St. Thomas Aquinas - The idea of Natural Law and its evolution.

        The changes in medieval society in the thirteenth century are important to understand as they influenced Aquinas and his work.  Another critical change with respect to political theory was the recovery of Aristotle.  Before the recovery of Aristotle, all that was known about him came in the form of second-hand knowledge from philosophers such as Cicero and St. Augustine.  With first hand knowledge in Aristotelian studies available for the first, his work began to popularize particularly due to St. Thomas’s adoption of his political science.  “Aristotle’s thought fit well with this new populism because it legitimized the entire realm of politics as something natural to human beings and necessary to their development.  Aristotle’s defense of the small city-state and of citizenship was a ringing affirmation of the importance of the community and of self-governance.”  Clearly, this was a very important time for medieval society.  With the growing acceptance of these new ideas and with the help of his predecessors, St. Thomas Aquinas was prepared to ‘stretch the boundaries’ of medieval political thought unlike anyone before him.  

        St. Thomas Aquinas attained significant stature as a philosopher, not only because of his brilliant mind, but also because how his philosophy was able to meet the needs of the church in the late medieval time.  With Aquinas’ adoption of Aristotelian politics along with his Catholic beliefs, he was able to establish an appropriate relationship between the church and the state, and even more importantly the larger issue of how people’s natural capacities could be made compatible with their spiritual destiny.  “What St. Thomas must further show is that people’s natural and spiritual activities, while distinct, are yet joined in some higher unity.  He must show that the natural and supernatural are in some way united within humankind.”  Aquinas argues that this link between the natural and supernatural is reason.  Reason to Aquinas is what raises humankind above both biological realms, as well as above nature itself.  This thesis and his natural law theory are best documented in his greatest work, Summa Theologica.  The Summa discusses the existence of four different levels of law.  Because rule is based on reason, all of these levels of law possess reason, just different levels of it.  The highest and most understandable law is eternal law.  Eternal law is god’s idea of the government of the universe, in God’s mind so to speak.  It is the natural and ethical order of things established by God.  The divine law, which is next in importance according to Aquinas, are laws additional to natural law or morality, laid down by God to lead mankind to a supernatural end.  This is really a different type of eternal law; it is the revealed word of God in Scripture.  According to St. Thomas the next level of law is Natural Law which is most important in understanding St. Thomas’ idea of reason.  The final and lowest level of law is human law.  Human law rules additional to natural law, but not consistent with it, which is laid down by a human ruler or community.  St. Thomas is very well respected for his understanding of law and his classification of it in Summa Theologica.  However, it is his ideas regarding Natural Law in particular, which made Thomas Aquinas most famous.

        St. Thomas Aquinas bases his belief on the Natural Law on his understanding of God.  He grounds his theory of Natural Law in the notion of an eternal law, in God.  What makes St. Thomas’ theory of Natural Law unique from others is that it establishes a link between natural and the supernatural, between nature and spirit.  “Since right and wrong are determined by God’s eternal law, ‘it is therefore evident that the natural law is nothing else than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law’.”  Aquinas explains; people’s moral reason is an extension of a spiritual principle that transcends nature.  Therefore, when people use reason in everyday life, their behaviour involves both a natural and a spiritual dimension.  This connection of nature and spirit that Aquinas discusses is a very important part of his work.  It allows him to argue not only that human law is legitimate, because it conforms to the dictates of moral reason but also, human law is a reflection of the highest level of law, God’s eternal justice.  Most importantly, the link between nature and spirit generated a newfound interest in politics for many Christians.  “For in St. Thomas’s analysis, politics is something more than simply an activity natural to human beings as Aristotle had thought; it is something that is not entirely unrelated to people’s spiritual welfare.”  This proves St. Thomas’s point that politics is conductive to the human spirit and therefore that being a good citizen, as well as Christian go hand in hand.  St. Thomas Aquinas should be recognized for his ability to satisfy both religion and politics, where so many before him could not.  For the first time since classical times, politics and political participation became a very important activity for Christians.

        St. Thomas Aquinas successfully liberated medieval thought from the old model of St. Augustine’s metaphor of two separate and distinct cities.  He did this not only with respect to the conflict between the church and the state as discussed before, but also in terms of people’s spiritual and natural capacities.  “Politics, philosophy, science – the earthly city and all its activities – were incorporated by St. Thomas into a larger Christian framework.”  The major difference between St. Thomas and St. Augustine, which allowed St. Thomas to see beyond the two-city analogy, was their different views in the field of psychology.  St Augustine believed that the defining characteristic of humankind is sin.  He claimed that individuals were so corrupt that they will use their reason for evil purposes.  St. Thomas on the other hand believed that reason; not sin was the defining characteristic of human kind.  As St. Thomas stressed, “the greater the distance between moral principles and the proximate judgments men make on the basis of them, the more hazardous and subject to error their inclusions are likely to be.”  In other words St. Thomas believed that people may sin, but they can choose not to, and reason helps them direct their lives towards virtue and goodness.  The significance of these different visions of reason between the two philosophers is quite important. “By linking reason to a larger spiritual dimension, that is, by uniting nature and spirit, St. Thomas was able, with good Christian conscience, to apply Aristotle’s political theory to the conditions of late medieval life.  In this way, he found a means to defend the existence of the state and those subordinate associations that were beginning to demand autonomy.”  The advantages of St. Thomas’s political theory are quite obvious.  Not only did his theory suit the condition of late medieval life exceptionally, but it also opened new possibilities for the political theorists.  The popularity of St. Thomas’s philosophy was very important to the development of his Natural Law theory, as it allowed him to gain political stature and enormous recognition towards his greatest work, Summa Theologica in which he studies the concept of Natural Law.   It is clear that his entire concept of Natural Law, based as it is on the ideas of nature and law, presupposes his interpretation of what a man is and what existence means.  Because St. Thomas’ understanding was ‘clear cut’ and precise, it allowed him to look at the concept of law in its basic essence, and not a descriptive understanding of law which had been the norm in the past.  Fundamentally, the idea of Natural Law is based on a belief that there exists a moral order that every normal person can discover by using reason, and of which he must take account if he is to harmonize himself to his necessary ends as a human being.  St. Thomas’s ability to accommodate to late medieval lifestyle helped contribute to the success of St. Thomas Aquinas and his work on Natural Law.

        St. Thomas in the thirteenth century was able to build upon the recovery of Aristotle’s complete philosophic works.  The vast amount of information that Aristotle had gathered and ordered into separate sciences during his time, was unified by Aquinas into a great philosophic system of all the branches of knowledge.  Saint Thomas’s philosophy is set forth in the twenty-two volumes of his principle work, Summa Theologica.  This work is considered the most esteemed system within the Catholic philosophy and one of the highest philosophical achievements of the western world.  The philosophy of the Summa, was proclaimed the official philosophy of the Catholic Church by Pope Leo XIII, and even today is still influential.  The importance of St. Thomas’s work cannot be underestimated.  “In uniting St. Augustine’s two cities, St. Thomas performed the same task for the medieval political theorist that Aristotle had done for the classical thinker when he united Plato’s ‘intelligible world of form’ with the ‘sensory world of appearances’.”  St. Thomas’s philosophy combined with the conditions of the period allowed for him to pursue his interest in Natural Law, for which he is still recognized for today.

        

        

        

           

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