St. Albert the Great: The Natural Law and Practical Reasoning

ST. ALBERT'S NOTION OF NATURAL LAW AS HABITUS must be understood and coupled with his notion of synderesis and practical reasoning. The principles of natural right (ius naturale) which are a habitus are part and parcel of practical reason. "More specifically," Cunningham states, the principles of natural right "inhere in an active power of reason called by some 'naturale iudicatorium,' by the Greeks 'synderesis.'" Cunningham, 489 (citing De bono V, 1, 1).

Though St. Albert does not expand on the notion of synderesis in his De bono, he did so in an earlier work entitled De homine, and in a fragment entitled Quaestio de synderesi which has been attributed to him. Cunningham, 491; Cunningham (2006), 222. In his De homine, St. Albert describes synderesis as "a special power (vis) of the soul in which are inscribed the universal principles of natural right." Cunningham, 489 (citing De homine, qu. 71, art. 1). In his Quaestio de synderesi, St. Albert states that "synderesis is a certain kind of motive power in possession of the universal principles of natural right [quaedam potentia motiva per habitum universalium ius], having something of knowledge and something of appetition, but situated more on the side of knowledge." Following St. Jerome, he also calls it the "light" and the "spark of conscience." Cunningham (2006), 222. These informing principles of natural right embedded in that active power of synderesis "serve as formal determinations directing and assisting the practical intellect of man in his operations." Cunningham, 491. St. Albert then takes the notions of first principles (such as the principle of non-contradiction or excluded middle) and their role in speculative or theoretical reasoning, and analogizes them so as to apply them to practical or moral reasoning.

Just as in the theoretical intellect there are certain innately implanted first principles aiding man in the area of speculative truth, so too in the practical order of human moral acts there are certain universal directive principles through which the practical intellect is aided in its discrimination between moral good and evil, principles moreover which are not acquired by man, but which are simply the content of natural law inscribed upon the human mind. The subject or substratum of these is synderesis.

Cunningham, 489.

Albertus Magnus, Fresco by Tommaso da Modena

Though St. Albert uses the terms potentia and vis (power and force) to describe synderesis, it would be wrong to understand him as proposing a new faculty or power distinct from, and separate of, either the will or the intellect. Synderesis in fact, is "simply the practical intellect itself considered as endowed with the univeral principles of natural right, and thereby innately habituated to an abstract understanding of human goodness." Cunningham (2006), 223 (citing Lottin, PEM, vol. 2, 342). Using the habitus of the ius naturale which inheres in the subject or substratum of synderesis as the first principles of practical reason, St. Albert is able to further refine moral decision-making and the role that the natural law (ius naturale), synderesis, and conscience play. Cunningham, 489.

In clarifying the role the ius naturale, synderesis, and conscience play in moral decision-making, St. Albert makes yet another innovation, "perhaps, his most striking innovation in these questions." Crowe, 133. In a sense, there is a watershed in the doctrine of conscience, pre-Albertinian and post-Albertinian. Prior to St. Albert's innovation, most theologians had identified conscience with the natural law, with synderesis, with free will, or with some sort of habitus, whether innate, acquired, or a combination of both. And there may have been a sort of feeling out for some better concept of conscience during St. Albert's time. But Albert's great innovation was to clear the brush in this area, and he did so by separating synderesis from conscience and the ius naturale, and identifying conscience as an act of reason. Crowe, 134.

Dicimus quod conscientia conclusio est rationis practicae ex duobus praemissis, quorum maior synderesis et minor rationis. . . . . Maior autem istius syllogismi est synderesis, cuius est inclinare in bonum per universales rationes boni. Minor vero est rationis cuius est conferre particulare ad universale. Conclusio autem est conscientiae.

Summa de creaturis, II. q. 72, a. 1 (quoted in Crowe, 134 n. 75). In short, the Albertian contribution was to render moral thinking clearly rational:

The practical syllogism uses a major premiss, provided by synderesis, and a minor premise, the work of reason (which brings the particular under the general rule laid down in the major premiss); and conscience draws the conclusion.

Crowe, 134 (citing Summa de creaturis, II, q. 72, a. 1). So, for example, the synderesis would yield the major premise: I should not kill an innocent, as it is an evil; reason supplies the minor premise: abortion is the killing of an innocent child; conscience draws the conclusion: abortion is evil an prohibited by the natural law.

Albertus Magnus by Fra Angelico

Crowe explains the significance of Albert's teaching on conscience:

The idea of synderesis as the habitual knowledge of first moral principles, providing the major premiss of the practical syllogism in which the actual drawing of the conclusion was the work of conscience, was an extremely important one. As has already been suggested, it went a good deal beyond the function Aristotle saw in the practical syllogism. In fact the practical syllogism, as Albert saw it, will play a vital part in the great natural law synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas . . . .

Crowe, 134-35. It is this notion of ius naturale, synderesis, conscience, and practical reason that led St. Albert to reject the Ulpian notion that brute animals participate in natural law. "More than any thinker before him, . . . Albert has attempted to delineate the close union between right and reason." Cunningham, 491. Because the entirety of the moral reasoning in man was rational, the natural law, which was at the heart of that reasoning, was likewise to be found only in rational agents. We shall address the issue of St. Albert's rejection of the Decretists and their continued reliance on Ulpian's definition of the natural law in our next blog entry.

St. Albert the Great: Lex Naturalis Cum Bottis

WHEN WE SPEAK OF ALBERT THE GREAT we are in the company of the bright lights in heaven, in the circle hosted by St. Thomas Aquinas, the Fourth Sphere of Heaven by the Sun. There we shall find St. Albert the Great, at his former student's right hand, if Dante is to be believed.

Questi che m’è a destra più vicino,
frate e maestro fummi, ed esso Alberto
è di Cologna, e io Thomas d’Aquino.

He who is near me on my right,
My brother friar and master was, and that Albert
Haled from Cologne, and I, Thomas, from Aquino.

Dante, Paradiso, X.97-99.

Illustration of the First Circle of Wisdom in by Giovanni de Paolo

(Albert the Great is to the right of St. Thomas, with a crosier and Dominican habit)

There, accompanying St. Thomas, St. Albert the Great greets Dante and Beatrice. And these two great intellectual lights are joined by such other sages as Siger of Brabant, Boethius, Gratian, Peter Lombard, Dionysius the Areopagite, Orosius, St. Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, Richard of St. Victor, even King Solomon.

From the poetic dalliances of Dante with heaven, let us turn return to earth, and to history. St. Albert the Great (ca. 1200 - 1280) is one of the great figures of the medieval Church. Haling from Lauingen in Swabia, Germany, Albert joined the Dominican order, devoted himself to philosophy and theology, taught St. Thomas Aquinas, was at the forefront of the Aristotelian revolution, became a provincial of the Dominican Order, was appointed bishop of Regensburg, and managed to to write numerous works, so that his opera omnia filled thirty-eight volumes when aggregately published by Borgnet. And as if that was not enough, he was canonized a saint, and then recognized as a Doctor of the Church, the Doctor Universalis.

Son of a family of lesser nobility, a traditionally military family that was in the service of the counts of Bollstadt, Albert was born sometime between 1193 and 1200 in Lauingen, in Swabia. Under the care of his uncle, Albert studied liberal arts at Padua. Against the desires of his family, in 1223, at a young age, he joined the relatively new Order of Preachers founded by St. Dominic. He was sent by his order to the Dominican house in Cologne, there to complete his novitiate and study theology, and where later in 1228, after becoming a lector, he also lectured. He also lectured at Regensburg, Freiburg, Strasburg, and Hildesheim. In 1245 he went to Paris, obtained his master in theology, and there taught the young Thomas d'Aquino. In 1248, his order sent him back to Cologne, accompanied by Thomas d'Aquino and other friars. Between 1254 and 1257, he served as Provincial of the Dominican Order for the Province of Teutonia, and in that capacity oversaw more than thirty-six priories for men, and twenty cloisters of nuns, handling his visitation on foot. He was allowed to resign that office in 1257, and returned to Cologne to study and to teach. In 1260, however, Pope Alexander IV appointed him bishop of Regensburg, and office he accepted unwillingly. Refusing to ride a horse (in conformity with his vows as a Dominican), Bishop Albert earned the sobriquet, episcopus cum bottis, the bishop with walking boots. After devoting himself sedulously to his duties as bishop, Albert asked to resign, a request granted by Alexander IV's successor, Urban IV. In 1263, he was ordered to preach the Crusade, and he did so again on foot, until the end of his commission upon the death of Urban IV. The rest of his life (at least until his memory and intellect failed him when he was an octogenarius et amplius) Albert devoted to studying, writing, and lecturing. (See generally, J. A. Weisheipl, O.P., "The Life and Works of St. Albert the Great," in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays 1980 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), 13-52).

Albert's intellect was prodigious, and the corpus of his works is concomitantly massive. When the majority of them were collected in 1899 by the editor Borgnet, they amounted to thirty-eight volumes, and cover all sorts of areas, from astrology to zoology.

Albertus Magnus by Fra Angelico

Albert the Great expressly addressed himself to the natural law, most notably in his Summa de bono (which is the third part of his Summa de creaturis), written around 1242. He also addresses the topic at some length in his Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics which was transcribed between 1248 and 1252 (by his student St. Thomas). Finally, he approaches the subject in his Ethica, which was composed later than 1260. Crowe, 120-22. Nevertheless, "De bono contains the most thorough and technically elaborated treatment of natural right and law within the entire Albertinian corpus . . . ." Stanley B. Cunningham, Reclaiming Moral Agency: The Moral Philosophy of Albert the Great (Washington, D.C., CUA 2008), 207. Albert the Great's contributions to the natural law are many, but the most important are surely his teaching on the natural law (ius naturale) as a habitus, and his teaching on synderesis and conscience and their role in the syllogism of practical reasoning. Another significant contribution is his distinguishing between law (lex) and right (ius). Equally important is Albert the Great's insistence that the natural law was a law of reason, and therefore was not one in which brute animals shared. Included in this view was his unequivocal rejection of the Roman jurist Ulpian's definition of natural law, adopted uncritically by-and-large by the Canon lawyers, the so-called Decretists. In their definition of the natural law, they included, at least in its fringes, the brute animals.

In the next few blog postings, we will review St. Albert the Great's contributions to the natural law. We will in particular focus upon his treatment of the natural law in his early work De bono. We will pay special attention to the Albertine notion of the natural law as habitus, and his teaching on the role of conscience and syllogism of practical reasoning, perhaps St. Albert the Great's greatest contributions in the area of natural law. We will review the Albertinian distinction between right (ius) and law (lex). We will also address the issue that St. Albert had with the definition of the natural law that had been inherited from the Roman jurisconsult Ulpian.

Albertus Magnus, Fresco by Tommaso da Modena

In his Apostolic Letter where he declared St. Albert as patron of the natural sciences, Pius XII described Albert the Great as a "beacon shining in a world engulfed in gloom." In his mutual trust of both reason and faith, and in his eagerness to study the natural and supernatural sciences, St. Albert set an example "even in his own day, when many, puffed up with a hollow science of words, were turning their eyes away from the things of he spirit." Therefore, this great thinker and great believer teaches us moderns "how we should rather mount from the things of earth to the things above." More recently, Pope Benedict XVI echoed the encomium of his predecessor regarding Albert the Great. In a general audience on March 24, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said the following: "St. Albert the Great reminds us that between science and faith there is friendship, and that the men of science can undertake, through their vocation to the study of nature, a genuine and fascinating journey of sanctity." It would be an improvement indeed if those who advanced the science of law, that is our law professors, judges, and lawyers, were to look toward St. Albert the Great, and to the student was no lesser genius, St. Thomas Aquinas, for their guidance on how to think, how to believe, how to live, and how to love.