• It specifies the human act and is the purpose that
WEEK 8: NATURAL LAW
St. Thomas Aquinas
Module, PPT & Synchronous lecture by Prof.
Oliveros
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
• Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that argues for the
goodness of pleasure and the determination of right
behavior based on the usefulness of the actions
consequences. This means that pleasure is good and
that the goodness of action is determined by its
usefulness.
• Also known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor
Communis
• Born in 1225 Aquino, Italy
• Died in 1274 in Italy
• Referred to as Thomas because his last name
Aquinas refers to where he was born.
• Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, Catholic priest,
and Doctor of the Church Theologian, and jurist in
the tradition of scholasticism
• Begins his natural law theory by differentiating
human acts from acts of man.
NATURAL LAW
• Natural law is a system in which actions are seen as
morally and ethically correct if t accords with the
end purpose of human nature and human goals.
• Follows the fundamental maxim, ‘do good and
avoid evil’.
HUMAN ACTS
• Human acts as Aquinas expressed proceeds from
the will.
ACTS OF MAN
• Is an action that does not proceeds from the will
→ No moral value
MORAL OBJECT
• The intention inherent in the action that one is
actually performing.
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the act accomplishes as a means to the ultimate
goal of life.
• Although the moral object or finis operis is the
fundamental element of the morality of the human
act, that is also the circumstance.
→ Human act; labeled as good or evil
CIRCUMSTANCE
• is the part of the human act that must be considered
in order to evaluate the total moral act. Can be
considered in various moral questions, thus, be
might ask, ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘how much’ or ‘in what
manner’
→ Things that you’re considering
INTENTION / MOTIVE
• The ultimate reason that determines the moral act
• Is a means towards attainment of true happiness
both of a agent and the common good
PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE-EFFECT
Thomas Aquinas
• Designed by Aquinas
• Used in order to judge the moral acceptability of the
human act that has two effect:
▪ Good
▪ Evil
Traditional Moral Theology, presents four conditions
for the Double-effect Principle to be applied:
→ To be applied to how acceptable our action is
1. The action is good itself or at least in different.
→ When performing an action – do what’s good
→ A good person always chooses what’s good
2. The Good effect must come first before the evil
effect or a least simultaneously
→ Pinautang ng pera – naibsan ang financial burden
→ Di pwedeng pinahiram yung pera tapos
nasagasaan
3. The Good effect must be intended
→ Dapat hindi out of luck
→ Intention to do good dapat
4. There must be a proportionately grave reason for
the evil effect to happen
→ Pag nag act possible: Good or evil
→ Kung mag act maliit ang possibility ng evil
Annotated by: C. Danting
 MEDIEVAL THINKER THOMAS AQUINAS
• This natural law of theory is part of a larger project,
which is Aquinas’ vision of the Christian faith
THE CONTEXT OF AQUINAS’ ETHICS
• How in our pursuit of happiness we direct our
actions toward specific ends.
• How our actions are related to certain dispositions
in a dynamic way since our actions arise from our
habits and at the same time reinforce a good
disposition leading us toward making moral choices.
• The Christian Life is about developing the capacities
given us by God into a disposition of virtue inclined
toward the good
• Aquinas also puts forward that there is within us a
conscience that directs our moral thinking
• We are called to heed the voice of conscience and
enjoined to develop and maintain a life of virtue.
→ Sometimes unreliable ang conscience
• However, we need a basis for our conscience to be
properly informed, and we need a clearer guidepost
on whether certain decisions we make lead us
toward virtue or vice.
• Being told that one should heed one’s conscience or
that one should try to be virtuous, does very little to
guide people as to what specifically should be done
in a given situation.
• There is a need or a clearer basis of ethics, a ground
the will more concretely direct our sense of what is
wrong and right
• For Aquinas, there should be Natural Law
THE ESSENCE AND VARIETIES OF LAW
ESSENCE OF LAW
• As a rational being, we have free will. Through our
capacity for reason, we are able to judge between
possibilities and to choose to direct our actions in
one way or the other
→ Hindi puppet master ang God
→ From the concept of John Stuart Mill, binigyan
tayo ng reason…
• ACTIONS are directed toward attaining ends or
goods that we desire
• There are many possible desirable ends or goods,
and we act in such ways to pursue them.
• ACTS are rightly toward their ends by reason
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• AQUINAS reminds us that we cannot simply act in
pursuit of our own ends or good without any regard
for other people's end or good. We are not isolated
beings, but beings who belong to a community.
• Since we belong to a community, we have to
consider what is good for the community as well as
our own good. This can be called COMMON GOOD.
• We should recognize the proper measure or the
limits in our acts in a way that we can pursue ends,
about our own and that of others, together. The
determination of the proper measure of our acts
can be referred to as LAW.
→ Not referring sa batas na ginawa ng hari/reyna
but when doing an act must use his reason and his
action are participative sa common good sa loob
ng lipunan
→ A good eagle is based on his nature
• A LAW, therefore, is concerned with the COMMON
GOOD.
• It is also necessary for rules or laws to be
communicated to the people involved in order to
enforce them and to better ensure compliance. This
is referred to as PROMULGATION.
• "The definition of law may be gathered; and it is
nothing else than an ordinance or reason for the
common good, made by him who has care of the
community and promulgated" — Aquinas
VARIETIES OF LAW
• We do not only recognize God as the source of these
beings, but also acknowledge the way they have
been created and the way they could return to Him,
which is the work of His divide reason itself.
→ If God provides you with reason why there are
people commits irrational act like criminal
activity…
→ You're thinking that this is the right thing but
you're wrong (ignorance)
→ When doing it out emotions
• "He governs all the acts and movements that are to
be found in each single creature, so the type of
Divine Wisdom, as moving all things to their due
end, bears the character of law."
ETERNAL LAW
• What God wills for creation
Annotated by: C. Danting
 • How each participant in it is intended to return to
Him
• We must recognize that we are part of the eternal
law and we participate in it in a special way.
→ As a rational being naiintindihan natin ang
existence and will of god
• Irrational creatures are participating in the eternal
law, although we could hardly say that they are in
any way "conscious" of this law.
• Aquinas notes that "we cannot speak of them by
obeying the law, except by the way of similitude”
• "Wherefore it has a share of the External Reason,
whereby it has a natural inclination to it's proper act
and end"
• This participation of the external law in the natural
creature is called NATURAL LAW
→ Pag pinabayaan mo ang animals to do their
proper act and end - nag paparticipate na sila sa
external law and that's natural reason.
HUMAN LAW
• refers to all instances wherein human being
construct and enforce laws in their community.
ETERNAL LAW
• refers specifically to the instances where we have
what is handed down to us in sacred scripture
• "So then no one can know the eternal law, as it is in
itself, except the blessed who see God in His
Essence."
NATURAL LAW
In common in other beings
• We have considered how we, human beings, are
both unique and at the same time participating in
the community of the rest of creation. Our presence
in the rest of creation does not only mean that we
interact with creatures that are not human, but that
there is also in our nature something that shares in
the nature of other beings
→ Unnatural things – that causes evil
→ It’s not the same with the oughtness
In common with other animals
• Aquinas then goes on to say that there is our human
nature, common with other animals, a desire that
has to do with sexual intercourse and the care of
Page 3 of 7 ETIC211 Week 8 (Midterms)
one’s offspring. As the matter of fact, animals
periodically engage in sexual intercourse at a
specific time of “heat”, and this could result an
offspring. In human too, that natural inclination to
engage in the sexual act and to reproduce exists.
Thomas writes certain special sins are said to be
against nature, thus contrary to sexual intercourse,
which is natural to all animals, is unisexual lust,
which has received the special name of the
unnatural crime
UNIQUELY HUMAN
• We have an inclination to good according to the
nature of our reasons.
• With this, we have a natural inclination to know the
truth about God and to live in Society
• It is of interest that this is followed by matters of
both an epistemic and a social concern.
→ Natural ability/drivve to know the truth about god
• General guideposts:
▪ Epistemic Concern – which is that we know
we pursue the truth
▪ Social Concern – which is that we know we
live in relation to others
• Thomas tells us that there is a priority among the
powers of our soul, with the intellectual directing
and commanding our sensitive and nutritive
capacities.
• Recognizing how being rational is what is proper to
man, the apparent vagueness of the third
inclination that Aquinas mentions is counter-
balanced by the recognition that he is not
interested in providing precepts that one would
simply, unthinkingly follow
• In making human laws, additions that are not at all
problematic for the natural law are possible. o As
Aquinas puts it, nothing hinders a change in the
natural law by way of addition, since our reason has
found and can fine many things that benefit
individual and communal human life.
INPUT: NATURAL LAW (module)
THE THEORY OF NATURAL LAW
• In the history of Christian thought, the dominant
theory of ethics is not the Divine Command Theory.
That honor goes to the Theory of Natural Law. This
theory has three main parts.
Annotated by: C. Danting
 1. The Theory of Natural Law rests upon a certain
view of what the world is like. On this view, the
world is a rational order with values and purposes
built into its very nature. This conception derives
from the Greeks, whose way of understanding the
world dominated Western thinking for over 1,700
years. A central feature of this conception was the
idea that everything in nature has a purpose.
• Aristotle incorporated this idea into his system of
thought around 350 B.C. when he said that, in order
to understand anything, four questions must be
asked: What is it? What is it made of? How did it
come to exist? And what is it for? (The answers
might be: This is a knife, it is made of metal, it was
made by a craftsman, and it is used for cutting.)
Aristotle assumed that the last question - what is it
for? - could sensibly be asked of anything whatever.
Nature, he said, belongs to the class of causes which
act for the sake of something.
• It seems obvious that artifacts such as knives have
purposes, because craftsmen have a purpose in
mind when they make them. But what about
natural objects that we do not make? Aristotle
believed that they have purposes too. One of his
examples was that we have teeth so that we can
chew. Such biological examples are quite
persuasive; each part of our bodies does seem,
intuitively, to have a special purpose - eyes are for
seeing, the heart is for pumping blood, and so on.
But Aristotle’s claim was not limited to organic
beings. According to him, everything has a purpose.
He thought, to take a different sort of example, that
rain falls so that plants can grow. As odd as it may
seem to a modern reader, Aristotle was perfectly
serious about this. He considered other
alternatives, such as that the rain falls of necessity
and that this helps the plants only by coincidence,
and rejected them.
• The world, therefore, is an orderly, rational system,
with each thing having its own proper place and
serving its own special purpose. There is a neat
hierarchy: The rain exists for the sake of the plants,
the plants exist for the sake of the animals, and the
animals exist - of course - for the sake of people,
whose well- being is the point of the whole
arrangement.
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• [W]e must believe, first that plants exist for the sake
of animals, second that all other animals exist for
the sake of man, tame animals for the use he can
make of them as well as for the food they provide;
and as for wild animals, most though not all of these
can be used for food or are useful in other ways;
clothing and instruments can be made out of them.
If then we are right in believing that nature makes
nothing without some end in view, nothing to no
purpose, it must be that nature has made all things
specifically for the sake of man.
• This seems stunningly anthropocentric. Aristotle
may be forgiven, however, when we consider that
virtually every important thinker in out history has
entertained some such thought. Humans are a
remarkably vain species.
• The Christian thinkers who came later found this
view of the world to be perfectly congenial. Only
one thing was missing: God was needed to make the
picture complete. (Aristotle has denied that God
was a necessary part of the picture. For him, the
worldview we have outlined was not religious; it
was simply a description of how things are.) Thus
the Christian thinkers said that the rain falls to help
the plants because that is what the Creator
intended, and the animals are for human use
because that is what God made them for. Values
and purposes were, therefore, conceived to be a
fundamental part of the nature of things, because
the world was believed to have been created
according to a divine plan.
2. A corollary of this way of thinking is that the laws
of nature not only describe how things are, they
specify how things ought to be as well. Things are
as they ought to be when they are serving their
natural purposes. When they do not, or cannot,
serve those purposes, things have gone wrong.
Eyes that cannot see are defective, and drought is
a natural evil; the badness of both is explained by
reference to natural law. But there are also
implications for human conduct. Moral rules are
not viewed as deriving from the laws of nature.
Some ways of behaving are said to be natural,
while other are unnatural; and unnatural acts are
said to be morally wrong.
Annotated by: C. Danting
 • Consider, for example, the duty of beneficence. We
are morally required to be concerned for our
neighbor’s welfare as we are for our own. Why?
According to the Theory of Natural Law,
beneficence is natural for us, considering the kind of
creatures we are. We are by our nature social
creatures who want and need the company of other
people. It is also part of our natural makeup that we
care about others. Someone who does not care at
all for others - who really does not care, through and
through - is seen as deranged, in the terms of
modern psychology, a sociopath. A malicious
personality is defective, just as eyes are defective if
they cannot see. And, it may be added, this is true
because we were created by God, with a specific
human nature, as part of his overall plan for the
world.
• The endorsement of beneficence is relatively
uncontroversial. Natural law theory has also been
used, however, to support moral views that are
more contentious. Religious thinkers have
traditionally condemned deviant sexual practices,
and the theoretical justification of their opposition
has come more often than not from theory of
natural law. If everything has a purpose, what is the
purpose of sex? The obvious answer is procreation.
Sexual activity that is not connected with making
babies can therefore be viewed as unnatural, and so
such practices as masturbation and oral sex - not to
mention gay sex - can be condemned for this
reason. This way of thinking about sex dates back to
at least to St. Augustine in the fourth century, and it
is explicit in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The
moral theology of the Catholic Church is based on
natural law theory. This line of thought lies behind
its whole sexual ethic.
• Outside the Catholic Church, the Theory of Natural
Law has few advocates today. It is generally rejected
for two reasons. First, it seems to involve a
confusion of is and ought. In the 18th century David
Hume pointed out that what is the case and what
ought to be the case are logically different notions,
and no conclusion about one follows from the
other. We can say that people are naturally
disposed to be beneficent, but it does not follow
that they should be beneficent. Similarly, it may be
that sex does produce babies, but it does not follow
that sex ought or ought not to be engaged in only
Page 5 of 7 ETIC211 Week 8 (Midterms)
for that purpose. Facts are one thing; values are
another. The Theory of Natural Law seems to
conflate them.
• Second, the Theory of Natural Law has gone out of
fashion (although that does not, of course, prove it
is false) because the view of the world on which it
rests is out of keeping with modern science. The
world as described by Galileo, Newton, and Darwin
has no place for facts about right and wrong. Their
explanations of natural phenomena make no
reference to values or purposes. What happens just
happens, fortuitously, in the consequence of the
laws of cause and effect. If the rain benefits the
plants, it is only because the plants have evolved by
the laws of natural selection in a rainy climate.
• Thus modern science gives us a picture of the world
as a realm of facts, where the only natural laws are
the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, working
blindly and without purpose. Whatever values may
be, they are not part of the natural order. As for the
idea that nature has made all things specifically for
the sake of man, that is only human vanity. To the
extent that one accepts the worldview of modern
science, then, one will be skeptical of the Theory of
Natural Law. It is no accident that the theory was a
product, not of modern thought, but of the Middle
Ages.
3. The third part of the theory addresses the question
of moral knowledge. How are we to go about
determining what is right and what is wrong? The
Divine Command Theory says that we must consult
God’s commandments. The Theory of Natural Law
gives a different answer. The natural laws that
specify what we should do are laws of reason,
which we are able to grasp because God, the
author of the natural order, has made us rational
beings with the power to understand that order.
Therefore, the Theory of Natural Law endorses the
familiar idea that the right thing to do is whatever
course of conduct has the best reasons on its side.
To use the traditional terminology, moral
judgments are dictates of reason. St. Thomas
Aquinas, the greatest of the natural-law theorists,
wrote in his masterpiece the Summa Theologica
that To disparage the dictate of reason is
equivalent to condemning the command of God.
Annotated by: C. Danting
 • This means that the religious believer has no special
access to moral truth. The believer and the
nonbeliever are in the same position. God has given
both the same powers of reasoning; and so believer
and nonbeliever alike may listen to reason and
follow its directives. They function as moral agents
in the same way, even though the nonbelievers lack
of faith prevents them from realizing that God is the
author of the rational order in which they
participate and which their moral judgments
express.
• In an important sense, this leaves morality
independent of religion. Religious belief does not
affect the calculation of what is best, and the results
of moral inquiry are religiously neutral. In this way,
even though they may disagree about religion,
believers and nonbelievers inhabit the same moral
universe.
NATURAL LAW
• What is natural law? ‘Natural’ because the goals and
the major values human beings seek are innate, that
is, they are from the nature and are not selected
freely by individual persons or communities. Since
human nature does not change, the basic goals are
constant and basic morality does not change. It is
considered ‘law’ because by reasoning about the
innate goals and values we can determine actions,
which is oftentimes expressed in norms or laws that
enables the person to achieve their goals.
• Natural Law is a system in which actions are seen as
morally or ethically correct if it accords with the end
purpose of human nature and human
goals. Natural Law follows the fundamental maxim,
‘do good and avoid evil’. A follower of natural law
contends that God is the creator. They believed that
God’s law is reflected in nature and in His creation.
So by following man’s heart therefore they can
recognized the law of God.
• The natural law method of seeking moral norms and
evaluating human acts has a long history in the
catholic community. On the other hand, it is closely
associated to St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas begins
his natural law theory by differentiating human
acts from acts of man. Human acts as Aquinas
expressed proceeds from the will and the act of
man is an action that does not proceeds from the
will. It is only the human act that is being
Page 6 of 7 ETIC211 Week 8 (Midterms)
determined as moral or immoral because its origin
is the exercise of the will. The morality of the human
act depends primarily on the ‘object’ rationally
chosen by the deliberate will (John Paul II
in Veritatis Splendor, 1993).
• The moral object can be described as the intention
inherent in the action that one is actually
performing, the moral object specifies the human
act and is the purpose that the act accomplishes as
a means to the ultimate goal of life. For example, ‘If
I gave money to the poor, I am performing an act of
charity, a human act judged by its moral object or
the intention inherent in the act. Although the
moral object or finis operis is the fundamental
element of the morality of the human act, there is
also the circumstance. Circumstance is a part of the
human act that must be considered in order to
evaluate the total moral act (Summa Theologica,
1947, I-II, q. 18, a. 3).
• Circumstance can be considered in various moral
questions, thus, we might ask, ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘how
much’ or ‘in what manner’. Example, a physician
who injects a debilitated patient with a fate dose
drugs to end his suffering. The moral object of the
act (what actually the physician intends to do) is to
kill the patient and it is this intention that makes the
physical act of the injection a moral evil. The
circumstance of the physician’s act, e.g., time,
place, and condition of the patient cannot make this
act good.
• Finally, the ultimate reason that determines the
moral act is the intention. Intention/motive is a
means towards the attainment of true happiness
both of the agent and the common good. Thus, in
the example, killing an innocent person to help
relieve pain cannot be justified. That is why as
Ashley and O’Rouke said, ‘we may not do evil for
good to come out of it’ (Originally is taken from
Rom. 3:8, Ashley, OP and O’Rouke OP, 2001).
• The presentation at hand speaks about the norms
of moral act, however, if given a situation or
alternative wherein there is the conflicting issues as
to what course of action will prevail, Aquinas
designed a method known as ‘Principle of Double-
Effect’. This principle is used in order to judge the
moral acceptability of the human act that has two
effects, one is good and the other is evil. Traditional
Annotated by: C. Danting
 Moral theology, presents four conditions for the sometimes referred to as “positive laws” in the
double effect principle to be applied: framework of natural law theory, to make a clear
1. The action is good in itself or at least indifferent. distinction between natural and social laws. This
2. The good effect must come first before the evil theory has heavily influenced the laws and
effect or a least simultaneously. governments of many nations, including England
3. The good effect must be intended. and the United States, and it is also reflected in
4. There must be a proportionately grave reason for publications like the Universal Declaration of
the evil effect to happen. Human Rights
• The application of the principle of double effect • The origins of natural law theory lie in Ancient
emphasized that the good effect is really and Greece. Many Greek philosophers discussed and
honestly the one that is intended, instead of the evil codified the concept of natural law, and it played an
one. For example, a nurse is treating pneumonia to important role in Greek government. Later
a patient with terminal cancer. In prescribing philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas
medication, one may possibly claim that his/her Hobbes, and John Locke built on the work of the
intention is to treat the pneumonia but it is possible Greeks in natural law theory treatises of their own.
as well that in one’s mind it would also be good so Many of these philosophers used natural law as a
that death could be hastened and the patient would framework for criticizing and reforming positive
not be in pain and prolonged suffering for a longer laws, arguing that positive laws which are unjust
period of time. In this example, it is required that under the principles of natural law are legally
the purity of ones internal action of consent or wanting.
intention must be intended.
• Situations by which the principle of double-effect
can be seen and applied and is not limited to
it: pain, restlessness, delirious, uncontrolled seizures
and depression caused by illness. Some of the
treatment may have an adverse and untoward
effect that it is not intended. Example, the use of
marijuana to control a certain pain and wasting; the
euphoric effects are the primary intention even if
the undesired effects are permitted. Another one is
applying sedition to a very restless and delirious
patient (as in rabies) it may require dangerous drugs
or even anesthesia even if these will shorten the life
of the patient. It is to be remembered here, that the
primary purpose of the health care provider is to
provide comfort and ease suffering. Indeed, good
intention demands impartiality and absence of
conflict of interest. Though, this is not always
possible, still, decision-making at the end must
recognize the individual conscience that requires
prudence of action. Prudence, as Aquinas said, ‘is
right reason in action’.

NATURAL LAW – OVERVIEW

• Natural law theory is a philosophical and legal belief

that all humans are governed by basic innate laws,
or laws of nature, which are separate and distinct
from laws which are legislated. Legislated laws are

Page 7 of 7 ETIC211 Week 8 (Midterms) Annotated by: C. Danting