WEBVTT NOTE Thomas Aquinas 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.680 I'm supposed to talk today about Thomas Aquinas. We've skipped quite a few years. We ended 2 00:00:06.680 --> 00:00:17.120 with the death of Aristotle in 322 BC. Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225, which is quite a 3 00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:23.440 number of years from 322 BC. There are some accounts that have him being born in 1224 4 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:35.760 1224, 1226, but 1225 I think is the most frequent date. The date of his death is, there's no 5 00:00:35.760 --> 00:00:49.480 controversy, that was March 7, 1274. Now, Thomas Aquinas was the son of an Italian knight 6 00:00:49.480 --> 00:00:54.240 that he lived in a place called Rocaseca in Italy. 7 00:00:54.240 --> 00:00:58.640 He attended the University of Naples, 8 00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:07.360 which had been organized by the great emperor Frederick II, 9 00:01:07.360 --> 00:01:11.800 the famous wonder of the world, the stupor of Mundi. 10 00:01:11.800 --> 00:01:13.680 He, who was, as you know, 11 00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:18.840 was involved in all sorts of fights with the papacy. 12 00:01:18.840 --> 00:01:24.120 People in Thomas Aquinas' family were involved in these fights. 13 00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:31.040 First, some of his older brothers had fought first for the emperor and then they shifted 14 00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:38.640 against him and I think one of his brothers was executed by the emperor, but Thomas Aquinas 15 00:01:38.640 --> 00:01:44.960 never mentions the emperor, the Holy Roman Empire in his discussion of politics. 16 00:01:44.960 --> 00:01:51.680 He tends not at all to comment on current events. If someone were just looking at what 17 00:01:51.680 --> 00:01:58.000 Aquinas wrote, he wouldn't be able to get any idea at all of what was going on in the 18 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:07.880 Middle Ages. Aquinas is much more interested in more general ideas than a description or 19 00:02:07.880 --> 00:02:13.600 Reactions to Particular Events of His Time. 20 00:02:13.600 --> 00:02:21.040 Aquinas decided to join the Dominican Order, which was fairly new at the time. 21 00:02:21.040 --> 00:02:25.160 The Dominican Order was an order of friars. 22 00:02:25.160 --> 00:02:33.040 These are people who were white monks in the sense they take vows of poverty, chastity, 23 00:02:33.040 --> 00:02:36.120 and obedience to their superiors. 24 00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:44.880 But they don't live as monks do in special places. They're separate from the world. They 25 00:02:44.880 --> 00:02:57.760 travel from place to place preaching and begging. The Dominican Order was an order of preachers. 26 00:02:57.760 --> 00:03:05.140 They were the first order founded specifically for preaching. So Aquinas was very attracted 27 00:03:05.140 --> 00:03:12.860 to this order and he joined it, but his family didn't like the idea of his joining the order 28 00:03:12.860 --> 00:03:23.060 because that wasn't a very high status. They approved of him going into the church, but 29 00:03:23.060 --> 00:03:28.100 they had in mind that he would be appointed to some very high office such as the abbot 30 00:03:28.100 --> 00:03:35.900 of the Monte Cassino Abbey, which was near where they lived, and they had necessary connections 31 00:03:35.900 --> 00:03:46.380 to get him that post, but he wasn't interested. So the family got permission of the emperor 32 00:03:46.380 --> 00:03:54.780 to seize him. He was, I think, coming through on a trip to Tuscany. They seized him, and 33 00:03:54.780 --> 00:04:02.420 He was imprisoned in the family castle for about a year. 34 00:04:02.420 --> 00:04:10.580 He took the time when he was, he wasn't really imprisoned when he was able to tutor his sisters 35 00:04:10.580 --> 00:04:18.460 and receive friends and visitors, but he took the time to study, among other things he did 36 00:04:18.460 --> 00:04:25.940 of Benworth. He memorized the Latin Bible and also the commentary, the sentences of 37 00:04:25.940 --> 00:04:31.920 Peter Lombard, which was an enormously long theological work. He had an amazing memory, 38 00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:40.500 so when he wrote, he could always refer to different sources and quotations that he just 39 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:48.420 had learned, but eventually the family let him go and he continued his work in the Dominican 40 00:04:48.420 --> 00:04:56.180 Order throughout his life. He studied with Albert the Great, Albertus Magnus, and he 41 00:04:56.180 --> 00:05:04.220 then taught at various places, including most, especially the University of Paris. He was 42 00:05:04.220 --> 00:05:12.820 He was offered various important jobs in the church, such as the Pope, when the Pope wanted 43 00:05:12.820 --> 00:05:19.580 to make him Archbishop of Naples, and he was also offered continued, he could become abbot 44 00:05:19.580 --> 00:05:27.180 of Monte Cassino even though he was remaining as a Dominican, but he turned those down. 45 00:05:27.180 --> 00:05:39.680 He was an amazingly productive writer. I'm sure he wrote the most of any of the people I'll be talking about. 46 00:05:39.680 --> 00:05:49.680 In the approximately 25 years that he was active as a writer, he wrote about 8.5 million words. 47 00:05:49.680 --> 00:05:57.320 His method of writing was that he would dictate to a secretary, 48 00:05:57.320 --> 00:06:02.560 he would just compose it, just orally dictate to a secretary. 49 00:06:02.560 --> 00:06:05.520 Sometimes he would have several secretaries, 50 00:06:05.520 --> 00:06:12.720 and he'd be dictating different books or different works to them at the same time. 51 00:06:12.720 --> 00:06:32.080 So he was capable of intense concentration. He would sometimes concentrate on a problem so much that even in a conversation he would appear to be going into a trance and he wouldn't notice what was happening. 52 00:06:32.080 --> 00:06:44.080 There was one account that he was, there was some very important official in the church who was visiting the Dominican Priory that he was staying. 53 00:06:44.080 --> 00:06:53.080 They introduced him to Aquinas, and Aquinas really didn't take any notice, he just seemed to be mumbling to himself. 54 00:06:53.080 --> 00:07:01.480 So the ecclesiastical official thought he was being rude and he was going to tell him off. 55 00:07:01.480 --> 00:07:06.920 Before he could do it, one of the other friars noticed what was happening. 56 00:07:06.920 --> 00:07:20.680 He just nudged Aquinas, started shaking him a bit, then he came out of the trance and then he was very polite to the person, they explained what had happened. 57 00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:40.680 He was also very good friends with King Louis IX of France, who had a very high opinion of him, St. Louis IX, he was the person that the city of St. Louis is named for, that's King Louis IX. 58 00:07:40.680 --> 00:07:53.680 One other detail about Aquinas, not only was he probably the philosopher who wrote more than any of the other great philosophers, 59 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:59.680 he was also the fattest of the great philosophers. He was enormously fat. 60 00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:07.680 In fact, one of the stories is when he would celebrate mass and kneel at the altar, 61 00:08:07.680 --> 00:08:15.440 They had to cut out a part of the altar in front of him so he would be able to fit in. 62 00:08:15.440 --> 00:08:23.240 I think that probably David Hume was probably second fattest to Aquinas, but Aquinas holds 63 00:08:23.240 --> 00:08:24.240 the record. 64 00:08:24.240 --> 00:08:40.240 In Aquinas' comments on politics, ethics are not concerned very much with contemporary events. 65 00:08:40.240 --> 00:08:50.240 The principal writings of Aquinas on politics, first what is in the reading list is given as a treatise on law. 66 00:08:50.240 --> 00:08:58.940 Law. This is a certain questions in his main most important philosophical work called Summa 67 00:08:58.940 --> 00:09:08.400 Theologica. The Treatise on Law is called, Summa is organized in different parts which 68 00:09:08.400 --> 00:09:16.760 are divided into further parts. So the Treatise on Law is the first part of the second part, 69 00:09:16.760 --> 00:09:46.000 1990-1908, called the Prima Secundae, and the other important short work he wrote on 70 00:09:46.000 --> 00:10:02.240 and Politics is something called On Kingship de Regno. This is dated about 1268. There's 71 00:10:02.240 --> 00:10:08.240 some controversy on whether he actually wrote it or was written by one of his followers, 72 00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:15.080 but the usual opinion is that he did write it. Now, I'll just mention something on the 73 00:10:15.080 --> 00:10:42.080 The way the Summa Theologiae is organized, what Aquinas generally does when he wants to give his views on a philosophical question is he'll first say, he'll give the denial of the proposition he wants to defend. 74 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:53.080 In one of the famous articles where he wants to prove that God exists, he starts off by saying that it would seem that God does not exist. 75 00:10:53.080 --> 00:11:03.080 Then, after that, he lists a whole series of reasons for upholding the thesis that he wants to deny. 76 00:11:03.080 --> 00:11:09.080 He gives all sorts of reasons why God does not exist. 77 00:11:09.080 --> 00:11:19.080 Then after that, solicit the objection, then he'll say, I answer that, and he'll state his thesis, God does exist. 78 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:32.080 Then he'll give his arguments for that. Then, after he's given the arguments, then he replies to each of the counter arguments he's raised in the first part. 79 00:11:32.080 --> 00:12:01.080 So, in the Middle Ages, it was very, this is the way, the disputes where people would propose arguments and counter-arguments were a very common method of proceeding, that sometimes these debates would be organized formally, other cases people could send in questions or the teacher, the professor would simply ask questions, 80 00:12:01.080 --> 00:12:06.560 Professor would simply make himself available, people could ask questions to which he would 81 00:12:06.560 --> 00:12:13.560 have to respond and people would send Aquinas various questions and he would answer them 82 00:12:13.560 --> 00:12:23.560 for example, somebody asked a question, if Christ had not performed any miracles would 83 00:12:23.560 --> 00:12:27.560 Will Christianity Still Be Believable? 84 00:12:27.560 --> 00:12:33.560 That was an example of a question he answers, yes it would, giving reasons for that. 85 00:12:33.560 --> 00:12:41.560 So, first I have to ask him, considering Aquinas on politics, 86 00:12:41.560 --> 00:12:50.560 what was he trying to do in his writings on politics? 87 00:12:50.560 --> 00:13:08.040 He was trying to modify the traditional Christian view, as stated classically by St. Augustine, 88 00:13:08.040 --> 00:13:19.360 in response to the knowledge of Aristotle's works that was available in his time. Aristotle's 89 00:13:19.360 --> 00:13:30.360 The ethics and politics were translated or made available in Latin translations in Aquinas' lifetime. 90 00:13:30.360 --> 00:13:34.360 Aquinas wrote long commentaries on each one of these. 91 00:13:34.360 --> 00:13:42.360 By commentary, he would take every sentence in Aristotle's book and have remarks about it. 92 00:13:42.360 --> 00:13:56.360 So, what Aquinas modified from St. Augustine is this. St. Augustine held that because of 93 00:13:56.360 --> 00:14:03.440 original sin, remember original sin is the doctrine that when Adam the first man and 94 00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:43.320 from the political society considered in itself only by accepting Christian 95 00:14:43.320 --> 00:14:54.200 revelation could you overcome original the the original sin and all the evils 96 00:14:54.200 --> 00:15:08.440 St. Augustine held that government exists only because of man's sin. 97 00:15:08.440 --> 00:15:15.480 Had there not been original sin, then government wouldn't have been necessary. 98 00:15:15.480 --> 00:15:19.400 It's only because of sin that government exists. 99 00:15:19.400 --> 00:15:27.800 Aquinas, although of course he accepted original sin, since it's one of the tenets, one of 100 00:15:27.800 --> 00:15:36.520 the dogmas of Christianity, held that original sin didn't completely corrupt nature. 101 00:15:36.520 --> 00:15:44.400 He said sin wounds nature, it doesn't destroy it. 102 00:15:44.400 --> 00:15:54.160 So Aquinas thought there was a good deal to be learned from without, or we could learn 103 00:15:54.160 --> 00:15:59.560 a good deal about politics without bringing in revelation. 104 00:15:59.560 --> 00:16:07.640 We could just reason by reasoning without resort to revelation. 105 00:16:07.640 --> 00:16:15.080 We could obtain knowledge of not only ethics and politics, but also metaphysics. 106 00:16:15.080 --> 00:16:20.400 He didn't entirely, in this point, he didn't entirely differ with St. Augustine. 107 00:16:20.400 --> 00:16:27.080 St. Augustine, after all, had philosophical proofs for the existence of God. 108 00:16:27.080 --> 00:16:35.240 But Aquinas was much more someone who emphasized the independent value. 109 00:16:35.240 --> 00:16:48.040 The Reason than St. Augustine did. 110 00:16:48.040 --> 00:16:56.260 In the Treatise on Law, Aquinas distinguishes different types of law, and it's about one 111 00:16:56.260 --> 00:17:01.920 of the types that I'll, since we'll be talking about, Aquinas distinguished first what he 112 00:17:01.920 --> 00:17:25.560 called the Eternal Law, the Lex Iterna. This is the pattern of God's mind. God is, according 113 00:17:55.560 --> 00:18:05.120 really, God's mind, then man or human beings, the image of God, so we have, we're able 114 00:18:05.120 --> 00:18:16.280 to find out by our own reason some of God's plans, some of what God has in mind, and this 115 00:18:16.280 --> 00:18:32.280 This is natural law. Then there's also laws that are not directly deducible from reason, but are just what's called positive law. 116 00:18:32.280 --> 00:18:41.280 This is a term that's come down to us, we have to say the school of legal, we talked today about legal positivists. 117 00:18:41.280 --> 00:19:04.280 So, what's meant by positive law, it's from the word, it's just sort of law that's promulgated, you have the word in English to posit something, meaning to state something, I posit this, so positive law is a law that is stated by someone holding authority. 118 00:19:04.280 --> 00:19:18.280 So, it isn't something that's directly deducible by reason, then it would be part of natural law, but it's just declared by a competent authority. 119 00:19:18.280 --> 00:19:27.280 And there are two kinds of positive law. There's divine law, which is different from the eternal law. 120 00:19:27.280 --> 00:19:38.280 Divine law are specific precepts, say, that we get in Revelation telling us what to do. 121 00:19:38.280 --> 00:19:46.280 Something can be part of both divine law and natural law. 122 00:19:46.280 --> 00:19:56.280 For example, we would know in natural law, we would know that we can find out that we're not supposed to kill anyone. 123 00:19:56.280 --> 00:20:04.280 We're not supposed to commit murder, but this is also part of divine law because it's one 124 00:20:04.280 --> 00:20:05.920 of the Ten Commandments. 125 00:20:05.920 --> 00:20:12.120 So something can be both in divine law and positive law, but there are divine laws that 126 00:20:12.120 --> 00:20:17.700 are not part of positive law as well, and then there's human positive law, they're just 127 00:20:17.700 --> 00:20:24.560 particular legislative enactments by competent authority. 128 00:20:24.560 --> 00:20:38.680 And then, there's also a law of nations, which is really elements of both natural law and 129 00:20:38.680 --> 00:20:39.680 positive law. 130 00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:50.920 This is laws that regulate between various complete political communities, these communities 131 00:20:50.920 --> 00:21:20.800 natural law is by far the most important for our purpose and I want to first go in, I want 132 00:21:20.800 --> 00:21:37.800 What I'm going to concentrate on is what Aquinas says about natural law, how do we know it, how do we find out what are the demands of reason as it relates to reality and politics. 133 00:21:37.800 --> 00:21:50.840 Here, Aquinas, like Aristotle, by whom he was much influenced, rejects the view that 134 00:21:50.840 --> 00:21:57.220 people in acting are motivated only by their desires. 135 00:21:57.220 --> 00:22:06.280 One view of action, it's one that David Hume held and von Mises also held this view, is 136 00:22:06.280 --> 00:22:15.760 that we have desires for various things, various things we want, and then reason can tell us 137 00:22:15.760 --> 00:22:24.400 how to achieve these desires, say, I just want something so then I can figure out by 138 00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:33.000 reason what's the best way to achieve this, say, I want to lose weight so I can figure 139 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:37.000 What Diet Should I Adopt? 140 00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:43.000 I can't find out through reason what to do. 141 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:47.000 That depends just on what my desires are. 142 00:22:47.000 --> 00:22:51.000 Aquinas rejects that view. 143 00:22:51.000 --> 00:22:55.000 One argument that shows that, 144 00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.000 supposing someone is considering this very question, 145 00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:11.360 question, does reason have any force other than a means, a way of helping us achieve 146 00:23:11.360 --> 00:23:20.400 our desires? Is there any independent, can we say something is rationally mandated regardless 147 00:23:20.400 --> 00:23:28.320 of how we desire it? So if we're thinking about this question, we must think it's valuable 148 00:23:28.320 --> 00:23:35.040 to think about this. Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing it. We wouldn't be engaging in this 149 00:23:35.040 --> 00:23:41.520 sort of reasoning. And so the very fact that we're raising the question shows that we think 150 00:23:41.520 --> 00:23:48.480 that knowledge is good. It's not something that it isn't that, say, I have an independent 151 00:23:48.480 --> 00:23:55.040 desire. I really like to find out things, but it's just that once this question is raised, 152 00:23:55.040 --> 00:24:11.040 It gives me a reason to want to answer it, and the very fact that I'm engaging in the inquiry shows that I can be, that the reason itself is motivating me. 153 00:24:11.040 --> 00:24:18.960 Now, this knowledge, then, is an example of something Aquinas thought could be motivated, 154 00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:24.800 intrinsically motivated, but it's just one of a number of different goods he thought 155 00:24:24.800 --> 00:24:26.920 were motivating in that way. 156 00:24:26.920 --> 00:24:39.320 So according to Aquinas, the basic precept of natural law is, good is to be pursued and 157 00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:47.160 chosen and evil avoided. It seems hard to quarrel with that. And then the issue is how 158 00:24:47.160 --> 00:24:53.980 we find out what the good is. So how do we know what are the goods we're supposed to 159 00:24:53.980 --> 00:25:01.960 do? And Aquinas thought that these goods, something like the way I just mentioned with 160 00:25:01.960 --> 00:25:30.960 Knowledge. These goods are self-evident. He calls this, uses the term, per se nota. These are things that are just by examining the claim, the statement, we can see that it's true. 161 00:25:31.960 --> 00:26:01.960 So, it doesn't mean that we can't have any arguments defending it, say, we can come up with, say, just an example, just giving knowledge, we can give dialectical arguments, if somebody rejects, say, somebody says knowledge isn't good, we can show that it is, well, just that the person is engaging in the question, would show that he does think it's good, so we can give arguments if anyone denies them, but the goods, 162 00:26:01.960 --> 00:26:08.580 The goods are self-evident in the sense that they're not deduced from further principles 163 00:26:08.580 --> 00:26:16.440 and just specifications of this preceptive natural law that good is to be pursued and 164 00:26:16.440 --> 00:26:19.400 chosen and evil avoided. 165 00:26:19.400 --> 00:26:30.640 So one of the goods, I won't give a comprehensive list of them, but one of them is marriage. 166 00:26:30.640 --> 00:26:39.680 holds that marriage is something that's intrinsically good. He has a very strict view of what marriage 167 00:26:39.680 --> 00:26:45.440 is involved with. The two people, the man and the woman, are bound to each other in 168 00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:55.400 that they can't separate or have any relations with anyone else. So he said, if we think 169 00:26:55.400 --> 00:27:02.120 Think about that, we'll see that it is an intrinsically good state of affairs. 170 00:27:02.120 --> 00:27:04.840 Then another example is truth. 171 00:27:04.840 --> 00:27:13.840 Aquinas has the view that it's always wrong under any circumstances to lie. 172 00:27:13.840 --> 00:27:26.600 by lying, what he means by lying, stating or implying that something is true when you 173 00:27:26.600 --> 00:27:33.520 believe the thing is false. So the primary badness in lying, according to Aquinas, is 174 00:27:33.520 --> 00:27:45.120 It's not that you're trying to deceive someone, but that you're being too minded or too faced. 175 00:27:45.120 --> 00:27:51.040 You're at odds with yourself because you're saying one thing while believing another. 176 00:27:51.040 --> 00:28:00.080 So this is, according to him, it's going against the integrity of the human person if you do 177 00:28:00.080 --> 00:28:01.080 this. 178 00:28:01.080 --> 00:28:10.280 Now, of course, there are objections to the strict view that he was very familiar with. 179 00:28:10.280 --> 00:28:17.560 What happens, say, if someone is, there's a murderer at the door and he asks you about 180 00:28:17.560 --> 00:28:25.320 the location of somebody, aren't you able to lie in that sort of view? 181 00:28:25.320 --> 00:28:33.380 Surely you don't have to tell the person where the victim is just because he's asked you. 182 00:28:33.380 --> 00:28:40.640 So Aquinas says there, well, you're not obligated to reveal the truth to him, but you still 183 00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:42.260 are not supposed to lie. 184 00:28:42.260 --> 00:28:50.420 You can say something like, I know, but I'm not going to tell you. 185 00:28:50.420 --> 00:29:01.460 He would also accept more artful statements that get around telling the person, but still 186 00:29:01.460 --> 00:29:05.380 you can't actually tell a lie. 187 00:29:05.380 --> 00:29:08.980 A lie doesn't have to be in words either. 188 00:29:08.980 --> 00:29:17.820 For example, supposing we could think of cases where people actually done this, supposing 189 00:29:17.820 --> 00:29:27.380 A politician wasn't religious, but he wanted people to think that he was, so he kept going 190 00:29:27.380 --> 00:29:35.940 to church services, where people would notice this, even though he didn't really believe 191 00:29:35.940 --> 00:29:36.940 anything. 192 00:29:36.940 --> 00:29:45.140 This would be an example, according to Aquinas, of something you couldn't illicitly do, because 193 00:29:45.140 --> 00:29:47.380 you would be lying. 194 00:29:47.380 --> 00:29:57.660 Now, supposing somebody can't, doesn't feel able to follow this very strict counsel, has 195 00:29:57.660 --> 00:30:01.260 he done anything very seriously wrong? 196 00:30:01.260 --> 00:30:08.940 Well, Aquinas says, no, it doesn't follow that because you've done something that you 197 00:30:08.940 --> 00:30:15.340 shouldn't, that you've committed some grave moral wrong, say if you tell a lie, say to 198 00:30:15.340 --> 00:30:24.540 to avoid revealing where a victim is to prospective murder, you haven't done anything really 199 00:30:24.540 --> 00:30:39.500 seriously wrong, but it's still, according to him, the wrong thing to do. 200 00:30:39.500 --> 00:30:53.020 Now another good that he holds is respect for human life, and he holds that a private person, 201 00:30:53.020 --> 00:31:05.380 someone who doesn't hold competent authority, say, as the ruler or official of a state, 202 00:31:05.380 --> 00:31:12.500 Under no circumstances whatever can directly intend taking innocent life. 203 00:31:12.500 --> 00:31:19.620 Now here, it's very important to see what Aquinas means by intention. 204 00:31:19.620 --> 00:31:22.740 This is a key concept in his philosophy. 205 00:31:22.740 --> 00:31:35.220 The intention in action is not just the motive for something, why I'm doing it. 206 00:31:35.220 --> 00:31:40.820 can be described as an intention also, but there's also an intention involved in the 207 00:31:40.820 --> 00:31:52.420 description of an action. For example, suppose I say I'm now giving a lecture, so in the 208 00:31:52.420 --> 00:32:01.640 Thomist way of viewing things, it wouldn't be right to say the action that's taking place 209 00:32:01.640 --> 00:32:08.640 This is just that there are sounds coming out of my mouth and the intention is just that 210 00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:19.200 I want to give a lecture and so this is connected with these, joined with these physical sounds. 211 00:32:19.200 --> 00:32:25.040 The intention, the description of the action would not be just physical sounds are coming 212 00:32:25.040 --> 00:32:31.860 Now, the description of the action would be, there's, I'm giving a lecture, that would 213 00:32:31.860 --> 00:32:36.880 be called the intention in the action, and then there's further intention, but why am 214 00:32:36.880 --> 00:32:44.000 I giving the lecture? We could have further intention, why am I doing that? Then we could 215 00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:48.880 have possibly further intention, we could have a whole nested series of intentions. 216 00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:56.880 The important thing is the intention is what's involved in the description of the act that I'm doing. 217 00:32:56.880 --> 00:33:05.880 There's a very important book that developed Quimes' concepts that are very influential in modern philosophy 218 00:33:05.880 --> 00:33:11.880 by Elizabeth Anscombe that came out in 1957. 219 00:33:18.880 --> 00:33:30.180 This is the best work to read on intention if you really want to get a good grasp of 220 00:33:30.180 --> 00:33:38.860 what Aquinas had in mind. So, as I say, Aquinas held that a private person can never intentionally 221 00:33:38.860 --> 00:33:45.860 to never directly intend the death of an innocent person. 222 00:33:45.860 --> 00:33:48.860 Let me modify that. I made a stupid mistake. 223 00:33:48.860 --> 00:33:54.860 To never directly intend the death of anyone, not just an innocent person, but anyone. 224 00:33:54.860 --> 00:34:01.860 So, again, let's imagine that, say, someone is going to murder you. 225 00:34:01.860 --> 00:34:04.860 Does this mean that you can't resist at all? 226 00:34:04.860 --> 00:34:19.860 You can resist. In fact, you can even use force that you know will very likely result in the person's death. 227 00:34:19.860 --> 00:34:24.860 But it's just that you can't directly intend the person's death. 228 00:34:24.860 --> 00:34:30.860 The description of your action would be resisting the assault on me. 229 00:34:30.860 --> 00:34:39.860 It wouldn't be that I want to kill this person, so you might say, well, what's the difference in practice? 230 00:34:39.860 --> 00:34:53.860 Well, one way this could come about is suppose there were some means of stopping the person without killing him, then you would have to do that rather than kill him. 231 00:34:53.860 --> 00:35:08.860 So the key here is that the description of the action, your direct intention, can never be to kill anyone, even in self-defense. 232 00:35:08.860 --> 00:35:12.860 If you're a private person, the coin is held on the contrary. 233 00:35:12.860 --> 00:35:18.860 The competent government authorities can directly intend to kill people. 234 00:35:18.860 --> 00:35:31.860 For example, in capital punishment, or in war, you can directly intend to kill people. 235 00:35:31.860 --> 00:35:41.860 People in war would be soldiers who were following the orders of the Compton authority could directly intend someone's death. 236 00:35:41.860 --> 00:35:52.860 So, we have then, according to Aquinas, there are various human goods that we have reason to adopt. 237 00:35:52.860 --> 00:36:03.860 And one point at which he's a little different from Aristotle, Aristotle, you remember, asked the question, 238 00:36:03.860 --> 00:36:11.860 How can, each person will be asking, how can I lead the best life? What is the best life? 239 00:36:11.860 --> 00:36:20.860 Now, Aquinas has also asked the same question. He holds that people are properly, properly have self-love. 240 00:36:20.860 --> 00:36:28.860 Each person wants his own good. However, according to Aquinas, if something is a human good, 241 00:36:28.860 --> 00:36:45.860 In this sense, I've explained it's one of these goods. You have a reason to do it, to seek it, to avoid evil, even if the good or evil has nothing to do with you personally. 242 00:36:45.860 --> 00:37:09.860 So, say, if I see I could help you in some way that falls under one of these class of human good, I would have a reason to do it, even if I'm not in any special relationship with you, even if it wouldn't particularly benefit me to help you, I still have a reason to do it. 243 00:37:09.860 --> 00:37:17.620 And we'll see how this comes out when I mention Aquinas' views on property a little later. 244 00:37:17.620 --> 00:37:28.780 So then everyone then has this motivation to try to achieve the human goods and avoid 245 00:37:28.780 --> 00:37:29.780 the evil. 246 00:37:29.780 --> 00:37:34.860 But then we have a question about how you have all sorts of goods. 247 00:37:34.860 --> 00:37:39.740 How do you decide which ones to pursue? 248 00:37:39.740 --> 00:37:49.740 Aquinas holds that the basic way we decide this, we just follow the precepts in the Bible, 249 00:37:49.740 --> 00:38:00.740 thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. By following that, we never will act against any of these basic human goods. 250 00:38:00.740 --> 00:38:12.740 We're able to act in a systematic way just by pursuing that path, by trying to love our neighbor as ourselves, 251 00:38:12.740 --> 00:38:17.740 we're trying to achieve the basic human goods. 252 00:38:17.740 --> 00:38:27.740 Before turning from this topic of Mises' moral theory and going on to some of the political applications, 253 00:38:27.740 --> 00:38:39.100 I should mention there's a big dispute among contemporary scholars of Aquinas and contemporary 254 00:38:39.100 --> 00:38:48.500 tomas on a particular point in Aquinas's ethics, and that is when I gave this basic precept 255 00:38:48.500 --> 00:38:56.720 of natural law, good is to be pursued and chosen, evil avoided, is this something that 256 00:38:56.720 --> 00:39:24.720 deducible from human nature, is it that we say we can see just by thinking about what the nature of human beings is that this precept follows and all the other goods that are constituent parts of the human good follow from that, or is it an independent principle, something that's just not derivable from human nature? 257 00:39:24.720 --> 00:39:38.720 So, the traditional view, which is defended by Ralph McInerney, he has a number of books on Aquinas, including one called Ethica Thomistica, 258 00:39:38.720 --> 00:39:49.720 is that Aquinas holds that we get the basic precept of natural law by deriving it from human nature. 259 00:39:49.720 --> 00:39:58.140 Henry Veach, who was a very good Aristotelian and Thomist philosopher, has the same view. 260 00:39:58.140 --> 00:40:07.560 But there is a competing interpretation that was an important article by a philosopher named 261 00:40:07.560 --> 00:40:26.360 Germaine Grisey, it came out in 1965, and he's allied with the Oxford legal philosopher 262 00:40:26.360 --> 00:40:34.120 John Finnis, and they say, no, no, this is altogether wrong, Aquinas didn't think you 263 00:40:34.120 --> 00:40:39.800 You could derive the precept of ethics, which is a statement telling you what to do. 264 00:40:39.800 --> 00:40:45.360 Remember, good is to be pursued and chosen, evil avoided. 265 00:40:45.360 --> 00:40:46.360 That's a statement. 266 00:40:46.360 --> 00:40:47.360 It's an ought statement. 267 00:40:47.360 --> 00:40:53.720 It isn't a statement that's at least related to an ought statement, not a strict statement 268 00:40:53.720 --> 00:40:54.720 of ought. 269 00:40:54.720 --> 00:40:58.680 But it's not a factual statement, it's a statement of what you ought to do. 270 00:40:58.680 --> 00:41:06.000 So they say, no, Aquinas didn't think that such a statement was deducible from human 271 00:41:06.000 --> 00:41:11.600 nature, it's independently postulated. 272 00:41:11.600 --> 00:41:20.560 Now I think one reason they hold this view is that they accept the argument given famously 273 00:41:20.560 --> 00:41:27.840 by David Hugh that you can't derive statements about what we ought to do just from descriptive 274 00:41:27.840 --> 00:41:35.360 of State and State Fund. What is the case? So they say, oh, well, Aquinas wasn't guilty 275 00:41:35.360 --> 00:41:40.960 of this fallacy. No, no, he didn't do this. And the other group, the more traditional 276 00:41:40.960 --> 00:41:48.800 group, they, it isn't a fallacy. So there's no reason to try to say that Aquinas didn't 277 00:41:48.800 --> 00:41:57.880 He committed, he did think he could deduce this basic principle of natural law from human 278 00:41:57.880 --> 00:42:00.840 nature and there's nothing the matter with that. 279 00:42:00.840 --> 00:42:09.840 So I should mention also Finnis' views, he has a very important book just called Aquinas 280 00:42:09.840 --> 00:42:13.040 where he discusses his legal and political theory. 281 00:42:13.040 --> 00:42:17.660 He gives a very elaborate account of his views on that. 282 00:42:17.660 --> 00:42:26.860 I'm inclined to think, myself, that traditional interpretation has better the argument, but 283 00:42:26.860 --> 00:42:35.740 it is important to realize that there are these great two main competing interpretations. 284 00:42:35.740 --> 00:42:44.900 This has been going on for the fight between them, it's been going on for a long time. 285 00:42:44.900 --> 00:42:51.380 If you're interested in that country, there's a book by Russell Hittinger called The Critique 286 00:42:51.380 --> 00:43:05.680 of the New Natural Law Theory that came out I think around 1993 or so. 287 00:43:05.680 --> 00:43:12.180 The views that Aquinas held on moral theory that I tried to explain have very direct implications 288 00:43:12.180 --> 00:43:26.580 for Politics. If there are these basic human goods, it follows that there are things that 289 00:43:26.580 --> 00:43:34.660 it's never permissible to do to anybody. For example, to kill the person or to steal property 290 00:43:34.660 --> 00:43:39.260 from him that's justly his. We'll see what's involved in, as you say, in Quincy's views 291 00:43:39.260 --> 00:43:47.980 on Property, but later it's never right to be involved in an adulterous relationship 292 00:43:47.980 --> 00:43:50.540 with someone that the person is married to. 293 00:43:50.540 --> 00:43:57.520 So we have, according to Aquinas, everyone has certain basic rights, and Aquinas says 294 00:43:57.520 --> 00:44:01.740 everyone is born free and equal. 295 00:44:01.740 --> 00:44:08.660 Now some people have objected, they say, oh, you can't say that Aquinas had the notion 296 00:44:08.660 --> 00:44:16.860 of Rights at all. I mentioned, people said that about Aristotle also, and I mentioned 297 00:44:16.860 --> 00:44:23.000 in my last lecture, Fred Miller and others have said, no, they're wrong, Aristotle did 298 00:44:23.000 --> 00:44:29.580 have a notion of rights. And I think similarly, we can say here Aquinas clearly did have the 299 00:44:29.580 --> 00:44:38.980 The notion of rights, because he, we can see this, he says, he defines justice as the firm 300 00:44:38.980 --> 00:44:46.740 resolve to give to everyone what is his, and he says sometimes to give to everyone what 301 00:44:46.740 --> 00:44:54.220 is his by right, using the term just. 302 00:44:54.220 --> 00:45:09.220 So he, this clearly, in the context he's using clearly indicates that people do have, oh sorry, yeah, oh it didn't, 303 00:45:15.220 --> 00:45:23.220 Good, that would violate Aquinas' posthumous rights if you hadn't noticed that. 304 00:45:23.220 --> 00:45:48.220 All right, so everyone does have the basic rights, but in order to secure, or I should say also, on these rights, according to Aquinas, they don't altogether rule out, oddly enough, they don't altogether rule out slavery. 305 00:45:48.220 --> 00:45:56.220 No one, according to him, is a slave by nature. He rejects what Aristotle says, that there are some people who are slaves by nature. 306 00:45:56.220 --> 00:46:10.220 However, you can sell yourself into servitude. I guess he's read Walter Block on this issue. 307 00:46:10.220 --> 00:46:36.220 So you can sell yourself into servitude. However, it's very strictly limited. If you do that, what can be done to you, for example, the owner would have no authority, because no one has this, other than the rulers, to impose anything more than minor punishments. 308 00:46:36.220 --> 00:46:46.460 Also, you couldn't be forbidden from marrying someone or compelled to marry someone, and 309 00:46:46.460 --> 00:46:50.580 you had the right to work on your own to provide for your family. 310 00:46:50.580 --> 00:46:59.780 In fact, if a master wanted you to do something and you thought you were a slave and you thought 311 00:46:59.780 --> 00:47:05.700 it would interfere with your needed work to help your own family, you could refuse to 312 00:47:05.700 --> 00:47:18.740 to do the work. So the term for slave, actually, is service. It's doubtful whether this can 313 00:47:18.740 --> 00:47:25.580 be really translated as slave. Probably it's more of a servant relationship, although you 314 00:47:25.580 --> 00:47:30.700 couldn't leave voluntarily if you sold yourself into such a thing. But they're very strict 315 00:47:30.700 --> 00:48:00.700 Restrictions. So it's not at all like, say, slavery in America or anything like that. It's a much more limited sort of thing. So then, again, so everyone has the basic rights, but like Aristotle, Aquinas thinks there's a people, in order to live well, must be part of a complete community 316 00:48:00.700 --> 00:48:08.700 They can't just secure their needs just by having a group of families or households get together. 317 00:48:08.700 --> 00:48:12.700 They have to form part of some larger group. 318 00:48:12.700 --> 00:48:20.700 Unlike Aristotle, Aquinas isn't very particular about the size of the group. 319 00:48:20.700 --> 00:48:30.620 Group. Sometimes he refers, or it can be a city-state, a polis, as in the classical 320 00:48:30.620 --> 00:48:37.860 Greece, but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes he uses the same term, kivita, to mean not 321 00:48:37.860 --> 00:48:45.140 only a city, but a much larger entity, such as a province or a country. It doesn't really 322 00:48:45.140 --> 00:48:53.140 for the Greeks, for Aristotle and Plato, it definitely did, the size of the city definitely did matter. 323 00:48:53.140 --> 00:49:07.140 Aristotle holds that a city shouldn't be too large, and in fact, one of the reasons he thinks that the ideal city, the best city can regulate population, 324 00:49:07.140 --> 00:49:14.140 is to prevent population from getting too large. 325 00:49:14.140 --> 00:49:26.140 Similarly, Plato, in his description of the city, in the law's limits, he says the city should be composed of something like 5,040 households. 326 00:49:26.140 --> 00:49:32.140 He wants this exact number, so Aquinas doesn't hold this view. 327 00:49:32.140 --> 00:49:39.820 Now, then, I think the key point, though, once we have Aquinas once, this complete community, 328 00:49:39.820 --> 00:49:48.740 is, this is, I think, one reason for agreeing with the great classical liberal historian 329 00:49:48.740 --> 00:49:58.420 Laurie Acton that Aquinas was the first Whig, is that Aquinas holds that the complete community 330 00:49:58.420 --> 00:50:04.860 is concerned only with external actions and behavior. 331 00:50:04.860 --> 00:50:11.100 Say, what the object of the complete community is, 332 00:50:11.100 --> 00:50:16.540 is to provide peace and order. 333 00:50:16.540 --> 00:50:20.740 Aquinas quotes the beautiful definition of St. Augustine, 334 00:50:20.740 --> 00:50:23.940 that peace is the tranquility of order. 335 00:50:23.940 --> 00:50:36.660 So the basic idea is that people, in order to live well, have to coordinate their actions in some way. 336 00:50:36.660 --> 00:50:45.940 And Aquinas thought he didn't have the Hayekian insight that order could emerge spontaneously. 337 00:50:45.940 --> 00:50:50.500 He thought that if you have various ways of coordinating action, 338 00:50:50.500 --> 00:50:59.260 You need someone in authority to set out how the order is to be done. 339 00:50:59.260 --> 00:51:02.900 You need to have someone deciding. 340 00:51:02.900 --> 00:51:06.420 Suppose we want to have a group of people living together. 341 00:51:06.420 --> 00:51:14.900 We need to decide, say, how various, how they're to regulate, 342 00:51:14.900 --> 00:51:19.140 how they're to live their, how they're to coordinate their actions. 343 00:51:19.140 --> 00:51:31.820 And this process by which the state decides what to do, this process of legislation, Aquinas 344 00:51:31.820 --> 00:51:44.180 calls this determination, he uses the term determinateo. 345 00:51:44.180 --> 00:51:50.060 This is where you would have a choice of various ways to achieve something, you have to pick 346 00:51:50.060 --> 00:51:58.460 one. Say, we're deciding, say, imagine we've sometimes done it this instant, we have to 347 00:51:58.460 --> 00:52:04.540 have a picture of everyone in the group. We have to, somehow, someone has to decide how 348 00:52:04.540 --> 00:52:08.620 the people are going to be arranged in the picture. There are various ways one could 349 00:52:08.620 --> 00:52:10.620 Determinatio 350 00:52:38.620 --> 00:52:44.220 You can promote virtue only as it relates to external actions. 351 00:52:44.220 --> 00:52:54.100 It doesn't take us in a way that contemporary libertarians would be completely comfortable 352 00:52:54.100 --> 00:52:55.100 with. 353 00:52:55.100 --> 00:53:04.940 For example, he holds that, say, because children need to be educated in a certain way, you 354 00:53:04.940 --> 00:53:14.580 You could say prevent pornography because this would have a bad effect on children and 355 00:53:14.580 --> 00:53:22.580 this would interfere with the way people interacted in society, but say you couldn't prohibit 356 00:53:22.580 --> 00:53:30.780 somebody from looking at pornographic materials by himself if he somehow got hold of them. 357 00:53:30.780 --> 00:53:34.460 You couldn't interfere with purely private vices. 358 00:53:34.460 --> 00:53:40.420 So the borderline isn't very clear, but he holds something like, as we'll see later, 359 00:53:40.420 --> 00:53:46.620 John Stuart Mill holds, that if there's something that's purely self-regarding, the state can 360 00:53:46.620 --> 00:53:48.180 interfere with it. 361 00:53:48.180 --> 00:53:55.220 And this applies also to religion, even though, of course, he thinks that everyone should 362 00:53:55.220 --> 00:54:02.940 be a member, they should be joining the Catholic Church and accept its doctrine. 363 00:54:02.940 --> 00:54:11.320 The State doesn't have the right to force people to accept the true faith. 364 00:54:11.320 --> 00:54:20.780 He makes an exception to this for people who are continued heretics. 365 00:54:20.780 --> 00:54:25.660 I won't go into his argument for that in case someone wants to ask a question about it. 366 00:54:25.660 --> 00:54:31.940 Basically, he holds that if someone is a continued in heresy after a number of warnings, then 367 00:54:31.940 --> 00:54:39.540 He's really guilty for breach of promise, so he can be given over to the state for execution. 368 00:54:39.540 --> 00:54:51.220 That's really, I think, is inconsistent with the main tenor of Aquinas' discussion. 369 00:54:51.220 --> 00:55:00.860 Now a question that I think will be of interest to us, all libertarians, would be, what does 370 00:55:00.860 --> 00:55:11.860 How does this view of Aquinas held about rights and nature? How does this relate to property? 371 00:55:11.860 --> 00:55:17.860 How does this affect what are his views on right to acquire property? 372 00:55:17.860 --> 00:55:26.860 He holds that the earth was originally given to everyone in common. 373 00:55:26.860 --> 00:55:35.260 Common. However, this doesn't exclude at all people from acquiring property for themselves. 374 00:55:35.260 --> 00:55:44.340 Quite the contrary, he thinks that the way people make parts of the earth available for 375 00:55:44.340 --> 00:55:55.900 common use is just by acquiring it for their own use. Say, if you possess some property, 376 00:55:55.900 --> 00:56:00.740 When you produce something and you put various products on the market, so just what you're 377 00:56:00.740 --> 00:56:03.660 doing is making the property available to others. 378 00:56:03.660 --> 00:56:11.220 This is how you make the property available, and he thinks that this is a much better way 379 00:56:11.220 --> 00:56:17.460 of doing things than letting property just remain income, because I think very rightly, 380 00:56:17.460 --> 00:56:25.780 people would be interested much more in producing what they own themselves and just trying to 381 00:56:25.780 --> 00:56:30.840 to make do by taking something from a common store. 382 00:56:30.840 --> 00:56:34.700 Though he was very definitely aware of the division of labor 383 00:56:34.700 --> 00:56:38.340 and the need for people to integrate 384 00:56:38.340 --> 00:56:40.140 their economic activities. 385 00:56:44.820 --> 00:56:47.180 Now, he divided. 386 00:56:47.180 --> 00:56:50.260 He didn't, though, have any view, say, as Locke 387 00:56:50.260 --> 00:56:53.740 and later libertarians of Hall, that you 388 00:56:53.740 --> 00:56:59.180 have held that you acquire property by mixing your labor with the property. 389 00:56:59.180 --> 00:57:07.300 It wasn't any particular relationship between the person and an owned property that would 390 00:57:07.300 --> 00:57:08.300 give you the property. 391 00:57:08.300 --> 00:57:15.340 It was just that you were somehow putting it into use that gave you the rights to it. 392 00:57:15.340 --> 00:57:26.420 Now according to him, when we think about property, there are really three classes of property. 393 00:57:26.420 --> 00:57:32.860 First is what you need for your absolute necessity. 394 00:57:32.860 --> 00:57:39.340 You couldn't live without this property, without getting this particular item. 395 00:57:39.340 --> 00:57:46.980 Now, if there's a matter, something that's absolutely necessary for you to have, Aquinas 396 00:57:46.980 --> 00:57:49.740 holds that you can take it. 397 00:57:49.740 --> 00:57:52.980 No one has the right to withhold it from you. 398 00:57:52.980 --> 00:58:02.380 Well, there's an obvious, what if somebody else needs the same item for his, is necessary 399 00:58:02.380 --> 00:58:03.700 for him to live? 400 00:58:03.700 --> 00:58:08.000 Then Aquinas says, well, then you don't really have any solution, there's no definite solution 401 00:58:08.000 --> 00:58:15.240 to that but somewhat like a bit like Rand on emergency ethics but again if 402 00:58:15.240 --> 00:58:23.240 something is absolutely necessary you can take it. Now the second class is a 403 00:58:23.240 --> 00:58:29.440 property that you need to fulfill your responsibilities. These this would 404 00:58:29.440 --> 00:58:36.160 include materials items such as defending I mean I mean securing the 405 00:58:36.160 --> 00:58:52.160 Education for members of your household or enabling people in your household to make a living or conducting your business, your legitimate business, or paying your debts. 406 00:58:52.160 --> 00:59:01.840 and here Aquinas thinks this is a it's reasonable you're entitled to hold this 407 00:59:01.840 --> 00:59:09.040 property and if you know that somebody else needs the needs some of this 408 00:59:09.040 --> 00:59:14.400 property or his absolute necessity you're not obligated to give it to him 409 00:59:14.400 --> 00:59:18.920 if he can take it if he can but you don't have to offer it to him you're 410 00:59:18.920 --> 00:59:31.480 The third class property is superfluous items, things that you don't need for either the 411 00:59:31.480 --> 00:59:38.240 first two, and here Aquinas holds that you don't have any right over these things at 412 00:59:38.240 --> 00:59:45.920 all, you really should give it to the poor, you don't have any right to these. However, 413 00:59:45.920 --> 00:59:55.760 As I mentioned, he does hold that investment is a legitimate form of activity, so he wouldn't 414 00:59:55.760 --> 01:00:05.760 favor any policy, say, that would tax businesses so that they'd have to lose all their profits 415 01:00:05.760 --> 01:00:12.200 and give them to the poor, because this would be not their superfluous property, but would 416 01:00:12.200 --> 01:00:22.480 to be part of their property that they were able to hold because they would be fulfilling 417 01:00:22.480 --> 01:00:32.440 their reasonable obligation, namely to promote their own business. 418 01:00:32.440 --> 01:00:39.800 While we're on the subject of economics, I should say something about Aquinas' views 419 01:00:39.800 --> 01:00:47.680 on Price and Usury, Murray Rothbard in the first volume of his History of Economic Thought 420 01:00:47.680 --> 01:00:54.880 has a characteristically good discussion at this point, but I'll say a few additional 421 01:00:54.880 --> 01:01:01.280 things in respect of slightly different from the treatment you'll get in that book, which 422 01:01:01.280 --> 01:01:04.800 everyone needs to consult. 423 01:01:04.800 --> 01:01:14.800 Aquinas held, here he was following Aristotle, when Aristotle discusses what he calls reciprocal justice, 424 01:01:14.800 --> 01:01:25.800 that in an exchange, if I trade something with you, I trade, say, apples for oranges, there has to be an equality, 425 01:01:25.800 --> 01:01:34.440 And the equality is one where the, really, where the, based on need, the price has to 426 01:01:34.440 --> 01:01:37.640 correspond to need in some way. 427 01:01:37.640 --> 01:01:44.080 It isn't entirely clear how this is to be done, but the way, what Aquinas thought was 428 01:01:44.080 --> 01:01:53.840 that really the measure of need is, in most circumstances, the going market rate for goods. 429 01:01:53.840 --> 01:02:04.680 So basically held that in an exchange you were acting legitimately if you sold or bought 430 01:02:04.680 --> 01:02:07.440 at the market price. 431 01:02:07.440 --> 01:02:14.960 Now supposing you were selling something and you knew that the price of what you were selling 432 01:02:14.960 --> 01:02:22.760 was going to go down very soon, are you obligated to tell the buyer about this or can you sell 433 01:02:22.760 --> 01:02:31.600 You don't have to tell the person you can sell at the going rate. 434 01:02:31.600 --> 01:02:40.520 However, suppose you have a case where someone, say, really wants something, say, someone 435 01:02:40.520 --> 01:02:49.480 has always wanted a copy of my book on marks and he's willing to pay $500 for it, which 436 01:02:49.480 --> 01:02:56.240 Which is somewhat above the market price. Can the seller say, okay, fine, I accept your 437 01:02:56.240 --> 01:03:02.560 offer of $500 for it? Aquinas says, no, he can't do that. He has to sell it at the going 438 01:03:02.560 --> 01:03:13.360 price. Now, the other interesting economic issue involves interest on money. And here, 439 01:03:13.360 --> 01:03:18.040 Again, Aquinas followed Aristotle. 440 01:03:18.040 --> 01:03:26.000 Aquinas thought there was a problem in getting interest on a loan, in that he said there 441 01:03:26.000 --> 01:03:34.960 are some goods where you can distinguish between the good itself and the use of the good. 442 01:03:34.960 --> 01:03:42.480 For example, suppose I rent an apartment from someone and I'm paying for the use of the 443 01:03:42.480 --> 01:03:53.200 Department, but the apartment is, I can distinguish that from owning the apartment. It's intelligent, 444 01:03:53.200 --> 01:04:03.600 makes sense to say, I'm just using the building, the apartment, but the owner of the apartment 445 01:04:03.600 --> 01:04:08.160 retains his ownership, he's just letting me use it. But there are other goods where this 446 01:04:08.160 --> 01:04:19.280 This isn't true. For example, suppose you consider wine. Well, when you buy wine, you're 447 01:04:19.280 --> 01:04:28.360 not buying both the bottle of wine and the use of the wine. When you buy it, you drink 448 01:04:28.360 --> 01:04:34.160 it, you've used up the good, there's nothing left. You couldn't say, okay, I'm just paying 449 01:04:34.160 --> 01:04:39.680 for the use of the wine. I'm going to return the actual wine to the owner. There is nothing 450 01:04:39.680 --> 01:04:51.680 to return. So Aquinas thinks money is like wine in this respect. When you're using money, 451 01:04:51.680 --> 01:04:58.680 there's nothing, there's no such thing as having the money, owning the money, as using 452 01:04:58.680 --> 01:05:08.120 If someone loans you money, then if you use it, that's all there is to it. 453 01:05:08.120 --> 01:05:12.200 There's no money left that you can still return. 454 01:05:12.200 --> 01:05:23.440 So if there's a charge for interest, then in effect you're being charged twice, you're 455 01:05:23.440 --> 01:05:33.440 being asked to pay back the original money, plus a separate amount for the use of the money, so he said this is obviously illicit. 456 01:05:33.440 --> 01:05:39.440 I think it's interesting to try to figure out what exactly is wrong with this argument. 457 01:05:39.440 --> 01:05:52.440 I think, as I see it, the basic fallacy is that Aquinas is assuming that if you're paying back the money, 458 01:05:52.440 --> 01:06:00.880 Say, that what you would have to pay back is the exact sum of money that you borrowed. 459 01:06:00.880 --> 01:06:08.840 This would certainly make sense if we just took, just consider things in, an example 460 01:06:08.840 --> 01:06:09.840 like this. 461 01:06:09.840 --> 01:06:16.880 Suppose I say, how much, I have a $20 bill in my wallet, how much money will you give 462 01:06:16.880 --> 01:06:18.760 me for it? 463 01:06:18.760 --> 01:06:48.760 Well, obviously, you wouldn't give me more than $20, and I wouldn't sell it to you for less than $20, it would be pointless, it would just be an exchange of $20 for $20, but if there were a question, how much, what about, how much money will you give me in six months if I give you $20, it doesn't follow at all that, just getting back, the money would mean getting back 464 01:06:48.760 --> 01:06:54.000 The price of the money would be $20. 465 01:06:54.000 --> 01:07:01.440 Aquinas is just assuming that the value of the good is always the same, he's not taking 466 01:07:01.440 --> 01:07:03.500 account of the time preference. 467 01:07:03.500 --> 01:07:08.240 So if you do take account of the time preference and you really consider it as different goods, 468 01:07:08.240 --> 01:07:14.160 there would be no particular reason to think that you want it at the price of $20 six months 469 01:07:14.160 --> 01:07:25.160 The price from now would be $20 just as you would not know, say, for any two goods like apples and oranges, what the correct ratio is. 470 01:07:25.160 --> 01:07:29.160 This would be just something that would depend on the market price. 471 01:07:29.160 --> 01:07:38.160 So interest doesn't involve, as Aquinas thought, this double charge. 472 01:07:38.160 --> 01:07:50.800 The last issue I want to discuss in Aquinas' theory is, I think, one that's certainly 473 01:07:50.800 --> 01:08:02.880 very relevant for us today in contemporary America. His views on just war. Now, Aquinas 474 01:08:02.880 --> 01:08:11.840 was developed using St. Augustine but had more to say on it than St. Augustine did. 475 01:08:11.840 --> 01:08:21.360 According to Aquinas there are three conditions for a just war. It's the third of these conditions 476 01:08:21.360 --> 01:08:27.280 that I want to stress the most because this is the one I think has great relevance for us today. 477 01:08:27.280 --> 01:08:36.160 The first one is that he thought that the war has to be declared by someone holding authority. 478 01:08:36.160 --> 01:08:44.240 You can't have private wars. Remember, one feature in Aquinas' theories is that the rulers, 479 01:08:44.240 --> 01:08:53.920 those who have legitimate rule, have certain powers that private people don't have. 480 01:08:53.920 --> 01:09:11.920 Remember, a private person can never directly intend the death of anyone, but those holding public authority can, because one reason for this is that they're able, according to him, to be impartial. 481 01:09:11.920 --> 01:09:27.920 Say, a private person, say, was trying to decide when to use deadly force directly, would be likely to make mistakes in his own favor, but someone who's competent authority would be able to avoid this. 482 01:09:27.920 --> 01:09:31.920 So the war has to be declared by competent authority. 483 01:09:31.920 --> 01:09:37.920 Then, the second requirement is that it has to be for a just cause. 484 01:09:37.920 --> 01:09:53.920 This doesn't have to be self-defense, but it has to be some injury, some violation of the natural law that the state is trying to rectify. 485 01:09:53.920 --> 01:10:01.920 The third one is, I think, the key one. War has to be waged with the right intention. 486 01:10:01.920 --> 01:10:14.920 So, you can only have a legitimate war if your intention is to rectify whatever the problem was that led to the just cause. 487 01:10:14.920 --> 01:10:21.920 Say, if you had some other intention as well, that would knock out the war entirely. 488 01:10:21.920 --> 01:10:37.920 Say, if you, in the conduct of the war, violated the proper rules, say, if you attacked someone who was innocent directly, that's something no one can ever do, that would invalidate the war entirely. 489 01:10:37.920 --> 01:10:48.920 So I think, say, if we applied this to the Iraq war today, we could see very readily that would be out altogether because it wouldn't be waged with the right intention. 490 01:10:48.920 --> 01:11:18.920 I won't go into any of the direct political applications, but again, there's an excellent essay by Elizabeth Anscombe in her collected Philosophical Papers, Volume 3, where she applies this view to various, she applies it to origins of World War II and U.S. policy in that war, so she shows that this Thomist doctrine has very strict implications 491 01:11:18.920 --> 01:11:33.920 In fact, one authority on the Cardinal Charles Jurnet said, if we followed the just war teaching, 492 01:11:33.920 --> 01:11:39.920 there would only be a handful of wars in human history that would turn out to be justified. 493 01:11:39.920 --> 01:11:50.120 Now, the last topic I want to mention is, I mentioned on some of Quine's views on what 494 01:11:50.120 --> 01:11:57.560 the proper course of conduct for the government is, but what about, what did he actually think 495 01:11:57.560 --> 01:12:01.440 the structure of the government should be like? 496 01:12:01.440 --> 01:12:04.440 What is the best form of government? 497 01:12:04.440 --> 01:12:17.800 Here he says that ideally kingship ruled by one person is the best if it isn't corrupted, 498 01:12:17.800 --> 01:12:21.480 but he thinks it very likely will be corrupted. 499 01:12:21.480 --> 01:12:26.360 So in practice, a mixed form of government is best. 500 01:12:26.360 --> 01:12:34.120 For example, say one where there was a monarch, but there's also an aristocratic element, 501 01:12:34.120 --> 01:12:44.360 Say, there's a group of people who are advising, close advisors of the king that he consults before deciding on policies. 502 01:12:44.360 --> 01:13:01.360 And also, there's a popular element, say, people can have a chance to elect some of the advisors or even a chance to elect who even have elect the monarch, 503 01:13:01.360 --> 01:13:12.360 He also makes a distinction, besides this one between how many are ruling whether you have kingship or not, 504 01:13:12.360 --> 01:13:16.360 he makes a distinction between what he calls regal rule. 505 01:13:16.360 --> 01:13:24.360 This is not the same as kingship, it's just a particular type of rule and political rule. 506 01:13:24.360 --> 01:13:34.120 Regal rule is where the ruler, whoever it is, is limited only by the natural law. 507 01:13:34.120 --> 01:13:38.960 There aren't constitutional limits on the power of the government. 508 01:13:38.960 --> 01:13:52.920 For example, the contemporary British government is meeting a case of regal rule because parliament really can pass any legislation it wants. 509 01:13:52.920 --> 01:14:01.160 They're not, there's no constitutional limit to what the parliament can do. 510 01:14:01.160 --> 01:14:11.400 There's certainly customary limits, if that would be considered very bad, very strange if the parliament were to violate them. 511 01:14:11.400 --> 01:14:15.640 But the parliament would technically have a power to do that. 512 01:14:15.640 --> 01:14:29.440 And then the political rule is where the government has their limits to what the government can do that are put in, that are explicitly part of the structure of the government. 513 01:14:29.440 --> 01:14:43.840 Say, in our government, although these aren't always observed in practice, we have, say, the rule that only Congress can declare war, the president can't do it. 514 01:14:43.840 --> 01:14:49.840 So, if that limit were observed, that would be certainly a limit on the present, is it not? 515 01:14:49.840 --> 01:14:57.840 It's a limit put in by the Constitution, so it would be prior to political rule. 516 01:14:57.840 --> 01:15:07.840 Even in the regal rule, though, the ruler can't do anything at all that he wants that consists of natural law. 517 01:15:07.840 --> 01:15:26.840 One thing that he's limited is that he can't, he has to follow his own laws, he can't exempt himself from his own laws because this, in addition to the power of coercion that a law has, 518 01:15:26.840 --> 01:15:45.840 According to Aquinas, a law also tells people, guides people, what to do. So if the ruler violates his own laws, this would confuse people. So he can't do that. 519 01:15:45.840 --> 01:15:56.280 And then, the last thing I'll say, and this is again a reason that Lord Acton thought 520 01:15:56.280 --> 01:16:03.600 that Aquinas was the first Whig, this is the reason he gave, is that he holds that if the 521 01:16:03.600 --> 01:16:13.200 government doesn't follow the proper course, if it violates people's rights, you have the 522 01:16:13.200 --> 01:16:21.200 The right to disobey and in some cases to revolt against the government if there are gross violations of people's rights. 523 01:16:21.200 --> 01:16:32.200 However, you need to take account in considering whether to revolt or even possibly to kill the tyrant. 524 01:16:32.200 --> 01:16:37.200 You have to take account of the possible bad effects this would have. 525 01:16:37.200 --> 01:16:54.200 So there might be cases where, say, government is violating people's rights, but trying to overthrow it would cause a great deal of trouble and it would result in more disorder than it's worth to correct the government. 526 01:16:54.200 --> 01:17:07.200 So we see here, I think, in conclusion, we can see how Aquinas developed some of the basic ideas of Aristotle on the complete political community. 527 01:17:07.200 --> 01:17:15.200 But he had more clearly than Aristotle a notion of individual rights and the limits on the power of the state. 528 01:17:15.200 --> 01:17:20.200 So I think we have some time for questions, objections. 529 01:17:20.200 --> 01:17:47.200 One of the early fathers of the church that might have been Athanasius was pleading for him from the golden giraffe and they came across him and recognized him and asked him if Athanasius was around and he said he's not far distant and he's got a good chance of catching him and they said, oh thanks. 530 01:17:47.200 --> 01:18:12.200 The question was, in the example where St. Athanasius was being pursued and he said, in response to the pursuers, they asked him, do you know where Athanasius is, and he said he's not far off, and then they rowed, but they went on rowing right by. 531 01:18:12.200 --> 01:18:42.200 The question is, would this pass Aquinas' test? Yes, yes, I think it would because here it isn't that, remember for Aquinas, lying isn't that you're intending to deceive the person, it's that you're saying something that you know to be false, and what he's saying is perfectly true, the person isn't far off, and similarly, he gives the example, say, supposing 532 01:18:42.200 --> 01:18:54.040 The soldiers in the battle, the general decides on a retreat in order to get the enemy to 533 01:18:54.040 --> 01:18:58.320 advance and then he comes in and attacks them. 534 01:18:58.320 --> 01:19:03.600 That's perfectly all right because all you've done is order the retreat. 535 01:19:03.600 --> 01:19:10.160 If the enemy wants to conclude that you're in full retreat, that's their problem. 536 01:19:10.160 --> 01:19:13.640 All you've done is withdraw your forces, that's perfectly all right. 537 01:19:13.640 --> 01:19:20.600 So the key question is just, are you saying something that while you believe or are you 538 01:19:20.600 --> 01:19:26.160 doing something that implies that you hold something to be true while really believing 539 01:19:26.160 --> 01:19:27.160 it to be false? 540 01:19:27.160 --> 01:19:35.200 It doesn't have to be a word, the quantum says you can lie, say with the nod of a finger. 541 01:19:35.200 --> 01:19:42.200 So, again, the key question is truth rather than deception. 542 01:20:05.200 --> 01:20:34.200 The question was in, say, a case where someone, 543 01:20:34.200 --> 01:20:41.000 Someone has uncertain information and treats it as a certainty. 544 01:20:41.000 --> 01:20:48.280 For example, President Bush said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 545 01:20:48.280 --> 01:20:57.080 His defenders say he wasn't lying because he was just basing himself on certain intelligence 546 01:20:57.080 --> 01:20:58.600 reports that were uncertain. 547 01:20:58.600 --> 01:21:03.520 He didn't say they were uncertain. 548 01:21:03.520 --> 01:21:08.520 Would this count as a lie in Aquinas' sense? 549 01:21:08.520 --> 01:21:21.760 Well, I think the key question would be, what does the person himself believe to be true? 550 01:21:21.760 --> 01:21:27.080 When you assert something, you know, asserting something is claiming that it's the case, 551 01:21:27.080 --> 01:21:28.260 claiming that it's true. 552 01:21:28.260 --> 01:21:36.720 So if in fact Bush believed that it fell short of truth, it was just there was some possibility 553 01:21:36.720 --> 01:21:37.720 there were weapons there. 554 01:21:37.720 --> 01:21:47.060 I think it would be a lie because his real belief, the lie doesn't have to lie, to say 555 01:21:47.060 --> 01:21:55.180 what you believe to be, to say something is true that you believe to be false, it doesn't 556 01:21:55.180 --> 01:22:01.900 You don't have to believe the contradictory of what you assert, it's just you have failed 557 01:22:01.900 --> 01:22:07.420 to believe what you actually assert. 558 01:22:07.420 --> 01:22:16.220 So I mean, for chronological reasons, he didn't discuss that actual case, so I can't really 559 01:22:16.220 --> 01:22:17.220 say. 560 01:22:17.220 --> 01:22:18.220 Michael? 561 01:22:18.220 --> 01:22:25.420 When you describe how Aquinas differs from the way we behave with credit card companies, 562 01:22:25.420 --> 01:22:36.220 that is, we expect that if we borrow money, we are going to face the tributes of getting it now rather than later. 563 01:22:36.220 --> 01:22:42.220 Why do you think Aquinas works differently about it than the way we do? 564 01:22:42.220 --> 01:22:55.220 I would probably, they hadn't really, he hadn't really had the concept of time preference which is something that came into economics only later. 565 01:22:55.220 --> 01:23:04.220 I think he took it, I mean it's very, seems very obvious that something like $20 is $20. 566 01:23:04.220 --> 01:23:10.940 How could you say that $20 now is a different good from $20 six months from now, they're 567 01:23:10.940 --> 01:23:20.780 still the same good. So I think it took quite a bit of, it was a great insight when people 568 01:23:20.780 --> 01:23:31.180 saw that this wasn't the case. Economics wasn't the subject, the quietness was particularly 569 01:23:31.180 --> 01:23:48.180 He's done an enormous amount of original work and he knew quite a bit about it, but that wasn't an area where he thought extremely deeply on his own, unlike most subjects that he covered. 570 01:23:48.180 --> 01:23:51.180 Yes, Tom? 571 01:24:21.180 --> 01:24:34.180 I was in the middle of my own writing, taking our position, and I remember saying to my father that I already hear my detector saying, 572 01:24:34.180 --> 01:24:40.180 I think you know more than Thomas Aquinas on this subject, and my father very serenely replied, 573 01:24:40.180 --> 01:25:07.180 The question was that Father James Sadowski suggested that perhaps Aquinas really in his heart of hearts didn't believe fully in the Church's doctrine of usury, but he held the hat to defend it because that was the official position. 574 01:25:07.180 --> 01:25:22.180 Now, it's an interesting idea. One thing possibly we could say in favor of that is Aquinas does hold that a lender can be compensated for his loss in lending the money. 575 01:25:22.180 --> 01:25:32.180 Supposing the lender was going to invest in a business, had he not loaned the money, he would have made money on that. 576 01:26:02.180 --> 01:26:09.020 to get this profit. He has to take into account that he might not have gotten it, as we consider 577 01:26:09.020 --> 01:26:18.140 in his decision. Also, Cuenas said, he couldn't say, well, if I hadn't loaned the money to 578 01:26:18.140 --> 01:26:23.420 you, I would have loaned it to somebody else, so I would have made profit on that. That 579 01:26:23.420 --> 01:26:31.180 would be rather circularly easy. One thing I should mention when you say this basic question 580 01:26:31.180 --> 01:26:34.780 If Aquinas did hold that, what would he have been like? 581 01:26:34.780 --> 01:26:42.460 I should mention in the talk, as usual, there's a Straussian interpretation of Aquinas. 582 01:26:42.460 --> 01:26:49.660 Now, this one is not held by all or even most Straussians, it's more in the oral tradition. 583 01:26:49.660 --> 01:26:59.340 In fact, if you look at the chapter on Aquinas in the basic Straussian textbook, History of 584 01:26:59.340 --> 01:27:04.980 Political Philosophy, edited by Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, the chapter on Aquinas is 585 01:27:04.980 --> 01:27:11.420 by Father Ernest Fortin, who is an extremely good scholar and gives a very standard view 586 01:27:11.420 --> 01:27:21.300 of Aquinas' recommenders. But in the oral tradition, there are some people who hold 587 01:27:21.300 --> 01:27:27.700 this, that Aquinas was really a secret atheist, didn't believe any of this stuff. Say, when 588 01:27:27.700 --> 01:27:46.700 He says in the Summa, it seems there is no God. That was what his real view was. He wasn't just giving the objection, but that was what he really held. I must say I don't find that altogether plausible. 589 01:27:46.700 --> 01:28:01.700 I guess of course it doesn't follow, she was just drowsy. 590 01:28:01.700 --> 01:28:06.700 Also on the history question, if I remember correctly, Aristotle employed the argument 591 01:28:06.700 --> 01:28:10.780 everybody is saying that because money is ... 592 01:28:24.780 --> 01:28:27.900 well I think he quotes the erosome. I think he relies 593 01:28:27.900 --> 01:28:30.860 on his own argument. The question was 594 01:28:31.760 --> 01:28:35.120 ... does Aquinas use Aristotle's 595 01:28:35.120 --> 01:28:40.000 point against usury that when Aristotle says money is barren. Well, I think probably a 596 01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:46.640 better answer would be he regards his argument really as a counter explanation of what Aristotle 597 01:28:46.640 --> 01:28:52.600 meant by that. It's not, after all, it's not altogether clear what Aristotle means by saying 598 01:28:52.600 --> 01:28:57.320 money is barren. It's somewhat of a metaphor. So I think what Aquinas is doing is really 599 01:28:57.320 --> 01:29:10.320 Are we explaining what this means? Anybody else? All right, well, thanks very much. Thank you.