Philosophy: St Thomas Aquinas and Natural Law

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74: canonised in1323) was the most famous of the mediaeval catholic philosophers.

He came from an Italian noble family; became a Dominican friar (against the wishes of his father); studied in Paris; taught & wrote extensively. Greatly admired Aristotle, and his grand overall scheme was to reconcile Aristotle with Christianity. His books are therefore full of quotations from the Bible and from Augustine & the other Christian Fathers, as well as from Aristotle & any of the other Greek & Roman books which had survived; all treated rather uncritically.

   Aquinas followed Aristotle in his division of types of government as monarchy/ tyranny, aristocracy/ oligarchy etc, but with important changes. Thus, he defined a monarch as a ruler who holds power legitimately and governs justly, whereas a tyrant holds power by violence and governs unjustly; hence, there can never be a bad monarch or a good tyrant. He saw monarchy as the best form of government and tyranny the worst. Because men in power were likely to quarrel, causing divided counsels, it follows that aristocracy is less good than monarchy and oligarchy less bad than tyranny.

   Using Augustine and other authorities, Aquinas attempted to set the parameters for a “just war”. It must be waged by a legitimate authority, it must be in a just cause, such as self-defence or to right an obvious wrong, and it must be conducted without unnecessary suffering, especially to non-combatants. He argued that too much violence can invalidate even a just war, and warned monarchs that military glory should not be their principal aim.

 

Aquinas’s most important contribution to political thought was the idea of Natural Law; a complex idea. He divided law into three categories: God’s law governs the world and is by definition always right: Human law; the laws which governments enact, and which may be just or unjust; and in between these in Natural Law. This is the human perception of God’s law; a universal code of right and wrong, by which human laws should be judged. But, as a consequence of the so-called "Reniassance of the 12th century, educated man like Aquinas became acquained with the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and also of Islamic ideas, and he was aware that these pagans had a code of right and wrong similar to ours. How could this be possible? Aquinas was driven to a radical conclusion: although only Christians can have full knowledge of God’s law, God in his mercy has enabled us to discover Natural Law reason alone.

Aquinas proceeded to postulate, under Natural Law, much of what nowadays would be covered by the concept of human rights. Thus, he would argue, it cannot possibly be in accordance with Natural Law that innocent people should be punished for crimes that they had not committed, whereas on the other hand Natural Law surely says that we should be entitled to enjoy the fruits of our labour. Under Natural Law, all things should be held in common for the benefit of all; private property, especially of land, is purely a matter of human law.  Slavery too has no foundation in Natural Law. This leads him to some interesting conclusions, especially concerning resistance to oppressive and unjust governments.

Natural Law has been debated ever since. John Locke, who in the 17^th century first postulated the concept of Human Rights, derives them from Natural Law, and the American Declaration of Independence speaks of men as being “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. The most famous example of Natural Law at work in the 20^th century came in the trials of the Nazi leaders, where it was laid down that obeying the orders of the government was no defence for evil deeds. Whenever we say that a regulation is “unfair” or “unjust” we are postulating some concept of Natural Law! 

 

A debate concerning Boris Johnson

(This is an exchange conducted on Facebook between myself and a former colleague, Dr. David Gwyn)

Peter Shilston: Are not Boris Johnson's travails in 2021-22 an example, in the finest traditions of classical Greek tragedy, of hubris being inevitably followed by nemesis?

 David Gwyn: Yes they are, but he's not Agamemnon and neither is he Oedipus. He's a character from Attic comedy dragging his unfeasibly large phallus with him without being particularly funny; and so far as the tragedy goes, his hamartia is neither a flaw in an otherwise noble character nor a random error, but a course of action undertaken for the wrong reasons and with consequences disastrous for the rest of us. It's as if the city of Thebes was punished AFTER Oedipus's actions are discovered while the motherf*cker in question goes off with the lotus-eaters. 

Christmas

 A merry Christmas to everyone! 

These splendid angels are from the Priory Church, Great Malvern, Worcestershire

Christmas Parties

No, this is a gathering, not a party, and all Covid regulations were followed, and in any case it never took place. 

The Divine Right of Kings

It is often said that the "Divine Right of Kings" is a medaeval doctrine, but I do not believe that this was in fact the case. In the mediaeval world there were different and conflicting traditions at work.

In the Byzantine Empire the Emperor had quasi-divine status, deriving from ancient Near Eastern traditions. He was surrounded by a court of bureaucrats, bishops and eunuchs, with very elaborate ritual, and kept the Greek church, headed by the Patriach at Constantinople, under tight control. When the early crusaders reached Constantinople at the end of the 11th century, they looked on all this with amazement. But there was never a long-lasting dynasty of Emperors, and many were forcibly deposed or even killed. In the Chinese Empire, this was called "the mandate of heaven being withdrawn".

In the Germanic and Viking traditions, a King was elected by the chiefs of the clans, and his main job was to lead in battle. If a King died, leaving an adult son to succeed him, there was seldom a problem; but what if he was childless, or left only a daughter, or a young boy? Or what if the new King proved to be grossly incompetent? Then the chiefs reserved the right to depose him and look elsewhere. In English history we can consider the deposition and murder of Edward II and Richard II, and the Wars of the Roses, which stemmed from the pious but otherwise useless Henry VI. 

   All monarchs in Western Europe were nominally elective, and in Poland and the Holy Roman Empire there were actual elections, right through till the 18^th century. Also, in the feudal system, the great lords were always deeply suspicious and resentful of any attempt by the King’s government to impinge on their local power. 

One added ingredient was that the Pope claimed sovereignty over earthly monarchs, and possessed the right to decree whether or not a King's actions were in accordance with God's will.. A powerful Pope, like Gregory VII or Innocent III could, and did, excommunicate a hostile King or Emperor and call upon his subjects to rebel and depose him (though this wasn’t always successful!). The Popes claimed that the Holy Roman Emperor only held the title after he had been crowned in Rome. There was no equivalent to this in Byzantium, where the church was was kept under the control of the state - as it was, and still is, in Russia.

The notion that monarchic authority descended by strict hereditary was not necessarily a mediaeval idea. Indeed, the inherent instability of feudal society, where so much depended on the King's personal leadership, especially in war, made rule by a child, a woman or a fool almost inconceivable. Also, one school of thought was that authority really only began at the coronation of the new King. Interestingly, the vital part of the coronation, both in England and France, was not the crowning but the anointing with the holy oil. In the coronation of Elizabeth II,  and more recently that of Charles III, this part of the ritual was carefully screened from the television cameras.

The full notion of the “Divine Right of Kings” (especially when it is portrayed as hereditary) really only emerges in later times, in the 16^th & 17^th centuries, when the feudal system had effectively ended, monarchs had brought the Church under proper control and there a much stronger financial & bureaucratic base available to central government, which was able to survive under an infant King or even a ruling Queen. In England it began with the Tudors, whose claim to the throne, in terms of hereditary descent, was shaky to say the least. An adult but incompetent King could, however, still result in a constitutional crisis, as was shown in 17th century England and 18th century France.

Political Philosophy: Augustine's Question

Saint Augustine (lived 354-430) is the greatest of the early Christian theologians. He lived in North Africa and studied in Rome, where he read and admired Plato and Cicero. He then became a lecturer in Rhetoric, had a mistress and a son, and followed a Manichaean beliefs (see footnote). His life was transformed in 387, when he was baptised a Christian in 391; he was ordained a priest and later appointed Bishop of Hippo, near Carthage. In his autobiography, “ The Confessions”, he tells of his sinfulness before his conversion. As a bishop, he combatted the Arians, Pelagians and other heretics. He came to reject the pagan philosophers, because they had nothing to say about salvation. In 410 the fall of rome to the Goths caused an enormous shock throughout the western world, and caused Augustine to begin writing “The City of God”, setting out his own philosophical ideas.   

 Augustine's views were as follows:-

There are two cities: the earthly city is what we all live in, good & bad together; but Christians, who know God through Christ, are at the same time members of the City of God. We are pilgrims on this earth, and our ultimate goal is not material wellbeing, but salvation. The Greek and Roman writers are wrong in seeing citizenship in a rational and just state as the best life, because it ignores the question of sin. We all inherit Adam’s original sin, as a result of which we are filled with self-love and lack self-control. All of us deserve eternal damnation, from which we can only be saved by God’s grace.

What part can the earthly state play in this? A just state would be united by love of God instead of material wealth; but any earthly state contains evilly-intentioned people, and can never be entirely just. It can act morally or immorally. 

Augustine tells a story of a bandit who was brought before Alexander the Great, who asked him, “How dare you go around killing and robbing people?”, to which the bandit answered, “Well, you go around killing and robbing too; the only difference being that you do it on a far greater scale! So I get called a bandit, and you're called a conquerer!” This leads to the question: what is the difference between a state and a large and well-organised gang of bandits?

The question still merits discussion. One answer might be that we obey the bandit gang merely out of fear, because they have power (in the shape of weapons). But is our motive for obeying the policeman or the tax-collector also based on fear, or is there more to it? Is it based on a broader level of self-interest; namely, that we benefit from living in a peaceful, prosperous society, and would be unlikely to benefit in a chaotic, lawless one. But would we still think like this if we lived under a violent dictatorship, or were part of a persecuted minority group?

  We have no moral duty to obey orders given to us by an armed robber. But the state claims to have authority over us: we ought to obey it. What is the nature of this authority? Where does it originate? Is it absolute and unlimited? Or is all obedience ultimately based on self-interest, and are claims to authority mere propaganda, to induce us to obey? 

Augustine’s answer: The state, although a fallible human construct, is capable of doing God’s will if it maintains the peace, prevents crime and violence, promotes moral conduct and rules with justice. Under these circumstances, Christians ought to obey. 

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Footnote: Manichaeism is named after Mani, a Persian, who was executed there in 276 A.D. Using ideas from the Persian Zoroastrian religion, Christian Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, he portrayed the world as the scene of a titanic struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, in which we are all involved. Although never officially approved, Manicaeist beliefs have crept into Christianity and also into Islam. Various mystics and some heretical groups have seen the human soul as a fragment of the godhead trapped in the material universe, which is under the control of the forces of darkness, and from which it is always striving to escape. 

 

Musings: Boris Johnson and Napoleon III

 There has been loose talk on social media depicting Boris Johnson as a potential "fascist" (whatever that word might be taken to mean), but I do not agree. I think the most interesting parallel is with the Emperor Napoleon III in mid-19th century France. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the nephew of the great man, displayed impressive cunnning and ingenuity, plus a huge helping of luck, in being elected President of the French Republic after the revolution of 1848, and then a few years later staging a coup and proclaiming himself Emperor. But, having achieved supreme power, he appeared to have no clear idea of what he wanted to do with it! He has always been a puzzle to historians, one of whom dubbed him, "The sphinx without a secret". I think this mirrors Boris Johnson's situation today.

   Eventually, the Emperor Napoleon III blundered into a quite unnecessary war with Bismarck's Germany. He had left France without allies, was crushingly defeated, and ended his days in exile in England. Opponents of Boris Johnson might be asking themselves: where is today's equivalent of Bismarck?