St. Thomas Aquinas Through the Analytic Looking-Glass

The Thomist 65 (2001): 259-300 ST. THOMAS AQUINAS THROUGH THE ANALYTIC LOOKING-GLASS STEVEN A. LONG University ofSt. Thomas St. Paul, Minnesota John Finnis-alongside his collaborator, and, in certain respects, doctrinal progenitor Germain Grisez-is known for propounding a philosophic account of the natural law. 1therto his views have developed only in loose relation to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. As Finnis notes, since 1965 "Grisez's major writings have not claimed to be interpretations of Aquinas" so that St. Thomas's work has served merely as "the point of departure for a free-standing philosophical treatment of ethical theory" upon which Grisez and Finnis have "collaborated extensively."1 Finnis's latest work-Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory-marks a departure from this "freestanding" theoretic work, and offers an interpretation of St. Thomas's natural law doctrine congenial to the new natural law theory. Having earlier argued for his moral, legal, and political theory under auspices relatively independent of the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas,2 Finnis in his latest work proposes a reconstruction of that teaching. To quote from the very beginning of his book: There are some serious flaws in Aquinas' thoughts about human society. A sound critique of them can rest on premisses he himself understood and articulated better, I think, than his philosophical masters Plato and Aristotle, 1 John Finnis, Aquinas, Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), viii-ix. 2 John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Right (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). 259 260 STEVEN A. LONG and much better than Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the other makers or heirs of the Enlightenment.3 It is a matter of fact that Finnis's thesis of the incommensurability of "basic goods" is not of Thomistic provenance. Finnis himself expressly admits that on a variety of issues in political and moral theory he cannot hold St. Thomas's conclusions: to mention prominentillustrations, tyrannicide and capital punishment.4 But he does not see that the root of his divergence with St. Thomas on these matters proceeds from divergence about the very foundation of Thomas's doctrine of natural law. For example , whereas St. Thomas's teaching on the authority of the state to kill is wholly in accord with his teaching regarding the object and end of the moral act,5 Finnis holds that Aquinas is guilty of unwittingly approving the "doing of evil that good may come."6 Finnis superimposes two sets of presuppositions upon St. Thomas's doctrine of natural law that alter its character. The first set is drawn from contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy , and comprises notions not only alien, but contrary, to St. Thomas's teaching. These largely determine the form of Finnis's interpretation, and distort St. Thomas's teachings regarding the relation of the speculative and practical intellect; the nature of the first precept of law ("primum princeptis legis"); the unified natural teleology of the moral life (i.e., the morally significant hierarchy of ends); and the analysis of moral object, end, and intention. The second set-which colors the end to which the earlier errors conduce-consists in a classically liberal reduction of the nature of the common good and of the role of religion in public life (and a negation of the very public character 3 Finnis, Aquinas, vii. 4 Ibid., 282-87 (death penalty), 289-91 (tyrannicide). 5 These conclusions are also consistent with St. Thornas's teaching of an ethically significant natural hierarchy among ends, a substantive common good, and the divine delegation of the state's authority to punish and kill. 6 Finnis, Aquinas, 282. FINNIS ON AQUINAS 261 of revelation), as well as a denial of the practical significance of the theistic root of natural law doctrine.7 As St. Thomas instructs us, a thing acts and moves toward its end by reason of its form. Finnis miscasts both the form and the end of St. Thomas's doctrine of natural law. To show the distorting effect of Finnis's presuppositions upon the teaching of St. Thomas is the purpose of the present essay.8 I. THE NATURE OF THE SPECULATIVE AND THE PRACTICAL About the first practical principles Finnis...