Justice and Charity

An Introduction to Aquinas's Moral, Economic, and Political Thought

Krom, Michael P.

• Verlag: Baker Academic
• Jahr: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781493424368
• Thema: Theology & Religion
• Thema: Christian Theology

This book introduces Thomas Aquinas's moral, economic, and political thought, differentiating between philosophy (justice) and theology (charity) within each of the three branches of Aquinas's theory of human living. It shows how Aquinas's thought offers an integrated vision for Christian participation in the world, equipping readers to apply their faith to the complex moral, economic, and political problems of contemporary society. Written in an accessible style by an experienced educator, the book is well-suited for use in a variety of undergraduate courses and provides a foundation for understanding Catholic social teaching.

PART 1
Moral Theory

1
The Natural Desire for Happiness (Moral Philosophy)

Happy is the man who finds wisdom,

and the man who gets understanding,

for the gain from it is better than gain from silver

and its profit better than gold.

She is more precious than jewels,

and nothing you desire can compare with her.

Long life is in her right hand;

in her left hand are riches and honor.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness,

and all her paths are peace.

She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;

those who hold her fast are called happy.

—Proverbs 3:13–18

But how can a man be just before God?

If one wished to contend with him,

one could not answer him once in a thousand times.

He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength

—who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?—

he who removes mountains, and they know it not,

when he overturns them in his anger;

who shakes the earth out of its place,

and its pillars tremble;

who commands the sun, and it does not rise;

who seals up the stars;

who alone stretched out the heavens,

and trampled the waves of the sea.

—Job 9:2–8

1. Introduction

As we begin our study of moral philosophy, we must address a popular misconception about ethics: in our society we often think of the moral life in terms of rule following, of doing one’s duty without regard to one’s own well-being. On this conception, ethics is not about our own happiness but about obedience to a moral code regardless of our own interest or desires. Think, for example, of that moral exemplar, Superman. Superman was just “doing his duty,” he tells those he helps; he is the super cop who perfectly serves and protects the human race simply because it is the right thing to do. On our understanding, ethics forces us to choose between what we ought to do and what we want to do. Doing the right thing is like dieting: it does not satisfy our desire for a tasty meal, but we should do it in spite of this.

Aquinas’s moral philosophy is much richer than this: ethics is not so much about doing good as it is about being good, and being good is about satisfying our natural desire for happiness; ethics, then, is the study and pursuit of happiness. Our rule-following, duty-based understanding of ethics is not so much false as it is incomplete. Ethics is about doing what we ought to do, but it turns out that this is what we really want anyway. Doing the right thing is more satisfying than betraying and hating our fellow human beings; friendship and love are naturally pleasant and good, even if we do not recognize this initially. Dieting is initially painful and leaves us dissatisfied with our meal, and yet those who stick with it end up finding delight in eating nutritious foods. Aquinas inherits from the Greek philosophical tradition the recognition that ethics is for the soul what medicine is for the body. We can no more be happy without being just than we can be healthy without a good diet and exercise. Happiness does not come to us accidentally, nor can it be achieved by acts of wickedness. Rather, happiness is achieved through ethical living, and we must choose not between serving others and our own interest but between hope and despair, love and hate.

In addition to this false dichotomy between ethics and personal happiness, another common ethical position in our culture is relativism, the view that nothing is truly good or evil. Maybe in movies there are superhumans who choose good over evil, but in real life this is not and could not be so, for good and evil are relative to cultures and to perspectives. One person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist, and so on. According to the relativist, ethics is not like mathematics, where there are objective answers to our problems, but like taste, where there are only subjective likes and dislikes. Ethics is not objective and absolute, but subjective and relative.

One often hears today that the Catholic position on so many matters is not “either/or” but “both/and,” and this is a good example of this approach: since ethics is rooted in our shared human nature from which we can derive natural laws,1 ethics is objective and absolute; since ethics must consider the particular circumstances of each person and since every moral situation is different, ethics is subjective and relative. While (as we will discuss shortly) some actions such as killing the innocent are intrinsically evil and thus can never be done, the right thing to do in any situation will depend upon a variety of unique circumstances. Let us consider again the example of diet: all humans share in common the need for basic types of foods, and also the inability to digest certain objects. In this sense, a good diet is fixed for all of us; however, our height and weight, allergies, available resources, cultures we live in, and so forth will dictate the particular way that each of us will achieve our own individual good. It is objectively the case that none of us can drink motor oil as part of a healthy diet, and yet it is subjectively the case that some of us can handle an occasional milkshake whereas others, due to lactose intolerance or obesity, would be harming their health by partaking of such a delight. Relativism posits just another false dichotomy, for it assumes that ethics must be subjective because it is not objective in the way that mathematics is. Rather, the objective given of human nature is compatible with the subjectivity of human persons, called in their own unique way to live out lives of friendship and love.

This chapter outlines Aquinas’s moral philosophy, or the study of what reason and nature tell us about how we should live. Our study will be divided into the following sections: (1) our last end, (2) human acts and passions, (3) virtues and vices, and (4) the best way of life. We will revisit these topics when discussing moral theology, which incorporates faith and revelation. In general, we are following Aquinas’s maxim that grace perfects nature: moral philosophy points us toward what by nature we are seeking in our quest for happiness; moral theology shows us how what God has revealed to us provides the grace necessary to achieve our goal. As we will come to see by the end of this study, there is no such thing as “an autonomous Thomistic philosophical ethics,” for those who pursue happiness within the limits of nature alone come to see how confining these limits are.2 Before launching into the particulars of Aquinas’s moral philosophy, a more general discussion of the workings of creation will be helpful, and we will use Aquinas’s discussion of good and evil in the third part of Summa Contra Gentiles to do this.

2. Called Forth to Share in God’s Goodness: Good and Evil in Creation

Background Reading: SCG 3.1.1–4, 7, 16–20, 25

Not only are “good” and “evil” important ethical terms, but they are fundamental aspects of creation as a whole. God is Goodness itself, creation is an image of this Goodness, and humans are that part of creation that can share uniquely in this Goodness through acts of intellect and will.3 This section works through these points in order to ground our discussion of moral theory on a proper understanding of the good as what all created things seek, and evil as the failure to obtain the end, union with God.

In Homer’s Odyssey there is an important scene early on in the story that establishes a vision of the created order as intrinsically purposive. The wicked suitors are plotting the demise of our hero, Odysseus, when suddenly a pair of eagles descends upon them, “wielding their talons, tearing cheeks and throats.” The old lord Halitherses correctly interprets this as a sign from Zeus that Odysseus will return. Yet one of the brazen suitors, Eurymakhos, shows his foolishness by declaring, “Bird life aplenty is found in the sunny air, not all of it significant.”4 Homer’s lesson in all of this is that everything that happens under the sun is meaningful, for the events of the natural world are signs pointing to divine realities. As the philosophers would put this point, nature does nothing in vain, for there is a reason for every action under the sun. The whole created order exhibits purpose by acting for an end, and this end the wise man knows to be the God who instills this natural order in his creatures.

Every action, even that of the unthinking creature, is for an end, an example of which is the tadpole acting so as to become a frog. This may sound anthropomorphic to us: surely the tadpole does not “seek,” “desire,” or “will” to become a frog. Every action is goal oriented, yet in the case of the tadpole this involves no conscious determination but rather a natural inclination toward that which fulfills its nature. As Aquinas puts it, using one of his favorite examples, “As far as this point is concerned, it makes no difference whether the being tending to an end is a knowing being or not. For, just as the target is the end for the archer, so is it the end for the motion of the arrow” (SCG 3.1.2). In more contemporary terms, the tadpole’s DNA dictates how it will act and directs it to the end or goal of becoming a frog. The end is that which fulfills the nature of a thing and is also its good.

We tend to think of “nature” as the beginning or as that which is prior to reason and reflection rather than as the end that a being seeks. For example, we often think of primitive humans as more natural than modern humans given that they live off the land whereas we live “away” from the land. But nature is more properly understood from the end which something seeks, from its perfected state. The frog, in this sense, reveals the nature of the tadpole; the frog explains why the tadpole does what it does.

To put this distinction between the beginning and end state of a creature somewhat differently, we could think of this in terms of “what happens” as distinct from “what things seek.” If we understand nature as “what happens,” in many cases we would be forced to say that it is more natural for tadpoles to die before becoming frogs, that becoming a frog is unnatural, for the majority of tadpoles in a given pond may get eaten or otherwise die before metamorphosis takes place. On the other hand, if we understand nature as “what things seek,” then we can always and everywhere say that it is natural for tadpoles to become frogs, for that is their end state. In this more fundamental understanding of nature, it is natural for beings to achieve their respective end, even if we must acknowledge that they do not always, or even usually, do so.

Finally, the terminus or end of natural inclination is a good: “That toward which an agent tends in a definite way must be appropriate to it, because the agent would not be inclined to it except by virtue of some agreement with it. But, what is appropriate to something is good for it. So, every agent acts for a good” (SCG 3.3.2). By nature, then, each creature seeks a proper good, and this can be described in another way as seeking perfection or the fullness of its own capacities: “Every action and movement are seen to be ordered in some way toward being, either that it may be preserved in the species or in the individual, or that it may be newly acquired. Now, the very fact of being is a good, and so all things desire to be” (SCG 3.3.4).

In seeking its good, a thing seeks being; there is a profound metaphysical point to all of this: to be is to be good. This insight helps us to grasp the next point: since being is good, evil is not a being but a privation or a turning away from being. Every intention is for some good, and yet defects prevent the achievement of the good: “That which follows from an action, as a different result from that intended by the agent, clearly happens apart from intention. Now, evil is different from the good which every agent intends. Therefore, evil is a result apart from intention” (SCG 3.4.2). We do not want to think of evil, then, as some opposing force or existing being that must be resisted. Rather, “evil” is the term we use to designate something missing or lacking, such as the situation of a tadpole that lacks the necessary environment in which to flourish.

Since all creatures are interrelated, the good that each creature seeks and the evil it avoids must be coordinated with the good of other creatures. Every nature, every act of seeking, works together into a whole that imitates the goodness and being of God. Reason itself tells us that there must be a cause of causality, a Goodness of which the universe’s goodness is but an image, a Creator of creation; this Cause of causes, Goodness itself, and Creator, we call “God.”5 What is the universe but God’s image? What is the diversity of things, the multiple ways and gradations of beings, but the image of a Being that in its simplicity and unity brings forth this wondrous variety as an ordere...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter Guide
• Introduction
• PART 1: Moral Theory
• PART 2: Economic Theory
• PART 3: Political Theory
• PART 4: The Perennial Teaching of the Angelic Doctor
• Postscript
• Appendix: Schema of the Virtues
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover