The Dialectical Foundations of the Natural Law in Aquinas’s De Ente et Essentia

Abstract

Recent scholarship has called into question Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on politics, specifically focusing on the foundations of his teaching on natural law. While some scholars have contended that natural law relies on the assumption that a god with creative agency exists, others have contended that the very method through which Aquinas argues is misguided. These latter scholars contend that dialectic rather than demonstration must be the first inroad to studying politics, since only the theologian begins the study of politics with demonstrative proofs. By reexamining the roots of Aquinas’s arguments for God, this study challenges both the claims that natural law simply assumes the existence of a creative God and that the foundations of natural law are incompatible or wholly separate from a dialectic.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Thomas Hibbs for his support and thoughtful feedback, as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers of Perspectives on Political Science for their helpful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Leo Strauss, On Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ed. Richard L. Velkley (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 5–6; Michael Zuckert, “The Fullness of Being: Thomas Aquinas and the Modern Critique of Natural Law,” The Review of Politics 69 (2007): 47; Geoffrey M. Vaughan, “Wisdom and Folly: Reconsidering Leo Strauss on the Natural Law,” in Leo Strauss and His Catholic Readers, ed. Geoffrey M. Vaughan (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 81–83 and 92–93; Thomas Pangle in Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 183–184; for a consideration and potential rejection of the Aristotelian proof from motion, i.e., the first way, consider Christopher Bruell, Aristotle as Teacher—His Introduction to a Philosophic Science (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2014), 225 and 254, and for a good preliminary examination of the possible contradictions that Bruell’s view entails, especially in the rejection of motion and an unmoved mover, see James Carey “Education and the Art of Writing,” review of Aristotle as Teacher—His introduction to a Philosophic Science, Christopher Bruell, The St. John’s Review, Fall, 2015, 134–137.

2 Joshua Parens, Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy (Rochseter: University of Rochester Press, 2016), 69–71. Not all scholars would agree that natural law relies upon some notion of the divine, most notably John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, ed. 2, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 49.

3 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953), 124. In regards to the centrality of dialectics for understanding the philosophic way of life, consider also Dustin Sebell, “Ancient versus Modern Philosophy,” The Political Science Reviewer 45, no. 2 (2021): 383; Christopher Bruell, “On the Lovers,” in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, trans. and ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 109; Douglas Kries, “On Leo Strauss’s Understanding of the Natural Law Theory of Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 57, no.2 (1993): 216–219; David Leibowitz, The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato’s Apology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 81; Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 71; and Alex Priou, Becoming Socrates: Political Philosophy in Plato’s Parmenides (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2018), 59 and 87.

4 Marc D. Guerra, “The Ambivalence of Classic Natural Right: Leo Strauss on Philosophy, Morality, and Statesmanship,” Perspectives on Political Science 28, no. 2 (1999): 71.

5 Consider Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 1177b31-34 and 1178b21-23.

6 Guerra, “The Ambivalence of Classic Natural Right,” 72; Parens, Leo Strauss, 54; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 151, and Muhshin S. Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 18.

7 Daniel Frank, “The End of the Guide: Maimonides on the Best Life for Man,” Judaism 34, no.4 (1985): 486. Some might find the claim odd that, for Strauss, the classic philosophic way of life is defined by a theological conception rather than against it. Yet, one must remember that Aristotle himself affirmed the existence of some divine being, Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Joe Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 1999), 1074b33-34. The central question for Strauss is not, then, theological but rather religious—not whether or not a God exists, but whether or not that God is communicative, providential, and creative. Consider that to Strauss, philosophy does not need to disprove the mere existence of God, but rather the existence of revelation or a creative God, Leo Strauss, “Reason and Revelation,” in Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theological-Political Problem (New York: Cambridge, 2006), 150 and 174. Thus, Strauss explains that “Plato’s and Aristotle’s attempts to demonstrate the existence of God far from proving the religious character of their teachings,” i.e., their devotion to revelation, “actually disprove it,” 146, perhaps because their proofs reveal that “the first things” produce “not by means of forethought, but by blind necessity,” 145. It makes no difference whether the philosopher imitates the divine, or molds the image of the divine after himself, since if it were discovered that the divine existed, philosophy would be forced to conform to whatever character it had.

8 Parens, Leo Strauss, 77.

9 Jeffrey A. Bernstein (2017). Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy, by Joshua Parens, Perspectives on Political Science, 46:3, 203–207.

10 Parens, Leo Strauss, 50, and Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, 23.

11 For the first objection, consider both Strauss, Natural Right and History, 164 and Ernest Fortin, “Thomas Aquinas as a Political Thinker,” Perspectives on Political Science 26, no. 2 (1997): 94; for the second objection, see Parens, Leo Strauss, 68–69 and 78.

12 See James Carey, Natural Reason and Natural Law (Eugene: Resource Publications, 2019), 14–18, but especially 13: “In the Summa Theologiae we are presented with five distinct ways to prove that God exists. These five ways make no mention of the claims of revelation, nor do they covertly rely on them. Of equal importance, only the First Way relies on an Aristotelian theory of motion, which has been repudiated by modern natural science; and only the Fifth Way relies on a teleological conception of the operation of subhuman entities, which has also been repudiated by modern natural science. The Second, Third, and Fourth Ways rely on neither of these things.” The Fifth Way might not need to be set aside so hastily, for a consideration on the potentially compatibility between the Fifth Way and our modern notion of the physical laws of nature, see James Madden “The Fifth Way, Scientism, and Intelligent Design,” Faith & Reason 31, no. 3 (2006): 387–408.

13 Parens, Leo Strauss, 69.

14 Parens, Leo Strauss, 70.

15 Marc Guerra, “Beyond Natural Law Talk: Politics and Prudence in St. Thomas Aquinas’s On Kingship,” Perspectives on Political Science 32, no. 1 (2002): 13. For a more recent re-consideration of De Regno, see Robert Wylie, “Reconsidering Tyranny and Tyrannicide in Aquinas’s De Regno,” Perspectives on Political Science 47, no. 3 (2018): 154–160.

16 Parens, Leo Strauss, 69.

17 Timothy Pawl, “The Five Ways,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 116.

18 I do not seek to examine the validity or invalidity of Parens’s claim that “we cannot follow the order of being directly,” i.e., that we cannot begin with demonstration. It very well might be the case that we can begin with demonstration without having to first engage in dialectical examination. I leave this as an alternative possibility to be examined on its own merits elsewhere. Similarly, because my goal is to draw out the possible dialectical roots of Aquinas’s arguments, rather than to defend the demonstrative nature of those arguments from assault, I do not seek to offer the strongest demonstrative account of either the real distinction between being and essence or Aquinas’s proofs for God. For what I believe to be the strongest account that examines Aquinas as proceeding demonstratively rather than dialectically, see John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984). Here, then, I aim primarily to show that Aquinas’s account is compatible with and even demanded by dialectic, thereby responding to Parens’s critique directly.

19 R.E. Houser, “Avicenna and Aquinas: Essence, Existence, and the Esse of Christ,” The Saint Anselm Journal 9, no. 1 (2013): 12, and R. E. Houser, “Avicenna, ‘Aliqui’, and Thomas Aquinas’s Doctrine of Creation,” Recherches de theologie et philosophie medievales 80 (2013): 32–33.

20 R.E. Houser, “Avicenna and Aquinas,” 12. See also Carey, Natural Reason and Natural Law, 14–18 and Brian Davies, “Aquinas’s Third Way,” New Blackfriars 82, No. 968 (2001): 451–452, respectively.

21 R. E. Houser, “Why the Christian Magistri Turned to Arabic and Jewish Falāsifa: Aquinas and Avicenna,” Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions 86 (2012): 14.

22 Houser, “Avicenna, ‘Aliqui’, and Thomas,” 52.

23 Houser, “Why the Christian Magistri,” 44.

24 Aristotle, Posterior Analytics in The Complete works of Aristotle in Two Volumes, ed. and trans. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 92b8.

25 That is to say that neither Avicenna nor Aquinas simply posit this principle, for neither of their dialectical examinations begin with this principle or the dialectical examination of it. Rather, their dialectic should be understood as a divergence from the already existing dialectic of Aristotle which, though arriving at very different conclusions, still has similar foundations. See Dmitri Gutas, “Avicenna’s Philosophical Project,” in Interpreting Avicenna, ed. Peter Adamson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 33.

26 Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, trans. Armand Maurer, 2^nd ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1968), 55.

27 Since the essence of a thing is the set of necessary characteristics, Aquinas is attempting to show that the being of each thing, or their particular existence, is not a part of that set of necessary characteristics. If it were the case that some being’s existence was the same as its essence, as Aquinas examines shortly after this argument in De Ente, then that thing would both be the only one of its kind, and it would lack the being and essence divide.

28 John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 124.

29 Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, 114–115. For more on this point, as well as an explanation for why there could not be multiple separate subsisting existents whose essence was the same as their being, consider Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles Books I-II, trans. Fr. Laurence Shapcote (Steubenville: Emmaus Academic, 2018), 1.42.8.

30 Aquinas, On Being and Essence, 56.

31 Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, 116.

32 Aquinas, On Being and Essene, 28.

33 Houser, “Avicenna and Aquinas,” 10.

34 Averroes, Commentary on Metaphysics, Delta 7, in Classical Arabic Philosophy, 363. For Averroes reference to Ibn Sīnā, see Avicenna, The Salvation, “Metaphysics,” II.III.I in Classical Arabic Philosophy, 212. Cf., David Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 26, and Richard Taylor, “Averroes: Religious Dialectic and Aristotelian Philosophical Thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 196.

35 Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy and Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 285–286.

36 Consider, for example, Avicenna, The Salvation, “Metaphysics,” I.2.3 in Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources, ed. And trans. Jon McGinnis & David C. Reisman (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2007), 215, and Peter Adamson, “From the Necessary Existent to God,” in Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays, ed. Peter Adamson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 170–171.

37 Bruell, Aristotle as Teacher, 193–195.

38 Parens, Leo Strauss, 29 and Thomas L. Pangle, “Editor’s Introduction” in Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), xii.

39 Carey, Natural Reason and Natural Law, 18 and 305.

40 Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God, 29. Consider also, Pegis, St. Thomas and the Greeks, 56, “the opposition between St. Thomas and Avicenna is in relation to all the important points of St. Thomas’ doctrine of creation. They differ, in fact, on the nature of God, how He acts, His immediate effects, the range of His causality.”

41 Aquinas On Being and Essence, 57. This holds true for his view in the Summa Theologiae, where he states that “it is therefore necessary for existence to be compared to essence, which is distinct from [existence], as actuality to potentiality,” see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae in Eight Volumes, trans. Fr. Laurence Shapcote (Steubenville: Emmaus Academic, 2012), ST I q. 3 a. 4 co., and cf., ST I q 45 a 5 co. and ST I q. 3 a. 1 co.

42 Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God, 46, Cf., 28–31 and SCG II.54.

43 Nota Bene, this shift away from viewing being and essence as an attribute (being) predicated of a substance (essence) and towards viewing being as the actuation of a potential essence allows Aquinas to decisively avoid the fatal critique launched by Averroes against Avicenna in the Long Commentary of the Metaphysics. By viewing being as an attribute, Avicenna falls prey to the same critiques launched against the Platonic forms or eide. By sidestepping the notion of attribution in De Ente and instead opting to view being and essence according to a model of act-potency, Aquinas is able to insist that the possibility of existing “essences in themselves” or “existence in itself” separate from the notion of God, who is Himself existence, is an issue that “is logical rather than real” since “asserting that something might exist (before it existed) would not yield a contradiction,” see Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God, 33, emphasis added. Thus, by means of a few alterations, Aquinas is able to accrue the benefits of Avicenna’s metaphysics without falling prey to the Platonic critiques which would threaten the rational foundations of natural law.

44 ST I q. 46, a. 2, co; see also Adam Bujdoso, “Difficulties in defending Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas on the eternity of the world,” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 54, no. 2–3 (2014): 121.

45 Bujdoso, “Difficulties in defending Aristotle,” 123.

46 Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 150.

47 Parens, Leo Strauss, 22; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 162–164; Leo Strauss, “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari” in Persecution and the Art of Writing, (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1952), 107.

48 ST I-II, Q. 90, A. 4, co.

49 Houser, “Avicenna, ‘Aliqui’, And Thomas,” 18 and 40–41. Houser explains that Aristotle’s god is “a sort of general, but an odd one, who inspires his troops while oblivious of them,” see Houser, “Avicenna and Aquinas,” 10–11. Cf., Jon McGinnis, Avicenna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 151.

50 I here purposefully set aside the problem of or synderesis (man’s natural habit of recognizing the first principles of practical reason) and the promulgation of the natural law as beyond the scope of this paper. For more on synderesis and conscience, see Douglas Kries, The Problem of Natural Law (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008), 95–97.

51 Frank, “The End of the Guide: Maimonides on the Best Life for Man,” 490.

52 Frank, “The End of the Guide: Maimonides on the Best Life for Man,” 493.

53 See Louis A. Mancha, Jr., “Defending God’s Strong Conservation,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 77 (2003): 145–157.

54 See Strauss, Natural Right and History, 75; Strauss, Reason and Revelation, 174–176; cf., Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law, trans. Eve Adler (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 23–24.