Category: Natural Law

Natural Law, Economics and the Common Good

Joseph Milne

 

  • According to Natural Law everything has a proper end in harmony with nature as a whole. In a society this means that wealth has a proper end in serving the common good. This talk will explore the implications of this principle in relation to the concepts of ‘property’ and ‘right use’.

 

My theme is natural law, economics and the common good, and I would like to begin with a definition of natural law: The natural law is the harmonious ordering of Nature to its proper end, which is justice and the good. It is the inherent moral order of the universe. I draw this definition from the long tradition of natural law which can be traced back to ancient Egypt, through Greek Presocratic philosophy, through Plato and Aristotle, through Roman law and through medieval theology up to the fifteenth century. Throughout that long history there was an understanding that the universe was ordered to the good and in harmony with the whole. Justice and wisdom permeated Nature, ordering it from within. This was expressed in various ways. In ancient Egypt it was through the goddess Maat, who embodied truth, justice and wisdom. Maat is present everywhere. It is the unwritten law everyone knows they are called to follow if they are to live auspiciously and in friendship with Nature and the gods. Maat is very like the ancient Sanskrit Rta, the ordering principle of the universe. It is also like the ancient Chinese principle of the Dao. It is the unwritten law, the law before any codes of law.

The same meaning is found in the Greek word for law, nomos. Heraclitus speaks of this law in the Fragments where he says:

  • Wisdom is the foremost virtue, and wisdom consists in speaking the truth, and in lending an ear to nature and acting according to her.
  • Wisdom is common to all. . . . They who would speak with intelligence must hold fast to the [wisdom that is] common to all, as a city holds fast to its law, and even more strongly. For all human laws are fed by one divine law, which prevails as far as it listeth and suffices for all things and excels all things.[1]

Here the wisdom common to all is the wisdom pervading in the universe and common to human intelligence. It is the ‘divine law’ which guides all human laws. It provides for all things. It is providential, caring for things according to their place in nature. It is this divine law that is heard by ‘lending an ear to nature and acting according to her’. This law foresees all things and provides for all human wants.

In his Rhetoric Aristotle speaks of the ‘unwritten laws’ sanctioned by heaven:

  • The unwritten laws are the great fundamental conceptions of morality, derived and having their sanction from heaven, antecedent and superior to all the conventional enactments of human societies, and common alike to all mankind. [2]

In more mythic terms, it is the law of the Greek god Cronus, the law of the Age of Gold that Hesiod records in his Works and Days. In that Age Nature gave to all freely. It is an Age free from avarice, the vice in Greek philosophy that corrupts society. Avarice forgets the law and becomes the mark of the Age of Iron, where few hold to their word.

In Plato’s Laws the Age of Gold is symbolised by the golden cord in the soul, where the Athenian Stranger says “this cord is the golden and sacred pull of calculation, and is called the common law of the city” [3] The word ‘calculation’ is a translation of the Greek logismos which more accurately in this context means ‘right judgement’. The ‘common law of the city’ is the universal unwritten law shared by all humanity. It is known directly by the intellect in the soul that is open to the guidance of the gods or divine reason.

Two ideas are transmitted and developed from Plato’s understanding of a knowledge of this ‘common law’ within the soul. First, that every being has an innate knowledge of the law that guides its mode of life within the greater order of nature. Hence the idea that all should act in accord with nature. Second, that human reason is informed by eternal principles that guide action towards the true and the good.

Aristotle divides the intellect into two aspects which he calls the ‘theoretical reason’ and the ‘practical reason’. The theoretical reason discerns eternal principles of truth, such as in the law of non-contradiction where, for example, something cannot exist and not exist. The practical reason, on the other hand, has an inherent knowledge of the good from which it makes practical ethical judgements. While the theoretical reason is concerned with eternal truths and is contemplative, the practical reason is concerned with contingent actions and decisions in the moment. The practical reason is the ground of ethical knowledge. It has a capacity to foresee the consequences of actions. It is the knowledge that one should always act justly and never unjustly. But since it has a capacity of foresight, the practical reason also knows that a good action is one that serves the common good. Right action is at once being true to oneself and acting according to nature. We recall what Heraclitus said:

…wisdom consists in speaking the truth, and in lending an ear to nature and acting according to her.

In a highly compressed way he is saying the same as Aristotle says of the two aspects of reason, the theoretical and the practical.

In a variety of different ways, these essential ideas passed through the early Stoic philosophers and through Cicero and then into medieval theology. Law was considered in three aspects: the eternal law in the mind of God, the universal law shared by all mankind, and the positive or human law that each society codifies for itself. The universal law is also called the common law or the natural law. The codified law should be in accord with the universal law, otherwise it cannot be called law.

How might all this apply to the study of economics? Well, since it apples to everything it necessarily must apply to economics. I began with a short definition of natural law:

The natural law is the harmonious ordering of Nature to its proper end, which is justice and the good.

Apart from the ethical aspect, the important aspect here is the understanding that everything has a proper end. This refers to what is called the telos of things, which is their purpose within nature. This law governs the development and growth of things and their function as part of nature as a whole. This is readily observable in living things. They grow according to their nature into maturity. According to this understanding, the nature of a growing thing is known only when it is fully formed or mature. Aristotle was the first to elaborate this view of nature, although it is present in Plato. Thus Aristotle says we can discern human nature properly only in the mature adult. He goes further, saying that the truly mature adult is a virtuous adult. This is because only the virtuous person has fulfilled their telos, or come to completion. The telos of things is also called their final cause, the end for which they come into being. The same is said in a different way by Plato. For Plato the telos and the ethical converge. Hence the great emphasis in Greek education on the cultivation of the virtues. Without the virtues of prudence, justice, courage and temperance a person cannot be fully rational. I think everyone understands this to some degree. Virtues are not moral principles but capacities, or what the Greeks called ‘habits’ or ‘skills’. They involve self-mastery. That is the Greek idea of the mature person. The virtuous person can live by the natural law whether or not it is reflected in positive laws of a society.

If everything has a proper end in the order of nature, we may ask about the proper end of the economy. The first thing that the natural law indicates is that wealth must have a proper end, and this end must lie beyond itself. Plato ranks wealth as necessary for the health of the body, and the health of the body as necessary for the sake of the soul. The aim or purpose of society is the cultivation of the soul. But if wealth becomes an end in itself, then it distorts the natural order of the society. In the Laws the Athenian Stranger says:

  • The noblest and best thing of all for every city is that the truth be told about wealth, namely, that it is for the sake of the body, and the body is for the sake of the soul. Since, therefore, there are goods for the sake of which wealth by nature exists, it would come third after virtue of the body and of the soul. [4]

The pursuit of wealth as an end in itself is to miss its proper purpose.

Thomas Aquinas has much to say about this. The aim of life for the individual ought to correspond with the aim of society as a whole. There is therefore a correspondent ranking of goods for the individual and for society. For example, he says in his treatise On the Governance of Rulers:

  • Now the same judgement is to be formed about the end of society as a whole as about the end of one man. If, therefore, the ultimate end of man were some good that existed in himself, then the ultimate end of the multitude to be governed would likewise be for the multitude to acquire such good, and persevere in its possession. If such an ultimate end either of an individual man or a multitude were a corporeal one, namely, life and health of body, to govern would then be a physician’s charge. If that ultimate end were an abundance of wealth, then knowledge of economics would have the last word in the community’s government. If the good of the knowledge of truth were of such a kind that the multitude might attain to it, the king would have to be a teacher. [5]

For Aquinas the final good to be aimed at is beatitude, or mystical union with God. So both man and society have an aim beyond themselves. Nevertheless, there is an order that belongs to each individual and to society which belongs to the social and political life. The spiritual life cannot be fulfilled without properly ordering society. And the principle of the proper ordering of society is the common good. The individual good cannot be secured without aiming at the common good. Thus Aquinas says: “Man cannot possibly be good unless he stands in the right relation to the common good”. [6]

Without wealth the body will not be healthy, and without a healthy body the soul will not flourish. This is the same for the individual and for society. The natural law serves the good of each through serving the good of the whole. If every individual strives only for their own good, it will not be attained without harming the common good. The inner life and the outer life cannot be separated.

This established a principle that was lost in the seventeenth century debates about law and society: namely the principle that man is by nature a social and political being. Aquinas summarises this traditional understanding rather beautifully in the following way:

  • It is, however, clear that the end of a multitude gathered together is to live virtuously. For men form a group for the purpose of living well together, a thing which the individual man living alone could not attain, and good life is virtuous life. Therefore, virtuous life is the end for which men gather together. The evidence for this lies in the fact that only those who render mutual assistance to one another in living well form a genuine part of an assembled multitude. If men assembled merely to live, then animals and slaves would form a part of the civil community. Or, if men assembled only to accrue wealth, then all those who traded together would belong to one city. Yet we see that only such are regarded as forming one multitude as are directed by the same laws and the same government to live well. [7]

The expression ‘living well’ comes straight from Aristotle. To live well is the final end society aims at. And living well is possible only in community, and good community is possible only with good laws and virtuous citizens. Man is at once the political being and the ethical being.

There are two obvious ways in which we can see that political community is natural to man. The first is that the human species has language and speech. In the Timaeus Plato says speech was given to man by the gods in order that he may speak the truth of things. It is part of the human calling to bear witness to truth. Aristotle says man is the only species with speech so that there can be discourse on justice and injustice. Such discourse belongs to man as the social and political being. The second way in which it can be seen that political community is natural to man is that each individual has particular talents through which they may make a unique contribution to the community. There is a natural division of talents ordained by nature for the ends they serve. The corollary to this is that no individual is sufficient unto himself. What one lacks, another provides. Hence mutual exchange is natural to the human species, grounded first in speech, then in tradition or custom, then in economics. But the natural principle of exchange is generosity, giving birth to justice. In this most essential sense, ordained by nature, the most perfect expression of society is friendship. In considering the ends that the lawgiver should seek, Plato says in the Laws:

  • One should reason as follows: when we asserted one should look toward moderation, or toward prudence, or friendship, these goals are not different but the same. Even if many other words of this sort crop up, let’s not let it disturb us.[8]

But true friendship is through the practice of the virtues, and in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle makes clear that only the virtuous may become friends in the true sense. This is because true friendship is beyond pleasure or utility. It is the love of virtue in the soul of the friend. Between friends all things are held in common.

This is the first principle of property. Nature gives freely to all and in right proportion, and in friendship founded in virtue there is no need for property laws. This is the highest ideal. Yet the philosophers and lawmakers have always understood that this highest ideal has to be moderated according to the quality of virtue in a society. For Plato a society of wholly virtuous citizens would be a city of ‘sons of gods’. Hesiod had seen it as the Age of Gold. Aquinas saw such a society as Eden before the Fall.

So, where there is not perfect virtue and perfect friendship, there must be human or positive laws regarding property. Aquinas says this is because if all things were held in common they would not be duly cared for. Fallen man cares for what is his own. Therefore laws need to be made for the most equitable division of property, especially land and the gifts of nature, where their right use would continue to serve the common good. Thus it is established that all property laws are a modification of the natural law, yet which seeks to attain the same end as the natural law, which is common benefit. We might say that property law is the birth of positive law. In primitive societies customs dealt with the question of property without the need of codes of law. Even today the Maori people in New Zealand see themselves as belonging to the land, rather than as owning land. And that would seem the right way round. But in societies greater than the village or town, it would seem that codes of law are required.

For Aquinas the purpose of ownership of property is to establish its right use. There is no inherent ‘right to property’ in the modern sense, not even through one’s labour. Labour does not create or establish ownership. The natural law works on the basis of duties rather than entitlements. The right use of things, especially the land which is given by nature, is to serve the common good. Land has a right use, and this right use is clearly absent if it is put to a use that deprives any individual or society at large of its benefit. That is simply theft.

I appreciate that we all understand the common use of the land. But there is an aspect which is often overlooked when thinking of land possession purely in terms of society. The wrong use of land harms the land itself. For example, we recognise the dreadful social conditions that arose with the dissolution of the monasteries and later with the enclosures. We also see the decline in social conditions during the industrial revolution, with the slum tenements in the cities. But it is easy to overlook that both the enclosures and the industrial revolution brought about abuse of the land itself, or even originate in the abuse of land. Modern mining and farming methods are an abuse of the land, just as were the building of the city slums. The land itself has a proper end, which is to nurture all living beings, including human society. The first duty of society according to natural law is the duty to preserve the land for the common good. This duty is prior to the law of rent, and the law of rent rests upon it.

If serving the common good is the right use of the land or of nature more widely, then according to natural law it is not theft if a destitute person takes from private possessions what they need. Aquinas says that in the case of dire need properly laws are suspended and common ownership is resumed.

But even in our private possessions, apart from land, ownership is qualified by the principle of right use. For example, ownership does not give a right to destroy one’s own property, as claimed by some. (Adam Smith, for example.) That would make ownership absolute while in fact it is only according to positive law. And positive law cannot overrule that natural law. But the right use of ones possessions means they should be used for the common good, not merely for oneself. Even eating a meal can be done for the common good. The right use of wealth is for the body so that the body may serve the soul, and the soul may serve the highest good. Used in this manner all things may serve the good of society and preserve nature and the land. To use things solely for oneself is theft. All things have a right use. For example, using money for gambling is a misuse of money and contrary to the nature of money. That is not a use it is intended for. And the modern gambling industry is both an abuse of money and of work. Any work that does not bring about a common benefit is not real work.

This brings us to perhaps one of the hardest questions of all for economic enquiry: What is the true purpose of work? We have become so accustomed to thinking of work as labour for production, and production for profit, that the real meaning of human work has become obscured. That manner of thinking dehumanises the economic realm and separates it from the social realm. It is what Karl Polanyi calls the ‘disembedding of the economy’ from the social realm. And so we have come to regard social justice and economic justice as two different things while in fact they are interdependent. At their heart lies the question of the true meaning and purpose of work.

Is there a model that can illustrate the true meaning of human work? This question is so obscured by the land question that we need to step outside that for a model. When discussing how, according to the natural law, all things are held in common Aquinas remarks that this is perhaps possible only in the monastic life. The monk has no possessions because his work can be dedicated to the spiritual life and the welfare of society. Labouring in the fields can be a form of prayer. That is to say, work may be transformed through being dedicated to God. Work transformed in this way becomes a benefit so society as a whole.

I am not suggesting we should join a monastery! But the question of the dedication of work illuminates work itself at the deepest level. Earlier we saw how the natural law distributes the different human talents for the common good. What one lacks, another provides. This, I suggested, is the real root of economic exchange. It means that every exchange both fulfils a vocational calling and is mutually beneficial. That is the true spirit of work. Those fortunate in finding and following their natural vocations are fulfilled in their work and do not grudge putting all their effort into it. The question of dedication lies at the heart of the question of economic justice. What a society is dedicated to reveals its nature. Any economic exchange that is not equally beneficial to either party is an unjust exchange and a distortion of the true nature of exchange. It harms society as a whole. Most injustices in the modern economy are due to unequal exchanges, whether in employment, selling, or any use of land.

Unjust exchanges are also abuses of work. If dedicated to justice and the common good, then work would find its right use and nothing in nature would be abused or spoiled. Here the questions of economic justice and the environment converge. They are not really separate questions. That is why I noted earlier that the question of property in land is bound up with the right use of land. Property rights obscure the question of right use. Modern environmentalism seeks to find a compromise between preservation and exploitation. It is assumed that there is a necessary conflict between human wants and the provision of nature. This false notion is present in classical economics built on the notion of scarcity. But any human wants that involve the abuse of nature are false wants. This situation arises, as Plato says, when the pursuit of wealth takes precedence over health and the cultivation of the soul. There cannot be economic justice when the acquisition of wealth becomes the principle aim of a society. This aim necessarily leads to wealth inequality because one person’s excess is another’s loss as Aristotle observes. Wealth equality is possible if proportioned with the natural providence of nature, where real equality is according to need. The idea that there is a competition for scarce recourses is a false and pernicious idea. We recall what Heraclitus said: “For all human laws are fed by one divine law, which prevails as far as it listeth and suffices for all things and excels all things”.

Let me close with a simple observation. From the perspective of natural law it is the highest ends of things that orders nature and which indicates the just order of society. Modern thinking supposes we must build from the bottom up, but the natural law says we should build from the top down. In philosophical language this means seeing the telos or ‘final causes’ of things, the true ends for which they come into being. Everything in nature has a final end which means its completion of itself in harmony with nature as a whole. Every living being desires the fulness of being. But to attain this it must live in accordance with nature. Man is liable to seek the fulness of being in wrong ends. Yet knowledge of the natural law is implanted in the practical reason and everyone knows that justice and the common good are the ends that should guide desire and also inform the positive laws of a society. Law in this sense should be a reminder of what we already know. It is not an external imposition laid upon us. It is that to which we are naturally inclined.

 

[1] Charles M. Bakewell, Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1907) p. 34

[2] Aristotle On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse translated by George A. Kennedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 1368bf.

[3] Plato, The Laws of Plato, translated by Thomas Pangle (Basic Books, New York, 1980) 644d-645a

[4] Plato, Laws 870b

[5] Thomas Aquinas, De Regno translated by Gerald B. Phelan (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1949) 1.15. 106

[6] Josef Pieper, The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas: A Breviary of Philosophy from the Works of St Thomas Aquinas, quotation 335.

[7] Thomas Aquinas, De Regno translated by Gerald B. Phelan (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1949) 1.15. 106

[8] Plato, The Laws of Plato, translated by Thomas Pangle (New York: Basic Books, 1980) 693b-693c.

 

This talk was given to the SPES Symposium “Spirit in Economics and Law” 2024

Natural Law Quotations

A Collection from the Classical Tradition

The welfare of the people is the ultimate law (Cicero)

Aristotle

Now it appears to be an impossible thing that the state which is governed not by the best citizens but by the worst should be well-governed, and equally impossible that the state which is ill-governed should be governed by the best. But we must remember that good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government. Hence there are two parts of good government; one is the actual obedience of citizens to the laws, the other part is the goodness of the laws which they obey; they may obey bad laws as well as good. And there may be a further subdivision; they may obey either the best laws which are attainable to them, or the best absolutely. (Aristotle Politics 1294a 3-8)

Now he who exercises his reason and cultivates it seems to be both in the best state of mind and most dear to the gods. For if the gods have any care for human affairs, as they are thought to have, it would be reasonable both that they should delight in that which was best and most akin to them (i.e., reason) and that they should reward those who love and honour this most, as caring for the things that are dear to them and acting both rightly and nobly. And that all these attributes belong most of all to the philosopher is manifest. He, therefore, is the dearest to the gods. And he who is that will presumably be also the happiest; so that in this way too the philosopher will more than any other be happy. (Nicomachean Ethics X 8 29)

He that acts by intelligence and cultivates understanding, is likely to be best disposed and dearest to God. For if, as is thought, there is any care of human things on the part of the heavenly powers, we may reasonably expect them to delight in that which is best and most akin to themselves, that is, in intelligence, and to make a return of good to such as supremely love and honour intelligence, as cultivating the thing dearest to Heaven, and so behaving rightly and well. Such. plainly, is the behaviour of the wise. The wise man therefore is the dearest to God. (Aristotle)

 

Plato

For in everything that grows the initial sprouting, if nobly directed, has a sovereign influence in bringing about the perfection in virtue that befits the thing’s own nature. This holds for the other growing things, and for animals-tame, wild, and human. The human being, we assert, is tame; nevertheless, though when it happens (766a) upon a correct education and lucky nature, it is wont to become the most divine and tamest animal, still, when its upbringing is inadequate or ignoble, it is the most savage of the things that the earth makes grow. This is why the lawgiver must not allow the upbringing of children to become something secondary or incidental, and since the one who is going to supervise them should begin by being chosen in a fine way, the lawgiver should do all he possibly can to insure that he provides them with a supervisor to direct them who is the best person in the city, in every respect. (Laws 765-766)

 

Cicero

“There exists one true law, one right reason – comfortable to nature, universal, immutable, eternal – whose commands enjoin virtue, and whose prohibitions banish evil. Whatever she orders, whatever she forbids, her words are neither impotent among good men, nor are they potent among the wicked. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law properly so called, nor be violated in any part, nor be abrogated altogether. Neither the senate nor the people can deliver from obedience to this law. She has no need of interpreters, or new instruments. She is not one thing at Rome, another at Athens – she is not one thing today, and another tomorrow; but in all nations, and in all times, this law must reign always self-consistent, immortal, and imperishable. The Sovereign of the Universe, the King of all creatures, God himself, has given birth, sanction, and publicity to this illimitable law, which man cannot transgress without being a fugitive from himself and rebelling against his own nature; and by this alone, without subjecting himself to the severest expiations, can always avoid the usual misfortunes of the present life.” (Cicero, Republic, Book 3)

“Now if nature hath given us law, she has also given us justice – for as she has bestowed reason on all, she has equally bestowed the sense of justice on all. And therefore did Socrates deservedly execrate the man who first drew a distinction between the law of nature and the law of morals, for he justly conceived that this error is the source of most human vices.

Law (lex) is the highest reason implanted in nature, which commands what is to be done and forbids the opposite. When this same reason has been strengthened and brought to completion in the human mind, it is law (lex), and so they suppose that law is intelligence whose force (vis) it is to command right action and forbid wrongdoing … It is a force of nature; it is the mind and reason of the wise man; it is the rule (regula) for justice and injustice. (Cicero Leg. 1.18-19)

[27] The person who is accustomed neither to think nor to name as ”goods” lands and buildings and cattle and huge weights of silver and gold, because the enjoyment of them seems to him slight, the use minimal, and the ownership uncertain, and because the vilest men often have unlimited possessions – how fortunate should we think such a man! He alone can truly claim all things as his own, not under the law of the Roman people but under the law of the philosophers; not by civil ownership but by the common law of nature, which forbids anything to belong to anyone except someone who knows how to employ and use it. (Cicero. On the Commonwealth, Book 1, 27 trans. James E G Zetzel (CUP)

There is nothing so consonant with the justice and structure of nature – and when I say that, I want you to understand that I am speaking of the law – as the power of command, without which no home or state or nation or the whole race of mankind can survive, nor can nature or the world itself. The world obeys god, and land and sea obey the world, and human life follows the commands of the supreme law. And to come to things closer and more familiar to us: all early peoples once obeyed kings. This type of power was first offered to the most just and wise men (and that was true of our own commonwealth, so long as monarchic power was in charge), and then it was handed on in turn to their descendants, a custom which remains true among contemporary monarchies. (Cicero Laws iii. 3-4 trans. James E G Zetzel (CUP)

The better and more noble, therefore, the character with which a man is endowed, the more does he prefer the life of service to the life of pleasure. Whence it follows that man, if he is obedient to nature, cannot do harm to his fellow-man. (On Duties Book III: 25. Gutenberg version)

And further, if nature ordains that one man shall desire to promote the interests of a fellow-man, whoever he may be, just because he is a fellow-man, then it follows, in accordance with that same nature, that there are interests that all men have in common. And if this is true, we are all subject to one and the same law of nature; and if this also is true, we are certainly forbidden by nature’s law to wrong our neighbour. Now the first assumption is true; therefore the conclusion is likewise true. On Duties Book II: 27)

But it seems we must trace back to their ultimate sources the principles of fellowship and society that nature has established among men. The first principle is that which is found in the connection subsisting between all the members of the human race; and [55] that bond of connection is reason and speech, which by the processes of teaching and learning, of communicating, discussing, and reasoning associate men together and unite them in a sort of natural fraternity. In no other particular are we farther removed from the nature of beasts; for we admit that they may have courage (horses and lions, for example); but we do not admit that they have justice, equity, and goodness; for they are not endowed with reason or speech. (On Duties Book 1: 50-51)

 

Clement of Alexandria

Again, God has created us naturally social and just; whence justice must not be said to take its rise from implantation alone. But the good imparted by creation is to be conceived of as excited by the commandment; the soul being trained to be willing to select what is noblest.

We now therefore understand that we are instructed in piety, and in liberality, and in justice, and in humanity by the law. For does it not command the land to be left fallow in the seventh year, and bids the poor fearlessly use the fruits that grow by divine agency, nature cultivating the ground for behoof of all and sundry? How, then, can it be maintained that the law is not humane, and the teacher of righteousness?

And now the wisdom which we possess announces the four virtues in such a way as to show that the sources of them were communicated by the Hebrews to the Greeks. This may be learned from the following: “And if one loves justice, its toils are virtues. For temperance and prudence teach justice and fortitude; and than these there is nothing more useful in life to men.”

Above all, this ought to be known, that by nature we are adapted for virtue; not so as to be possessed of it from our birth, but so as to be adapted for acquiring it. ( Stromata Quotations)

 

Origen

Now there are two kinds of law for our consideration. The one is the ultimate law of nature, which is probably derived from God, and the other the written code of cities. Where the written law does not contradict the law of God it is good that the citizens should not be troubled by the introduction of strange laws. But where the law of nature, that is of God, enjoins precepts contradictory to the written laws, consider whether reason does not compel a man to dismiss the written code and the intention of the lawgivers far from his mind, and to devote himself to the divine Lawgiver and to choose to live according to His word, even if in doing this he must endure dangers and countless troubles and deaths and shame. Moreover, if the actions which please God are different from those demanded by some of the laws in cities, and if it is impossible to please both God and those who enforce laws of this kind, it is unreasonable to despise actions by means of which one may find favour with the Creator of the universe, and to choose those as a result of which one would be displeasing to God, though one may find favour with the laws that are not laws, and with those who like them. (Contra Celsum Book V Chapter 37)

 

Tertullian

These testimonies of the soul are as true as they are straightforward, as straightforward as they are widespread, as widespread as they are universal, as universal as they are natural, and as natural as they are divine. I do not believe anyone would find it frivolous, if he reflects on the majesty of nature (naturae maiestatem), which is regarded as the wellspring of the soul. As much as you attribute to the teacher, so much you will concede to the pupil. The teacher is nature and the pupil is the soul (Magistra natura, anima discipula). Whatever the teacher has conveyed or the pupil has learned has been communicated by God, who is the teacher of nature. Whatever the soul can surmise about its original teacher, this power resides in you that you may reflect upon that which is in you. Be aware of that which has given you awareness. (Quoted in Quincy Howe, Tertullian of Africa: The Rhetoric of a New Age. iUnivere, Bloomington, 2011)

 

Thomas Aquinas

I answer that: It is proper to justice, as compared with the other virtues, to direct man in his relations with others: because it denotes a kind of equality, as its very name implies; indeed we are wont to say that things are adjusted when they are made equal, for equality is in reference of one thing to some other. On the other hand the other virtues perfect man in those matters only which befit him in relation to himself. Accordingly that which is right in the works of the other virtues, and to which the intention of the virtue tends as to its proper object, depends on its relation to the agent only, whereas the right in a work of justice, besides its relation to the agent, is set up by its relation to others. Because a man’s work is said to be just when it is related to some other by way of some kind of equality, for instance the payment of the wage due for a service rendered. And so a thing is said to be just, as having the rectitude of justice, when it is the term of an act of justice, without taking into account the way in which it is done by the agent: whereas in the other virtues nothing is declared to be right unless it is done in a certain way by the agent. For this reason justice has its own special proper object over and above the other virtues, and this object is called the just, which is the same as “right.” Hence it is evident that right is the object of justice.

Reply to Objection 1. It is usual for words to be distorted from their original signification so as to mean something else: thus the word “medicine” was first employed to signify a remedy used for curing a sick person, and then it was drawn to signify the art by which this is done. On like manner the word “jus” [right] was first of all used to denote the just thing itself, but afterwards it was transferred to designate the art whereby it is known what is just, and further to denote the place where justice is administered, thus a man is said to appear “in jure” [In English we speak of a court of law, a barrister at law, etc.], and yet further, we say even that a man, who has the office of exercising justice, administers the jus even if his sentence be unjust. (ST II-II: 57)

I answer that: As stated above (I-II:90:1 ad 1), law, being a rule and measure, can be in a person in two ways: in one way, as in him that rules and measures; in another way, as in that which is ruled and measured, since a thing is ruled and measured, in so far as it partakes of the rule or measure. Wherefore, since all things subject to Divine providence are ruled and measured by the eternal law, as was stated above (Article 1); it is evident that all things partake somewhat of the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its being imprinted on them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends. Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to Divine providence in the most excellent way, in so far as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Wherefore it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. Hence the Psalmist after saying (Psalm 4:6): “Offer up the sacrifice of justice,” as though someone asked what the works of justice are, adds: “Many say, Who showeth us good things?” in answer to which question he says: “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us”: thus implying that the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine light. It is therefore evident that the natural law is nothing else than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law. (ST II-II. q. 91)

 

Bacon
The second part of metaphysics, is the inquiry of final causes, which we note not as wanting, but as ill-placed; these causes being usually sought in physics, not in metaphysics, to the great prejudice of philosophy; for the treating of final causes in physics has driven out the inquiry of physical ones, and made men rest in specious and shadowy causes, without ever searching in earnest after such as are real and truly physical. And this was not only done by Plato, who constantly anchors upon this shore; but by Aristotle, Galen, and others, who frequently introduce such causes as these: “The hairs of the eyelids are for a fence to the sight.26 The bones for pillars whereon to build the bodies of animals. The leaves of trees are to defend the fruit from the sun and wind. The clouds are designed for watering the earth,” etc. All which are properly alleged in metaphysics; but in physics are impertinent, and as remoras to the ship, that hinder the sciences from holding on their course of improvement, and introducing a neglect of searching after physical causes. And therefore the natural philosophies of Democritus and others, who allow no God or mind in the frame of things, but attribute the structure of the universe to infinite essays and trials of nature, or what they call fate or fortune, and assigned the causes of particular things to the necessity of matter without [166] any intermixture of final causes, seem, so far as we can judge from the remains of their philosophy, much more solid, and to have gone deeper into nature, with regard to physical causes, than the philosophy of Aristotle or Plato; and this only because they never meddled with final causes, which the others were perpetually inculcating. Though in this respect Aristotle is more culpable than Plato, as banishing God,27 the fountain of final causes, and substituting [167] nature in his stead; and, at the same time, receiving final causes through his affection to logic, not theology. (Bacon Advancement of Learning, Book II, Chapter IV)

 

The Heavenly Order and the Lawful Society

Joseph Milne

  • Just as the primary purpose of human law is to cause friendship between men, so the purpose of the divine law is to establish friendship between men and God. Thomas Aquinas
  • Nothing is due to anyone except in virtue of something that has been given to him gratuitously by God. Thomas Aquinas

 

We find in all ancient cultures an understanding of a heavenly order that holds all things in their proper place and guides them to their proper ends. The earth and the heavens are bound together, with man dwelling in the earth and under the heavens. Thus man is seen as part of a greater whole, a participant within a cosmic order he is called upon to contemplate. Through this contemplation arises insight into the way of life proper to man, into the nature of society and into the laws and customs that enable society to flourish within the wider order of the earth and the heavens.

From this understanding of a heavenly order arise religious veneration, poetry, architecture and the crafts, agriculture, philosophy and jurisprudence. These are all rooted in the understanding of the heavenly order, and so the heavenly order is woven into that natural life of society.

This ancient view is grounded in an understanding that the universe is supremely intelligent. For example Cicero writes in The Nature of the Gods:

  • Now we see that in parts of the universe (for there is nothing in the entire universe which is not a part of the whole), sensation and reason exist. These qualities must therefore exist, and exist more vividly and to a greater extent, in that part in which the ruling principle of the universe resides. Consequently the universe must be intelligent, and the element which holds all things in its embrace must excel in perfection of reason; the universe, therefore, must be divine, and so must the element by which the whole strength of the universe is held together. (The Nature of the Gods, Book 2, XI)[1]

Following Plato and the Stoics, Cicero goes further and says that the universe is also virtuous:

  • As there is nothing more perfect than the universe, and nothing more excellent than virtue, it follows that virtue is an attribute of the universe. Human nature is not indeed perfect, yet virtue is attained in man, so how much more easily in the universe! Virtue, then, does exist in the universe, which is therefore wise, and consequently divine. (The Nature of the Gods, Book 2, XIV)

Is this so different from what the Psalmist says in Psalm 8? ‘O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens,’? In The Third Ennead Plotinus personifies the cosmos speaking of its own nature in this way:

  • I am made by a God: from that God I came perfect above all forms of life, adequate to my function, self-sufficing, lacking nothing: for I am the container of all, that is, of every plant and every animal, of all the Kinds of created things, and many Gods and nations of Spirit-Beings and lofty souls and men happy in their goodness.
  • And do not think that, while earth is ornate with all its growths and with living things of every race, and while the very sea has answered to the power of Soul, do not think that the great air and the ether and the far-spread heavens remain void of it: there it is that all good Souls dwell, infusing life into the stars and into that orderly eternal circuit of the heavens which in its conscious movement ever about the one Centre, seeking nothing beyond, is a faithful copy of the divine Mind. And all that is within me strives towards the Good; and each, to the measure of its faculty, attains. For from that Good all the heavens depend, with all my own Soul and the Gods that dwell in my every part, and all that lives and grows, and even all in me that you may judge inanimate. (Plotinus The Third Ennead).[2]

We could cite many examples from other ancient cultures and traditions that express in different ways this vision of the cosmos as divinely ordered or as manifesting the divine mystery beyond itself, or as infused with providential intelligence, and ordered toward the divine and the good. Eliade, for example in his famous study The Sacred and the Profane, traces a history through religious symbols of how man naturally lives in a sacred cosmos. He writes:

  • Every world is the work of the gods, for it was either created directly by the gods or was consecrated, hence cosmicized, by men ritually reactualizing the paradigmatic act of Creation. This is a s much as to say that religious man can live only in a sacred world, because it is only in such a world that he participates in being, that he has real existence. This religious need expresses an unquenchable ontological thirst. Religious man thirsts for being. (The Sacred and the Profane p. 64)[3]

This consecrated world, this world made cosmos, Eliade contrasts with the ‘profane’ world which has no order and exists in mere empty space where no place has meaning or offers a home for man. The profane world, which is equivalent to the modern ‘secular world’, is a world without purpose or direction, of homogenous space and time as two dimensions of emptiness where all objects and beings exist indifferently and arbitrarily. The secular or profane world is where man must strive to render meaning to things that have no meaning in themselves, or a moral order where no natural good belongs to anything in itself, or a rational order where things have no reason or intelligence in themselves.  Thus Eliade says, the world becomes apprehensible as world, as cosmos, in the measure in which it reveals itself as a sacred world. (p. 64)

This is a remarkable assertion of Eliade. Since it is the sacred that gives order to the world, order will be seen only insofar as the sacred is perceived. Such perception Eliade calls ‘religious perception’. It is not a theory about things, but a way of abiding with things. As Cicero says, the universe must be divine and ordered by a divine intelligence. Once this is grasped, then the question of how man ought to live may be raised. It is only when the human race is seen as part of the whole universe that the real nature of society can be explored and reflected upon. This is because the question of the nature of society is part of the wider question of the truth of all things, and because the right order of society is accomplished when man lives in harmony with Nature as a whole. It is from this perspective that the questions of ethics and law arise. Thus we find in Plato and Aristotle that the question of the truth of things and the question of virtue arise together, since to seek the truth of things is also to seek the good. Really the love of truth and the love of the good cannot be separated, and if they are they both give birth to distortions. For the Greek philosophers the beautiful may be added to the true and the good. Thus if we reflect on human culture widely we can see that the true, the good and the beautiful are the real ground of scholarship, of the arts or the crafts, and the law.

From that perspective we can begin to see that all scholarship is ordered towards finding and articulating the sacred order of things. Likewise all the crafts which support human life, beginning obviously with agriculture, are ordered toward living in accord with the life of Nature, of nurturing the earth. And again with the creative arts of the imagination, which study and bring to visibility the underlying order and beauty that infuses all things, or which act as a mirror to the interior order of nature. That the study of law and ethics might also belong the study of the sacred order is perhaps the most difficult for our secular age to grasp. We have become so used to the understanding of law in terms of positive law, of mere legal obligation, and as historically conditional, or as the arbitrary dictates of governments, that its roots in the sacred are greatly obscured. Even the divine law in the great religions has now generally been reduced to mere rules and obligations, or moral platitudes, what in theology is known as the decline into juridicalism.

Yet for the ancients the study of law was the study of the relation of the sacred to reason. The sacred order addresses all parts of human nature – the physical, the rational and the spiritual. It is when these realms of our being become separated or isolated from one another that the study of law becomes confused. To quote Cicero again, he says:

  • Now if nature hath given us law, she hath also given us justice,—for as she has bestowed reason on all, she has equally bestowed the sense of justice on all. And therefore did Socrates deservedly execrate the man who first drew a distinction between the law of nature and the law of morals, for he justly conceived that this error is the source of most human vices. (Cicero, Treatise on The Laws, Book I)[4]

For the classical Greek and Roman thinkers the perception of the order of Nature is always connected with the perception of justice. Indeed, one of the meanings of the Greek word kosmos is ‘justice’, and so the enquiry into the natural order of things is at once the enquiry into the ethical order of Nature. With Plato and Aristotle the enquiry into the order of Nature leads inevitably to enquiry into human nature and the into the nature of the polis or the state, the proper study of politics.

It is interesting that justice is at once given by nature and is a human virtue. That is to say, the law of Nature is the natural law of all things, while the human virtue of justice is the knowledge of right action in accordance with the truth of nature. Thus everyone has the sense of justice, the sense that there is a proper way of life in harmony with the cosmos or universal justice. Cicero sums this up very beautifully by quoting the Stoics as collected in Diogenes’s Lives of Eminent Philosophers:

  • For our individual natures are parts of the whole cosmos. And this is why the end may be defined as life in accordance with nature, or in other words, according to our own human nature as well as that of the cosmos, a life in which we refrain from every action forbidden by the law common to all things, that is to say, the right reason which pervades all things, and is identical with this Zeus, lord and ruler of all that is. (Lives, 7. 87-88)

Here we notice not only ‘the law common to all things’ but also ‘the right reason that pervades all things’ which is ‘identical with Zeus, lord and ruler of all that is’. The reason that pervades all things is the cosmic dimension of the reason the belongs to human nature. This view of reason is not the modern view, which restricts reason to representative conceptions of things. The ancient view of reason is that of the intelligence that pervades all things, and that human reason may participate in this universal reason. Thus the knowledge of things comes about through the mind being receptive to the nature that belongs to all things. The human mind receives the forms of things, and it is this receptivity that is unique to the human race. From this receptivity is born the capacity to reflect on the truth of things. From this reflection is born the philosopher and the contemplative life of the monk.

It is on the basis of this reflective capacity that Aristotle in his Politics, for example, understands the meaning of citizenship. The citizen is one who has the ‘foresight’ necessary to make laws aimed at the common good. Thus the art of lawmaking originates in the capacity to see the ‘law common to all things’ and to judge the consequences of lawmaking. Plato likens this capacity to that of the physician knowing the effects of prescribing medicines. It is a very apt analogy, for while the physician cares for the health of the body, the lawmaker cares for the health of the city or the state. Both are grounded in the knowledge that ‘health’ is the natural condition. The natural health of the body lies in right diet and exercise, while the natural health of the city lies in right reason and the practice of virtue. Thus for Plato the whole object of lawmaking is to establish virtue, since only the virtuous society can live in peace and friendship. Strictly speaking, only the virtuous society is actually a community of citizens. So the person who seeks only their own advantage in a society is not really a citizen.

It is worth noting that our modern notion of the industrial society, in which each seeks a share in the material exploitation of Nature, would not be regarded as a society at all by Plato or Aristotle, but a form of political degeneration. Or, to put that more gently, it would be regarded as a kind of social order, but not citizenship. A genuine society actively seeks the common good through reflection and virtue, just as the physician seeks health through proper exercise and diet.

Yet it is also clear that for the ancient philosophers the virtuous society must be rooted in the sacred. We recall what Eliade said: “the world becomes apprehensible as world, as cosmos, in the measure in which it reveals itself as a sacred world”. This is true for all the great religious and philosophical traditions. Thomas Traherne speaks of this in his beautiful Centuries of Meditations:

  • You never enjoy the world aright, till you see how a sand exhibiteth the wisdom and power of God: And prize in everything the service which they do you, by manifesting His glory and goodness to your Soul, far more than the visible beauty on their surface, or the material services they can do your body. Wine by its moisture quencheth my thirst, whether I consider it or no: but to see it flowing from His love who gave it unto man, quencheth the thirst even of the Holy Angels. To consider it, is to drink it spiritually. To rejoice in its diffusion is to be of a public mind. And to take pleasure in all the benefits it doth to all is Heavenly, for so they do in Heaven. To do so, is to be divine and good, and to imitate our Infinite and Eternal Father. (Centuries of Meditations, First Century)

Traherne presents here a remarkable correspondence between the ‘mystical’ perception of nature and true citizenship. To see the wine that quenches the thirst as flowing from God’s love is to ‘drink spiritually’ and to ‘rejoice in its diffusion is to be of a public mind’. And ‘to take pleasure in all the benefits it doth to all is Heavenly, for so they do in Heaven’. This heavenly pleasure is the happiness that comes with virtue and ‘is to be divine and good’. For Traherne the mystical vision is not in any way a private experience. It is to participate in the universal good, or the heavenly order, that manifests in all things when they are seen as they truly are in the mind of God.

This understanding of citizenship wholly transcends the prevailing secular notion of society in which each seeks their own good out of self-interest. A society is not yet a society if each member does not seek the common good. As Thomas Aquinas puts it ‘Man cannot possibly be good unless he stands in the right relation to the common good’. The only way in which this may be practically established is through each citizen understanding their work as a contribution to the common good. Josef Pieper asks about the nature of distributive justice and of the meaning of the ancient definition of justice: to render to each their due. He says:

  • It means: to make sure that the individual members of the population are given the opportunity to add their contribution to the realization of the common good (bonum commune) that is neither specifically nor comprehensively defined. This participation according to each person’s dignitas or capacity and ability—this is precisely each person’s rightful “due”.[5]

He suggests that there is no need to define the ideal society in detail since the common good emerges spontaneously from the free association of citizens in the realization of their natural talents and vocations. In other words, given the foundation of law and justice in the natural citizenship of man, the common good emerges spontaneously as the proper end or flowering of society or the state. This natural flowering of society or the state is at once in accord with human nature and with the whole of Nature.

In the different ways that Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, or Traherne approach the question of law one thing is common to them all: the understanding of man as a participant in the greater whole and the greater good. Man is called beyond himself in order to be himself. Man is lost if he does not find his home in the unfolding meaning of the cosmos, as Eliade brings to light so clearly.

This understanding of man as participant in the greater order of things is the key to the ancient approach to education. In Plato’s Republic, and more specifically in his Laws, the concern for the cultivation of the virtues through gymnastics and music is in order to bring about the individuals’ capacity to respond wisely and courageously to the trials of life and to serve the common good. All the true benefits of society arise through virtue and may be enjoyed only by the virtuous – friendship, honour, trust, peace, constancy, wisdom. For Plato the poor man is one without these things, and without these things the individual capacities or talents are stifled.

This understanding of education may be traced right through the Middle Ages. The aim was to integrate the individual into greater and greater spheres of society, so that the functions engaged wider and wider scope and responsibility. This ideal of education is what Paul Tillich calls ‘inductive’. It aims to induct children into the family, with its traditions and symbols, and gradually into ‘the group, the life and spirit of the community’, the ‘tribe, town, nation, church’. (Tillich Theology of Culture, p. 147). One can see how this extends to the transmission of a people’s history, in honouring the ancestors, and in laying down the foundations of the future.

This has even deeper significance in Christian monasticism, where the individual becomes part of the community of prayer and contemplation, and ultimately of mystical union with God. This was precisely the purpose of the study of Scripture and scholastic learning in the Middle Ages. Nature, mathematics, grammar, music and so on are studied in order to refine the soul so that it can participate in the essence of all created things, and so come to know them in the mind of God as God knows them. Once one sees how the medieval scholars were concerned to ascend to God through meditation on the created order, and thus to experience the cosmos spiritually, the differences between what they regarded as the knowledge of things and our modern secular or materialistic notion of knowledge becomes perfectly explicable. For example in his Journey of the Mind into God Bonaventure says:

  • We may behold God in the mirror of visible creation, not only by considering creatures as vestiges of God, but also by seeing Him in them; for He is present in them by His essence, His power, and His presence. And because this is a higher way of considering than the preceding one, it follows as the second level of contemplation, on which we ought to be led to the contemplation of God in every creature that enters our mind through the bodily senses. (Journey of the Mind into God Chapter 2)[6]

For Bonaventure, as for the great Maximus the Confessor before him, the creation, or Nature, in a special way manifests God. Contrary to the widespread view that regards the medieval Christians as ‘world-negating’, for the medieval scholar or mystic the cosmos makes the invisible visible. Nature is theophanic. In seeing God through Nature the mystic sanctifies the world and returns it to its true meaning in the Creator. Aquinas puts this in a more philosophical way, saying, ‘All things, in so far as they have being, are like to God, who is being in the first and highest manner’ (Summa contra Gentiles I, 80). And elsewhere he says:

  • All creatures participate in the divine goodness, with the result that they pour forth to others the goodness that they themselves possess. For it belongs to the nature of goodness to communicate itself to others (Summa Theologica I, 106, 4).

In these Christian mystics we see how the cosmos has its order from participating in its divine origin, and thus how each created thing, by virtue of the goodness of its origin, goes out of itself for the good of all others. In this sense the cosmos strives to be like God. We might call this the first law of nature. In a similar way the human mind naturally goes out of itself embracing all things. The virtue of the human soul, paradoxically, lies in its receptivity to God’s creativity. Thus Aquinas, taking the insight of Aristotle further, sees the human soul as ‘potentially all things’. This receptivity of the soul, however, is as much for the sake of the things as it is for the soul itself. Through receiving the truth of things the soul sanctifies them, or grants to them their true dignity as divine manifestations, and through this granting the soul attains its own true dignity and proper end, which is the contemplation of truth.

From all that we have said it is clear that the ancient philosophers and the medieval scholastics understood that there was a relationship between the laws of nature and divine law. Yet these two orders of law are not identical. The law of nature is observed through reason and justice, while the divine law is known through grace. From these two orders of law human law is derived. By human law is meant the codes of law communities or nations make for themselves. These are distinct orders of law, even though ultimately they serve the final end of law, which is the common good or perfection of all things. Aquinas, drawing upon the philosophical tradition, medieval jurisprudence and divine revelation sums up the ends of the two orders of law this way:

  • Just as the primary purpose of human law is to cause friendship between men, so the purpose of the divine law is to establish friendship between men and God. (Summa Theologica I-II, 90).

I think it is very important to observe here that law is not rules or commands that a society ought to submit to in order to avert chaos or curb selfishness – the Hobbesian idea of law – but rather law exists to bring about friendship. Its aim is to foster amity between citizens, since only through amity can the real potential of society be realised – that is to say, only through mutual goodness can a society actually become a society in reality and not only in name. Plato says the same in his Laws. In enquiring into how legislators should go about their task he says:

  • They should have considered something like the following: that a city should be free and prudent and a friend to itself, and that the lawgiver should give his laws with a view to these things.
  • By the way, let’s not be surprised to find that we have often before laid down goals which we’ve asserted the lawgiver should look to when he lays down his laws, but the goals don’t appear to be the same for us each time. One should reason as follows: when we asserted one should look toward moderation, or toward prudence, or friendship, these goals are not different but the same. (Laws 693b)[7]

For Plato the virtues and friendship cannot be separated, and so when law aims to make citizens moderate or prudent or peaceful or harmonious or good, these all amount to the same thing. Friendship is the natural relation of good citizens, and therefore the condition for the flourishing of the proper human life.

This concern for the true end of law is a most important thing, and Plato returns to it again and again in the Laws. Where the proper end of law is overlooked or neglected, it not only degenerates, it becomes tyrannous. The same insight is to be found in the Bible. This is what Jesus accuses the Scribe and Pharisees of doing when he says “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man”. Where law is made into bondage it is no longer law, but the opposite of law. This holds for both human law and divine law. When spiritual law becomes oppressive it is no longer spiritual law.

It is at this point that we come to the most challenging aspect of the study of law and human society. Although the divine law and the natural law spring from the natural order and telos of all things, causing each to seek its natural end within the universe as a whole, for man this is possible only through reflection and understanding. That is to say, while for the realm of nature and for living creatures generally the law acts spontaneously through them, so that all follow the law of their own being, for man this does not happen spontaneously. Man, or society, may attain their natural end only through reflecting on the truth of things and bringing that knowledge to articulation through culture – through the arts, religion and the institutions of society. This is because the natural goal of the human person is the contemplation of truth, and action born out of that contemplation. This, we might say, is the burden of man being the thinking being – his life will not go well if lived thoughtlessly. Yet, if man would be free, then he takes on the burden of responsibility for his thoughts and actions. The question of freedom lies at the heart of Plato’s concern for the way to establish a just and peaceful society. Freedom is possible only through wisdom or prudence, which is knowledge of the true and the good at once. Such wisdom comes about only through the exercise of intelligence and justice, just as bodily strength comes about only through physical discipline. Remarking on this Aquinas says:

  • God moves all things in their own manner. Hence some things participate in the divine movement in a necessary way, but the rational creature is moved freely. (Questiones quodlibetales I, ad 2)

In the realm of livings things, each moves by necessity according to its nature, the nature created by God. But for rational creatures, that is the human race, the intelligence is free to move or not to move, even though its natural end is the apprehension of truth. Again, Aquinas draws this distinction between man and the other creatures clearly:

  • God’ providence cares for all things in their own manner. . . .  Voluntary action, and mastery over that action, are peculiar to man and to spiritual creatures. To this compulsion is opposed. Hence God does not compel man to act rightly. (Summa contra Gentiles 3, 148)

Thus human freedom may be experienced either as a gift or a burden. This is a theme we often find in the novels of Dostoyevsky. The most famous example is in The Brothers Karamazov where Ivan says to the Christ that the people want bread, not freedom.

The question of the nature of natural and divine law is difficult because for man it arises with the question of the nature of freedom, and the question of the nature of freedom arises with the question of responsibility. Because man is free to act according to his own decisions, he is therefore responsible for his actions, and this means he falls under the lawful consequences of his actions. It is for this reason that Aristotle says lawmaking involves foresight, a capacity only of rational creatures.

Man’s freedom lies in the capacity to reflect and act according to the nature of things. In this way ‘right action’ is a free and skilful conformation to truth. Freedom arises only through knowledge. This is not so strange. The farmer sows according to the season and gains a delicate sense of nature’s ways. It is the same in developing any skill. It comes only with intelligent observation and practice. Seen in this way the mechanisation of industry and farming, which came with the Industrial Revolution, removes man from his natural place in nature and takes away the freedom of his intelligence. It places man under lower laws and diminishes the opportunity to live the contemplative life. Man becomes there mere sentinel of the machine.

Unlike other beings, man is not compelled to fulfil his natural vocation, yet he is drawn towards it by the attraction of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. That is how the classical philosophers saw it. Thus he stands at the threshold of his natural habitation, but must take the step over that threshold by himself. This is what Eliade means by the sacred, where man discovers his natural home in the sacred order of nature. In the Christian tradition this step is into the realm of Grace – which means to see how Nature is infused by Grace. That is where the law begins, and it descends through grace to the natural realm as justice. Justice is Grace given form. In essence it is mercy, as Shakespeare shows us.

At the beginning I said that from an understanding of the heavenly order comes not only the knowledge of the nature of society, but of religion and all the arts. In her essay The Underlying Order: Nature and the Imagination, Kathleen Raine writes:

  • It is the part of the poet to present to us that total view and experience of reality which includes all aspects of our humanity in the context of every age. Or that situates every age, rather, in the context of the everlasting. (The Underlying Order and other Essays p. 51)[8]

Her phrase ‘in the context of the everlasting’ sums up the way in which man is called to see himself and the world. It is a glimpse of the ‘everlasting’ that truly defines poetry, and all the arts, and what Kathleen Raine and Blake call the Imagination. But the arts also embody the human response to the everlasting, and in this sense they are the natural fruit of man’s contemplation of the truth of things.

Plato asks, what is the knowledge that is key to all other kinds of knowledge? In reply he points to an art that contemplates the unity that enfolds all things, and from which all branches of knowledge spring. What becomes visible from this unity may be the eternal numbers that give form and beauty to nature, or to architecture or music or the motions of the heavens. The artist unites the temporal materials of his craft with the eternal numbers of the heavens. This work is what Eliade called ‘consecrating’ the world, re-establishing it in its heavenly origin. Or it is what Aquinas calls returning creatures to God through human knowledge. Such work is the work proper to man. It is the natural human vocation, and it is the only work that truly inspires and which brings delight and nourishment to society as a whole.

 

[1] Translated by Francis Brooks (London: Methuen, 1896)

[2] Plotinus The Enneads, translated by Stephen MacKenna (Faber, 1969)

[3] Mircea Eliade The Sacred and the Profane (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969)

[4] Cicero Treatise on The Laws, translated by Francis Barham (London: Edmund Spettigue, 1841)

[5] Josef Pieper, An Anthology, (Ignatius Press, 1989)

[6] Bonaventure, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, translated by Philotheus Boehner (Franciscan Institute, 1956)

[7] Plato, The Laws of Plato translated by Thomas Pangle (Basic Books, 1980)

[8] Kathleen Raine The Underlying Order and other Essays (Temenos Academy, 2008)

Aquinas and Providence

 Joseph Milne

 

Thomas Aquinas and the Providential Order of Nature
For Thomas Aquinas everything in the creation is ordered toward the Good as its proper end. This means that each created being has its own natural perfection which in some way embodies God’s goodness or perfection. This natural perfection of created beings is governed by Divine Providence. The perfection of each created being is also part of the perfection of the universe as a whole which is united through Divine Providence. Human nature, through practical reason, has a share in providential intelligence in its capacity to guide action towards the Good, both for itself and for all other created beings. Human life in the universe has a part to play in bringing all beings to their natural perfection in God.

Thomas’s vision has deep roots in ancient philosophy and in the Christian understanding that all things ultimately seek to unite with God. There is at once a perfection of the created universe within itself, and a perfection beyond it in mystical union with God. This natural order is sustained by Divine Providence.

In this talk we shall try to recover something of Thomas’s understanding of Providence and how it might enable human society to live in accord with the true order of nature.

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I would like to begin with the suggestion that we have a natural sense of providence, a sense that there is something that guides the order of all things. This sense is completely distinct from the notions of determinism or necessity. It belongs to human nature to have this sense of providence, just as we have an ethical sense and a sense of justice. We also have what the philosophers call a “narrative sense”, the sense of the lawful unfolding of events. This narrative sense is also the sense of “story”, the sense in which we follow the evolution of actions through time towards a definite end or conclusion. It is what the ancient Greeks called “mythos”, especially myths of the gods and their deeds, or the myths of the different ages following from the Golden Age.

Whether we speak of providence, ethics, justice or story, underlying each of these is a sense of “order”. But not just an eternal or fixed order but also an unfolding order. We experience the world and existence as in one way constant and in another way in motion. Things move lawfully. Or if they move unlawfully they need to be returned to their lawful motion.

All that I have just described belongs to yet another sense: the sense of “the whole”. Our fundamental sense of existence is embraced by a sense of being part of the whole, of all that is. Human consciousness does not grasp things upwards from the least particle, but rather from the totality of everything – a totality that includes all that is, that ever was and that ever may be. It is through this sense of participating in the greater whole that we experience ourselves as “situated” or “placed” in the universe and in our particular circumstances. We are part of everything and in some way participate in everything.

It is easy to overlook these primordial aspects of our experience of existence. Yet they are the ground of all ancient myths and stories of how things came into being. We can see it in the myths and legends of primitive peoples, in the Genesis story of creation, in the cosmology of the Upanishads of India, or in the Theogony of Hesiod. Every story must begin with “Once upon a time there was…” Our sense of the beginning of all things has something divine or sacred about it, as though a mystery is being made visible through the manifestation of the universe. And yet, beyond that beginning of all things there is something wholly transcendent. The transcendental realm can be spoken of only symbolically. It is the ground of the “religious sense”, the sense in which we are aligned in some way with that which is wholly beyond all manifestation. The religious sense springs from an intuition that everything begins and ends in the divine. This beginning and ending of all things in the divine is the completion of our sense of the whole, though it always remains a mystery. It is remarkable that the most ancient cosmological myths include the divine within the cosmic order. For example, even Zeus in the Greek pantheon dwells within the cosmos. The divine order is part of the cosmic order. Only later, both in the East and the West, does a distinction emerge between the temporal and the transcendental realms. The contemplation of the order of things brings to light distinctions, and then the insight that there is that which lies wholly beyond all distinctions but which is the source of the manifold.

These are ideas we need to recognise before we explore what Aquinas has to say about the providential order of nature. Since the fifteenth century the providential order of nature has been superseded by a mechanical approach to nature which seeks to explain everything without recourse to any divine or purposeful order. The material world is taken to be explicable within itself, so that neither a metaphysical nor a sacred understanding need be consulted. So there was a complete break with the medieval vision of the universe as well as the ancient Greek vision of Plato and Aristotle. The most decisive feature of this break is that the universe is no longer conceived as having an intelligent essence. It is no longer seen as a “living being” as in Plato’s Timaeus for example. It is taken to be without soul. So when we approach the question of providence we are obliged to consider a cosmology and a vision of nature wholly at variance with modern materialism.

This is why I began by saying that we have a natural sense of providence. Like the ethical sense or the narrative sense, or the sense of the whole, it is innate to our human intelligence. But it is out of tune with our modern conception of the universe or nature. Having broken nature off from any divine or sacred order, we have abandoned a natural part of human intelligence. To give an obvious example, the ancient conception of the universe as ruled by justice has become unintelligible to modern thought. Yet the perception of justice as key to the order of the cosmos is the beginning of Greek philosophy in Heraclitus, as it is also of the biblical representation of the creation. If our age no longer understands that the universe is ruled by justice, then understanding providence becomes very challenging.

Thomas Aquinas’s main work on providence is given in his Summa Contra Gentiles, his challenge to non-Christian beliefs. As typical for Aquinas, he begins with what is evident in nature and ascends to the metaphysical and ultimately to the divine. The first thing to observe is that everything in nature has a purpose and seeks its proper end. He is following Aristotle here, who observes that all things are inclined towards the fullest completion of their particular being. In an obvious sense, everything grows and matures. But this inclination towards maturity is not a blind reaching out for mere survival, but an inherent direction towards a particular form and function. This inherent direction in things is what Plato and Aristotle called their telos, meaning the natural end they seek. It is what Aristotle calls the “final cause” of anything, the end or purpose for which it has come into being. But the concept of “final causality” was discounted in the rise of early modern science, which sought to account only for efficient causality. For example, the seed is the efficient cause of the plant, or the carpenter is the efficient cause of the table. The purpose of the plant or the table are not accounted for. We might say that modern enquiry seeks to understand how things come to exist but not why they come to exist. The concept of “purpose” has been confined to human ends that we decide upon, while nature is regarded as having no purpose. Descartes says we can never know the purpose of things while Bacon says the concept of teleology hinders our understanding of the natural world.

But to deny purpose to nature is to miss a central principle of its ordering. Modern ecology, for example, has come to see nature acting both as a total system and as establishing a specific integrated order. Or one form of the modern anthropic principle observes that for the human species to have come into being the whole universe had to take the form that it has taken. The human species, with its reflective consciousness, can exist only in the universe that has come into being. So to argue that nature does not seek specific ends is no longer really tenable, at least according to the anthropic principle.

It is at this point that Aquinas becomes illuminating. If we grant that each thing seeks its natural end, then the question can be raised about the completeness or perfection it seeks. This means we have to regard the “being” of things. Natural things are not simply taking shape or form but they strive towards the fullness of their being. The further we move up the hierarchy of nature, the more evident this becomes. A stone has a very limited mode of being, while living creatures have a higher mode of being, and living rational beings a higher mode still. As we ascend the natural scale we observe an increase in autonomy or self-direction. There are stages of increase of being. At this point we move to the metaphysical. If each of these modes of being move in the direction of higher and more self-determining modes of being, the question then arises about the nature of being itself towards which all things tend in their distinct ways.

It is at this point that Aquinas makes the most important observation that every being loves its own being, and that beings of the same kind love their equal in being. Hence there is mutual attraction between similar kinds of being throughout nature. Yet, he observes, that the love of each beings own being and the love of its equal is founded beyond itself in the love of Being Itself. He goes yet further, saying that every being loves Being Itself more than its own particular being, and that each loves its own particular being because it participates to some degree in Being Itself. It is this Being Itself that each ultimately strives towards.

There is another way of saying the same thing. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle says “the good is what all desire” (SCG 3. 11. Nicomachean Ethics 1094a 1). Aquinas quotes this passage. We know from both Plato and Aristotle that “the Good” is the highest perfection beyond which there is no higher good to be sought. All other goods are only means to further goods, while the Good Itself is the final end of all desiring. This Good, the Good, is both the original cause of all things and the final end they seek fulfilment in. Aquinas says that the terms “good” and “being” are interchangeable. Thus the fuller the being, the greater the goodness. Likewise, evil is the diminishment or negation of being and therefore of goodness. Once again, we find the same in Plato and further developed by St Augustine in the doctrine of the privatio boni. All things resist the negation of being. This is the true ground of the instinct of self-preservation, which itself is grounded in the love of Being in itself.

Aquinas takes all this a step further, going beyond the metaphysical to the theological. The good or the perfection of being that everything desires is God. He says, everything loves God more than itself. God is perfect goodness. It is this love of everything beyond its own being, and beyond created being, that orients nature towards perfection. Every created thing desires to be as like God that it is possible for it to be as a created being. This for Aquinas is a primary ordering principle of nature, of the entire creation. But it also means that every created being in some way resembles or has a likeness of God. In the Summa Theologiae Aquinas describes how nature is ordered to the likeness of God in two ways. He says:

  • For the creature is assimilated to God in two things; first, with regard to this, that God is good; and so the creature becomes like Him by being good; and secondly, with regard to this, that God is the cause of goodness in others; and so the creature becomes like God by moving others to be good. (ST 1a q. 103 a 4)

Not only do all things seek to become good like God, they also seek to act like God “by moving others to be good”. Thus a mutual goodness is sought among all creatures in one way or another. We will return to this principle later when we look at human society.

That all things have a likeness to God is a key to medieval biblical interpretation. The created world is regarded as a manifestation of the wisdom of God. For Hugh of St Victor, in the twelfth century, this meant that each created thing presented in the Scriptures was itself a “word of God”. Human words, Hugh says, may have several meanings, but the words of God expressed in the creatures have very many meanings. Nature is a vocabulary of God, and Scripture reflects that vocabulary. Thus “nature”, just like the Scriptures, has a literal sense, an allegorical sense, and a mystical sense. There is the sacred or theological way of understanding nature as well as the Scriptures.

So all created things in some sense ‘manifest’ something of God and at the same time seek God as their end. This is the work of providence. Divine providence, Aquinas says, “orders all things to the divine goodness” as their end (SCG 97. 1), so that they may be as like the divine goodness as possible. But this, of course, adds nothing to God through created things since God is the Good Itself. It does show, however, that God’s goodness is unlimited and infinity communicable, shining out of itself. But since the substance of created beings must fall short of the perfect unity of divine goodness, Aquinas says:

  • [in or that]…the likeness of divine goodness might be more perfectly communicated to things, it was necessary for there to be a diversity of things, so that what could not be perfectly represented by one thing might be, in a more perfect fashion, represented by a variety of things in different ways. (SCG 97. 2).

This, Aquinas says, is because “the perfect goodness which is present in God in a unified and simple manner cannot be in creatures except in a diversified way and through the plurality of things”. This necessary diversity of things, which together form a unity in plurality, comes about through the diversity of forms. Each particular thing has a form that distinguishes it’s kind of being. It is through its form that each created being bears a likeness to God. Also the form of each being determines its particular operation in the created order, thus establishing a hierarchy or gradation of different species. The greater the resemblance to God the higher the species. Nevertheless, every kind of being bears a likeness to God in some way and has a meaning and purpose within the created order.

Each particular created being has an end in itself, an end through its operation in the natural order, and a final end in God. These ends are bound together. Each being fulfils its own being through performing its part within the natural order. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything subsists through contributing to nature as a whole. The natural order fulfils its end in the unity of the creation, while the unity of the creation ultimately fulfils its end in knowing God. This is another way of seeing how all things seek the good or the perfection of being. They seek it individually and universally. The hierarchical created order culminates in rational beings, at the highest level the angels, and just below them human beings or mankind. The proper end of each individual person lies in seeking the goodness, fullness of being, and knowledge of God. Providence orders the whole of nature so that man may fulfil that end.

Thus the creation is not merely a multiplicity of forms and beings but is ordered to manifest a likeness of God. But this likeness also has an end. It is manifest in order to be known, and through being known returned to God. It is here that humanity has its special purpose within the created world. God created man last on the sixth day of creation in order that his rational consciousness should be a terminus of created things. In other words, through man the created universe becomes conscious of itself. As Aquinas says, just as all things desire the good, so all things also desire to be known. In the most perfect sense they desire to be known by God. Their journey towards this is through human rational consciousness. Man’s natural desire for knowledge of things is at the same time a response to the call of all things to become known. Knowledge of things serves not only man but also the things known. As a medieval theologian says, God does not manifest Himself in the creation without intending to be seen. Our human desire to know things springs from the intention of God to be known, and in their likeness to God each created being also desires to be known. Like the divine goodness, knowledge also seeks to be communicated. To put that in a different way, every being desires to be received into every other being so that the universe seeks to bring about a mutual knowing. Modern theories of knowledge forget that knowing is intended to be reciprocal, for the good of the things known as well as for the knower. As the early church father Tertullian says “it is nature who gives us our awareness”. Knowing things is meant to serve them. For example, the physician serves the patient through his knowledge.

That our rational consciousness may see order in things indicates that it is reason that orders them, and so human reason and the reason in things have a natural correspondence. Thus Plato in the Timaeus portrays the cosmos as living rational being, and this conception of the cosmos was very influential throughout the Middle Ages. For example, John of Salisbury sees a city as a living being, with its various institutions and vocations acting together like a single body with head, hands and feet.

Aquinas’s approach to the providential order of creation shows the proper purpose of studying the natural world. There had been a period before his time when any concern for the created world had been dismissed in the name of seeking spiritual knowledge alone. But that position sets up a conflict between God’s desire in creating the world and the call to spiritual knowledge or redemption. Yet it has always been foundational to Christianity to see the created universe as itself a divine work, a revelation of the divine wisdom and goodness and therefore a teacher and guide to the human soul.

Aquinas says “the primary measure of the essence and nature of each thing is God; just as He is the first being, which is the cause of being in all things.” (SCG 100: 5) In his view the nature of the created world cannot be understood without reference to God since it derives its essence and its being from God. Most important of all, it has come into being from the essence of the providential goodness. From the providential goodness it has received both its order and its aim. While coming forth from God into being, it seeks its way back to God in its completion. As St Paul says in Romans 8:22, the cosmos groans as though in childbirth for God. So, while it is God’s providence that creates and guides nature, nature has a motion grounded in its own being that tends upwards towards God. It is this double aspect of the created order that redeems it from any conception of blind chance or mere necessity. Creation and redemption are part of a single act. The proliferation into multiplicity as at once the journey towards unity.

We have already seen how man has a special place in nature as the rational being, as the being who desires to know and understand. Aquinas says that there is a special providence in man, given from the divine providence, whereby each individual may govern themselves. While the other created beings are directed by providence implanted in their essence, with human nature providence provides for each to govern their own intentions and actions. Each is a free agent. This means two things. First that the human species must provide for itself from the providential gifts of nature. Each must be clothed, housed, fed. With other creatures providence gives these things appropriately to each, while the human species has to master certain skills in order to provide for its needs. Second, it also means that the human species must learn to act together since no individual is self-sufficient. Providence has given a natural distribution of talents whereby what one lacks another provides. Thus community is natural to the human species. The higher ends of society are possible only through collective work, knowledge, and exchange. Aquinas takes this a step further:

  • Because they are ordered to their species, they possess a further ordination to intellectual nature. For [temporal things] are not ordered to man for the sake of one individual man only, but for the sake of the whole human species. (SCG 112: 9)

So there is a remarkable correspondence between individual autonomy on the one hand, and participation in the work of the entire human species on the other. Only self-ruling persons can consciously participate in the work and proper end of the entire species in the created order. Aquinas insists, however, that this does not mean each individual exists only for the sake of the species. He says: “only rational creatures receive direction from God in their acts, not only for the species, but for the individual.” (SCG 113: 1) Thus, while other species act for the self-preservation of their species and purpose within the natural order, directed by external providence, the human individual is able to act consciously for their own fulfilment as well as the fulfilment of the human species. The two fulfilments are mutual. Since each individual has autonomy they are able to act responsibly for the good of the whole. Autonomy is a capacity to act beyond simple self-interest. Thus the human species builds its own society over which it is called to govern for the common good. The common good is the end that society by nature seeks, and this common good is itself an image of the unity of God’s goodness. Only the person who can act for the common good has real freedom of action.

Yet all this remains under providence. Aquinas explains this in the following way:

  • … the rational creature is subject to divine providence in such a way that he is not only governed thereby, but is also able to know the rational plan of providence in some way. Hence, it is appropriate for him to exercise providence and government over other things. This is not the case with other creatures, for they participate in providence only to the extent of being subordinated to it. Through this possession of the capacity to exercise providence one may also direct and govern his own acts. So, the rational creature participates in divine providence, not only by being governed passively, but also by governing actively, for he governs himself in his personal acts, and even others. Now, all lower types of providence are subordinated, as it were, to divine providence. Therefore, the governing of the acts of a rational creature, in so far as they are personal acts, pertains to divine providence. (SCG 113:5)

Perhaps the important point here is that man is “able know the rational plan of providence in some way” and so order his actions in accord with the plan of divine providence. Aquinas calls this ability to discern providence “prudence”, which is a capacity to judge past and future and to have “foresight” in performing actions. All the most important human actions are possible through foresight. There is a further special gift here. Man is the being who is able to reflect on providence, both in individual actions and actions in accord with the whole. Providence gives a guide to the unity of action. It is the ground of human goodness and freedom.

This applies especially to actions belonging to society. In society reflection on the order of nature is brought about through speech or discourse, which is the nature of politics. Society flourishes through agreement on what is true, good, and just. Justice itself, which belongs to the essence of things, is a direct manifestation of providential order. Society flourishes so far as it apprehends and elects to honour and follow justice. A just society establishes its laws in accordance with the providential order of nature. What is most significant here is that justice and making just laws is possible only through the rational free choice of will. That is to say, justice and just laws are established only through free assent, and so justice and freedom belong together. Law and freedom belong together. Freedom through justice is a natural end human society seeks. But this is possible only through rational understanding and through the virtue of prudence. For Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas the human intelligence is understood as by nature ordered towards truth and goodness. Intelligence or reason has a telos. Human free will is grounded in an orientation towards truth and goodness. The reason loves truth, while the will loves goodness.

According to Aquinas, the principles of truth and goodness are implanted in the human soul. The principles of truth guide what is called the “theoretical reason”, while the principles of goodness guide what is called the “practical reason”. This distinction of the operations of the mind is taken from Aristotle, but is also evident in Plato. The human soul by nature loves truth and goodness. It is this that makes it a soul. According to Aristotle it is the love of truth that makes us desire to live. The proper end of human intelligence is truth and goodness. Aquinas takes this principle further than Aristotle and says that the dignity of the human soul lies in its resemblance to God, who is Truth and Goodness. And so it follows that the final end the soul seeks is God, who is truth and goodness itself. Because it seeks the truth and goodness of God as its final end, the soul is able to discern truth and goodness in the order of nature which, as we have seen, also resembles the divine truth and goodness. The truth and goodness of the order of nature is simply recognised, just as the eye recognises light. All this is part of the work of divine providence.

We began our talk by saying that everyone has an innate sense of providence. Yet what Aquinas says seems strange to modern thinking. I would suggest there are two reason for this. First, in the fourteenth century the understanding of “final causes” or purpose in the order of nature suffered with the rise of nominalism – the idea that “universals” exist only in abstract thought but not in nature itself. For example, the “human species” is only an abstract classification, while in reality only separate individuals exist. Thus the understanding of “nature” as an integrated whole was replaced by the notion that each thing was created and existed independently. Second, the understanding that the intellect had principles of truth or goodness implanted within it, or any kind of pre-knowledge, was gradually rejected. So, for example, in the seventeenth century John Locke proposed that the human mind was a tabula rasa, a clean slate, devoid of any innate ideas or any predetermined inclinations or goals. He also asserted that words have no inherent meaning but only such meanings that we attribute to them. Thus the denial of any actual universals and the conception of the mind as an empty slate upon which anything might be written, renders the traditional understanding of providence inconceivable. With the disappearance of providence from the philosophical enquiry into nature the universe is rendered purposeless.

But, as I suggested at the outset, our minds naturally apprehend order in nature and in life and we have a sense that providence ultimately guides all things. We have this sense of providence just as we have a sense of justice or a sense of truth. We may not quite grasp these things, but we know they are there to be known and acknowledged. It is the sense of order and providence that situates us within the great cosmic order, giving us the sense of living in a “world” and not floating in mere emptiness. Divine providence shows us that we are part of the great drama of creation which has a sacred meaning communicating itself throughout nature and informing all our thoughts and actions. But also that our true end is mystical union with God, and that our work within the created order is to bring created things through knowing them to their fulfilment. Our human consciousness is meant to receive all it is conscious of in order that things may be brought back to God. It is this final end of all things that providence continually seeks to attain. It is really God’s presence everywhere.

 

 

Talk given to Fintry Trust 2024

Law and the Harmonious City

Joseph Milne

 

A distinguishing feature of ancient myth is the sense of a divinely ordered cosmos. Unlike our modern mechanistic conception of the universe, for the ancients the whole world was a living being, peopled with divinities who watched over all the works of nature, and also over the life and deeds of mankind. And if anyone acted in a way that offended the divinities or the natural harmony of nature, retribution would fall upon them. Man is intended to live in accord with the laws of nature, and insofar as he does so the human race flourishes and is happy. One can see these themes in ancient myths and folk tales from all parts of the world. They are present in the epics of Homer, the Greek tragedies, the heroic Norse sagas, the myths and legends of the American Indians, as well as in ancient sacred Creation stories.

And still, for children, and for the storyteller, ‘nature’ is a living being with strange and magical powers. There is no good story without a world full of mysterious powers. The stars, the rivers and the forests are all living beings who watch over human events. Nothing in nature is unseen and without witness. This is the way the imagination apprehends the world, even in our own age where such things are supposed to belong to the previous ages of superstition.

But it is not only imagination that apprehends the world in this way. Our human reason also apprehends an order to the world, and somehow grasps it as a single whole – as a ‘cosmos’ and not mere random entities and events. Reason sees justice in nature, as well as a purposeful order between all living things. Modern ecology is built on this primary rational intuition of order throughout the natural world. It is one branch of science that seeks to escape from the mechanistic vision of the seventeenth century that has limited our understanding of nature’s wisdom and intelligence for so long. Yet it remains difficult now to see nature as itself rational and intelligent because we have banished intelligence from nature. Nevertheless, seeing nature as rational and intelligent was always how she was seen until our age. Insofar as we still acknowledge order in nature, we have limited its ‘lawfulness’ to a mechanistic or mathematical level. Even the ecologists try to do this, perhaps against their better instinct, in order to stay scientifically legitimate.

We find in the ancient world various words for the great order the universe. In ancient Egypt Maat ruled the entire universe with providential wisdom and justice, and this extended down to the order of society and even to the smallest human deed. Whatever one did, it was to be guided and enlightened with Maat. While Maat is the Goddess and symbol for cosmic order, for truth, for harmony and moral conduct, she is in essence the symbol for Egyptian civilisation itself. She is incarnate in the Pharaoh and through him immediately present everywhere and in each citizen. Citizenship is experienced as living in harmony with truth, duty and justice.

In the ancient Hindu writings the great order and harmony of the universe is represented by the word Ṛta. It is Ṛta that governs cosmic order and the lawful unfolding of things divine and human. In China the equivalent word is Tao of the Dao which keeps the heavens and the earth in balance and harmony. In ancient Persian it is Arta. In classical Greece it the words Nomos and Harmonia. Nomos is Greek for ‘law’, while Harmonia is the just proportion of all things. For the Romans it is Lex or Right, signifying the just law governing the whole universe as well as human affairs. Each of these words signify an intelligence inherent in the universe, guiding everything to its appointed end. They are not powers outside nature, imposed on things from outside. On the contrary, they are the most intimately present realities shining everywhere out of their essences. The law is at once universal, yet it also belongs to the nature of each particular thing, relating each to the order of the whole.

As the Greek philosophers began to explore nature in a more abstract or rational way, they found that what was expressed in myth and primordial symbols could be seen in more direct ways. For example, in early medicine the order of the body was still connected with the cosmic order. The word physis – the Greek word for nature – referred to the ‘coming to birth’ of things and their growth into completion. So the word physis meant ‘essence’ and ‘coming to be’, and our own word ‘nature’, from the Latin ‘natura’ once meant the same. This ‘coming to be’ of things brought them to their maturity and their proper place within the greater order. Thus everything in nature seeks to come to full maturity. Even the Sophists who opposed physis with nomos or law, understood nature as prescriptive, as indicating what we ought to do, as we see in Plato’s Gorgias.[1]

This principle of everything seeking its maturity or completion is crucial for understanding Greek thought and philosophy. The technical name for this principle is the telos of things, and it is also called the ‘final cause’ of each thing. For example, dwelling is the final cause of building a house, or cutting is the final cause of a knife. The final cause is really the end for which things come to be, and therefore the reason they come to be. It is through knowing the final cause of things that we really know their nature. Aristotle says that we know human nature from the fully grown and mature human being, which includes the person living a virtuous life. We cannot know the nature of something when it is incomplete.

With the birth of modern science this telos of things was swept aside, and teleology relegated to a superstition of the past. But early modern science was not concerned with the proper ends of things but with gaining mastery over them, of subjecting nature to human will. This break with the teleological understanding of nature wiped out a way of enquiring not only into the natural ends of things, but also investigation into the right use of things. Here is an example. According to Plato and Aristotle the right use of a house is dwelling, or the right use of a shoe is wearing it on one’s foot. But these things get put to a wrong use when used for money-making, for selling at a profit. In other words, the commercialising of things is putting them to wrong uses and replacing their proper end with a false or unjust end. The classic example is usury which is still illegal in some systems of law.

According to Plato and Aristotle, nature of herself provides exactly the right amount of things for man to live on. For example, the right amount of food from the land. But if the farmer seeks to make a profit rather than supply for his city, then the balance of nature will be upset and some will have more than they need while others will have insufficient. In other words, the wrong use of nature produces both poverty and excessive riches, and these in turn divide a society against itself. The art of the right use of things was what was meant by the Greek word oikonomia, the origin of our word ‘economy’. It was the art of knowing the just relation between ends and means. The proper ends and means of things kept them in harmony with nature as a whole. Thus the ‘wrong use’ of anything involves breaking away from the order of nature as a whole. It is significant that only the Catholic Church still teaches the principle of the right use of things in its social teaching on economics. Modern economics ignores it, or at best will mention it as only an ancient theory.

These ideas about ‘nature’ and about ‘telos’ have universal application. They are keys to understanding the question of natural law and the natural order of a society. For Plato and Aristotle, the city or polis are the natural habitat of the human species. As the social and political species, every community naturally tends towards a self-sufficient city. The constitutions may vary, but the telos is towards a balanced self-sufficiency where each citizen has a clearly defined role or vocation. This idea re-emerges in the twelfth century in John of Salisbury who likens human society to a living organism with its different organs and limbs. Every individual, from the farmer to the scholar to the Prince has a ‘status’ of honour within the whole, where each has reciprocal duties. The craftsmen formed guilds to assure their communal welfare and prevent illegal practices. For a brief moment such cities came into being in France but where eventually overwhelmed by the rise of commerce and trade for money instead of for goods. The demise of the organic city is the beginning of the modern marketised society.

If a society has a natural order, and its natural order forms a part of wider nature and of the universe, then it must also have a natural hierarchy. The proper meaning of ‘hierarchy’ is that mind or divine intelligence descends through the structure of things. The word ‘hierarchy’ literally means ‘divine principle’. It is a further part of the telos of things, guided by the most universal principle of ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ permeating all things. This natural hierarchical order of things is laid out very clearly many times in Thomas Aquinas. For example in his Summa Contra Gentiles he says:

  • …it is evident that all parts are ordered to the perfection of the whole, since a whole does not exist for the sake of its parts, but, rather, the parts are for the whole. Now, intellectual natures have a closer relationship to a whole than do other natures; indeed, each intellectual substance is, in a way, all things. For it may comprehend the entirety of being through its intellect; on the other hand, every other substance has only a particular share in being. Therefore, other substances may fittingly be providentially cared for by God for the sake of intellectual substances. (SCG 3 Chapter 112: 5)

As always with Aquinas, he is at once very clear but very compact. So it is worth drawing out what he says here. The first part – that everything is ordered to the perfection of the whole – we have already covered. We can see this simply in the organs of human anatomy. But when Aquinas says that “intellectual natures have a closer relationship to a whole than do other natures” we have to pause a moment. What he means here is that ‘mind’ is more universal than other substances, and so mind embraces everything, can take in the whole. The universe is already embraced and held in being by the mind of God. But the human mind, being made in the image of God, can ‘comprehend’ the universe and ‘participate’ in the divine intelligence embracing and sustaining it. That is to say, the truly universal principle of the universe is ‘mind’, and that all things exist by virtue of God knowing them into being. It also means that ‘intellectual substance’ is itself the most unified substance in itself. It is the rational principle of unity in all things. By contrast, every other substances, such as matter or the elements, have a ‘particular share in being’ and therefore providentially serve ‘intellectual substances’ or mind.

This means, of course, that in the order of nature the lower species serve the higher species. We can clearly observe this in nature. The bee pollinates the fruit tree in gathering its honey, the fruit tree nourishes the birds and a host of other creatures, including the human species. The human species returns to the earth the chore and seed from the fruit. Thus nature forms a virtuous circle. That is the natural hierarchy of nature clearly manifest to observation. Yet human society has a higher function. Its place is to manifest the understanding of the great order of things through living in accord with the law than runs through the whole. That means to live virtuously and, ultimately, to contemplate the Divine Goodness itself that has brought all beings into being and to which they naturally aspire to return through their part in the harmony of the universe. Thus the ‘contemplative’ life is the completion of the ‘practical’ life. The contemplative and the active mutually support and sustain each other. They are not merely ‘alternative life styles’ as we say in modern parlance!

From this it follows that each individual citizen has a part to play within the whole, and through making their contribution they bring benefit to all and at the same time fulfil their own nature. It is only through this participation in society that each individual may fulfil their natural talents or vocations. There is nowhere else to fulfil them. It is obvious that if each individual were to live only for themselves they would neither receive any benefit from, nor contribute any benefit to society. In this way we see that society has an underlying fundamental lawful order, and the more closely it holds to that underlying order, the better it will attain its end. Through caring for the whole, each individual is cared for and fulfilled. In that sense, each individual is also an end in themselves. Serving the whole does not mean being subsumed to the whole.

We find this fundamental principle of participation in the whole expressed in Plato’s reflections of the proper ends that the lawmaker must bear in mind. For example, in the Republic when it is suggested that the law should enable one class to live better than others, Socrates says:

“You have again forgotten, my friend, that the law does not ask itself how some one class in a state is to live extraordinarily well. On the contrary, it tries to bring about this result in the entire state; for which purpose it links the citizens together by persuasion and by constraint, makes them share with one another the benefit which each individual can contribute to the common weal, and does actually create men of this exalted character in the state, not with the intention of letting them go each on his own way, but with the intention of turning them to account in its plans for the consolidation of the state.” (Sourcebook of Ancient Philosophy, edited by Charles M. Bakewell) Plato’s Republic, Book VII. p. 519e)

Notice the expression “law does not ask itself”. Plato speaks from the essence of law as such and the ends it naturally secures. It is from an understanding of the essence of law and its ends that any good lawmaking can proceed. Laws that spring from the essence of law will not only assure the good of all, they will also “create men of exalted character”, which is to say it will create just citizens, citizens who love justice and delight in acting justly. Citizens who thus live justly will create a city of friendship. For Plato and Aristotle ‘friendship’ is the true end or fruit of law and justice. A city founded in friendship will aim at the higher arts of music and poetry and philosophy, and will be friends with the gods.

Lawmaking must be guided by seeking perfect justice, while bad law is law that favours one part of the city to the disadvantage of another. Lawmaking ought to be guided by divine intelligence rather than by human desire. Aristotle is very clear on this point, saying:

  • He therefore that recommends that the law shall govern seems to recommend that God and reason alone shall govern, but he that would have man govern adds a wild animal also; for appetite is like a wild animal, and also passion warps the rule even of the best men. Therefore the law is wisdom without desire. (Aristotle Politics 11. 3 – 4)

A just society is therefore governed by law and not by human passion. Law itself is the natural ruler, not man. But this requires an understanding of law as ‘reason’. When Plato and Aristotle speak of reason they have two kinds of reason in mind: theoretical reason and practical reason. These two aspect of reason have been lost in modern notions of reason. The theoretical reason is grounded in a knowledge of universals, or universal principles. For example it knows ‘being’ as a universal in which all beings participate. The theoretical reason therefore goes to the ‘truth’ of things. The practical reason, on the other hand, is grounded in the principles of action, or knowledge of right action. These principles come to light when specific proper actions are called for, so that, for example, justice can be applied to a specific situation. The practical reason therefore goes to the ‘good’ of things. It is the practical reason that knows the natural law. The natural law is known in the immediate demand to act, showing what ought to be done and what is not to be done. Cicero often writes of the practical reason in this sense, for example he says:

  • Law (lex) is the highest reason implanted in nature, which commands what is to be done and forbids the opposite. When this same reason has been strengthened and brought to completion in the human mind, it is law (lex), and so [the Stoics] they suppose that law is intelligence whose force (vis) it is to command right action and forbid wrongdoing … It is a force of nature; it is the mind and reason of the wise man; it is the rule (regula) for justice and injustice. (Cicero De Legibus, On the Laws 1.18–19)

When Cicero says ‘law is the highest reason implanted in nature’ he means that Nature Herself is imbued with reason and intelligence. The human intelligence shares in this same reason, and when it is perfected in the human mind, it is then the law in human reason. Acting from that law in human reason corresponds with the universal reason of nature, and so right action becomes action according to nature. This is what justice amounts to, acting in harmony with the intelligence of nature.

Notice a connection here with what Aquinas said: that intellectual substances are universal and that in a certain sense the human mind is all things, at least insofar as it has the capacity to receive into itself the intelligence and reason guiding the universe. We find this same understanding expressed is a different way in the third century by the biographer Diogenes Laertius who says:

  • For our individual natures are all parts of universal nature; on which account the chief good is to live in a manner corresponding to nature, and that means corresponding to one’s own nature and to universal nature; doing none of those things which the common law of mankind is in the habit of forbidding, and that common law is identical with that right reason which pervades everything, being the same with Jupiter, who is the regulator and chief manager of all existing things. (From Diogenes Laertius, Yonge’s translation, p. 290. Sourcebook of Ancient Philosophy, p. 274)

That ‘reason’ is a principle shared in all rational beings in common with nature is beautifully expressed in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

The intellectual part is the same to all rationals, and therefore that reason also, whence we are called rational, is common to all. If so, then that commanding power, which shows what should be done or not done, is common. If so, we have all a common law. If so, we are all fellow-citizens: and if so, we have a common city. The universe, then, must be that city; for of what other common city are all men citizens? (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, translated by Francis Hutcheson, Liberty Fund)

The idea that we are all ‘citizens of the universe’ is a distinguishing mark of the Stoic philosophy. Each individual is in a sense a ‘little city’, and the built city each dwells in bears a likeness to the ‘cosmic city’ that all mankind inhabits. What unites the three cities is the one law common to all. But the sense of living in the cosmos, what is called the ‘cosmic sense’, belongs to the human sense of existence as such and may be traced back to the earliest religious and mythic records of human thought, as we observed earlier. Yet with the rise of philosophical reflection the original ‘symbolic’ or ‘poet’ sense of existence shows itself to belong also to the rational sense. This appears most evidently in the sense of the ‘lawfulness’ of things, the fundamental intuition that reality is coherent.

The sense of belonging to the cosmos calls into being the highest human faculties. From this follows a natural hierarchy of things to be most honoured. For Plato the ‘soul’ of man is to be honoured first, bodily health and grace second, and material wealth third. This threefold hierarchy belongs to the individual citizen as well as to the structure of the city or polis. Thus statesmanship consists first in tending the soul, second in the health of the body, and third in the right use of wealth. A city loses its unity and harmony if this hierarchy is changed, especially if it is inverted and wealth becomes more honoured than bodily health or the harmony of the soul. Plato says clearly in the Laws:

  • The noblest and best thing of all for every city is that the truth be told about wealth, namely, that it is for the sake of the body, and the body is for the sake of the soul. (Plato Laws 870b)

Here we see how wealth has a natural telos or proper end in nurturing the body, while the body has a proper end in serving the soul. The soul is the proper ruler of the body and wealth, and this is the same with the soul of the individual and the soul of the city. When this natural order of honours is established, then the soul is open to the order of the cosmos and the realm of the gods. When this natural order is maintained, the city shapes itself accordingly, with the temple in the centre, the civic life surrounding it, and the cultivation of the land forming the outer circle. We see this natural form in the medieval cathedral cities. It is a form that unfolds spontaneously if the life of the soul and the divine order is placed first in honour. It is exactly what Aquinas means when he says “intellectual natures have a closer relationship to a whole than do other natures”. The soul has an affinity with the cosmic order, the intelligence of the universe personified in the powers of the gods and the providential goodness that guides everything to its appointed perfection.

Although this lawful order of things is natural and spontaneous, nevertheless it belongs to man to respond to it and to enquire into it. Unlike the other creatures, man has an innate sense of duty to educate and develop himself. The seed of this sense of duty is the inborne love of truth and goodness. There is a beautiful passage in Cicero’s De Finibus which describes the progressive development that follows from this sense of duty in the soul:

  • The primary duty is that the creature should maintain itself in its natural constitution; next, that it should cleave to all that is in harmony with nature and spurn all that is not; and when once this principle of choice and rejection has been arrived at, the next stage is choice, conditioned by inchoate duty; next such a choice is exercised continuously; finally, it is rendered unwavering and in thorough agreement with nature; and at that stage the conception of what good really is begins to dawn within us and be understood. Man’s earliest attraction is to those things which are conformable to nature, but as soon as he has laid hold of general ideas or notions and has seen the regular order and harmony of conduct, he then values that harmony far higher than all the objects for which he felt the earliest affection and he is led to the reasoned conclusion that herein consists the supreme human good. In this harmony consists the good, which is the standard of action; from which it follows that all moral action, nay morality itself, which alone is good, though of later origin in time, has the inherent value and worth to make it the sole object of choice, for none of the objects to which earlier impulses are directed is choiceworthy in and of itself. (De Finibus, III, 20-21)

Let me draw to a close with some brief thoughts on the virtues. When Cicero says ‘morality itself, which alone is good’, he means the virtues, not our modern idea of moral ‘values’. Plato and Aristotle likewise say that the virtuous life is the one good that alone is an end in itself, even though it must be cultivated. The four cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Courage and Temperance are for the ancients the ground of ethics. Each of these virtues is a skill practiced in following the natural law.

Prudence, the Greek virtue of phronesis, is really the virtue of right discernment, of seeing without illusion, with good judgement. It is a part of the practical reason we spoke of earlier. It discerns what ought to be done. A good translation of the Greek phronesis is ‘practical wisdom’, as distinct from ‘theoretical reason’.

Justice is the power to act in harmony with the true or natural order of nature. It is at once a kind of outward action and an inner condition of the soul. The just soul is a soul in harmony with itself.

Courage is part of what Plato calls the ‘spirited’ aspect of the soul, the part roused to take action in defence or in opposition. It must be guided by prudence and justice, the rational part of the soul, otherwise it becomes either rash or cowardly.

Lastly Temperance is the virtue of self-knowledge and self-command. In Greek it is Sophrosyne. This virtue is prized by Plato above all other virtues. For a man may be just, prudent and courageous yet lack self-governance. Temperance is the condition and skill of the soul with self-knowledge in command of itself and therefore immune to all the vices. Sophrosyne is distinguished from the other virtues in that it runs through the rational, the spirited and the appetitive parts of the soul. Later philosophers tended to associate it only with the appetitive part, and so its original meaning was last. According the Plato, only the temperate man is fit to be a statesman or a ruler of a city. Likewise, a city where the virtue of sophrosyne is established in its citizens will live in justice, peace and friendship with itself, and also with its neighbours. Sophrosyne is the natural law fully embodied in citizenship.

It is clear from all we have said that the ancient understanding of natural law has been lost in our age along with the primordial ‘cosmic sense’ in which the universe is experienced as intelligent and divinely ordered. Owing to this loss, the ancient virtues have also lost their ground since they are the actions of the practical reason that bring human life into accord with the cosmic order. Thus only a virtuous people living in harmony with the cosmic harmony can create a ‘natural society’ and so flourish as nature originally intends.

 

[1] See G. B. Kerferd, The Sophist Movement (Cambridge University Press, 1981) p. 112.