Naturalism and Thomistic Ethics

NATURALISM AND THOMISTIC ETHICS 1 IT IS NOT unusual to find the moral philosophy of Thomas Aquinas described as naturalist. The meaning of the adjective must be sought in the still ongoing squabble between Prescriptivism and Naturalism. Doubtless there is always the danger of anachronism in the use of current labels to speak of the thought of a predecessor and it is surely foolish to borrow a recommendation of Thomistic ethics from the capital of contemporary trends. Old wine, new bottles. But vintners know that age is itself a recommendation. Nonetheless I think there is something to be gained from seeing Thomas's moral thought through the dust of today's controversies. To call him a Naturalist in ethics is, as far as it goes, true. This paper is an effort to see how far indeed it goes. The Prescriptivist conception of ethics which has been developed by R. M. Hare is elevated on Hume's guillotine (Ought cannot be derived from Is), the fact/ value dichotomy and, more specifically, G. E. Moore's so-called Naturalistic Fallacy. The acceptance of these as commonplaces can no doubt lead in a number of directions, but Hare's position seems to arise inexorably out of the sternest and most unrelenting adherence to them. Moore was concerned to show that it is a mistake to try to explain the meaning of " good " by appeal to the characteristics or qualities of the thing called good. No doubt it is because the thing has certain qualities that we evaluate it as good, but these qualities cannot be what we mean by " good." Hare has a conveniently succinct way of showing why this is so.2 Let 1 This paper was read at a symposium held to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the death of St. Thomas at Aquinas College. I am grateful to Professors Joseph Boyle, Alan Donagan and Giles Milhaven for their comments. • A flurry of footnotes would be needed to document this summary of Prescriptivism . Those acquainted with R. M. Hare's The Language of Morals and Freooom and Reason will, I trust, find it accurate. NATURALISM AND THOMISTIC ETHICS P .stand for the qualities of the good thing. Then, when we say that " an X which is P is good," if " is P " were the meaning of " good," the formula could be made to say, " an X that is P is P" and that is not a very informative remark. In order for evaluations to perform some useful function, then, it seems necessary to distinguish the qualities the good thing has from what we mean by calling it good. These qualities are sometimes called the criteria of application of the term so that the distinction is sometimes expressed as one between the meaning of " good" and the criteria of its application. This distinction is given added force when we reflect that there is no single set of qualities had by each and every thing called good. The qualities we have in mind when we call a book good are surely not those involved in calling a wife good. This might lead us on to say what Hare himself does not, namely, that " good " has many meanings. Hare does not .say this because, were we to take just one of our alleged meanings of " good," say that which is involved in the phrase, "a good book," we would of course cite the qualities the book has as the meaning of " good " in that instance. But Hare is every bit as intent to deny the identification of the criteria of application and the meaning of "good" in this case as in any other. His reason is that "good" has one and the same meaning whatever criteria for application may be invoked. As an evaluative term, " good " bears the abiding meaning of commending the object called good. Commendation, prescription -these, or this, is what constitutes the single, pervasive meaning of " good." This enables us to .see why Hare is so insistent on denying that the meaning of " good " could ever be identified with the descriptive qualities of the thing called good. If such an identification were possible, it would seem to follow that, in calling...