Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law by J. Budziszewski (review)

St. Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law takes up questions 90–107 in the prima secundae partis of his Summa theologiae. It concerns not only the nature of law in general (rational, for the common good, and promulgated by he who has care of the community), but also the four specific types of law (eternal, natural, human, and divine) and questions concerning their natures, causes, and effects. Although discussions of Aquinas's view of natural law are not difficult to find—especially in the debates in recent years over the new natural law and its application to contemporary issues—no one, until now, has published a line-by-line commentary of the Angelic Doctor's Treatise on Law.

Most philosophers are exposed to Aquinas's work in law by way of selections found in anthologies, rather than by direct acquaintance with the full panoply of St. Thomas's philosophical and theological corpus. For this reason, these readers oftentimes approach the Angelic Doctor with a cluster of modern assumptions that make it difficult for them to truly understand Aquinas's thought. In this book, J. Budziszewski provides these readers with the epistemic, metaphysical, and theological infrastructure that is nearly always missing from contemporary "textbook" accounts of the Treatise on Law. As Budziszewski points out in his introduction, so many of the contemporary critics of St. Thomas assess his view of law while ignoring the rest of the Summa theologiae, the work from which the Treatise is derived and with which it is organically connected. Thus, to many of these critics, Aquinas's position seems naïve and simplistic, and thus not worthy of serious consideration by contemporary philosophers of law. Unfortunately, this mistaken understanding gets repeated and recycled by generations of scholars who are not aware of what they do not know. Budziszewski's book is an important remedy to this exegetical negligence.

After the acknowledgements, a republication of Aquinas's prayer before study, and a diagram of the architecture of law, Budziszewski begins this volume with a wonderful introduction. As one would expect, he provides an overview of what he is trying to accomplish in this book. But he also offers an introduction to Aquinas's life and work, as well as to the Summa and how to read it. It is clear that Budziszewski is not writing just for the guild, but as he puts it, for "students, general readers, and other serious amateurs" (xxiii). For this reason, he situates Aquinas historically, explains the disputational structure of the Summa (prologue, ultrum, objections, sed contra, respondeo, etc.), and responds to questions and concerns about Aquinas's approach that contemporary readers often raise: that it is dry, lacks warmth, relies too much on authority, ignores issues important to present day scholars, and so on. (I have no doubt that this last point is a result of Budziszewski having, for many years, taught a graduate seminar on the Treatise on Law at the University of Texas, where he serves as professor of philosophy and government.)

The book covers only questions 90–97, which is the portion of the Treatise that is most often anthologized. In a free online-accessible volume meant to accompany the book—Companion to the Commentary—Budziszewski offers commentary (and reflections) on questions 100, 105, and 106, which concern the Divine Law, both Old and New. The Companion is 239 pages in length and addresses many questions that are not addressed in The Commentary. Among the over sixty issues (or topics) he addresses are the following: "What is the common good, anyway?" "Does the eternal lawmaker really exist?" "What counts as harm to others?" "Shared private goods," "Do even sociopaths and psychopaths know the natural law?" and "Conscience, conscience, and conscience, revisited." (In my judgment, the publisher should have fully integrated The Companion with The Commentary.)

The Commentary is divided into two parts. The first part—"Law Itself, In General"—covers questions 90–92, and the second part...