A Necessary Condition for the Truth of Moral and Other Judgments

A NECESSARY CONDITION FOR THE TRUTH OF MORAL AND OTHER JUDGMENTS STEPHEN THERON Na,tional University of Lesotho Lesotho, Africa, SIMPSON'S RECENT review of Morals as Founded on Natural Law 1 so misrepresents its main point, one so vital to civilization's continuance, that I feel obliged to try to restate that point. It was of course disconcerting that he misunderstood the main point of the hook (whetlrer he agrees with it or not), thoogh it may ,weN. be, as he says, that the book oouM have been mOire readably written. He summarizes the book's aim as being" to establish morality on an external authoritative law "-a summary which does indeed seem close, even :identicaJ., to what is said in the book's first paragraph. However, there is ra potential equivocation in the w;ay he uses " externail.'' One should ask, external to what? What .the book speaks of in this opening paragraph is of justifying morality on ra principle " external to states of mind." I use "external" in the sense of that principle's being "independent of them," 'i.e., of meuba1l srtates. So :llar, this is a very open statement. Brut how do I go on to amplify it? Not the way Simpson does. He takes me as equating this principle with " the authoritative law of God," in the sense of "a divine legislative aiuthority " which, he reports me as arguing, " is just somehow an inemdicwblegiven ." This " somehow " not only refoses to consider the meta1 Stephen Theron, Mora,ls M Founded on Na,tural Lww, European University Studies (New York: Peter Lang, 1987; 2nd ed. 1988). Reviewed by Peter Simpson in The ThomiBt 53 (1989): 341-342. ~93 294 STEPHEN THERON physical reasoning at the heart of the book's position but even seems to suggest that such reasoning was not evien offered. In fact it is precisely at this point that Simpson goes right off the raiJs as far as representing my view is concerned. H~ claims that this foundation upon divine authority would make morals "dependent on ·divine 1a.w, not, as his title dedares, on natural law." However, my use of " naturrul law " is rthe Thomistic use, which is sufficiently wen known in the debate so as not to be misleading. In the view of St. Thomas (and a whole established school of thought), natural law is indeed, in Simpson's words, "deriviative and secondary," or, in St. Thomas's words, "a reflected divine light.'' 2 Brut in the famous Artiicle 2 of Question 94 of the Prima secundae of the Summa theologica, so exh81ustively discussed in .the rooent literaturie, natural law is declared to be derived from the eternal law and not from divine law in the "external " or positivist •sense clearly intended by Simpson. (A different distinction is used in the Contra gentiles, but throughout my book the above text was referred to, often explicitly) . "Divine law," the fourth type of law (eternal law and natural law being the first two types), does indeed refer, in this text, to some kind of positiv;e legisfation on the part of God in the 01d and New Testaments. (But evien here St. Thomas is oarefoil to point out that the law of the New Testament is only analogous to positive law, since it is not written on stone but poured into men's hearts by the Holy Spirit.) If I had been referring to this divine law (in such phrases as " reaISOn is divine and .therefore law ") and not thait eternal law which is one with the divine being, Simpson might have been able to brooket me with those nominalist theologians for whom .2" quasi lumen r.ationis naturalis . . . nihil aliud sit quam impressio luminis divini in nobis. Unde patet quod lex naturalis nihil aliud est quam participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura." St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica I-II, 91. 2. THE TRUTH OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 295 God might hav:e decreed an opposite morality if he so chose. (Though this, too, would be contrary to St. Thomas's view of such positive divine law, ev;en for the Old Testament; indeed for him even 011dinary "human" positivie law loses the sense...