Dominic Farrell

In Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae the Second Vatican Council not only presents the dignity of the human person as the parting point for its moral teaching but also grounds human dignity in natural teleology. Natural teleology is the view that the good of any thing corresponds to, and so can be discerned from, the ends to which it is directed by its nature, both that end which is proper to it and those ends that it has as part of a wider order. As official Church teachings, these documents refrain from providing a philosophical justification of their account of human dignity. The existence of natural teleology, however, is generally contested in modern philosophy. For this reason, grounding human dignity in natural teleology constitutes a questionable approach to the issue. Of all major Catholic theologians, Thomas Aquinas is arguably the one who provides the most developed philosophical resources for articulating these views on natural teleology and its connection with human dignity. This paper examines and assesses the way in which he grounds human dignity in natural teleology. In his view, we see that human beings are the principle part of the universe and that the other parts of the universe are ordered towards the good of human beings. After surveying his general justification of how a thing is ordered to particular ends in virtue of its nature, the paper considers his explanation of how each part of the universe assumes further ends within the universe as a whole, and his main set of arguments on how we perceive human dignity against the backdrop of the natural teleology of the universe.

Justice is a divine attribute to which the sacred texts of the Abrahamic religions attest frequently and to which people attach great importance. However, it is the express subject of comparatively few contemporary studies. It has been argued that this is symptomatic of a long-standing trend in Christian theology, which has tended to conceive justice narrowly, as retributive. This paper makes the case that, mediaeval theologians, from Anselm to Aquinas, address the divine attribute of justice in depth and with philosophical sophistication, viewing it primarily as God’s merciful and gracious distribution of merits and goods. It seeks to identify Aquinas’s contribution to the mediaeval analysis of this divine attribute and assess what he may have to contribute to current philosophy of religion. In particular, pointing to natural teleology, he offers more fully worked out metaphysical reasons for calling God just and considering all his works just. The existence of creatures can only be explained as an act of divine mercy, with the result that, since existence is the fundamental gift, all God’s works are merciful and just.

The chapter argues that the natural law tradition’s conception of public reason is more consistent than that of political liberalism, especially when it comes to bioethical legislation. After offering a précis of Thomist natural law theory, the chapter examines Alasdair MacIntyre’s treatment of the rational resolution of moral disagreements and argues that, in line with the natural law tradition, public reason should be construed as a shared political deliberation that is rooted in truth-directed inquiry. Furthermore, MacIntyre points to how such a truth-directed inquiry requires a set of commitments which correspond to the primary precepts of natural law. A just political order should pursue and promote this sort of public reasoning, even amid the systematic and apparently intractable moral disagreement of a pluralistic society. However, whereas MacIntyre believes that such shared deliberation is no longer possible outside local communities, we shall reflect, with the aid of the natural law tradition’s conception of legislation, on how his proposals might carry over to the full-fledged public reasoning of political decision-making. We conclude that the natural law tradition’s conception of public reason is more consistent than that of political liberalism when it comes to legislation on bioethical issues, such as abortion and medically assisted suicide. By requiring that laws be morally justified through truth-directed inquiry into the relevant second-order issues, it has more rigorous standards against arbitrariness.

Ancient philosophers develop what has been called a compositional conception of justice. They treat the virtue of justice as conceptually anterior to a just social order and the moral standing of others. By reversing the order of priority, modern thought proposes structural conceptions of justice. However, Thomas Aquinas’s compositional account of justice may satisfy the demands of modern conceptions. He argues that there is a moral virtue called general or legal justice, which consists in responding to the demands of the common good and a society’s laws. The article reconstructs Aquinas’s account of general justice and argues that he manages to resolve certain difficulties inherent in a compositional conception of justice. He can explain how a shared conception of the common good is reached, and how those who hold rival conceptions can be accommodated and expected to promote it.