e.
thing sought by that action, knowingly or unknowingly, as is seen
in the case of non-rational creatures,

quia Deus est ultimus finis hominis, et omnium aliarum rerum... in

quantum participant aliquam similitudinem Dei, secundum
quod sunt, vel vivunt, vel etiam cognoscunt.385

St. Thomas's ethics thus emerge as essentially theistic. He does

not admit an independent realm of value or of the sittlich, but only
because the transcendental beatitude of divine contemplation to
which our nature is ordained, whether or not special help (gratia)
be needed for this, is itself the final perfection of morality,
höchste Entfaltung der Sittlichkeit.386
Hence for Aquinas human life is not ultimately or violently
383
Ibid. Ia-IIae 16, 3.
384
Ibid. Ia-IIae 1, 1 ad 2um.
385
Ibid. Ia-IIae 1, 8.
386
M. Grabmann, Thomas von Aquin, Munich 1959,
p.159.
subject to law as such but is a spontaneous pursual of what man
freely loves, a law of nature in other words which all other law
serves ("this do and thou shalt live", he would quote the scripture
as saying). Hence it is fundamental that he defines law as
essentially belonging to reason and not to will.387

Ex hoc enim quod aliquis vult finem, ratio imperat de his quae
sunt ad finem (Willing the end entails reason's commanding
whatever is needed to that end).

And it is by this biologically integrated reason that the will, where

it is exerted, must be regulated,

alioquin voluntas principis magis esset iniquitas quam lex

(otherwise a prince's will is more iniquity than law).

This, essentially, would be Aquinas's answer to the nominalist

theologies of the potentia absoluta Dei, able to change the laws of
morals or even of logic. The example of St. Thomas as analysed
here should serve, one hopes, to show the importance of
metaphysics and related enquiries for ethical theory.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Natural Inclinations Broadcast

Much of our discussion has centred upon human inclination, as

giving proof and expression in reality of what counts for us human
beings, once the fog and babble of our imperfect conceptions
have dispersed. Not long ago the leader, head or chief "shepherd"
of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II, who as Karol
Wojtyla spent much of his earlier life philosophizing, published a
document, chiefly on morals, called Veritatis Splendor.388 It is
interesting, indeed heartening, to see that the doctrine concerning
the inclinations and their role in ethics which is there presented
appears in the main to be the same as what has been argued for

387
Ibid. Ia-IIae 90, 1, especially ad 3um.
388
Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, Rome 1993.
here, though I hope this admission will not lessen the interest of
my contribution. The explanation might be that the present author
and the Pope share an admiration for the pure doctrine of Thomas
Aquinas, by no means universally grasped, still less approved, by
a majority of those claiming to follow Aquinas. One would prefer to
think, however, that what is shared is rather a care for the true
good of man and an ability, in greater or smaller measure, to
penetrate to it, while it just so happens that the least flawed
account historically of this matter is to be found in the pages of
just Aquinas.
Here, therefore, I want to point to the sureness of touch
with which the one-time Professor Wojtyla sets out these matters,
albeit in a style suited to a wider perusal than the academic. He
says most of what he has to say on the inclinations and on natural
law in general in paragraphs 47 to 51 of his monograph where, for
example, he endorses the statement of his predecessor Leo XIII,
also once an academic, that "the natural law is itself the eternal
law."389 In theology, after all, one may assume what we have been
labouring so hard to demonstrate philosophically, that man is
made to the divine image, something compatible with at least an
orthogenetic account of evolution.
The identification, the identity, of natural and eternal law
is the cause of the rational judgments of conscience being also
"magisterial dictates".390 Where that much is agreed ethical then
theory must next focus upon the relation of reason to nature or,
the Pope's preferred stress (in line with our own), of freedom to
nature.
He sets out his exposition of this in a context of the
objections against the reality of natural law which allege that it
masks an unacceptable physicalism or naturalism (or "biologism"),
presenting merely biological laws as moral laws.391 Behind this
allegation lies an implicit acceptance of the positivist position that
law is predicated in both physical and moral, i.e. descriptive and
prescriptive contexts only equivocally.392 The Pope notes that
many writers believe that the official Church teaching (of the
"magisterium") is itself involved in this invalid "biologistic"

389
Leo XIII, Praestantissimum, Rome 1889, 219.

390
See J.H. Newman, A Grammar of Assent, V, 1.

391
Veritatis Splendor 47. Cf. S. Theron, "Natural Law and Physical
Reality in the Thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas", Proceedings of the IXth
Congress of Medieval Philosophy, Ottawa 1992.

392
Cf. Henry Veatch, Op. cit.
reasoning, as they conceive of it. They claim, he says, that the
natural inclinations "cannot determine the moral assessment."
Against this he objects to the view of the human body
(and its inclinations) as "a raw datum", mere material upon which
an absolute freedom goes to work. Here the finalities of the
natural inclinations are seen as merely "physical", i.e. non-moral
goods, "pre-moral" in the current jargon.393 In this way, as he
summarizes it,

the tension between freedom and a nature conceived of in a

reductive way is resolved by a division within man
himself.

This will mean that what we spontaneously want can never derive
moral value from this spontaneity, a position we found de Muralt
reprobating and which we ourselves have repeatedly attacked.
Such a view, the Pope categorically states,

does not correspond to the truth about man and his freedom. It
contradicts the Church's teaching on the unity of the
human person, whose rational soul is per se et
essentialiter the form of his body.

Certainly in philosophy today there is little interest in a

soul which would not be that. The unity of the human person
appeals as a thesis not only to a wider ethical and humanitarian
circle than that of the Church. In addition it is presupposed to any
research of a scientific character today which might have man for
its object. Nor did Wojtyla himself express the matter better in
earlier days.
Reason and free will, the Pope goes on, "are linked with
all the bodily and sense faculties," so that goods to which the
person is naturally inclined possess, and possess thereby,
"specific moral value".
Thus it is that, considering in the converse direction this

person himself in the unity of soul and body, in the unity of his
spiritual and biological inclinations and of all the other
specific characteristics necessary for the pursuit of his
end,394

393
Veritatis splendor, paragraph 48.

394
John Paul II, op. cit. 50.
the Pope cautions that

natural inclinations take on relevance only insofar as they refer to

the human person and his authentic fulfilment.

His main point though, against the dualists and

rationalists, is that the inclinations do so refer. Although biological
they are not biological cum praecisione, i.e. in speaking of them
we do not prescind from man's rational and spiritual nature (just
as in considering that rational nature we do not prescind from his
bodily and animal nature). For the same reason they, the
inclinations, are not to be confused with the passions, being
propria of human nature.
In illustration of his account the Pope takes the somewhat
general, but very topical example, of "respect for human life".
Context suggests that he has Article Two of Question Ninety Four
of the Pars Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologica of Aquinas
in mind. Thus he cites this article in his following, fifty-first section,
where St. Thomas refers to a prime inclination to the conservation
of one's own being

according to that nature in which it communicates with all

substances (secundum naturam in qua communicat cum
omnibus substantiis),

i.e. not just as an individual.395 The Pope says here that the
foundation for this duty of self-preservation is

to be found in the dignity proper to the person and not simply in

the natural inclination to preserve one's own physical life.

To this statement, if we bear in mind that Aquinas defines

person in terms of our rational nature(endorsing Boethius),
correspond the responses to the "objections" (of 94, 2) where
Aquinas states that all the precepts of natural law, and hence by
implication all our natural inclinations, are referred (referuntur) or
carried back to one first precept (bonum est persequendum: the
good is to be pursued), itself resting upon the fundamental
inclination of the rational will to ens in communi. Hence natural
395
In interpreting this passage one should recall Aquinas's constant
teaching that "each thing is inclined not merely to conserve its own
individual substance, but also its own species. And much more does each
thing have a natural inclination towards that which is the unqualified
universal good" (Summa Theol. Ia 60, 5 ad 3um). Otherwise, he says,
natural love would be perverse and not perfectible by charity.
law is one, all the inclinations of the various parts of human
nature being naturally regulated by reason.396 Thus Aquinas states
that the law comprises397 all those things which practical reason
naturally apprehends as human goods.
Now clearly we can each of us be said to have a purely
animal inclination to preserve our own lives. This though, the Pope
says, is not the type of inclination which generates natural law.
For such inclinations (i.e. of the latter type) "refer to the human
person and his authentic fulfilment," i.e. they are inclinations of
the person as person.
What is meant is a distinction between inclinations
merely to objects good in themselves, without regard to one's
personal circumstances, and inclinations founded upon the
person's first, defining inclination to his fulfilment or perfection or
overall good.398 For upon this first inclination, to bonum in
communi and the finis ultimus, is in turn founded the fundamental
and constitutive precept of the law, viz. bonum est persequendum
et malum evitandum. Not only this, but it is natural to man to
order his inclinations in this way, it being in virtue of this ordering
that they are natural, i.e. human, inclinations.
Thus, in the example, the inclination to preserve one's life
is always there, in the mind and animal fibres even of a martyr.
But it is overridden by the inclination to one's proper human
fulfilment, which the man refusing martyrdom (like St. Peter in the
Gospel) would miss or postpone. This "transcendental" fulfilment,
furthermore, is most likely included in Aquinas's conception of vita
hominis, the life of man, when he cites this inclination (to preserve
this vita).399
In speaking of the unity of spiritual and biological
inclinations the Pope makes the same point, that the rational soul,
as principle of unity, makes every "biological" inclination a human
396
Cf. Ia-IIae 94, 2 ad 2um.

397
In the sense in which we have noted previously that it is the ends of
the precepts which are of primary obligation, this being the only explanation
of the existence of a virtue such as epieicheia or equity, for example.

398
Here one can see that it is not merely a debasement which we
might ethically deprecate but a straight confusion to equate the personal
with the private. One's personal circumstances are rather the totality of
circumstances from which one may judge what will serve one's total (not
one's "private") good here and now.

399
For further confirmation of this interpretation, implicit anyhow in
Wojtyla's own account, cf. Lawrence Dewan O.P., "St. Thomas, Our Natural
Lights and the Moral Order", Angelicum LXVII (1990), pp. 285-308. See also
chapter 12, above.
or rational inclination. Thus the specifically human inclination is
not the indiscriminate, generic inclination to venereal pleasure,
but the more specific programme of permanent mating and the
raising of a family, which of course includes and is in a sense
founded upon this pleasure. And it is this same inclination (and
not some "heteronomous" law) which can hold one back from
destructive indulgence in this field400, this being the law "written
on the heart" of which St. Paul wrote. That is, it is a law of the
person and nature, of how he is and hence of how he operates,
what he inclines to, and thus far it is entirely descriptive, like any
other "scientific" law. What indeed would be the sense of
"prescribing" for any being behaviour which did not accord with
the nature of that being, with what will fulfil or perfect it? The
inclination itself constitutes a law with which one's own being is in
deep autonomous harmony, for the obvious reason that it is a law
of one's own being.401
So it is important to grasp the essence of natural law as
being not other than a "natural teleology", what is natural to man
never being purely biological in the animal or vegetable sense.
The rational animal is rational through and through, saturated as
we might say. Those who feel constrained at the thought of having
a natural teleology simply fail to understand the nature of
freedom. Freedom does not begin where nature leaves off, but is
rather its crowning aspect as being of the essence of rationality
itself, will flowing from intellect as intellect itself flows from the
substance of the soul.402 Thus freedom to sin, to act contrary to
nature, is not what defines freedom, since it can in no way lead to
our overall fulfilment, this being a fulfilment of nature and hence
of the person.
There is a certain coincidence here, as we noted also
above, with some ideas of D.H. Lawrence as urging us, in that

400
It can also, as Jacques Maritain suggests, lead one to
exercise a political rather than a despotic control upon these
more generic impulses, this being less likely to backfire in
the progress of one's personal history. I.e. it is the more
natural, less violent way (it being an old principle of physics
that nothing can continue indefinitely in a violent state),
secundum inclinationem naturalem.
401
That it is also, we have seen, a "magisterial dictate", is precisely the
pledge of the dignity of that being, as made in the divine image.
402
A rational being is free in virtue of its rational nature, i.e. by a natural
necessity. This finding needs to be taken more into account when adopting
the concept of artificial intelligence into serious scientific discourse.
striving for happiness which is of the essence of morality, to
identify our deepest and truest desires (concerning which,
however, Lawrence's own views were not as differentiated as one
might wish).403 It is in this sense that rationalist moralism can be
seen as a subtle enemy of the religious, as of the poetic, spirit,
creative of "a division within man himself", in the Pope's words.
One can only admire how he avoids the post-Kantian fashion of
speaking of reason as an extrinsic, heteronomous404 arbiter
opposing man's spontaneous and natural wishes which arise from
within the heart of his own being. Instead, for Wojtyla, reason, or
intellect, more properly speaking, is soul, our deepest self,
seeking the overall good of the person, of what we are. For dualist
rationalism and the accompanying alienation arise precisely
where it is denied that it is the intellectual soul itself which is the
form of the body.
On the view defended, on the other hand, one sees how
the activity of reason, and hence of freedom, is essentially
supplementary, extending the natural law, i.e. the law of what is
ontologically determinate or given.405 Conversely the sins of
unnatural vice, though not against the intellectual part, are yet
against an essentially intellectual or rational nature, with
corresponding inclinations to the common good (an essential
mark of law), even at that generic level. Such inclinations are not
those irrational egotistic urges which, as the Pope intimates, are
irrelevant to the project in hand.
The wrong view envisages a rationalist or rationalizing
corrective to the inclinations, which are regarded as morally
neutral or "ambiguous". The right view sees these inclinations and
their natural order as themselves legislative, because of the
dignity of that human nature which they themselves define, and
hence of the human person. They need no corrective, since an
order is already present among them as existing in the
harmonious arrangement of all that it needs to be human, just as
when a man eats he eats knowingly.
So human inclinations, as human, are always to known
goods. They are not, again, those "blind urges" which we may
encounter in the lower reaches of our nature, but not only in
faculties uncontrolled by reason. An indiscriminate curiosity or
"nosiness" is equally a failure of nature (of the inclination,
403
Cf. the work of H. McCabe O.P., referred to above.

404
Kant only calls it autonomous.

405
Cf. Summa Theol. Ia-IIae 94, 3; IIa-IIae 66, 2 ad 1um; 85, 1; Summa
Contra Gentes III, 38.
perhaps, to live in harmony with our neighbours). These
inclinations refer, in fact, to what man as man, the person,
naturally wills. Hence John Paul's protest against treating free will
and nature as fundamentally opposed. The will is a crowning part
of nature, has itself a nature according to which its freedom is
exercised:

but just as in things which function according to a natural

necessity the principles of their behaviour are their
various natures themselves, from which their own
behaviour proceeds as perfecting them, so in these things
which have a measure of cognition the principles of
action are cognition and appetite. Hence there should be
some natural conception in the cognitive power, and a
natural inclination in the appetitive power, through which
those operations typical of the genus or species remain
suited to the nature and purpose of these.406

So man's first inclination is that of his will as such, to

bonum in communi (equivalent, says Aquinas, to the finis ultimus).
To this inclination, again, corresponds the first, foundational
precept, bonum est persequendum, perfective of the being in
question, viz. man.
The will, however, as human, is also naturally moved by
all those other things to which the person who wills is by nature
inclined, and not only by its own end qua will:

For we do not desire through the will only those things which
pertain to the power of will, but also those things which
pertain to each of the respective powers and to the whole
man.407

Hence it is that man, in and through these other powers,

inclines to these ends as well as to bonum in communi or the finis
ultimus, and this is the situation reflected in the scheme of
inclinations at Ia-IIae 94, 2, to which the Pope refers.

Wherefore man naturally wills not only the will's proper object as
such, but also other things which belong to the other
powers; such as knowledge of truth, which belongs to the
intellect; and to be and to live, and other things of this

406
Aquinas, IV Sent. 33, 1, 1 (author,s translation).

407
Aquinas, Summa Theol. Ia-IIae 10, 1 (author's translation).
 kind, which are required for the integrity of our nature; all
of which things will be comprehended together under the
object of the will, just as are certain particular goods.408

Nothing shows more clearly that in this doctrine a good

man is more than a good will, fundamental as that is. The will is
part of a larger unity. The distinction is essential to a doctrine of
the precepts of natural law as hierarchically based upon the
natural inclinations which, precisely as natural, like the end of the
will itself, are not subject to choice.
Thus John Paul's understanding of those inclinations
which are knowingly referred to integral personal fulfilment as
being the source of the moral law is utterly faithful to Thomism
and indeed supplies a corrective to certain rationalizing
interpretations. The renewed stress on the soul, so neglected of
late, is most welcome. It is just because the intellectual soul is
forma corporis that nothing human is "purely biological".

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Central Role of Creativity

One insight to which we have drawn attention here is that of the

sovereignly determinative role of the ultimate specific difference.
Aristotle applied this to the metaphysics of substance.409 Perhaps
he rather thought that it was a truth about substances specifically.
We, however, have found it to apply to at least three areas
indifferently. One is indeed that of the human constitution, of the
substance which is man: the intellectual soul is determinative.
Another is that of the structure of ethical virtues and principles:
the highest perfection, love, is the form of all the virtues. A third
area, though intrinsically related to the second (as both are to the
substance which is man), is that of the anatomy of human
behaviour: its initiating fount and motor is that which is ultimately
sought, the last end.
What the insight accounts for in the first case, for

408
Ibid., eodem loco.

409
Cf. F. Inciarte, op. cit.
example, that of man, is that the rational intellective soul itself
marks and forms human sensitive, i.e. generic animal nature. It is
therefore that this nature is, as Aquinas says, more "noble" than
that of the brutes,410 i.e. just because for us it is not the ultimate
and hence determinative form. Thus our music surpasses the cries
of bats, even though their auditive range may be more extensive,
our discriminative world of colour transcends all animal sight, as
do our sexual refinements all animal coupling, i.e. in their proper
sensuality (hence the fifty-seven varieties Geach humorously
mentions411, their "exquisiteness", must be distinguished from the
mere lustfulness they may on occasion serve).
The formative power of this ultimate difference, itself
even steered by an ultimate individuality of personality, reaches
down into the autonomic vegetative system, inclusive of patterns
of brain activity, and bears upon the sheer matter of our being,
the sheen of our skin, the dignity of our hands, so much more than
prehensile claws in their infinitely docile adaptability, a
potentiality we have learned to venerate just as potentiality in the
more than animal, quasi-divine helplessness of a baby, that new
human beginning of which Geach speaks. The human genetic
code with its far-reaching determinative powers is accordingly
itself to be viewed as determined in this way, whatever form it
possesses on its own being subsumed into the higher. This, after
all, is no more than we mean by speaking of our human freedom.
So, again, it is the ultimate perfection of love which
straightens out and perfects earlier ethical postures and
constrictions. As it was said, "In thy light shall we see light." Here,
in this book, we have allied love to creativity, referring, as we
should, to the superior wisdom of an ultimately supernatural
prudence and to the "higher justice", as being a justitia quaedam
existens, potior and melior than "legal justice", which is epieicheia
or equity.412 Such justice is informed by love, being in its perfection
410
The choice of this term is significant. It originally had
the sense of "knowable", as in the older form gnobilis.
411
Geach, The Virtues, p.148. Yet Geach himself says, "It
is not a matter of lower animal appetites, shared with
ancestral apes, that overcome a weak will; the radical
perversion or misdirection of the will is what deforms animal
appetite." Our point, however, is that in human nature
animal appetite, quite apart from original sin, is manifested
with more "nobility" (which will then also of course give an
opening for greater perversion) than among apes, say.
412
Epieicheia directs legal or general justice. Cf. IIa-IIae
impossible without it. Similarly, by this principle of the sovereignty
of the ultimate and "directing" difference, this highest or best
justice cannot be an occasional justice. It is the "superior rule" of
all human actions.
Now in the same way creativity cannot be an occasional
or side-effect of love. Love is predicated per prius of creativity,
since this is its superior rule, its "wonderful effect".413 It is, so to
say, quintessential love, as epieicheia is quintessential justice, the
proper justice which has regard to the intention of the legislator.
Two cases of fidelity may look the same, but they differ depending
on whether or not they are informed by epieicheia and ultimately
by love, in a way that will sooner or later show, as the
unprofitableness of the man who buried his talent, or the human
and moral deficiencies of the spiritless idler Osmond in Henry
James's Portrait of a Lady, ultimately showed. This was the
meaning of the proposition agreed on by C.S. Lewis and his group
of friends that creative artists, especially when creating worlds of
fantasy414, more closely show forth the image of God as creator of
the world, an idea wrongly dismissed by John Wain in his
autobiography Sprightly Running as silly.
But it is not only the fantasy writers who are creative. Any
attempting of great or original things, even or especially in a small
but continuous way, any imaginative entering into the worlds and
needs of others, any joyful shouldering of the daily task, any
readiness to think, to be kind, to make the best of things, to bring
good out of evil, to redeem failure, to forgive, in short, as we
stressed in an earlier chapter, all this belongs to the creativeness
which is, so to say, the sign and flower of love. Of this, too,
Aristotle might have said that a little of it is worth all the rest, as
St. Paul said it was the greatest and sole enduring virtue, as St.
Peter said it covers a multitude of sins. It goes beyond not doing
what we would not like others to do to actually doing whatever we
would like them to do to or for us, and it is just such originative
action which requires imagination, the envisaging of an end in
fantasy which we wish to realise.
120, 2 ad 2um.
413
Cf. the chapter in The Imitation of Christ (the fifteenth
century classic by Thomas à Kempis) entitled "On the
wonderful effects of Divine Love" ("Love walks, runs and
leaps for joy... attempts great things etc.").
414
Of course only God creates being. Fantasy worlds are
"beings of reason", as are of course the "possible worlds" of
"sistology".
 Indeed the coincidence with Aristotelian contemplation is
not fortuitous. Thus Aquinas speaks, with tradition, of the active
and contemplative lives. Strikingly, it is only to the former that
moral life properly belongs, since the vita contemplativa is really
proper to the life to come, where the need for effort is no more.
Mary is not troubled, like Martha. This is the final reach of the law
of our nature, höchste Entfaltung der Sittlichkeit (M. Grabmann)
indeed, but ipso facto no longer itself Sittlichkeit. Again, honi soit
qui mal y pense; it is like that. Is thine eye evil because I am good,
asks the landowner in the parable. Again we remember
Screwtape: "he's a hedonist at heart." The laughing buddha says
as much. But we here might remember Rembrandt's blind but
laughing Homer, beside sighted but solemn Aristotle, not to slight
the latter but to see him fulfilled beyond himself in creativity, in
the self-fulfilling prophecy of unshakeable joy. There is indeed no
argument against joy. Joy has no time, indeed, for thought, yet it
cannot be thoughtless, as can the false hilarity of a mere
enchantment which, as a violence done to nature, will not endure.
Such thoughts, paradoxically, are sobering for a philosopher. Yet,
as Aristotle, again, insists, no man is a philosopher, i.e. the quality
is not proper to any human being qua human. So we all have to
"come off it" sometimes, one day for ever, perhaps (though by the
same token we will then be more truly "on it".
Creativeness is indeed the analogue and sign of the
contemplative life under conditions of change and development,
here below as we say. This is the true significance of the
development in ascetic theology, in thought about the spiritual
life, noted by the modern Jesuit Hans Urs von Balthasar, writing in
his book Thérèse of Lisieux, when he says that patristic and
medieval spirituality,

influenced by classical conceptions, takes eternal happiness, the

contemplation of God, as man's goal; consequently the
supernatural end of human nature can serve, under the
elevating influence of grace, as man's sure compass
throughout his spiritual journey... The emphasis shifts as
soon as Ignatius [of Loyola] fixes on the "praise,
reverence and service of God" as man's end, and
subordinates everything else, the contemplation of God
and one's own happiness, to this end (p.225).

A shift of emphasis, of course, is not much more than a question

of style, though it is certainly true that we want to be caught up
into a life rather than just be found looking at something. It is,
nonetheless, precisely in terms of such a being caught up that the
visio beatifica is classically explained. Still, we did explain
creativity, this life of good works taking its rise in the imagination,
as the analogue and sign of contemplation, since it is an
understanding response, and this already implies a certain
widening of the notion of contemplation, as the doctrine of the
analogy of being must widen our notion of God in relation to his
creation. I am the life.
What is emerging here is the unseparated character of
what is called the moral life. It is distinct as a conception only. In
reality it is taken up into love and contemplation. Of its nature it
serves the spiritual life and destiny of man (as the pure in heart
shall see God), and it is immoral, therefore, to drive a wedge
between the two. Again, the ultimate or crowning difference,
contemplation, which is the fulfilment of love (which is creativity),
determines the rest. The type of being, the virtue, we are pleading
for, might be expressed, mutatis mutandis, as follows:

a characteristic thematic inventiveness that springs straight from

the source of all inspiration, without intellectual
distortions, without second thoughts of critical listeners or
third thoughts about the need for seductive persuasion;
an incorruptible urge towards a breadth of conception
that is prepared to risk the failure of detail, prepared to
leave things undeveloped which should be developed...
and last, but first, a calm, stable and humble belief in the
artist's metaphysical mission.415

The central role of creativity, therefore, is highlighted. Earlier we

related this to election, freedom, the working out of our personal
vocation. This is true enough, but too general, but also too
particular, as answering the often no more than moralistic
question, what ought I to do? The idea of vocation itself has rather
to be brought to its ultimate specific difference, if it is not to be
watered down and conventionalized to a purely passive, inert
following of God's will which one fears to mistake, in the
"rationalist" manner of which de Muralt complained. "You've got a
vocation," the priest tells the young person, and he or she runs to
the cloister in mere fear of disobeying the call, like Aeneas driven
by Hermes to Rome (Italiam non sponte sequor), with ruinous later
consequences. This kind of system was bound to break down.
We refer often here to imagination. We have to be people
415
Hans Keller on Anton Bruckner. The Sunday Times,
London 1964.
of imagination to accomplish things, imagination being also the
organ of fantasy, phantasia, without which, Aquinas argues,
human thinking at any given moment is impossible. The case is
clearest for those who are specifically artists, from composers
down to great footballers, where the imaginative is equated with
the quick-thinking, often with "lateral" thinking. But we apply it to
and require it for great leadership also, here too the ultimate, the
"greatest", supplying the model, the ideal determining the whole
genre, as leaders themselves are patterns for human greatness in
general (hence they lead), for any man or woman's becoming
great, as we are all called to be if greatness of soul
(magnanimitas) is a virtue universally required (the desire for
great honours or "glory") and if the last shall be first. I shall be a
great saint, declared the so-called patroness of "little souls", but
even comparing herself to a "little dove". Thus the meek inherit
the earth, the love which is the way for all of itself attempting
great things without strain. We praise the imagination of John
XXIII, of the gesture-filled lives of Francis or Joan of Arc, of military
commanders and chess-players, of mothers with high aspirations
for their children or of actively understanding wives and
husbands.
And so we are led to consider more closely the reality of
fantasy in human life. It belongs to the life and strength of fantasy
that it strives and wants to be real, today's imaginations being
tomorrow's realities. "Spiritual" writers, blundering, have often
deprecated imagination as a most unruly faculty (like the Holy
Spirit in that) and even one to be left behind, as meditation
succeeds to contemplation, or even "forced acts of the will".
Certainly love opposes mere idle indulgence of the imagination.
We must imagine goals and imagine the means to achieve them.
To this end though we want to say not merely that the vision must
be good. What we are insisting upon, more radically, is that since
creativity is the ultimate determining difference of love itself, as
love itself determines justice, therefore the goodness, the good
effect, must come from the properly creative imaginative vision,
reaching down from there (and not, contrariwise, being a superior
yardstick or control of the vision) into everyday "moral" life. Thus
theology gives life and direction, as religion inspires to love, as
"without vision the people perish".
This ethics of creation is for everyone, pedagogical
necessities apart. As baptism is the sacrament of an otherwise
general membership of the human race (not of the Church: it is
membership of the Church416) so the creative artist is the type and
416
I owe this insight to Fr. Herbert McCabe O.P.
guarantee of a general human greatness for which we all must
aristocratically strive. Their role is analogous to that of prophecy
in the biblical system, something of which T.S. Eliot once
complained, wishing to restore a sacral society, but a Christian
society, or for that matter a human society (if the Christian is the
sacrament of the human), is not essentially sacral if it is of itself
open to the transcendent hand reached down.
So the artist is not some monster, as the term "genius"
dangerously suggests, so that a Kierkegaard can actually oppose
it to the ethical as a deficient pathology, as the merely aesthetic
falling short of, being blind to, the ethical. But we have rather
argued that it is understanding of the beautiful which first
discloses anything properly ethical.417 We should rather think of
genius as defined as a capacity for taking infinite pains, creativity
as apotheosis of the ethical, virtue being ad ardua, directed to
difficult things which love, like habit, makes easy, love itself being
the supreme habit. Thus the complexity, the pains, of language
itself serve the goal of simplicity, of unity, as subject and
predicate in general are identified by the copula, reuniting the
mind's necessary abstractions.
Fantasy strives to be real, to impose itself upon and
replace a previous reality. This is essential to it, since it is not
more or other than the structure of our ceaseless striving after our
not yet attained end, needing, however, to exist in the
imagination, in our "dream", if it is to move us. It swirls mistily in
the mind, in the fantasy, so that we strive to realise it, like the
melody striving to break out triumphant at the end of the music,
but the form of which in the composer's mind has determined all
the preceding phraseology and demurring interplay. The last end
attained will replace the world. The dream will have become
reality and so we believe in the "life of the world to come" (vitam
venturi saeculi). This, our practical reasoning, is thus a quasi-
divine way of knowing since, says Aquinas, God knows things, and
us, not as they are in themselves but in his thought of them, in his
imagination as we would say in human terms.
417
Oscar Brown speaks of obligation's "aesthetic
anchorage in the spontaneously self-compelling character of
the kalon: the immediately attractive beauty and proportion
of perfected practical rationality in particulari casu" (Natural
Rectitude and Divine Law in Aquinas, Toronto 1981, p.20).
Aquinas's category of the honestum says as much:
"something is called honestum... in as much as a certain
beauty (decorem) accrues to it from reason's ordaining of it"
(Summa theol. IIa-IIae 145, 3).
 Leoncavallo's Pagliacci gives us a type of this. The main
protagonist, a clown by profession, really kills his unfaithful wife in
the course of a presentation on the stage, causing confusion to
those who had otherwise been merely spectators. The theme is
touched on in The Phantom of the Opera. Of course Pagliacci itself
remains a story. Still, the impulse to such a story can lead us to
question the assertion that opera must be understood as play,
contradistinguished against reality, if it is to be properly itself and
enjoyed in a discriminating, non-vicious way, the aesthetic not
trampling upon the ethical. The opposite is Wagnerian hubris,
leading to the making of newsreels showing planes flying to bomb
a city to the music of the Ride of the Valkyries, the turning of the
propellors being attuned to the rhythm of their unearthly cries.
The hubris, however, lies more in the matter than the
mode, the latter serving to fool us as regards the matter, such a
dodge being of the essence of this propaganda. For the total
project which the Nazis strove to impose upon society was not
aesthetic, this being merely used to impose the unaesthetic, the
ugly project of that most total moral abdication which is murder.
Their unspoken premise, in which their critics at times concur, was
that the beautiful, the aesthetic, in no way coincides, since it is
rather above it, with the good, the moral, which it does not fulfil
but replace and destroy, as something contemptible. But this, we
have found reason enough to observe, is bad metaphysics, the
natural nemesis of a moralism which has not truly broken free
from itself. Common, after all, both to the classical ideal of beauty
and to ethical theory is the general idea of order, just to begin
with.
But if goodness must ultimately be beautiful, beauty must
ultimately be good, as in the song of Sylvia (or the "grace and
truth" of Schubert's music as a whole418), and so it is
discrimination within imagination itself, its own aesthetical
nobility, which leads it (i.e. it does not merely require it) to
coincide, intrinsically and from its own resources, with what
belongs to virtue and goodness, with all that is conducive to and
puts us upon the straight (recta) road to our Last End and which is
thus, like Anselmian and Augustinian rectitudo itself, secundum
Deum, according to God, as type and source of beauty, being
418
Of the Rose of Tralee it is sung that she won the
singer not by her beauty alone, but rather by that plus "the
truth in her eye ever dawning." We would rather say that
that quality was the ultimate difference precisely of her
beauty, bringing it to its own perfection as what it was to be
(quod erat esse).
indeed that summa regula of our consciences which Gregory the
Great said (in Magna Moralia) we go wrong if we neglect. That is,
we don't go wrong just by not listening to the priests, though
Gregory certainly thought and taught that. We go wrong if our
ethics be not an ethics of creativity, where any not doing is but a
function of the doing.
We might compare the Gesamtkunstwerke of two tales of
a Ring, Tolkien's and Wagner's. We might ask which is more
beautiful in the sense of "moving", a fairy-tale by Grimm or a
Japanese novella of ritual or aesthetic murder. What is this state of
being "moved"? It has the sense, again, of the effect of something
noble, an ideal which a Kant could turn against a too easy idea, as
lacking respect, of happiness. Nobility, respect, all that the
masses lack, e.g. in the analysis of Ortega y Gasset; one is moved
as an individual person. The power of beauty to move, though, is
the proof of its link with the moral. One is moved as if to action,
and hence distressed if one does not know what to do about it.
Dante wrote his poem; Greeks commit suicide when overcome by
the beauty of their country; Irish monks launch themselves on the
ocean in rudderless boats; an Avicenna or a Wittgenstein give
away their fortune. Never man spoke like this man, people
exclaimed, and being struck to the heart they asked what must we
do. Here I do not muddle ideas together that should be distinct;
rather, I try to show the unity in being of ideas which the
mechanism of abstraction is forced to make distinct. I do this
because this unity is my idea here. It is necessary and not vicious
or idle because ethics as a science exists for the sake of praxis,
and good praxis demands full humanity and mature adequacy of
vision.
Tolkien appeared to despise Wagnerism, at least the Ring
libretto. His own work, all the same, is the closest in English to
that operatic attempt to replace reality (and hence give it a total
direction ad finem), inventing a language, a geography, a history
way beyond the tale itself, coats of arms, poetry, enormous pains
being taken to create a consistency and varied multifariousness
as of a world. Tolkien deprecated the way some readers identified
with his story, yet he himself suggested it as a "mythology for
England", analogous, if one consider, to the Bayreuth project. Like
the latter it prompts to imitation, even to re-production, from
mere re-reading to styles of living, furnishing and so on, or even,
with Samwise, to a lifelong search for elves or something
equivalent to them.
What is mythology? It is not an escape and this is not
escapist literature. One does not cease to breathe that air of
earnestness simply by putting the book down. It is a reflection,
giving because showing meaning, a meaning. It is even a
reflection of that most central mandala of our culture, the Gospel,
centred on the humility of Frodo as principle of salvation, the
Silmarillion standing as a kind of old Testament. Living by
imagination in such a world, become for a brief while a refracted
finis ultimus, a world the order of which is necessarily less vast
and problematical than that of reality, one is helped to discern the
contours of goodness as at once the contours of beauty, as in
Augustine's justly celebrated exclamation or as the prophet
unwillingly exclaimed, "Oh Israel, how lovely are thy tents." The
tents of the people of the law are ipso facto lovely, that is
beautiful. But as far as reflecting the Gospel is concerned, one
might find something of this also in Wagner's tale, as we claimed
above to discern it in the ideals of a Nietzsche, whatever others
have found there.
What is undeniable is that the Last End, from which law
and much else takes its rise, as we have argued here and
previously419, is not as such realised, whether we place it at the
end of time or in the midst of the present moment in which alone,
insists the seventeenth century ascetical master de Caussade,
reality, and hence the divine, can be apprehended. So it is
something of which we dream, an intention. Hence its realisation
will be the victory of the dream over reality, the less ultimate
reality or "world" for which Christ did not pray. The structure
behind Martin Luther King's project was none other. He had a
dream, he said. Such a dream is a guiding dynamic hope,
essential source of any action. Even the action of despair hopes,
paradoxically, to quiet a pain. The dream, anyway, is the ultimate
reality and end, and this was the true meaning of Poe's aesthetics.
He was only not visionary enough to see the strength of his dream
over reality, clinging rather to his dream just as dream, though as
preferable even to "higher Heaven".420
The dream has indeed its casualties, since the road, as
corresponding to the high stakes, is perilous. Our point though is
that moralism fails more radically by refusing the search itself.
This lies behind the idea that those who find the way after being
lost on the road cause more joy in heaven than those appearing
more faultless, unless indeed the grace of the journey is already
with them. Hence the saints see themselves as metaphysically
sinners, upheld by grace alone. In this way they hope also to

419
See our The End of the Law, Louvain 1999.
420
See our Philosophy or Dialectic? p.202.
cause this greater heavenly joy, incomprehensible except on this
premiss of a venture, after the pearl of great price, as we said. For
the line of thought helps also to explain the power of erotic
fantasy, as we need to do. People dream in this area, alone or
together, while procuring for themselves a more than imagined
satisfaction, though the setting of fantasy is often needed for this
end. They thus feel they are in the imagined world with their real
minds and bodies, as the young swimmer experiences the joy of
entering another element, again at best in an enchanted or
bewitching setting, such as a deep pool in the mountains, or as
does anyone who weeps or laughs in response to something
imagined. In so far as sexual acts are commonly performed in a
state of high and concentrated fantasy, a situation corroborated
by the structure of dream-life, commonly accompanied by sexual
excitement, the paradoxical naturalness of what is likely to be
called perversion, fetichism and so on seems obvious. It can seem
unnatural or even brutish to repress fantasy where one's life
engages one to sexual activity, and it might well lead one to fail in
one's plain duty.
It follows that the sadistic or criminal variants of this
operatic or dream aspect to life are actually due to a weakness or,
which is the same, one-sidedness of fantasy, a failure to see it as
bearer of life, hope and all that is good. Ugly fantasy is fantasy
that lacks something, like the poor draughtsmanship of many
comic-books. What happens here, rather, is that the aspect of play
belonging to the art-work or show but only superficially, in so far
as we become a merely passive audience, is then, as a negative
or limiting characteristic carried over into real life as cruel
irresponsibility. Thus the movement against audience passivity is
so far justified. All play is earnest, as children know and as ritual
proves, or at least expresses. But when ritual becomes ritualism,
as morality can become moralism, then this is a morally negative
phenomenon accounting, among other things, for the insufficiency
or even evil of mere voyeurism when it is a replacement for sexual
involvement. This is not a point against fantasy though it may
seem to call, at least for the most part, for a sharing of it. But
even if one remain convinced of the total evil of sexual fantasy it
still would illustrate our thesis of the structure of human action as
such, which in turn explains the pull of erotic fantasy, materially
so close to this central area of love and, even more clearly,
creativity. One can hardly abstract from this when one considers
the statement of Aquinas that the beauty of the bodies of the
redeemed will render superfluous any resurrection of animals and
plants. This, as Lewis pointed out, is trans-sexual, even super-
sexual we might say, not a-sexual. Instead of particular organs,
whole bodies and hence persons pass into one another, as in
Milton's vision, or, more centrally and simply, "I in them and they
in me". It is an unimaginative timidity which two-dimensionally
restricts this (or any other saying of the speaker) to a purely moral
interpretation, as in a unity of will and purpose. "I am the vine,
you are the branches... my meat is meat indeed... taste and see."
It is just here that the ideal of virginity takes its rise, as crown of a
creative ethics seeking the enthronement of a vision, known as
realised only in the groping imagination, which none of the
necessary restrictions and caveats of negative, apophatic
theology can suppress, functioning as a guide and target of
action.
To be moved, again, by great music, for example, is
precisely to feel that it has taken up into it (as indeed it takes us)
something of one's life and its direction (or that of another being
with whom we feel a sympathy). Being moved just is the
interaction of art and life at this point, the passing beyond play. No
doubt this can even interfere with the just appreciation of art on
its own terms. Yet it is music itself, when most intensely itself, as
coming to birth out of an initial silence, or when the strings cry out
in child-like wonder and joy at the simultaneously solemn
expression of peace in the brass (close of Bruckner's Fourth
Symphony), which most directly achieves this.
In The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis presented a picture of the
final end-dream of human life as a kind of park where the blessed
wander naked and "drink deep of Christ", possessing a solidity and
agility denied to outsiders. A certain what we might call erotic
intensity, in comparison with the mystics or with Aquinas as we
cited him, is missed in so far as animal life and scenery, giving a
note of calm and even relaxation, are not otiose here. Lewis's
contrast, rather, is between the lizard of lust perched chattering
on the young man's shoulders and delivering to him intense but
restricted dreams which keep him from the heaven around him,
and the glorious horse on which he himself rather mounts, so as
to gallop to the mountains after consenting to the killing of the
lizard, so central to his old self. Submit to death as gateway to
salvation is Lewis's classically Christian message, and a believer
may find that our philosophical equivalent really participates in it.
What we have tried to show though is that such a submission is
way beyond a purely obediential submission to a set of inert moral
rules. It is rather an openness and an opening to creative winds,
to all reality (in the end the All of St. John of the Cross or St.
Francis), the reality of others included. It is a viewing of what we
experience under the aspect of the whole, without restriction, sub
specie aeternitatis indeed. It is a willingness not to see one's path,
to be led by what is revered above self. In a word it is love, not
merely the love which is loyalty, but identification, outgoing to the
other to the point of death, this indeed giving rise to all virtue (as
we hope we can see without having personally achieved it), not by
showing itself in agreement with virtues already in place, but by
creating new virtue which, all the same, fulfils what was best in
the old. Ecce omnia nova facio, again and again, in ceaseless
revolution (Mao), or as passing through one chamber to another
until, if we could, we reach the palace's centre (Teresa of Avila).
Enlightened by this love we will indeed be enabled to
describe, to descry, to exercise all the virtues making up the
image of human goodness in its fullest beauty.

Our life is no dream, but it should and will perhaps become one
(Novalis).