Thomas Aquinas: Ethics, Politics, Faith, and Reason
Thomas Aquinas: Ethics and Politics
Ethics
Saint Thomas leaned on various concepts previously proposed by Aristotle:
- The concept of nature as the foundation of ethics. Considering that human happiness is the aim and objective of ethical and political science. According to Aristotle, happiness is the activity most consistent with the nature of man itself. Saint Thomas, as a theologian, explains the life of the blessed soul. The essence of happiness is the beatific vision, which is the direct contemplation of God.
- Moral virtue: It is necessary to perform well and to lead a happy life. The main ones are the theological virtues, which have God as an object. These are called faith, hope, and charity.
- Synderesis and conscience. Reason can be considered as two types of use:
- Theoretical or speculative. Its first notion is being. Demonstrations of speculative reason are dependent on their apparent truth of the first principle.
- Practical. Governs or directs the action; the first notion is good. The notion of having the same right to be, but adds the relationship of the will: the good is being seen as desirable or undesirable.
Practical reason directs the essential inclinations of nature. The human essence includes three features from which the main slopes derive:
- Substantial: Men tend to self-preservation.
- Animal: Human beings are endowed with sexual orientation and tend to the care of children.
- Rational: Men tend to know the truth.
For Aquinas, *it is necessary to do good and avoid evil*. That is, our natural reason knows immediately that it must do good and avoid evil.
Politics
Society is the sphere in which human beings can achieve happiness. For St. Thomas, the common good is all the means by which human beings can satisfy their material needs and the set of goods needed for intellectual growth, emotional and religious components.
Thomas Aquinas defines law as the ordering of reason for the common good by the competent authority. He distinguishes between three types of laws:
- Eternal law. Order of the divine intelligence, according to which God governs all things created.
- Natural law. It is inscribed in the divine order of human nature. The human part of the order of the eternal law by which God created all things.
- Positive law. It is the specific law or policy that determines the natural law. It is enacted by the competent authority, which represents God.
Thomas Aquinas: The Relationship Between Faith and Reason
The model of the relationship between faith and reason gives more autonomy to philosophy. Although philosophy does not provide salvation, the Christian philosopher does not directly use their faith when doing philosophy. He distinguished two orders:
- The order of nature: The human being is considered a natural among others.
- The order of grace: Man is elevated to a son of God.
The order of nature is subordinate to grace.
- Philosophy is an exercise in understanding the natural order. Philosophy can be autonomous as long as the intellect is given a reality and a larger role than that granted by Augustine.
- The intellect, as conceived by Thomas Aquinas, is owned intellectual light of God. But there is no need to suppose that it is a supernatural light.
- Intelligence capability enables access to God, not only in the order of faith but also in the natural order.
Relationship Between Natural Truths of Faith
- The truth of faith is superior to the truth of reason, but between them, there can be no contradiction. Truth cannot go against itself.
- According to Thomas, there are two kinds of truths of faith:
- Those which are above reason. Truths are inaccessible to human understanding and cannot be demonstrated (Mysteries of faith).
- Those which are within reason. Truths that can be understood by philosophy, by the use of reason.
The most important doctrine is referred to as the analogy of being, which is held on:
- What this is, the essence.
- The act of being of the essence.
The result is a new theory that distinguishes and describes two types of substances:
- Material. Bodies are accessible through the senses. Structure:
- Substantial level. The matter regarding the form, as the power to act.
- Accidental level. The substance is a potential for accidents, acts in the second grade who accidentally make him one way or another.
- Immaterial. They are pure forms, as Angels.
The authorities have created God is an essence that power is being and not his own act of being. Pure act of being essence. Being an act is exercised by the material realities of a more perfect, immaterial substance. The creatures have to be a loan, none of which is appropriated to be so in essence you have it, only God is the essence. To be necessary it is that in essence is identified in the act of being, while the contingent being is one in which does not include the act of being.