Thomas Aquinas and knowledge of the first principles of the natural law.
详细信息
文摘
Thomas Aquinas teaches that the first principles of the natural law are self-evident and known to all. Modern commentators nevertheless differ greatly in their attempts to explain Aquinas's theory of how we come to have such knowledge. This dissertation will deal with the question of how, according to Aquinas, we know the first principles of the natural law, and then with the question of whether or not Aquinas's theory of the natural law, properly understood, is viable in our present age.;After the introductory first chapter, chapter 2 discusses Maritain's theory of knowledge through connaturality or inclination. Chapter 3 examines the work of commentators who seek to ground knowledge of the natural law, including its first principles, in prior speculative knowledge, most often in knowledge of metaphysics. After considering Maritain's efforts to explain the role of metaphysics in grounding moral knowledge, the discussion turns to the work of Veatch, Lisska, Aertsen and Jacobs. In chapter 4, consideration is given to the natural law theory of Grisez and Finnis. For reasons summarized in part at the end of chapter 1, none of the commentators considered in chapters 2 through 4 offers either an accurate account of Aquinas's theory or a satisfactory explanation of how it is possible know the principles of the natural law.;Chapter 5 proposes an alternative interpretation based upon a literal reading of Aquinas's texts which say that first speculative and practical principles are innate, implanted in the human mind by God or nature, and that they subsist in the light of the agent intellect. Our knowledge of first principles is at first only habitual. Then, through the natural habit of synderesis, first practical principles are considered actually but only implicitly in moral judgments. Finally, after a resolutio in the conceptual order (secundum rationem) which works back from our informal moral judgments, the first principles may be explicitly identified. In chapter 6, it is maintained that Aquinas's theory, properly understood, provides us with starting-points for moral and political dialogue in the contemporary setting.