Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Ressourcement and Development

FINNIS THINKS THAT THE RATIONALISTS such as Samuel Clark made themselves easy targets for Hume's criticism, a criticism which deftly pointed out that these über-rationalistic theories were illegitimately leaping from fact to obligation, from two "is"-based premises to an "ought"-based conclusion without a middle term that coupled is to ought. Premises that were "is"-based could only yield "is"-based conclusions, not "ought"-based conclusions. So one had to give up, according to the argument, trying to construct any "ought"-based conclusions (that is, morally obligatory statements) from "is"-based premises that were predicated either upon nature or upon (speculative) reason. Practical reason as being a source of our "ought"-based premises was not something that factored into Hume's thinking since practical reason was executory of good, and not determinative of the good. Nor was it part of Hume's thinking that nature--created by God with its own ratio ordinis--might have some inner compelling inclinations, an internal movement, entelechy, or teleology, one based upon the reason of the Creator God himself, that necessarily imposed the obligatory "ought." He would not entertain the simple syllogism: we ought to act in accord with nature because nature has an order given it by God; nature suggests we should do act φ (or not do act φ); therefore, we ought to do act φ (or not do act φ).

How is it that Clarke made himself such an easy target for Hume? If Finnis is to be believed, it occurred through a historical shift or "turn," or actually two historical shifts or turns, in the thinking regarding natural law in between Thomas Aquinas (13th century) and Samuel Clarke, (late 17th early 18th century), one shift to which Clarke was heir, and one shift for which Clarke (and his fellow rationalist thinkers) were responsible. The first "turn" changed the model of natural law both in terms of the means of determine its content, and the basis of its obligation.

St. Thomas (under Finnis's interpretation) held a model that was based upon self-evident principles (and not nature) for its content. St. Thomas (again under Finnis's interpretation) held a model that with respect to obligation was built upon a "friendship" theory. As a result of the Jesuits Francisco Suárez and Gabriel Vásquez intermediated through the Dutch protestant Hugo Grotius, the natural law model shifted to a rationalistic-voluntaristic theory where content was obtained by a focus on nature and behavior fitting or unfitting to it and obligation was based upon divine command. Nature gave the "is," the divine command gave the "ought" to the "is," and the moral theory straddled both the world of "is" and the world of "ought."

According to Finnis, the Aristotelian/Thomasian classical tradition was thereby replaced by a false and unfaithful pseudo-Thomistic theory, one which sounded like Thomistic tradition but was actually a new "tradition of rationalism eked out by voluntarism." NLNR, 47. Through Suárez and Vásquez it entered into the Catholic intellectual world and took root in the early 17th century for four centuries until released through efforts of the some insightful theologians in the mid-1960s. Through Grotius it entered the Protestant intellectual world about the same time where it slowly morphed into rationalism to the extent it had any life at all, until it was practically banished in 1934 by the peremptory Nein! of Karl Barth.* In Finnis's interpretation, however, Clarke exposed himself further to Humean attack by rejecting the voluntaristic (Divine command) prong of the Suarezian/Vasquezesque/Grotian theory, and trying to bootstrap the obligation on an observation of nature, leaving himself only in the land of "is." Thus he left himself and all his progeny exposed to the attacks of Hume and of "the whole Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment current of ethics." NLNR, 47. The way out of the Humean and Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment critique according to Finnis's view is to go back to the original Aristotelian/Thomasian model based upon self-evident principles and the notion of friendship and not divine command. Since St. Thomas's development of these is insufficient, once re-acquired there must be some development. So Finnis's concept is one of ressourcement (return to the sources) and development (developing the original theory to clarify it).

According to Finnis, St. Thomas had a view of natural law that was neither rationalist or voluntarist. Instead, St. Thomas's theory of natural law was predicated, not upon nature or reason's reflection upon nature, nor upon God's will, but upon self-evident principles, whether self-evident per se, quoad omnes, or quoad sapientes.** To be sure, St. Thomas was "regrettably obscure on the question of which practical principles or precept are self evident," NLNR, 51. At best, Aquinas only "adumbrated but left insufficiently elaborated" these principles. NLNR, 47. According to Finnis, the natural law was neither based upon nature (i.e., rationalist), nor upon God's will (i.e., voluntarist), nor even upon nature cum Divine command (i.e., rationalist and voluntarist), but upon self-evident (and consequently unprovable, yet undeniable) first principles of practical reason. Essentially, however, St. Thomas's theory was neither rationalist nor voluntarist. With respect to content, St. Thomas did not advance a rationalist notion:

[W]hat is decisive [in Aquinas], in discerning the content of the natural law, is one's understanding of the basic forms of (not-yet-moral) human well-being as desirable and potentially realizeable ends or opportunities and thus as to-be-pursued and realized in one's action, action to which one is already beginning to direct oneself in this very act of practical understanding.

NLNR, 45. With regard to obligatoriness, St. Thomas did not adopt a voluntarist or Divine command (will) theory:

Aquinas . . . treats obligations as the rational necessity of some means to (or way of realizing) and end or objective (i.e., a good) of a particular sort? What sort? Primarily (i.e., apart from special forms of obligation) the good is a form of life which, by its full and reasonably integrated realization of the basic forms of human well-being, renders one a fitting subject for the friendship of the being whose friendship is a basic good that in its full realization embraces all aspects of human well-being, a friendship indispensable for every person.

NLNR, 46. In Finnis's view, then, we are obligated to follow the content of the natural law (obtained from self-evident principles) not because of a command from God, but because it is the means of friendship with God.

"Terra Nullius" by Lachlan Amore-Lloyd

In between Samuel Clarke and St. Thomas two things happened to queer the natural law doctrine and which made it so susceptible to Humean attack. The first turn or corruption according to Finnis is to be found in the version of natural law espoused and promulgated by the Jesuits Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) and by Gabriel Vásquez (1549/51-1604). Though seemingly predicated upon Aristotle and Aquinas, the theory advanced by these Spanish Jesuits "differed radically from the ethical theories actually maintained by Aristotle and Aquinas." NLNR, 45. Essentially, they dropped the Aristotelian and Thomasian reliance on self-evident principles. Instead, they advanced a combined "rationalist" and "voluntarist" theory of the natural law.

In terms of content, the reliance on self-evident principles of St. Thomas's theory was abandoned and replaced with a rationalistic basis. For Suárez and Vásquez, reason looked to human (rational) nature (and not self-evident principles) and therein discerned by a sort of extrapolation whether a certain act φ was befitting or unfitting with that nature. If it was fitting, then it was morally right. If it was unfitting, then it was morally proscribed. If φ was the only fitting act in the circumstances, then it was morally needful to to φ. This was the "rational" component of their theory.***

In moving from human (rational) nature to obligation, Suarez and Vasquez rejected the Thomasian "friendship" concept, and replaced with a Divine command theory. They required "an act of will be a superior, directing to moving the will of an inferior." NLNR, 45. This was the "voluntarist" part of their theory. The moral obligatoriness of nature, then, involved looking at whether a certain act φ was fitting (and therefore legitimate, and if φ was the only thing one could do in the circumstances, mandatory) or unfitting (in which case it was illegitimate) coupled with a divine command to follow nature. Their theory was then a blend or intertwining of rationalist and voluntarist principles.

Finnis states that this marked rationalist-voluntarist shift in the Suarezian and Vasquezesque doctrines of natural law from the Thomasian self-evident-friendship model shows itself in a shift language. Whereas those schooled in St. Thomas's original doctrine spoke of "end" and "good," those who relied on the Jesuit formulation started talking about "right" and "wrong." NLNR, 46.

It was not the original Aristotelian/Thomasian self-evident-friendship theory that made it into the influential treatise on law by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), De Jure Belli ac Pacis, but rather the Suazerian and Vasquezesque rationalist-voluntaristic theory. It is clear from Grotius's text that the content of the natural law is obtained by rationally looking at what is fitting with human nature, and what is contrary to human nature, and then tying that determination with the divine command to follow nature. The act that was fitting to nature was commanded by God, the author of Nature. The act that was unbefitting to nature was proscribed by God, the author of Nature.

So by the beginning of the Seventeenth century, the Thomasian theory had essentially been replaced by the Suarezian/Vasquezesque model with nary a murmur by the theologians. By the beginning of the Seventeenth century, the kernel of the natural law theories was as follows:

What is right and wrong depends on the nature of things (and what is coveniens to such nature), and not on a decree of God; but the normative or motivating significance of moral rightness and wrongness, in particular the obligatoriness of the norm of right and wrong, depends fundamentally upon their being a decree expressing God's will that the right be done (as a matter of obligation) and that the wrong be avoided (likewise) . . . .

NLNR, 44.

The second "turn" is evident in Samuel Clarke (and incipient in Grotius himself), specifically Clarke's rejection of the "assumption that obligation is essentially the effect of a superior's act of will." NLNR, 44-45. In other words, of the rationalistic-voluntaristic Suarezian/Vasquezesqe/Grotian model, Clarke rejected the voluntaristic prong.**** But he retained the rationalistic part of the theory, remaining "so firmly within the grip of the thesis that practical reasoning is a matter of discerning relations of fittingness or consistency with nature that he tried to treat obligation as just one more of the set of relations of consistency."

It was these two turns that wholly corrupted the Aristotelian/Thomasian doctrine of natural law and exposed the substantially denuded and transformed doctrine of natural law to such withering attack by Hume and by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers. But the theory of natural law that they dispatched into the grave was not the Aristotelian/Thomasian one, but rather a counterfeit. The theory they destroyed by the naturalistic fallacy was a rationalist-voluntaristic corruption sans the voluntaristic part, not the original, classical theory of Aristotle and St. Thomas which was based on self-evident principles and notions of friendship with God.

What therefore is required in Finnis's view is a ressourcement and a development of St. Thomas. We must recover his thought, says Finnis, and, where St. Thomas is deficient, we must develop it.

It is a bold theory and a bold project. One that has raised the hairs on the back of both classical and Thomistic natural law advocates, on one side, and modern consquentialists, relativists, and legal positivists, on the other side. But this is exactly what Finnis (through the work of Germain Grisez) claims to do and to have done in his Natural Law and Natural Rights. It is as if the triumvirate of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph Boyle (who were the original collaborators and promoters of this "new" modern law theory) had boldly stepped into no man's land only to be fired on by both sides. What is not clear is whether this no man's land was once occupied by St. Thomas, a terra Sancti Thomae occupatum, or a land once occupied by Kant, a land des Kants, or a land-never-before-occupied and up for grabs, a terra nullium.

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*On Karl Barth's highly negative assessment of natural law, see a series of posting in Lex Christianorum: Karl Barth's Response to Natural Law: Nein!, Karl Barth's Tin Ear: Notes, But No Melody, and Karl Barth: Rubbing Out the Image of God in Man.
**Self-evident propositions whether of speculative reason (such as the principle of non-contradiction: something cannot both be and not be in the same way and same time) or of practical reason (e.g., one ought always to do good) were traditionally divided into those that were obvious in themselves (per se nota secundum se or per se nota secundum se tantum) and those self-evident to us (per se nota quoad nos). The latter were divided into propositions that were self-evident to all (per se nota quoad omnes) and those propositions more complicated, and which only with those with sufficient understanding of the terms could grasp their self-evident status (per se nota quoad sapientes).
***Given the texts of St. Thomas, Finnis cannot outright say that this "rationalist" thinking is not present in St. Thomas, but he essentially demotes it, insisting that this "rationalist" thinking is secondary, and that fundamentally, St. Thomas is based upon "self-evident" principles and not rationalist observations of nature. "Aquinas would not reject the Vazquez-Suarez formulae, but would give them a subordinate and derivative place in the methodology of ethics." NLNR, 45. Finnis also states that a subsidiary effect of the shift in focus was the "perverted faculty" argument, which he colors as a "late but traceable descendant of the Vazquez-Suarez conception of natural law . . . which looms large among the modern [false] images of natural law theory, that natural functions are never to be frustrated or that human faculties are never to be diverted ('perverted') from their natural ends." He calls the argument "ridiculous," but gives no basis for that judgment other than a brief reference to Germain Grisez's Contraception and the Natural Law. NLNR, 48, 55. At least six things ought to be noted about the comment. First, Finnis's extreme formulation of the "perverted faculty" argument ("never"). Second, may there a more nuanced form of the "perverted faculty" argument that is acceptable (something à la "'close-in' teleologies" advanced by Steven A. Long in his Natura Pura? See Long on Porter: "Close-In" Teleologies and the Natural Law. Third, St. Thomas appears to have had a form of the "perverted faculty" argument (certainly in the case of lying, S.T. IIaIIae, q. 110, a. 3c, which Finnis acknowledges), and indeed (fourth) a form of it can be find in authoritative documents of the Catholic Church and in its common teaching. Fifth, what is the relationship between John Paul II's "theology of the body" and the "perverted faculty" theory? If one acts against the "theology of the body," is one also not guilt of having "perverted" [the bodily] faculty" argument? Sixth, why is it "ridiculous" without argument? Finnis is more tolerant of the opinions of Hart, Raz, and positivists than the moral theologians who advocated a "perverted faculty" argument.
****This is an assertion by Finnis without any supporting reference, and, in my view, dubious. It is difficult to see how such a conclusion can be based upon Samuel Clarke's Discourse, where it seems rather clear that the will of God was invoked by him, and so he would have combined both the rationalist and voluntaristic prongs of what Finnis identifies as the Suarezian/Vasqezesque/Grotian model of natural law as compared to the Aristotelian/Thomasian model:

That the same necessary and eternal different relations that different things bear one to another, and the same consequent fitness or unfitness of the application of different things or different relations one to another, with regard to which the will of God always and necessarily does determine itself to choose to act only what is agreeable to justice, equity, goodness, and truth, in order to the welfare of the whole universe, ought likewise constantly to determine the wills of all subordinate rational beings, to govern all their actions by the same rules, for the good of the public in their respective stations: That is, these eternal and necessary differences of things make it fit and reasonable for creatures so to act: they cause it to be their duty, or lay an obligation upon them, so to do, even separate from the consideration of these rules being the positive will or command of God, and also antecedent to any respect or regard, expectation or apprehension, of any particular private and personal advantage or disadvantage, reward or punishment, either present or future, annexed, either by natural consequence, or by positive appointments, to the practising or neglecting those rules.

That though these eternal moral obligations are, indeed, of themselves incumbent on all rational beings, even antecedent to the consideration of their being the positive will and command of God, yet that which most strongly confirms, and in practice most effectually and indispensably enforces them upon us, is this, that both from the nature of things, and the perfections of God, and from several other collateral considerations, it appears, that as God is himself necessarily just and good in the exercise of his infinite power in the government of the whole world, so he cannot but likewise positively require that all his rational creatures should in their proportion be so too, in the exercise of each of their powers in their respective spheres: That is, as these eternal moral obligations are really in perpetual force merely from their own nature and the abstract reason of things, so also they are moreover the express and unalterable will, command, and law of God to his creatures, which he cannot but expect should, in obedience to his supreme authority, as well as in compliance with the natural reason of things, be regularly and constantly observed through the whole creation.

The Disfigured Face: The War of the Philosophers: St. Thomas on Slavery

THE SCHOOL OF SALAMANCA was the work of the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria. He has been hailed as the "Father of International Law." He was not trapped by a Spanish parochialism or jingoism; his philosophy, and his Faith, allowed him to overcome many of those nationalistic hindrances that bound the ordinary Spaniard to his belief in superiority or exceptionalism of his nation. It was these sorts of intellectual chains that bound up the intellect of that advocate of natural slavery, Sepúlveda, and made him, in an ironical way, a slave to them. Spain in the early 16th century was the glory of the earth. Headed by the Emperor Charles V, Spain was the world power. It was firmly planted in two continents. It took a great man to seek that there was a part of Spain, its earthly glory withal, that was not glorious in heaven. But Vitoria's merits were largely a reflection of his teacher, St. Thomas Aquinas.

Portrait of Emperor Charles V by Titian

It was his appointment to the University of Salamanca, and his promotion of Thomism there, that was Vitoria's greatest, and lasting work. Unusually, he did not publish any work during his lifetime, and the majority of what we have from him are as a result of notes taken from his lectures. Perhaps his most important, certainly the most frequently read, are his Relectio de indis recenter inventis, his lectures on the status of the recently-discovered Amerindians. Many of these notes, at least those on other topics, unfortunately, remain unpublished.

In his Relectio de Indis, Vitoria addressed the issue of whether Spain was justified in conquering the Americas because of the lapse of reason, the "rational insufficiency," of the Amerindians. Despite their social sins and cultural enormities (e.g., human sacrifice, idolatry), were the Amerindians capable of self-government, self-determination? Or were their cultural enormities, the product of the failure of the natural law and reason, justifications for just war and warrant for conquest? It is clear that Aristotle's authority and stature was the biggest impediment to answering the question. Specifically, the Aristotelian doctrine (found in his Politics and in his Nicomachean Ethics) that there were men who were barbarian, who were by nature slaves, and were naturally lacking in the right over themselves and their possessions. Slavery was rampant in the ancient Greek world, and Aristotle addressed the issue of whether it was a natural institution, or rather one that was conventional. Aristotle believed that slavery was a natural institution, that there were some men, who, by reason of their superiority, were naturally masters, and other men, who, by reason of their inferiority, naturally slaves.

But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature? This is the question: but it is interesting that he feels the need to ask it. There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.

Politics, I, 2, 1254a. Vitoria was, as may be expected, conservative, and he struggled to find a way around the Aristotelian doctrine without repudiating it. "Aristotle certainly did not mean to say that such men thereby belong by nature to others and have no rights of ownership over their own bodies and possession (dominium sui et rerum). Such slavery is a civil and legal condition, to which no man can belong by nature." Aristotle "certainly did not mean by this that such men had a legal right to arrogate power to themselves over others on the grounds of their superior intelligence, but merely that they are fitted by nature to be princes and guides." Granting, arguendo, that the American Indians were "foolish and slow-witted as people say they are," Vitoria's conclusions were that it was "still wrong to use this as grounds to deny their true dominion (dominium); nor can they be counted among the slaves." Cortest, 37 (quoting Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 233.)

Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas by Félix Parra

Vitoria's effort to circumvent Aristotle without outright repudiation has been criticized by scholars, and probably rightly so. To give to Aristotle such a slant was outside the range of probability of Aristotle's intendment.

On the other hand, Las Casas was much less deferential to the Aristotelian "natural slavery" doctrine. Cortest, 38. Las Casas maintained that there was but one human race, "una denique sola species creaturae rationalis, quae in individuis suis per universum mundum erat dispersa," "besides, there is only one species of rational creature, which is dispersed through the entire world in his individuality." (So in his De unico vocationis modo.) Though there may be differing levels of cultural achievements and though they may be laboring under social or cultural impediments, the Indians remained children of God, redeemed of Christ, and fellow brothers with the Spaniards:

Again, if we want to be sons of Christ and followers of the truth of the gospel, we should consider that, even though these peoples may be completely barbaric, they are nevertheless created in God's image. They are not so forsaken by divine providence that they are incapable of attaining Christ's kingdom. They are our brothers, redeemed by Christ's most precious blood, no less than the wisest and most learned men in the whole world.

Cortest, 41 (quoting Las Casas's In Defense of the Indians) Can one imagine Aristotle, the proud Greek, saying of the Persians or the lesser peoples, "They are our brothers"? Manifestly no. Christianity injected something precious, something magnificent, into the world, a comfort to the poor and downtrodden, and a humbling medicine, perhaps bitter in taste, to the rich and the proud. Oh let us praise the Lord God in unison with Mary for the entry into the world of this thing!

Magnificat anima mea Dominum,
et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salvatore meo . . . .
Fecit potentiam in brachio suo,
dispersit superbos mente cordis sui;
deposuit potentes de sede,
et exaltavit humiles;
esurientes implevit bonis,
et divites dimisit inanes.

Others also addressed the issue of the Amerindians' status as "natural slaves," and weighed in against Sepúlveda. Among these, Cortest cites and discusses the Jesuit José de Acosta, the so-called "Pliny of the New World," who detailed the natural and moral history of the Indies. He discusses the Dominican Domingo Bañez, the proeclarissimum jubar, the "brightest light" of Spain, and confessor to St. Theresa of Avila. He also briefly addresses the view of the Dominican Melchor Cano, that zealous prosecutor of Carranza and author of the famous De Locis Theologicis. But the real focus of his sights is Francisco Suárez, and the teacher of them all, St. Thomas Aquinas.

In his De triplici virtute theologica, fide, spe & charitate, Suárez explicitly confronts the position of Sepúlveda on Spain's right of conquest over the pagan American Indians. The three arguments commonly given were that such conquest was justified by reason of the Indian practice of human sacrifice, which warranted intervention to defend the innocent. The second argument commonly given was that such conquest was legitimated by the cultural benefits that the pagan society would receive from its conquerors' superior civilization. The third argument (which is the one that Cortest in his discussion of Suárez focuses on) is the argument that the Amerindians were, by nature, slaves, and therefore could be compelled to obedience to their superiors. Cortest, 40.

Aztec Human Sacrifice: Did it Warrant Conquest?

In addressing the last argument, Suárez doubted that, in fact, there could be peoples that were so barbarous and uncivilized "that they were neither united in a civil society, nor capable of exercising government." In other words, the capacity to live in common and provide for self-determination and self-government is so intrinsic to humanity, that one ventures into the land of theory to suggest that a people have lost this capacity. In practice, Suárez maintains, such a barbarous people with an absolute inability to self-govern have never been found.

The fact is that all of these men: Vitoria, Las Casas, de Acosta, Bañez, Cano, Suárez, and literally hundreds of others who are lesser lights but remain within the constellation of the School of Salamanca were schooled by St. Thomas Aquinas. "[T]he reason these writers share a common view concerning the doctrine of natural servitude is that Thomas himself rejected this doctrine." Cortest, 42. It is St. Thomas, steeped in the law and teachings of the Gospel, who overcame the Aristotelian "some men are by nature slaves" blight.

Cortest focuses on St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. Thomas's commentary on Aristotle's Politics is problematic in that it is difficult to tell when St. Thomas is citing Aristotle's text with approval, and when he is not. Moreover, the commentary was never completed. The Summa, though also not fully completed, presents clearly enough St. Thomas's own view on the matter of the institution of slavery. The heart of the Thomistic analysis is Question 57, article 3 of the second part of the second part (IaIIae):

From the bare nature of the case there is no reason for this man rather than that man being a slave. It is only when it is looked at pragmatically in its results that, as Aristotle says, it is expedient for him to be ruled by a wiser man whom he serves. Servitude, which is part of the ius gentium, is natural then in the second sense of our explanation, not the first.

[H]unc hominem esse servum, absolute considerando, magis quam alium, non habet rationem naturalem, sed solum secundum aliquam utilitatem consequentem, inquantum utile est huic quod regatur a sapientiori, et illi quod ab hoc iuvetur, ut dicitur in I Polit. Et ideo servitus pertinens ad ius gentium est naturalis secundo modo, sed non primo [modo].

S.T., IIaIIae, q. 57 a. 3, ad 3. St. Thomas appears, then, to reject the Aristotelian notion that some men, are by nature inferior to others. However, he does not enter into the intellectually vacuous and indefensible territory of those who hold that men are in all things equal. Such a view is, as a matter of empirical fact, untenable. (In fact, in practice, such a belief can cause untold suffering, perhaps even more than the suffering imposed by slavery. One need only look at the sufferings of those under Communism. Wasn't it Gilles Dauvé who said, "Communism believes in equality through force"? Slavery is inequality through force. Communism is equality through force. Both are social and moral evils.) What St. Thomas suggests is that though slavery is not a natural institution, it is natural that some men should be subordinate, but not enslaved, to others, namely, the wiser.

This view is confirmed in another part of the Summa (dealing with the relationship between man and wife). Here, St. Thomas distinguishes between the subordination which is only for the advantage of the master (slavery), and subordination which is for the benefit of the subject (right order):

Subjection is of two kinds; one is that of slavery, in which the ruler manages the subject for his own advantage, and this sort of subjection came in after sin. But the other kind of subjection is domestic or civil, in which the ruler manages his subjects for their advantage and benefit. And this sort of subjection would have obtained even before sin. For the human group would have lacked the benefit of order had some of its members not been governed by others who were wiser.

Ad secundum dicendum quod duplex est subiectio. Una servilis, secundum quam praesidens utitur subiecto ad sui ipsius utilitatem et talis subiectio introducta est post peccatum. Est autem alia subiectio oeconomica vel civilis, secundum quam praesidens utitur subiectis ad eorum utilitatem et bonum. Et ista subiectio fuisset etiam ante peccatum, defuisset enim bonum ordinis in humana multitudine, si quidam per alios sapientiores gubernati non fuissent. . . .

S.T., Ia q. 92 a. 1 ad 3. Slavery, though perhaps prevalent among men, is not a natural institution. It entered the world by reason of man's original sin, and, where it becomes institutionalized, as it did in Ancient Greece, or as it did in Africa, Islam (Islam has the added problem that slavery is justified in the Qur'an and the Sunnah, Mohammed having participated, nay, benefited, nay even relished in orgasmic shudder in the institution, as he had sex with his women slaves. Thus it would appear that slavery, which is against the natural law, has the sanction of Allah, if Muhammad and his Qur'an is to be believed.), or the West during the era of the slave trade and chattel slavery, it is the product of sin: indeed, it is a punishment for having sinned. Slavery does not insinuate itself into a society unless it has compromised the natural moral law:

The difference between a slave and a free man is that a free man is because of himself, as it says at the beginning of the Metaphysics; whereas a slave is geared to the benefit of another. So someone lords over another as a slave when he simply uses him for his own, that is the lord's purposes. And because everyone naturally values his own good, and consequently finds it grievous to surrender entirely to another the good that ought to be his own, it follows that lordship of this kind cannot but be punitive to those subjected to it. For this reason man cannot have lorded over man in the sate of innocence in that sort of way.

Cuius ratio est, quia servus in hoc differt a libero, quod liber est causa sui, ut dicitur in principio Metaphys.; servus autem ordinatur ad alium. Tunc ergo aliquis dominatur alicui ut servo, quando eum cui dominatur ad propriam utilitatem sui, scilicet dominantis, refert. Et quia unicuique est appetibile proprium bonum, et per consequens contristabile est unicuique quod illud bonum quod deberet esse suum, cedat alteri tantum; ideo tale dominium non potest esse sine poena subiectorum. Propter quod, in statu innocentiae non fuisset tale dominium hominis ad hominem.

Ia q. 96 a. 4 ad arg. There is a predisposition in man toward slavery. This is the result not only of the Fall, but also of the natural convenience, the pragmatic benefits to the master from this institution. It is sometimes so entrenched that the removal of it can cause more harm than the tolerance of it. Analogously, it is sometimes better to live, at least for a time, with a tumor, if to remove it would result in certain death. Thus, slavery is something that, though not in accord with nature, is frequently found among human societies. This is because something can be said to be natural in two ways, actively, because nature requires it, and passively, because nature does not appear to forbid the contrary.

You speak of something being according to natural right in two ways. The first is because nature is set that way; thus the command that no harm should be done another. The second is because nature does not bid the contrary; thus we might say that it is of the natural law for man to be naked, for nature does not give him clothes; these he has to make by art. In this way common ownership and universal liberty are said to be of natural law, because private property and slavery existence by human contrivance for the convenience of social life, and not by natural law. . . .

[Q]uod aliquid dicitur esse de iure naturali dupliciter. Uno modo, quia ad hoc natura inclinat, sicut non esse iniuriam alteri faciendam. Alio modo, quia natura non induxit contrarium, sicut possemus dicere quod hominem esse nudum est de iure naturali, quia natura non dedit ei vestitum, sed ars adinvenit. Et hoc modo communis omnium possessio, et omnium una libertas, dicitur esse de iure naturali, quia scilicet distinctio possessionum et servitus non sunt inductae a natura, sed per hominum rationem, ad utilitatem humanae vitae.

IaIIae q. 94 a. 5 ad 3. Thus, slavery was not a natural institution, but one of human origin. It has no divine or natural pedigree. It is one imposed by positive law, by custom, and has entered the world as a result of sin. Though men are, by accidents of birth, culture, education, inheritance unequal, all men are by nature equal, omnes homines natura sunt pares. S.T., IIaIIae q. 104 a. 5 co.

And so it is that this chapter turns to a close:

The philosophical debate concerning the nature of the native peoples of the New World was an important component in the controversy surrounding the legitimacy of the wars of conquest. The legal theory that grew out of this controversy would have a long history. The juridical treatises produced by the members of the School of Salamanca were primary sources for Hugo Grotius and, as such, had a major impact on the development of modern international law. More importantly, the participants in the debate reveal two distinctly different views concerning the dignity of the human person. One one hand, the [strict] Aristotelians (lead by Sepúlveda) defended a hierarchical notion of human worth . . . On the other hand, the strict Thomists defended the idea that no one is a natural slave; all people are children of God and thus, foreign peoples, even if they believe in different gods, are human beings created by God who live in legitimate societies.

Cortest, 47.

From here, Cortest turns to the philosophy of natural right. Specifically, Cortest traces its origin to the 16th century, and, after exploring the origin of modern human rights, will compare it to the classic, specifically Thomist, theory of natural law.

The Disfigured Face: Ontological Morality and Human Rights

THE "NATURE" OF ARISTOTLE AND OF AQUINAS which is the source of the natural law is different from the denuded, one dimensional, materialistic "nature" of the modern day sciences. If the "nature" as understood by Aristotle and Aquinas were an apple, the "nature" as understood by the modern scientist is but a peel. The modern notion of "nature" is lacking both fruit and seed. It is tasteless, fruitless. It is bland of value, composed only of empirical fact. There is no "ought" in it; there is only "is" in it. The Aristotelian/Thomistic concept of nature had and element of design, but not the design of some complex watch, but the design of a quasi-living organism, as it had an inner entelechy, a desire, a yearning toward the God that had brought it out of nothing and that constantly preserved it in being. The entire cosmos, after all, even its raw matter, the chaotic matter over which the Spirit hovered, was a creature of God. God did not act arbitrarily, without reason in creation ex nihilo. It followed that nature had a purpose, a goal, an end, a telos (from the Greek word τέλος, a word meaning "purpose," or "goal," or "end"). Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas (and, for that matter, the entirety of the perennial tradition in between them and after them until this notion was rejected as part of the Enlightenment, Liberal, and Modernist project) was teleological. In this regard, Cortest quotes Ernest Fortin:

The heart of the Aristotelian enterprise is the well-known and now almost universally contested thesis that nature acts for an end.

This teleological view of nature of Aristotle was shared by St. Thomas; however, he nestled it into his unique metaphysics or ontology, which distinguished essence from existence, and which found that existence was the preeminent good, in fact the source of both the true and the good, of perfection. In St. Thomas's view, good and being are exchangeable terms. If a thing is good, it subsists in the fullness of its being (existence); that is, it conforms entirely to its nature which is informed by its end. To the extent that it fails to abide by its being (existence), to the extent that it misses the mark that is its end and which is defined by its nature, it suffers (or does, if the creature has free will and knowledge) evil. St. Thomas, it hardly need be said, also recognized the truths of revelation, particularly those that related to the dignity of man as a creature of God and as a result of his ultimate calling (union with God in the beatific vision). His understanding of the end of nature was informed by the Evangelical revelation.

Aristotle had no inkling of the Gospel. It is for this reason that, "[a]lthough both Aristotle and Aquinas construct ethical and moral systems on metaphysical principles, they have entirely different conceptions of the value of human life." Cortest, 18. So different is that conception, that Aristotle and St. Thomas stand apart each other by a great divide. It is the philosophical analogue of the historical divide between B.C. and A.D. The Lord had not walked among us when Aristotle did his thinking. Aristotle promoted (or at least excused) the killing of deformed children and human chattel slavery, something unthinkable to St. Thomas. So massive is the difference the Gospel made to the Aristotelian underlayment of St. Thomas Aquinas, that if Aristotle alone was relied upon to build a natural law, he would be unable to provide us with a workable morality. "I would argue," says Cortest, "that no credible doctrine of human rights can be based exclusively on an Aristotelian anthropology, since nature shows no compassion for the weak, the innocent, or the 'deformed.'" Cortest, 19. Cortest is right. As great as Aristotle was, he lived without Gospel light, and his teaching is, next to the sublime values of the Gospel, barbaric in some aspects. To return to raw Aristotelianism without the temper of the Gospel would be a giant leap backwards in human development.

While indisputably St. Thomas had a high view of human dignity, it would be a mistake to attribute to him, as some scholars do (John Finnis or Brian Tierney come readily to mind), the modern notion of "human rights." The most fundamental chasm exists between St. Thomas's traditional notions and the modern notions of human right. That chasm arises out of the excessive individualism of modernity, an individualism so excessive that it advances rights that are idiosyncratic, even against human nature and inimical to communal life. St. Thomas always saw rights ensconced within the greater good of the community, and never apart from duty to God and neighbor. He never saw rights as something inhering in free-standing, atomic and autonomous individuals. "In Thomas's system, ius or right is understood in terms of justice, which is itself always understood of others." Cortest, 21. In short, St. Thomas saw ius (right) as coming out of an I-Thou and I-You relationship, one of responsibility to God and to fellow humans. Moderns, on the other hand, see right as coming from the seagull philosophy in Pixar's (Disney's) movie Finding Nemo: "Mine, mine, mine, mine . . . ." I rather think that St. Thomas would have been impatient with the modern advocates of human rights, who now claim things like the right to abortion, the right to homosexual marriage, among a whole slew of rather questionable "rights." Like Nigel in Finding Nemo, he would have told the incessant advocates of autonomy to shut up. To claim St. Thomas as a sort of precursor to the modern notion of rights is not fair to St. Thomas's thought.

The "Seagull Philosophy" of Modern Right: Mine, mine, mine . . .

Three things are without question shared between St. Thomas and Aristotle: (1) a teleological view of nature, (2) a notion that positive laws, or laws particular to the city-state, are distinct from universal or natural law, and, finally, (3) that this natural or universal law is not to be separated from the notion of a natural or universal justice. Cortest, 14, 22.

From St. Thomas, Cortest jumps to the Dominicans at the School of Salamanca, focusing on the works of Francisco Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, and Domingo Bañez. These men were devoted followers of their fellow Dominican, Thomas Aquinas. Cortest also rejects the effort to recruit the Dominicans at the School of Salamanca as advocates of modern, individualistic human rights. "For them, individual or human rights are always understood within the more general context of justice." Cortest, 22. It seems that Brian Tierney is at the forefront of recruiting the Salamancans as advocates of modern human rights. But it would seem that Tierney is not recruiting, but impressing or shanghaiing the Salamancans who would probably be unwilling advocates of the modern, liberal, individualistic vision of human rights that are not based on any notion of nature or reason.

Domingo de Soto of the School of Salamanca

The Salamancans distinguished between the notions ius or right and dominium or lordship or power. De Soto's De iusticia et jure posits a distinction between the two:

Ius is the same as what is just (as Isidore says in Book V). It is the object of justice, the equity which justice establishes between men, dominium is the facultas of a lord (as its name implies) in servants or objects which he can use has he likes for his own benefit. Ius must therefore not be confused with domininium, as it is superior to it, and of wider reference.

Ius namque idem est (ut ait lib. 5 Isid.) quod iustum. Est enim objectum iustitiae: puta aequitas quam iustitia inter homines constituit: dominium autem facultas est domini (uti nomen sonat) in servos vel in res, quibus suo arbitratu, ob suumque commodum utitur. Fit ergo, ut ius no converatur cum dominio, sed sit illi superius et latius patens.

(quoted in Cortest, 23).

The Salamancan jurists, Vitoria, Soto, and, most famously, Bartolomé de las Casas, were very critical of the Spanish Conquista of the New World, and the Conquistadores' treatment, in some cases virtual enslavement, of the indigenous populations. It would seem, then, that the Salamancans were advocating some sort of inherent human rights of the Indian that were being violated. Brian Tierney seizes on the Salamancan notion of dominium or lordship as the source of the Salamancan advocacy of modern human rights. Dominium, Tierney suggests, is nothing but right under another name. Cortest, I think properly, criticizes Tierney's use of dominium as the source of individualistic rights. "[T]he difference between the traditional notions of dominium as Vitoria [and the Salamancans] understood it and a doctrine of 'natural rights' is vast." Cortest, 23. To equate the two would be to wrest the Thomistic objective foundation inherent in the Salamancans' thought and carry it into a subjective realm. It would be analogous to taking the Thomistic intellectual cathedral and moving it from a foundation of rock onto a foundation of sand, watch the cathedral collapse into a pile of rubble, and call the two situations the same. The underlying basis of modern rights theory and Thomistic and Salamancan natural law are simply different. Moreover, as Cortest correctly points out, the notion of dominium related to self-governance of a people, not to a subjective, individual right over one's possessions, and certainly not a subjective, individual right over one's own person against others. Cortest, 24. The Salamancans were not defending the rights of the Indians, but were defending the natural right of the Indian communities to exist and to govern themselves. Cortest, 25.

The only "right" found among the Salamancans that may be said to be an individual right in the strict sense would be the right to self-preservation. "Soto comes closest to defending a notion of personal rights in his treatment of self defense," which builds upon the right to self-preservation. Cortest, 25. But even this right must be understood within the more general framework of justice and the common good, something that is entirely absent from the modern concept of rights, which seem to be, in fact, independent of notions of justice to the entirety, and seem to be pitted against the demands of the common good or the good of the community. Certainly, many of the advocates of modern so-called "human rights" espouse values that are contrary to the very nature of man. Most uncontroversially, the claim to the "right" to procure an abortion is against human nature; indeed, it is foul, not fair, to nature's teaching. A tree, like a legal theory, is known by its fruits. Classical natural law and modern natural rights are two different species.

Now what is true for the Salamancans is not necessarily true for Suárez according to Cortest. In Cortest's view, Suárez appears to hover a bit closer to the modern notion of personal, positive human rights. Cortest, for example, cites to the definition of ius or right in Suárez's De Legibus, ac Deo Legislatore as more attuned to the modern understanding of human rights: According to Suárez, ius is "a certain moral power which ever man has, either over his own property or with respect to that which is due to him . . . . Accordingly, this right to claim (actio), or moral power, which every man possesses with rspect to his own property or with respect to a thing which in some way pertains to him, is called ius, and appears to be the true object of justice." [ius vocari facultas quaedam moralis, quam unusquisque habet, vel circa rem suam, vel ad rem sibi debitam . . . . Illa ergo actio, seu moralis facultas, quam unusquisque habet ad rem suam, vel ad rem ad se aliquo modo pertinentem vocatur ius, et illud proprie videtur esse obiectum iustitiae.] Cortest, 26 (citing Trac. de Leg. ac Deo Leg., I.2.5]

While Suárez may arguably be the source, or at least the harbinger, of modern notion of right, it would stem from his failure to "follow the strict Thomistic line of legal theory followed by the Dominicans at Salamanca." Cortest, 27.

But, in fact, the source of modern human right is more likely to be one who came after Suárez, but who relied heavily upon him: the Dutch Protestant jurist Hugo Grotius. In his De Iure Belli, Grotius seems well on his way to understanding right as a subjective right, positive, rather than negative, in tone:

A legal right (facultas) is called by the jurists the right to one's own (suum); after this we shall call it a legal right properly or strictly so called. Under it are included power, now over oneself, which is called freedom, now over others, as that of the father (patria potestas) and that of the master over slaves; ownership, either absolute, or less than absolute, as usufruct and the right of pledge; and contractual rights, to which on the opposite side contractual obligations correspond.

(quoted in Cortest, 27) While Grotius still bore traces of Aristotelianism, this language of "power . . . over oneself . . . which is called freedom" is recognizable as something new. Here we have a kernel of modern rights theory, one based on alleged autonomy or freedom from restrictions of any kind, including eventually, nature and, what is the same thing since nature contains within it the law of God, even God. Some of Grotius's notions, particularly when seasoned by the Hobbesian notions of nature and right which were wholly outside the pale of the Aristotelian/Thomist tradition, may be the source of modern theories of human right. But by the time one gets to Hobbes and his Leviathan one is clearly outside any notion of morality having an ontological or metaphysical foundation. In Hobbes, right is no longer tied to being, or, for that matter, Being.

The Disfigured Face: Thomistic Ontology: Existence Distinct from Essence

METAPHYSICS AFFECTS ETHICS perhaps is the conclusion of Professor Cortest's first chapter in his The Disfigured Face: Traditional Natural Law and Its Encounter with Modernity. The science of being affects the science of doing. Who we think we are, and what we think of reality, affects how we act. Modern man does not know how to act, largely because he does not know who he is or even what is (that, or he thinks he can make himself whatever he wants to be and has not stable, informing nature that ought to guide him). St. Thomas Aquinas did not suffer from the modern malaise which has deracinated or uprooted man.

At the heart of the natural law theory of St. Thomas Aquinas is his ontology. Ontology, a word which comes from Greek ontos (ὄντος = of being) and logia (λογία = study, science, theory), is the science of being. Since at least the time of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), "ontology" has been distinguished from "metaphysics" generally, and now is regarded as part of "metaphysics," along with its other components "psychology" and "cosmology." At the center of St. Thomas's ontology was the proposition that essence is really distinct from existence, that existence was the preeminent ground for the discovery of truth, and that existence was for every thing other than God, whose essence is existence, a sharing in existence as a gift of God. God it is "who properly causes existence in creatures, just as it is fire itself that sets other things on fire. And God is causing this effect in things not just when they begin to exist, but all the time they are maintained in existence, just as the sun is lighting up the atmosphere all the time the atmosphere remains lit." (Cortest, 12, quoting S.T. Ia, q. 8, art. 1)

"Thomas considered 'being' the first and most fundamental object known by reason." Cortest, 1. Being is, in fact, at the heart of the thought of St. Thomas and the one he referred to as "the Philosopher," Aristotle. "There is," Aristotle says in his book Metaphysics, "a science which investigates being as being and the attributes which belong to this in virtue of its own nature," ἔστιν ἐπιστήμη τις ἣ θεωρεῖ τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὂν καὶ τὰ τούτῳ ὑπάρχοντα καθ᾽ αὑτό. Arist., Met., 1003. To on hē on. Being as being.

Certainly since the Enlightenment, and even spottily before in the Renaissance, the underlying philosophical views of both Aristotle and St. Thomas, who relied on Aristotle, have been increasingly rejected. The French positivist Auguste Comte saw metaphysics as a passing stage, sort of as like an intellectual teenager (theology being the infant), in the development of human intellectual knowledge. In his lectures on metaphysics, Theodor Adorno, who was no fan of metaphysics (or ontology), noted, probably accurately enough, that "metaphysics is used in almost the entire non-German-speaking world as a term of abuse, a synonym for idle speculation, mere nonsense and heaven knows what other intellectual vices." Theodor W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 1. Before Adorno, Nietzsche called those who dabbled in metaphysics "Hinterweltler," "backworldsmen," perhaps an allusionary word play, in that Nietzsche's term sounds strangely like "Hinterwäldler," or "backwoodsmen." (Ontology or metaphysics is not the only area that has suffered abuse by moderns. The notion of natural law has been equally the subject of deprecation. One need only think of the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who called natural law "nonsense on stilts," or Associate Supreme Court Justice Holmes, who all his life "sneered at the natural rights of man." )

The rejection of the Thomistic ontology is unfortunate because it rejects the particular contribution of St. Thomas to metaphysics, specifically, his emphasis on existence (esse, "to be," that a thing is) as really (and not only mentally) distinct from essence (essentia--the "what" of a thing; its quiddity) in his metaphysics of being. For St. Thomas, both "essence" and "existence" were important concepts to distinguish in thinking about reality because, other than God in which they were identical, in created things they were really distinct things. Further, St. Thomas taught that truth is more principally grounded in the existence (esse) of a thing, rather than in its essence, veritas fundatur in esse rei magis quam in ipsa quidditate. St. Thomas, I Sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 1. Unfortunately, at least initially, St. Thomas's views on ontology faced stiff competition from the nominalism that had infected the brains of scholars. More popular in the 13th [correction, 14th century] century seemingly was the thought of Ockham, and Ockham rejected the extra-mental distinction between essence and existence as meaningless, in fact non-existent, therefore equating both of these concepts. Cortest, 5. Ockham could not put it any plainer:

We have to say, therefore, that essence (entitas) and existence (existentia) are not two things. On the contrary, the words "thing" (res) and "to be" (esse) signify one and the same thing.

Ideo dicendum est, quod entitas et existentia non sunt duae res. Sed ista duo vocabula 'res' et 'esse' idem et eadem significant.

Ockham, Summa Totius Logicae, 3, 2, 27. Ockham also emphasized the particular, and did not believe in abstract essences as having any sort of reality; in short, he was a nominalist. (Though unrelated to the issue of ontology, Ockham also was a voluntarist in morality, believing the will to be preeminent over reason in law.)

As Cortest notes, if "essence" is studied without regard to "existence," then one loses contact with reality and ventures into a world of mere abstraction, of concepts, of the mere possible or potential. On the other hand, if "being" is considered a sophomoric abstraction, a verbal flatus, and all thought is focused on the particular existence, then we are unable to grasp universal realities or the concept of "nature." St. Thomas, like a clever helmsman, steers us between the Charybdis of a Kantian or Hegelian idealism, and a Scylla of a Humean or Lockean empirical superficialism.

Francisco Vitoria

For a time, Ockham and his followers carried the day, perhaps finding ultimate expression in the Lutheran boil that burst open spewing forth all its puss when the recalcitrant, troubled, disobedient Augustinian friar nailed 95 theses on the Cathedral doors in Wittenberg, shattering Christian unity. But slowly, surely, largely as a result of the work of Cardinal Cajetan (Tomasso de Vio) (1468-1534) and Francisco de Vitoria (ca. 1492-1546), the Thomistic spirit was revitalized. Cajetan, the diminutive Dominican with a prodigious mind, is probably the most celebrated of all the Thomistic commentators. Francisco de Vitoria, commonly regarded as the father of Spanish Thomism, completely reformed the curriculum at the University of Salamanca, replacing the Sentences of Peter Lombard with the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas as the principal text for the study of theology.

Nobody could have foreseen the harvest that Vitoria's decision to sow Thomist seeds instead of Lombardian seeds into the furrows of the minds of his students. The names of those who came from, or have ties to, that school are profuse, and they ripened largely in Dominican and Jesuit habit, and fed the disciplines of moral theology, political philosophy, economics, and international law: Domingo de Soto (1495-1560), Martín de Azpilcueta (1491-1586), Domingo Bañez (1528-1604), Diego de Covarrubias y Leya (1512-1577), Tomás de Mercado (1525-1575), Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566), Luis de Molina (1535-1600), Juan de Mariana (ca. 1535-1624), Melchior Cano (1509-1560), and Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). From Spain, the Thomistic revival rooted itself into all Europe, affecting all manner of men and all manner of sciences.

Francisco Suárez

Cortest acknowledges that the last mentioned of the Salamancan greats: Francisco Suárez, the Doctor eximius, the exceptional Doctor, is "perhaps the greatest philosopher in the Thomistic tradition," and yet, "he differed profoundly from the Angelic Doctor [Thomas Aquinas] in his metaphysics." Cortest, 9. There is, in short, a school, distinct from Thomism, called Suarism. For Cortest, one of the fundamental distinctions between Aquinas and Suárez was precisely in the Thomistic distinction between essence and existence:

The primacy of existence, so fundamental for Aquinas, is lost with Suárez, for whom essence and existence can both be either potential or actual. . . . For Suárez, all being is reduced to essential being; existence is always subordinate to essence."

Cortest, 9. From the Thomist teaching that gave preeminence of existence over essence, Suárez went rogue. Suárez understood being primarily as essence, and this tended to deprecate the true character of being, of existing. "Therefore," Suárez concluded in his Disputationes Metaphysicae, XXXI, s. vi, 23, "it must be said that essence and existence are the same thing but that it is conceived of under the aspect of essence." Dicendum ergo est eamdem rem essse essentiam et existentiam, concipi autem sub ratione essentiam. Suárez had, in a way, come back full circle to Ockham.

From the point of view of the Thomist, this is a massive mistake. The mistake arises from seeing being as a noun rather than a participle. Cortest, 9. (One may recall that Ockham saw existence or being (esse) as a form of a verb, not a noun.) The mistake arises out of Suárez's taking for granted that his verbum mentis, the word in his mind, "corresponds exactly to what it represents, even when he uses it to conceptualize the principles of being itself." Cortest, 10 (quoting David M. Knight, SJ, "Suarez's Approach to Substantial Form," The Modern Schoolman 40 (1962): 238)

Is being, existence, esse, "to be," a verbal, nounal, or participial concept?

What difference, if any, does it make?

Taken as a participle, being signifies "the act of existing as exercised and is the same as the actual existent." Looked as a noun, it means "the essence of a thing which has or can have existence (esse) and it can be said to signify existence itself not as exercised in act but in potency or aptitude." Thus, taken as a noun, the objective concept of being is that which is or can be, that which has a real essence prescinding from actual existence without excluding or denying it.

Cortest, 9-10 (quoting John P. Doyle, "Suarez On the Reality of the Possible," The Modern Schoolman 45 (1967): 36-37) To view existence as a noun, rather than a participle, is to sort of fold the concept of existence into essence. And thus existence becomes, not an independent, extra-mental reality, but becomes the difference between essence potential and essence actual. According to Cortest, the result is to fragment being and take us somewhat out of reality. Metaphysics is the "science of possible being," and no longer the science of "actual or real being." We sort of walk out of the boundaries of authentic Thomistic ontology and its moderate realism. It sort of shatters the chain of being, in fact being itself, into virtually infinite shards.

It also affects Suárez's view of individuation (i.e., what makes individuals individuals?). Traditionally, the individual expression of an essence (say, "Socrates," as an individuation of "man.") was the result of matter or particular existence of an essence. But for Suárez, "neither matter nor existence constitute the principle of the individual." Cortest, 11. For Suárez, "accidents contain within themselves their own principle of individuation," and this "leads logically to the conclusion that a being contains within itself a multiplicity of individuating principles." Cortest, 11. By looking at accidents and substance thus separately, Suárez "destroys the very unity that most characterizes the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of substance." Cortest, 11. Man was hacked up into many parts, and was no longer whole.

Why is this subtlety important? Is this just subtlecraft? Cortest answers:

On this foundation [of existence being really distinct from essence, and being the preeminent metaphysical principle for understanding reality], an epistemology and an ethics are developed. In fact, the Thomistic system [of knowledge and of morality] can be understood as a series of logical extensions from this premise.

Cortest, 11. The eventual effect was to divide the world of thought into two: either those who relied only on existence, focusing only in individual existent things, neglecting essence, or those who relied only on essence, neglecting existence. The former are the empiricists. The latter are the idealists. Both views have significant effect on ethics, that is, affect one's view of the natural law.