Goerner on Thomistic Natural Law

Abstract

W ITHIN RECENT YEARS, there has been revival of interest in the ancient tradition of the virtues. Most of the contemporary discussion has focused on the moral and political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle especially.' But medieval contributors to this ethical tradition also figure as important, and only recently have scholars outside the field of theology begun to pay heed to moral philosophers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas. The political philosopher E. A. Goemer has cleared important ground in the philosophical study of Aquinas. In his two articles on Thomistic ethics, first published in Political Theory2 he rejects Aquinas's traditional classification as natural law theorist. Goerner identifies the presence of two ethical standards in Aquinas's thought, natural law and natural right. Goerner takes natural law to be set of exceptionless rules prescribing or constraining action. In contrast, the natural right theorist, of which Aristotle is an example, holds that rules are, at best, generalizations that are not universally valid but are changeable according to circumstances.3 The real criterion of natural right ultimately must be the judgment of the virtuous person. Goerner provides an account of how these two very different standards function within Thomistic ethics. He takes up Aquinas's own distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic principles of actions.4 The intrinsic principles, moving the moral agent by love of the good, are the virtues. The extrinsic principles of action are law and grace, both of which, in some sense, move from without. Law is, minimally, constraint on the vicious, imposing penalty for violations; optimally, law can serve as an educator, a propaedeutic to virtue.5 Nonetheless, law does not have the perfection of fully virtuous