Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics

Chapter 2: Wisdom as Foundational Ethical Theory in St. Thomas Aquinas

Chapter 2 WISDOM AS FOUNDATIONAL ETHICAL THEORY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS Only five days ago, in a gathering here, principally of ladies, he solemnly declared in argument that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their neighbors. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality. Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. That’s not all. He ended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who do not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become, not only lawful but even recognized as the inevitable, the most rational, even honorable outcome of his position. —Ivan Fyodorovitch Karamazov’s doctrine as given by another character, Miusov1 Introduction One problem for the foundation of ethics is the question of the reality of nature. Is there any such thing as nature?2 Much prevailing scientific orthodoxy suggests that the coherence and order of reality is ultimately accidental.3 Another problem focuses on the move from being to goodness -for-me (from ‘‘is’’ to a decisive ‘‘ought’’). Even given that things have natures, and that natures are interesting and beautiful, what relevance has the appeal that they make to one’s appetites? The sapiential response to both of these problems is to present the appetite as pertaining to the nature  Wisdom as Foundational Ethical Theory in St. Thomas Aquinas  of the thing. The human appetite is appetite for the fullness of being proper to the intellectual nature: to be, in a way, all things. Things have more the nature of goals, just to the extent that they participate in or pertain to such fullness. The ultimate happiness must be beyond the grave, a knowledge of God, the source of being as such, beyond what is possible in the present state.4 In this present state of life, the contemplative operations have most of all the nature of the goal. The next highest line of operation is that which orders the will regarding the whole community , that is, governmental felicity, which brings rational order to the realm of choice.5 Below this are domestic and individual reasonableness. The task of wisdom is simply to present the ordered vision.6 Action itself is always the domain of freedom. What can ethics be but an appeal to reason?7 And what can its foundation be, save the foundation of such an appeal? Wisdom What do I mean by ‘‘wisdom’’? I mean the philosophical knowledge that says whatever is possible about God and the relation of other things to God. The conception of wisdom is presented by Thomas Aquinas at the beginning of the Summa contra gentiles (SCG)8 and at the beginning of the Summa theologiae (ST).9 This is because Thomas himself holds that the work he is undertaking in them, namely, the theology that pertains to revealed Christian religion, is the highest form of wisdom.10 Later on in the ST, he discusses philosophical wisdom as the highest of the intellectual virtues.11 I am proposing that ethics has as its proper foundation the consideration of the relation between the human being and God the Creator and Providence. The idea is that without the doctrine of God, no morality is possible.12 In this connection, I might note that in present-day vocabulary, the word ‘‘religion’’ often means exclusively the revealed religion that is the object of faith.13 I am working with a philosophy that claims to prove the existence of a god and contends that the ethical theater of action really follows upon this viewpoint. Thus, I am speaking about natural ethics associated with a metaphysics of divine order in things. St. Thomas distinguishes , as I said, between philosophical wisdom and the wisdom that  Wisdom, Law, and Virtue pertains to revealed religion. Although I believe that the real well-being...