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Chapter 12 ST. THOMAS, OUR NATURAL LIGHTS, AND THE MORAL ORDER The study of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas draws one into considerations of the distinction and coexistence of reason and revelation, as well as of the divisions, pedagogical sequence and coexistence of the sciences . St. Thomas, in the Summa theologiae (ST), insists from the start on the unity of his theological undertaking, while affirming the inclusion of all the philosophical or scientific endeavors, theoretical and practical, within this unity.1 John Finnis, in his book Natural Law and Natural Rights, calls attention to such issues by the very nature of his project.2 Finnis wishes to present a genuinely ethical discourse, as distinct from a metaphysical reflection on human action and human sciences, and he wishes to do so by making considerable use of the ethical discourse contained in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. This obliges him to say what he takes to be essential to the ethical discourse of St. Thomas and what he takes to be ‘‘speculative appendage added by way of metaphysical reflection to such ethical discourse.’’3 Such judgments obviously comport risks, and in the present chapter I wish to underline some features of St. Thomas’s doctrine of natural law that, I am worried, may be obscured in the Finnis presentation. Finnis, criticizing D. J. O’Connor, rightly says: ‘‘Nor is it true that for Aquinas ‘good and evil are concepts analyzed and fixed in metaphysics before they are applied in morals.’’’4 However, our knowledge of natural law,5 and our knowledge of the first principles of speculative reason as well,6 is prior not only to metaphysics but also to ethics. And prior even to our knowledge of those first principles is our knowledge of their terms. Still, the metaphysician does have it as part of his proper task to reflect   Wisdom, Law, and Virtue on such knowledge, and to judge and defend all the principles.7 That is why so much of what the metaphysician discusses (I am speaking of the metaphysician as conceived by St. Thomas) pertains to what we all know (whether we be scientists, i.e., cultivated persons, or not). What we generally mean by St. Thomas’s ‘‘doctrine of natural law’’ is the metaphysical reflection on the nature of our knowledge of the first practical principles, and is the metaphysician’s description of our original natural knowing of those principles (I do not mean to exclude the theologian: for example, no presentation of natural law in St. Thomas’s writings would be complete without reference to the effects of sin, original and actual, on our natural knowledge of things to be done, as well as on the corresponding natural inclinations).8 Finnis’s aim to present a straight ethical discourse is certainly one that accords with St. Thomas’s doctrine of modes of knowing and sequence of acquired cultural perfections. One is supposed to study ethics before metaphysics.9 However, such a strictly ethical ethics supposes that one gets one’s starting points by some grasp of a less probing sort than the sapiential.10 This is satisfactory as long as agreement among the discussants prevails. A problem arises, however, when as today challenges to ethical starting points have saturated public discussion. Accordingly, Finnis feels obliged to begin his book with a rejection of certain generally held views about natural law. Does it incorporate affirmation of the existence of a god? Does it infer the ‘‘ought’’ from the ‘‘is’’? These are surely questions to be fully treated by the metaphysician as judge and defender of the principles of particular sciences. Finnis tells us that a natural-law ethics does not attempt to derive the ‘‘ought’’ from the ‘‘is.’’11 Now, since the strictly ethical ethics he has in mind starts with indemonstrable ‘‘oughts,’’ he can say this with conviction. Still, I would say it contains a measure of misinformation as regards St. Thomas’s view of things. The metaphysician, faced with someone who denies the first principles, or even with the task of judging the first principles, does no more than call to our attention the more searching eye already present in us all—merely reaches back more searchingly than does the ethician to what we all know. And, in that perspective, the first principles stand exposed as an intelligible hierarchy, a sequence of visions, each flowing from its intelligible predecessor; and in that vision, ‘‘good’’ derives from ‘‘being...

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