Introduction: Natural and supernatural goods
Introduction without the moral virtues, just as the moral virtues were not possible without practical wisdom.
By now it may seem that natural law theory is very far away: the account Aquinas gives of practical wisdom takes its shape from his account of agency, not from his account of natural law. But that appearance is misleading. For one thing, since practical wisdom is inseparable from the moral virtues, and both the role and the content of the moral virtues can be explained only by reference to the natural law, natural law theory is not so far offstage after all. But there is an even closer connection between practical wisdom and natural law, a connection that brings us back to our starting point. Practical wisdom is, as we have seen, an account of excellence in practical reasoning. And practical reasoning, like theoretical reasoning, starts from principles and works towards conclusions. The principles of practical reasoning – the starting point from which the practically wise person sets out on a reasoned path to excellent action – are the precepts of the natural law.
I can draw out the significance of this point by pointing to another comparison between speculative and practical reasoning. In theoretical reasoning there is a purely formal science that sets the norms for proceeding properly from principles to conclusions. That science – called syllogistic or logic – can be expounded and practised perfectly well without any reference at all to the content of any (non-logical) principles.
There can be no equivalent science of practical reasoning. Practical reasoning cannot be practised perfectly well without any reference at all to the content of any moral principles; good practical reasoning starts from a correct conception of the end. The account of practical reasoning therefore cannot stand without the account of the human end, and that account is given its general theoretical foundation in the theory of natural law and then fleshed out in a doctrine of virtue that is thoroughly dependent on the theory of natural law.
Natural and supernatural goods I said earlier that the specifically human rational activity that constitutes our good is not theoretical but practical reasoning. The life of practical reasoning, which is the life of the activity of the moral virtues, is (as Aquinas likes to put it) 'proportionate to human beings'. To put it another way, the life of theoretical reason is in an important sense superhuman: 'the xxi
Introduction theoretical intelligence . . . is not found in human beings in the full way that it is in angels, but only through their participating in something else.
That is why the life of contemplation is not, strictly speaking, human, but above what is human' (DQCard rep.). But as a Christian Aquinas believes that God intends human beings for a life that surpasses their nature, a life that is not 'proportionate to human beings' and therefore cannot be attained merely by the cultivation of their natural capacities, even to that peak of perfection that constitutes complete moral virtue.
This supernatural human life is a gift, not an accomplishment.
We must not, however, think of that supernatural life as something wholly unrelated to our natural life, merely tacked on afterwards but lacking any intelligible continuity with our natural desires, actions, and dispositions. In fact, the notion that our natural life is the life exclusively of this world, and our supernatural life exclusively the life of the world to come, is completely foreign to Aquinas. Heaven fulfils our nature, though in a way beyond nature's own power; and our supernatural life begins not with death but with baptism.
We can understand what is distinctive in Aquinas's view by looking at the intellectual context in which these disputed questions were raised.
By about , or roughly a decade before the Disputed Questions on the Virtues were argued, the faculty of arts at the University of Paris had become something like what we would think of as a philosophy department. The arts masters no longer thought of themselves chiefly as providing a preliminary grounding in the liberal arts for budding theologians, but as practitioners of a critical, philosophical discipline with its own independent dignity – a dignity that they were not shy of asserting both on their own behalf and on behalf of the discipline of philosophy itself.
For the Aristotelian philosophy that it was their task to develop and teach offered a comprehensive view of the world that did not rely on any purported revelation. Some of the arts masters therefore made very strong claims about the preeminence of philosophy and of the life of speculative
(as opposed to practical) reason, as we can see in some of the propositions later condemned by the Bishop of Paris in :
That there is no more excellent way of life than the philosophical way.
Thatthehighestgoodofwhichthehumanbeingiscapableconsists in the intellectual virtues.
That the philosophers alone are the wise men of this world. xxii
Introduction The arts masters' assertion of the autonomy and integrity of philosophy (and indeed of the whole natural order, which philosophy purports to explain) has come to be known as 'integral Aristotelianism', since it involved the use of Aristotle's work not merely as a conceptual apparatus for elucidating received theological wisdom but as a complete, freestanding philosophy in its own right.
Not surprisingly, some conservatives in the faculty of theology vigorously opposed this 'naturalistic' philosophy and were deeply suspicious of the influence of Aristotle. We can get a glimpse of their attitude by looking at the Conferences on the Hexa¨emeron, a series of lectures given by Saint Bonaventure in April and May of . Although by now his own faculty days were behind him, Bonaventure had supported theological opposition to what he saw as the over-exuberant Aristotelianism of many lecturers in the University of Paris. The tenor of that opposition can be seen in passages like these:
Take note of Gideon, whom the Lord commanded to test the people by the waters. Those who lapped were chosen: that is, those who drink moderately from philosophy . . . The others who drank while lying down are those who give themselves entirely to philosophy and are not worthy to stand up in the battle-line, but are bent over in submission to infinite errors.
One must not mingle so much of the water of philosophical science with the wine of Holy Scripture that the wine is transmuted into water . . . But in modern times the wine is changed into water and the bread into stone, just the reverse of the miracles of Christ.
The professors – even if not openly, at any rate secretly – read, copy, and conceal the quartos of the philosophers as though they were idols, much as Rachel lied about concealing the stolen idols of her father.
(ConfHex ..–) In short, those who do not rigorously subordinate Aristotelian philosophy to scriptural theology are deserters from Christ's army, reversers of his miracles, and indeed closet idolaters.
Aquinas aims at avoiding both the extreme naturalism of the integral Aristotelians and what we might call the 'rejectionism' of the conservative theologians. Far from rejecting philosophy in general or Aristotle in particular, Aquinas is thoroughly Aristotelian. As Ralph McInerny puts it, xxiii
Introduction When Thomas referred to Aristotle as the Philosopher, he was not merely adopting a fa¸con de parler of the time. He adopted Aristotle's analysis of physical objects, his view of place, time and motion, his proofoftheprimemover,hiscosmology.HemadehisownAristotle's account of sense perception and intellectual knowledge. His moral philosophy is closely based on what he learned from Aristotle and in his commentary on the Metaphysics he provides the most cogent and coherent account of what is going on in those difficult pages.
But even as he adopted much of Aristotle's philosophy, he did not agree with the integral Aristotelians that philosophy by itself offers a comprehensive, autonomous account of everything there is. In addition to the natural order, which philosophy investigates, there is a supernatural order, which is beyond the competence of philosophy. Yet 'the highest does not stand without the lowest';the supernatural order does not obliterate the natural. As Aquinas himself puts it, 'grace does not destroy nature, but brings it to fulfilment' (ST a .ad ). This understanding of the relationship between the natural and the supernatural orders allows
Aquinas to preserve the whole Aristotelian conceptual apparatus but put it to a wider use than Aristotle envisioned. Aquinas expects to find parallels between the natural and the supernatural orders. He therefore seeks 'the discovery of natural analogies to transcendent truths and the ordering of both natural and supernatural truths in a scientific way'.
Within ethics, this approach allows Aquinas to affirm that there is indeed such a thing as natural happiness, and that it does not lose its importance for moral theory simply because, as Christians affirm, there is also such a thing as supernatural happiness. Jean Porter explains this particularly well: the natural end of human life, that is, the attainment of specific perfection as a human being, is not rendered otiose or irrelevant by the fact that we are actually directed toward a supernatural end.
The specific natural ideal of humanity remains the proximate norm 'Saint Thomas Aquinas', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall/entries/aquinas.
Thomas `a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ.
C. H. Lohr, 'The Medieval Interpretation of Aristotle', in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, ), pp. –, at p. . xxiv