Abstract

This dissertation seeks to re-establish the proper context for understanding Thomas Aquinas's discussion of the natural law. The loss of this context has resulted in numerous misreadings of Aquinas, many of which end up divorcing the natural law from the virtues and, most critically, from the fundamental virtues of prudence and charity. ;In the Summa theologiae, Thomas states that the basic precepts of the natural law were revealed in and through the moral precepts of the Old Law. These basic precepts, though revealed, may also be known by unaided reason, but often are not, either because of the weakness of the intellect or the corruption of the will. He suggests, moreover, that all the precepts of the natural law can be reduced ultimately to the Ten Commandments, which in turn can be reduced to the two great commandments to love God and love one's neighbor as oneself. I show how these two fundamental commandments to love God and neighbor, which Thomas claims are self-evident to human reason, operate not as hypothetical imperatives, but as categorical imperatives that follow logically and necessarily from the intrinsic character of every rational human choice. ;Since all the norms of the natural law can, according to Thomas, be reduced to these two fundamental norms to love God and love one's neighbor as oneself, all such norms should be seen as necessary, though not sufficient, conditions of the love of God and neighbor. This being the case, it follows that the moral norms of the natural law can only be fully realized when they are followed out of an authentic bond of love, for they are, by their very nature, ordered to that love. What must motivate the moral agent to follow the norms of the natural law, therefore, is charity and the virtues informed by charity