Nov 08 2008
Ethics and Natural Law, Part 1, Chapter 1
What follows is an excerpt from MORAL PHILOSOPHY, by Joseph Rickaby. Links and text in red represent my additions. The sole purpose of the first chapter is to summarize certain introductory points.
Of The Object-Matter And Partition Of Moral Philosophy.
1. Moral Philosophy is the science that considers human acts inasmuch as they befit man’s rational nature and make towards man’s last end. Philosophy means the love (philia) of wisdom (sophia). Wisdom orders things to an end: “Accordingly it is proper to moral philosophy, to which our attention is at present directed, to consider human operations insofar as they are ordered one to another and to an end” (Aristotle) The last end of man is happiness: “Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence” (Aquinas). For more on wisdom and the science of Philosophy in general read chapter 1 of the Summa Contra Gentiles. For more on happiness (Beatific Vision) see SCG, Bk. 3, Ch. 37.
2. Those acts alone are properly called human, which a man is master of to do or not to do. A human act, then, is an act voluntary and free. A man is what his human acts make him. Concerning this, read this excerpt from Walter Farrell’s Companion To The Summa, Bk. 2, Ch. 2. Also, read the Summa Theologica Ia-IIae, Q. 1, Art. 1.
3. A voluntary act is an act that proceeds from the will with a knowledge of the end to which the act tends. See ST. Ia-IIae, Q. 6, Art. 1.
4. A free act is an act which proceeds from the will that under the same antecedent conditions it might not have proceeded. See ST. Ia-IIae, Q. 13, Art. 6.
5. Human acts, as defined above, are the subject-matter of moral philosophy. The special light in which it considers them is their agreement with, or opposition to, man’s rational nature. That agreement or opposition is their moral good or evil, and is called morality. See ST. Ia-IIae, Q. 18, Arts. 1-11.
6. Moral Philosophy is divided into Ethics and Natural Law. The principal business of Ethics is to determine what moral obligation is, or to fix what logicians call the comprehension of the idea I ought. It belongs to Natural Law to consider what things are morally obligatory, or to determine the extension of the idea I ought.
7. Ethics stand to Natural Law as Pure Mathematics to Mixed.
