is good’ is analytic in that it expresses a truth about God (that God is fully whatever it is to be God), but it is also synthetic as God represents the goal and destiny of all human beings, even though human beings may not recognise this. Aquinas based this idea on ‘fitness for purpose’ – since he held that humans were made by God for fellowship with God it follows that God, as their creator, must be the means by which human happiness will be found. Aquinas did not consider that morality was based on commands from God – a position which William of Ockham held as he considered that morality was based on revelation – Ockham held that if God commanded adultery then this would be right because of the command. Aquinas considered that if this was the case then God’s commands could be irrational and arbitrary. Instead God makes human beings with a certain nature and this nature enables human beings to use their reason and their experience to understand what is right.
Aquinas considered, following Aristotle, that all men will the good. Human beings may seek some apparent good, but this is not a true good – it is only an apparent good because it does not conform to the perfection of the human nature which all human beings share. Aquinas considered that there is an ‘ideal’ human nature which we all have the potential to live up to or to fall away from and our moral actions are crucial in determining where we stand in this respect. If a person does something that is morally wrong, he or she will do this because they consider this to be a good although the possibility of the individual being mistaken certainly exists (examples might include smoking, drinking too much or even taking drugs). Aquinas says that: ‘A fornicator seeks a pleasure which involves him in moral guilt’ (Summa Theologica 1a, 19, 9). The fornicator seeks a pleasure which he thinks is a good, but this is only an apparent good as it diminishes a human being’s nature.
Sin, for Aquinas, involves a falling short from the good – it means a human being becoming less than he or she is intended by God for him or her to be. To pursue an apparent good rather than the real good is to fall short of our real potential – it is to ‘get it wrong’ and to be mistaken. No one seeks evil for itself, it is only sought as an apparent good and therefore rests on a mistake. Hitler and Stalin did not seek to do evil – they sought what they thought were goods but they were mistaken – they strove for apparent rather than real goods. Sin is a theological word but there is no real difference between this theological idea and acting against reason. Aquinas says: ‘the theologian considers sin principally as an offence against God, whereas the moral philosopher considers it as being contrary to reason’ (S. T. 1a, 11ae, 71, 6, ad 5).
Since Aquinas argued that it is possible to be mistaken in which goods are chosen, it is obviously necessary to determine what is the right thing for a person to aim for. In essence, this is what discussion of natural law is about – seeking to explore what is the right good to aim for. Human beings have the ability, using their will and reason, to make deliberate moral choices (S. T. 1a, 11ae, 1, 1) which Aquinas terms ‘human acts’ to distinguish them from those acts performed by a person which are based on instinct. However, human reason must be used correctly, which leads Aquinas to talk of the ‘right use of reason’ – reason may be used to plan a murder or to decide to be virtuous, but only in the second case is reason being used ‘rightly’. This obviously raises the problem of how one determines what is the ‘right’ use of reason when there are genuine differences of opinion as to what is good in a particular situation. A person’s reason and their will both work together to help determine the choice they will make – if a person uses their reason correctly to determine what is right and then wills to do it this is, according to Aquinas, a free choice.
A person may will to make a morally wrong choice which he or she does not carry through – perhaps because the choice is not available. A man may, for instance, decide to defraud his employer of a substantial sum of money but he never gets the chance because he is moved to a new job.
Aquinas distinguished ‘interior acts’ and ‘exterior acts’ and is clear that the former are the most important – indeed morally good or bad acts are generally interior acts. An act may be good in itself but done for a wrong intention – for instance giving to charity may be good in itself but if it is done in order to attract praise then there is a bad intention (‘for instance, we say that to give alms for the sake of vainglory is bad’ (S.T., 1a, 11ae, 20, 1)). This does not entail that intention alone is decisive. As Copleston says in his book Thomas Aquinas:
As Aquinas says, there are some things which cannot be justified by any alleged good intention … If I steal money from a man in order to give it to someone else, my action is not justified by my good intention … It is not possible to father on Aquinas the view that the end justifies the means … (p. 207).
In every act or proposed act, Aquinas considers that the will aims towards some end – in other words there is something which is considered to be a good (whether it is, in fact, a good or not). Aquinas needs, therefore, to establish the aim or end towards which human actions are to be directed.
Aquinas’ answer is, perhaps, not unexpected. Considering that he was a Christian theologian writing from a world that was steeped in Christian thought only one final end could possibly be posited – and that is God. This raises the obvious question of those people who do not accept the existence of God and it might seem that their ends or aims would be different from those of the believer. Aquinas is by no means the only advocate of a natural law approach to morality and his understanding differs from others such as Aristotle due to his belief in a personal God. This leads Aquinas to maintain that not only do human beings in general have a purpose beyond death, but each individual also has a particular purpose which is directly related to each person’s talents and abilities. Hugo Grotius claimed in 1625 (in Prolegomena II) that the foundations of natural law would be valid even if there was no God and Aristotle would have agreed with this, but in the absence of God the understanding of natural law would be significantly different as there would then be no life after death and thus the purpose of human existence would be changed. In addition, if God did not implant natural law in human beings then it might be argued that there was no reason why an individual should obey natural law.
Aquinas’ approach is sophisticated and he seeks to address the problem of those who do not believe in God. Even such an individual would seek to fulfil his or her nature and to make the most of individual potentialities – it will therefore follow that such individuals would still incline to obey natural law, as it is in obeying this natural law that human potential is fulfilled. However, the ends that people seek are different and it may be possible to tell what ends they seek by looking at how they live – they may, for instance, look for money, power or reputation as ends in themselves and, if they do so, they will be making a mistake as to where their true happiness lies.
Aquinas does not simply assert that God is the final end for human beings – he considers alternatives. If, for instance, it is suggested that some form of sensual pleasure should be the final aim or end in life, Aquinas would reject this as it is then only the body’s appetites and potentialities that are being satisfied and animals can seek the same thing. Similarly scientific knowledge cannot be the end as this good could only be sought by a small number of people who have the academic ability. Having said this, Aquinas’ view that God is the final end for human beings may be regarded as an assumption and it can, of course, be challenged. However, if the assumption is accepted and if there is, indeed, a God who created the world and human beings, then it is perfectly sensible to claim (although, of course, not necessarily true) that human beings were created for fellowship with this God.
It is interesting and important that Aquinas considers that all human beings share a single nature and, therefore, there should be a single aim or objective for all human beings – this justifies him in rejecting knowledge as an aim (as only some people have the ability to seek this knowledge). The one thing that every person can desire is the vision of God which is promised for the next life. It is only this beatific vision which will be fully and completely satisfying for every human being and humans can choose to seek this or to turn away from it.
The power of reason is vital for
