Philosophy 051-01

More on Natural Law

February 13, 2002

 

1. In Question 94, Article 3, Thomas wonders whether virtuous acts are natural in the sense of us being naturally inclined to them.  It seems, after all, that they’re not.  For instance, taking care of one’s own health is a part of virtue, but we do not have a natural inclination to take any medicine.

• Thomas says that in a sense we are naturally inclined to virtue and in a sense we may not be.  Virtue = action according to reason.  We all have the inclination to act according to reason.  This is shown simply by the fact that we deliberate and make choices, and try to make a reasonable choice—we agonize over choices, etc.  So we all have an inclination to virtue.  But consider a specific act of virtue, such as taking some medicine.  We may not have the inclination to that specific act.  Although we have a general inclination to act according to reason, that is to act virtuously, we do not know by nature that taking this kind of medicine is good for us.  Thus, we take the medicine by reason, not by nature, though following reason is natural.
• Elsewhere, Thomas says (1) that people’s understanding of what is good can be to some extend destroyed by their sin, namely by their evildoing.  Likewise, (2) emotions can darken this understanding as can bad habits.  Moreover, (3) the secondary precepts of natural law—the second principles—can be blotted out by error.  We can make mistakes in mathematics, and likewise we can make them in ethical reasoning (94, 6).  Finally, (4) (ibid.) bad societal habits can make bad things seem good.  If one has grown up among thieves, one may not realize that thieving is bad.  So Thomas certainly admits that we might lack natural inclinations to good things, and might have unnatural inclinations.

2. Basically, Thomas’s ethics boils down to this: Act according to your human nature, in such a way as to fulfill your human nature.  But this doesn’t prohibit us from doing things like taking medication.  Our nature doesn’t make us take medication.  It may even rebel at some disgusting piece of medication because our bodies may not know that the medication is good for us.  But it is also, more importantly, a part of our nature to act by reason.  By reason, we know that medication only promotes the natural functioning of the body.

• If the medication were contrary to the natural functioning of the body, it would be wrong to take, even if we had an inclination to take it.  For instance, a diabetic may have to avoid sugar, even though we have a natural inclination to eat sugar.  The reason for it is that the natural inclination to eat sugar is directed towards the good of furthering the proper function of the body—we need sugar to provide us with energy.  Thus, if we follow the inclination to eat sugar, in this case the sugar will provide one with the very opposite of what it is supposed to provide one with—the body will not function well.  It is natural to use our reason, and so we can use our reason here.  The inclination to eat sugar is at this point malfunctioning—it is failing to indicate what is truly good for us—and hence perhaps can be said to be in an unnatural state (or at least in unnatural circumstances). 
• Moreover, if one function is there solely for the sake of a higher purpose, thus the inclination to eat sugar for the sake of the proper function of the body, then it might be acceptable to override the lower function for the sake of fairly directly furthering the higher.  This is why it is OK to amputate a gangrenous leg—the leg is there solely to aid the functioning of the body as a whole, and when the leg is acting for the exact opposite purpose, it can be removed for the sake of the body as a whole.
• But that doesn’t mean we can willy-nilly override bodily functions.  There are people who want a leg amputated but who have no medical need to have their leg amputated.  They claim they will be happier without the leg.  Yes, there really are such people.  They come in different varieties.  For some, it may be a sexual thing: They may be turned on by the idea of lacking a leg or of someone who lacks a leg (or some other limb, like an arm).  For others, it may be a desire to have more challenge in their lives.  And yet others say things like: I just don’t feel it’s a part of me; to become who I really am, I need to have this leg removed.  This may be very strange to us, but there are such people.  Not that long ago, a Scottish surgeon actually amputated a leg off of each of two people who claimed they’d be happier without a leg.  Allegedly, they were happier as a result.  Should he have done it?
• How would a natural law theorist analyze this kind of a case?  Well, the leg is there to further the proper functioning of the body.  Minus a leg, the body does not function quite as well—it moves around more slowly, for instance.  Thus, removal of the leg is directly opposed to the proper functioning of the body.  The proper functioning of the body furthers the basic good of survival.  Or maybe health, the proper functioning of the body, can be said to itself be a basic good—something that doesn’t require some further purpose to justify it.  Now, if removal of the leg were to help one to survive, it might be acceptable.  But it doesn’t.  Maybe though it makes one happier.  Happiness furthers other basic goods of the human, though it is not clear if the kind of happiness we are talking about here does.  This may not be genuine happiness.  (True happiness for Thomas is union with God, and removal of the leg in no way helps with that!)  But suppose it does make one happier in some way, and that this happiness is a basic good.  Then this basic good is parallel to the basic good of health.  Health is valuable in and of itself, and not just for the sake of happiness.  We see this from the fact that the health of an oyster is also valuable to the oyster, even though oysters can’t be happy: health is intrinsically valuable.  Thus, this would be a case where one acts directly against one basic good, for the sake of indirectly furthering another basic good.  And this is unacceptable: in acting directly against a basic good, one is choosing a basic evil, and the first principle of natural law is to avoid the evil and pursue the good.

3. Thomas’s theory of action.  According to Thomas, our actions look like this.  We have a certain end in view.  This will ultimately be some real or apparent good—perhaps even a real or apparent basic good.  We then choose certain means, a plan of action, for attaining this apparent good.  For instance, the end may be furthering knowledge.  I choose a plan of action: This plan of action involves my teaching you about Thomas’s ethics.  But the plan is a lot more detailed.  It involves my writing up some notes, getting out of the house, going to the metro, getting on the metro, getting out of the metro, getting on to the GUTS bus, etc.  Each of the items in the plan is an action.  Now each of these actions has an object, namely what it is directly trying to achieve.  Thus, the object of writing up my notes is to have course notes.  The object of going to the metro is arriving at the metro station.  We have broken up the plan of action into individual actions.  We can break them up further.  My going to the metro station involves a number of steps.  Now, not every step counts as a human action—only things that are voluntary and free count as human actions: merely automatic things don’t.  But my setting myself to go in a certain direction, my looking around when crossing a street—these are truly human actions.  There are intermediate goals, and each of the subactions thus has its own direct object.  But the end of all of these actions is furthering knowledge.

• So, actions have ends and objects.  The two are usually not the same.  That is why as kids we laughed at the joke about why chicken crossed the road—to get to the other side.  The reason we laughed at the joke is that we expected to be told the end of the action, the further purpose, and what we were told was merely the object.
• What defines an action as the kind of action it is is the object.  “Crossing the street” is an action whose object is being on the other side of the street.  “Killing someone” is an action whose object is the death of someone.  “Eating an apple” is an action whose object is the apple’s presence in one’s digestive system.  However, the same action can have different ends.  One might cross the street in order to commit murder—the victim living on the other side of the street—or one might cross the street in order to save a life—a man lying wounded on the other side of the street.  The action is the same kind—Thomas uses the word “species” here for “kind”—of action in both cases: crossing the street.  It has the same object: being on the other side of the street.  But it has a very different end.
• So far we have three aspects of an action, all of which are in Q. 18, art. 4. 
• (1) That it is a genuine action.  (Rather, than, say being an involuntary muscle spasm, or something that just happens outside of us, like an eclipse of the sun.)  This is its genus, Thomas says: all actions fall under the same genus, namely action, though they may fall under it to different degrees—there plainly are degrees of voluntariness. 
• (2) Its end.
• (3) Its object.  This is what Thomas calls the species, what defines the kind of action it is.
• Suppose we want to evaluate whether an action is good or bad.  Then, we need to evaluate each of the ingredients.  An action is only good if all of the aspects of it are good, just as the answer to a math problem is right only if all of its parts are right.  If one aspect is wrong, it is wrong—though of course there are degrees of wrongness.  Anyway, so far we have three aspects.  First, we can judge how much the action was an action.  Well, all actions by definition are actions.  Thomas thinks that acting is itself a good thing.  Acting is an imitation of God’s exercise of divine power, and hence is good.  So, by criterion (1), all actions are good, though there are degrees.  The more voluntary actions are better in respect of (1). 
• It doesn’t follow, however, that all actions are good.  We need more criteria.  There is (2).  Some ends are good and some are bad.  It may seem good to us to act to cause our enemy misery—misery to our enemy may seem good to us—but in fact the misery of our enemy is bad.  It is bad because it is misery, and misery is bad.  And moreover we ought to know it.  We know we don’t like misery inflicted on us, and this knowledge should let us know that misery inflicted on someone else is bad just as much.  If it seems to us good to cause our enemy misery, it seems to us that way because we have freely neglected to consider her intrinsic value. 
• But (1) and (2) are not enough to evaluate an action.  Thomas gives the example of someone like Robin Hood: the end, helping the poor, is good.
• We need to look at (3).  Robin Hood’s end was helping the poor.  But how did he set out to help the poor?  It was by robbing the rich.  Now, when you rob a rich person, the object of your action is to acquire by force or subterfuge from a rich person that which she owns.  This object is bad, and so Robin Hood’s action is bad on account of the object.
• We might say that Robin Hood took the wrong means to achieve a good end.  That is correct, but Thomas further analyzes the notion of “means” and notes that the means is itself an action, and thus has an object, and what makes it bad is that this object—the taking of something owned by someone else—is bad.
• An action might be good according to (3) and not according to (2).  Thomas’s example is someone who gives to the poor out of vainglory—his end is that people should have a good opinion of him no matter whether he deserves it or not.  That is a bad end to have.  But the object of his action, the enrichment of a poor person, is good.
• Some objects are neutral, some are intrinsically wrong and some are intrinsically good.  If the object of one’s action is the death of a person who hasn’t been duly sentenced to death, then the object is intrinsically wrong.  An action whose object is intrinsically wrong is never acceptable.  This is an action whose object is directly opposed to a basic good: it is the taking away of a basic good.  For instance, suicide: the object is the removal from oneself of the basic good of life.  Nothing can make right an action whose object is intrinsically wrong.  If, on the other hand, the object of one’s action is the relief from hunger for a person, then the object is intrinsically good.  But that isn’t enough to make the action right: the end might still be bad.  So, if the object is intrinsically wrong, the action is always wrong.  If the object is intrinsically right, the action may or may not be right: it depends on other things.  There are also objects that are indifferent: e.g., being on the other side of the street.  In action whose object is indifferent, a lot more depends on the end.
• But the above three things are not enough.  Imagine this story.  I go out to help the poor, and give out food to them.  My end is to terminate the misery of the poor.  My object is to feed them—by feeding them, I terminate the misery.  So far so good.  And this is a voluntary action.  But suppose furthermore that I know I have a very nasty flu.  My going to help the poor will communicate the flu to them.  Moreover, because they are poor and not in good health in general, they may well die of it.  Clearly, what I am doing is wrong, even though it is genuinely an action, and the end is good, and the object is good.
• Note that communicating the flu is not an action of mine.  If it were, then I could just say that helping the poor is good, but communicating the flu is bad.  But it is not an action.  It is not something I do intentionally.  The virus is what does it.
• There are other such cases.  For instance, suppose that I help someone carrying a heavy item into a car, in order to relieve their burden.  The end is relief of burden.  The object: the item being in their car.  The end is good, and the object is neutral.  But I discover that in fact the person is a robber, and the heavy item is a computer he is stealing.  In that case, my helping her is wrong.  This is because action involves a fourth condition:
• (4) Circumstances.
• Once one takes all of these into account, no action is morally neutral.  It’s true that the object and circumstances of an action can be indifferent: neutral.  But the end is never indifferent: it is either the genuine good or it is not the genuine good.  If the latter, something has gone wrong with the action.  It is natural for the will to be attached to the genuine good.  When it is not, something has gone wrong.

4. The little comments on the Ten Commandments are just there to show the way in which Thomas thinks we need to divide up the moral law, into different kinds of obligations to different people, depending on relationship.

5. Time permitting, discuss concupiscent and friendly love.