The following lecture was delivered to the faculty of Thomas Aquinas College in the fall of 2020.
When Aquinas presents his understanding of the natural law, he unifies it under a single precept, “Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be shunned.”[1] This precept forms the basis for every other natural law precept—which is why it is a unifying principle for the natural law as a whole[2]—because it expresses the first principle of any action whatsoever. We do not commit a fully human act except insofar as an act seems to be good or to be aimed at a good (or away from its opposite). The precept is universal; it grounds any and every pursuit of goods. But there is a question: What, precisely, is meant by “good” in this precept?
I argue in this lecture that the good of this first precept is the good common in its goodness, and not the good common in predication (I will explain this distinction soon). More importantly, I argue not only that Thomas means the good common in its goodness, but that one must say this is the good that grounds human action. Saying otherwise results in a separation of goodness from things, a denial of the natural order in general, and an ordination of God to man rather than man to God, at least as far as human agency and action is concerned.
In order to make this argument, I will be making a comparison between the way Thomas understands the good of the first precept and the way that the particular natural law tradition—now often called the New Natural Law (NNL) tradition—of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and others understands that same precept. Grisez, without seeing the distinction in kinds of universality, founded the NNL theory upon the notion that the good in the first precept was the predicable good, and the NNL theory as a whole flows from this conception of the first precept. So, in bringing out the principles of this theory we will have a contrast to Thomas’s understanding. Thomas unequivocally distinguishes the common good of a precept from the good common in predication. In this contrast, then we may both explain the difference between the two ways of understanding the universality of the good of the first precept, and set the ground for seeing why one must follow Thomas.
I break this lecture into four parts. First, I distinguish the key differences in the two senses of ‘common’ or ‘universal’ and lay out the conception of natural law that flows from the notion that the good of the first precept is the good common in predication. I do this in light of the NNL theory. Secondly, I contrast this with Thomas’s understanding and show that the NNL theory and any theory of human action so rooted in the predicable good necessarily separates goodness from things—goodness is no longer in things. Thirdly, I show that if one follows the implications of this separation, one sees that not only is God not the end of human action, but he is in fact ordered to man in human action. Finally, I conclude by briefly showing that the error of the NNL theory concerning the first precept is by no means unique to them, but rather is far more prevalent and a serious danger to our times.
PART I
Distinctions between predicable and causal universality
The distinction between the good common in predication and the good common in its causality is most easily seen through example. ‘Health’ is good for all. I want and desire health, as do we all. However, my health is not your health. My health is a private good—a good unique to me and, strictly speaking, un-sharable. Health is good for us all, but it is not one shared health that we desire when we desire it. Thus, while I can say that health is commonly desired, or that it is even universally desired, I am speaking according to predicable universality.
On the other hand, truth is common in its actual goodness. Contrary to some popular opinions, there is no ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth.’ Many can know the exact same truth at once. Its goodness is communicable most properly in that many can enjoy the same good without in any way diminishing it. We can share a meal, but we diminish that as we go along. Truth does not diminish the more people know it. The reverse is in some way true inasmuch as those who know are more able to communicate it.
The good common in its causality—in its very goodness—is one in being; it is commonly desirable as something one in number that is good for many at once. The good common in predication is one only in notion. Here is how Aquinas explains the latter kind of universality in the De Ente et Essentia when talking about the universality of the predicable genus:
For the oneness of the genus proceeds from its very indetermination or indifference; not however in such a way that what is signified by the genus is some numerically one nature found in diverse species, and to which another thing supervenes, namely the difference, determining the genus as form determines matter which is numerically one. It is rather because the genus signifies some form, not determinately this form or that form, which the difference expresses determinately, but which is not other than the form which was indeterminately signified by the genus.[3]
The unity of species is found precisely according to this kind of indetermination. There is not common subject matter for each species receptive of further form, but rather the form itself is signified indeterminately, and the commonality of distinct species comes only in the abstraction from the differences of each. ‘Animal’ is said of both ‘man’ and ‘penguin’, but precisely insofar as we have abstracted the notion of ‘living, sensitive thing’ from each being and attended to that notion separated from each. There is not one common nature being further specified by the differences between man and penguin, but rather the form and nature of each is signified indeterminately. Hence, Aquinas points out in the same treatise, the genus is not predicated of the differences; it is by abstracting from these differences in thought that there is common predication.
So, when we consider the first precept of the natural law (“good is to be done and pursued and evil shunned”), the question is whether that good is universal in its actual goodness or only in its predication. Is the universality via a determinate final end, or an indeterminate notion applicable to many, and what is the significance of this difference?
Natural Law under the common predication of goodness
Germain Grisez introduced the principles of what would come to be known as the NNL theory in 1965 in an article[4] interpreting Thomas’s account of the natural law in the Summa Theologiae. At the time, at least, and for quite some time after, Grisez and those who followed him thought they were articulating Thomas’s actual thoughts on the principles of practical reasoning even as they increasingly and, to be clear, openly disagreed with many of Aquinas’ conclusions. The reason for this trajectory is a confusion at the heart of the NNL principles.
In that first article, Grisez manifests a confusion concerning universal final causality and universal predication of the good. He refers to the first good of practical reasoning as the last end, but also describes this ‘good’ as that which signifies all human goods.[5] He is happy both to say that the last end is happiness, but also to say that the goods of the precepts that Aquinas articulates after the first precept are themselves referred to by the first precept.[6] Grisez both wants to say that the good of the first precept is an actual final cause and even the ultimate final cause, and also that it is something said of many goods and directive to them. Here is how he tries to unite the whole account.
The gap between the first principle of practical reason and the other basic principles, indicated by the fact that they too are self-evident, also has significant consequences for the acts of the will which follow the basic principles of practical reason. The will necessarily tends to a single ultimate end, but it does not necessarily tend to any definite good as an ultimate end. We may say that the will naturally desires happiness, but this is simply to say that man cannot but desire the attainment of that good, whatever it may be, for which he is acting as an ultimate end. The desire for happiness is simply the first principle of practical reason directing human action from within the will informed by reason. Because the specific last end is not determined for him by nature, man is able to make the basic commitment which orients his entire life. The human will naturally is nondetermined precisely to the extent that the precept that good be pursued transcends reason’s direction to any of the particular goods that are possible objectives of human action.[7]
The will in this account is ordered to a universal good, but the universality is transcendent precisely according to indetermination with respect to the many possible objects of choice. Thus, while Grisez doesn’t here use the relevant terms with precision, it is clearly a predicable universality, since its ‘oneness’—that which is one in the many—is only through formal indetermination with respect to further formality. Happiness is therefore something to be constructed, since the will has no specific ordination. Indeed, Grisez follows up this passage by saying the role of practical reason in this life is to synthesize the goods that specify the first good.[8]
To put it most simply, the good of the first precept directs the will universally only inasmuch as it can signify all particular goods (or kinds of goods) indeterminately. The self-evident goods provide determination, and thus the first good transcends the others only through an abstraction and separation from them just as they transcend their particular instantiations by abstraction and separation from them.
The NNL as a whole has remained committed to this view and has only clarified the point. Here is how Christopher Tollefsen—himself a NNL theorist—sums up the principles of action according to the NNL:
[P]ractical reason, that is, is reason oriented towards action, grasps as self-evidently desirable a number of basic goods. These goods, which are described as constitutive aspects of genuine human flourishing, include life and health; knowledge and aesthetic experience; skilled work and play; friendship; marriage; harmony with God, and harmony among a person’s judgments, choices, feelings, and behavior. As grasped by practical reason, the basic goods give foundational reasons for action to human agents. Moreover, they are recognized as good for all human agents; it is equally intelligible to act for the sake of the life of another as for one’s own life.[9] …
[T]here is no natural hierarchy of goodness such that one good may be said to offer all the good of another plus more. Rather, each of the goods is beneficial to human agents, and hence desirable, in a unique way; each offers something that the other goods do not. The same is generally true of particular instantiations of the goods: one way of working, playing, or pursuing knowledge, for example, may offer benefits that are not weighable by a common standard of goodness in relation to instantiations of the other goods, or even instantiations of the same good.[10]
Leaving aside, for now at least, the particular list of goods and the question of hierarchy—i.e., why they have no hierarchy amongst their basic goods—the most important point here is the fruition of Grisez’s principles. Each of the basic goods that form the ground of human action (and their further instantiations) are desirable according to their specifications/differences. The goods are each desirable in unique ways and thus when being interested in one of the goods, one is not in that interest also interested in the others.
This is as it must be for them, for the goodness that grounds practical reason does not direct to any actual action or actual good, but to all indeterminately. Thus the real principle of desire and action is in the specification through distinction from the first good and from all other goods. Indeed, these goods are each desired as other from the other goods. And so I should note that the point here broadens. Insofar as someone makes the predicable good the first good of practical reasoning, they to that extent commit themselves to a theory of action in which the goods are separated from each other in their actual desirability, and the only unity of goods is found through abstraction and separation from the actually desired things.
PART II
Thomas’s opposition and why he opposes
Thomas unequivocally opposes this interpretation of the first precept. All one has to do to see is look to his article on the end of law. When discussing the definition of law, Aquinas argues that laws are ordered to the common good. One of the objections is that laws direct actions, and human actions are in particulars. Here is the reply.
Operations indeed pertain to particular matters: but those particulars are referable to the common good, not as to a common genus or species, but as to a common final cause, according as the common good is said to be a common end.[11]
The article as a whole argues that the common good in question is the common felicity, common happiness of the community. Unlike Grisez et al., Aquinas holds the common happiness as an actually common end that is not merely universal in predication.
And of course, one must see that the context of the treatise on the natural law falls within both the broader context of a treatment of the order of laws springing from the Eternal Law and the whole of the Prima Secundae. The Prima Secundae begins with a treatise on happiness, and Aquinas argues with great precision that, finally speaking, God alone is happiness; God alone is the common end of all human beings. We desire the virtues for the sake of being able to contemplate God to the best of our ability, and while we cannot effect the perfect vision, the kind of contemplation we can achieve in this life is an imperfect share and a preparation for the graces required to draw us to the perfect vision and perfect happiness in eternity.
And the Eternal Law is nothing less than God’s providence, the ordination of all things to God Himself as the supreme common good of the universe. He is the principle of all existence and thus the total measure of it. All things, in seeking their proper ends, seek God to the extent that their share in participated existence allows. But man, again, as an intellectual creature, has the capacity to seek God directly, to know Him and love Him even as He, God, knows and loves Himself. This is why man has a special law, for since by His light we see light, we can see the end to which all existence is ordered, and thus we are provident for ourselves.
And, while it is important to see that the treatment of natural law in the Summa Theologiae is a treatment in light of Sacred Theology, Thomas is absolutely consistent on this point throughout all his treatments of goodness and human action, and action in general. Here is a pertinent passage from the De Veritate:
And therefore, just as God—because he is the first efficient cause—acts in every agent, so also—because he is the ultimate end—is he sought after in every end. But this is to seek after God implicitly. For thus the power of the first cause is in the second, and also the principles in the conclusions; to resolve, however, conclusions to principles or secondary causes to primary causes belongs only to the rational power. Whence the rational nature alone is able to bring secondary ends back to God himself through a way of resolution so as to seek after God himself explicitly. And just as in the demonstrative sciences the conclusion is not rightly known except through a resolution to first principles, thus also the appetite of a rational creature is not right except through explicitly seeking God himself, in act or habit.[12]
God is himself the supreme common good of the universe, and the whole point of the natural law, again, is that man alone among material creatures is provident to the end, for man alone can see it and draw himself to it intentionally. His nature not only directs to the end, but can do so intentionally.
A clarification: the first precept is not simply “seek God”
This is not to claim that the first precept could be restated as “seek God.” Nor is it to claim there is no indeterminacy at the level of the first precept; there just isn’t predicable indeterminacy. While it is true that man’s actual good is finally found in God alone, the point of the natural law is that man sees or at some level of experience comes to see that his actual good is a common good and thus he is directed to it under a law (or, again, at least he begins to see this as he comes to see that his good is not a private good).
So, one way to make this point is to look at the way in which Aquinas does say God is naturally known:
To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude. For man naturally desires happiness, and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known to him. This, however, is not to know simply (simpliciter) that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching; for many there are who imagine that man’s perfect good, which is happiness, consists in riches, and others in pleasures, and others in something else.[13]
The first good of man’s action, happiness, is not simply (simpliciter)known. But it is the being of whatever that good is that is desired. Most precisely, I would say that man naturally is inclined to the good that in its being fulfills man, whatever that may be. It is when he starts to see that this good is common in its goodness that he begins to see the natural law.
Consider the wording of the article on the first precepts of natural law:
The order of the precepts of the natural law is according to the order of natural inclinations. For there is first of all in man an inclination to good according to the nature which he shares with every substance, just as every substance seeks the conservation of its own existence (esse), according to its nature. And according to this inclination, that through which human life is conserved and the contrary is impeded pertains to natural law. Secondly, there is in man an inclination to things more specific, according to the nature he shares with other animals. And according to this, those things are said to be of the natural law which nature has taught to all animals, such as the conjunction of male and female, and the education of offspring, and similar things. Thirdly, there is in man an inclination to good according to the nature of reason, which is proper to him: thus man has the natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society. And according to this, those things that regard this inclination belong to the natural law, such as that a man should shun ignorance, avoid offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things regarding the above inclination.[14]
The first two inclinations are not proper to man as man. But other creatures do not see the end, the good according to their nature to which they tend. The cat seeks the existence of its form, and the generation of it, but it does not know or of itself intend this end. The wolfpack has a highly complex authority structure that works for the common continuation of the pack, but they do not see this common end. Emperor Penguin parents are remarkably selfless and daring in raising the next generation. Through these instincts which they follow according to the private experience of sensations, these animals serve the common good of the species. But, again, they do not see this. The actual good that they are seeking and bringing about is not seen.
The inclinations lead to precepts in man precisely because we can see the common goodness they are ordered to. I say “can” see this, because it not the case that we always do or that we cannot ignore it if we so choose. The significant point of this treatment on natural law is that man has the capacity to see that he is the part of a perfect community, and thus he is ordered to it as part to whole, not in a communistic sense but quite directly in that his good is the good of the whole and he has a choice as to whether or not he will treat it as such.
Aquinas—if you look to the articles on sin immediately preceding his discourse on law in the Prima Secundae—locates the moment of deliberate (and thus truly human) action as when one can order oneself to the due end or order that end to oneself. This is what is going on in the precepts of the natural law. When one can see that one’s actual good is common in itself, then one has the choice of seeking it as common or as private. The latter is sin, and contrary to the natural law.
So, this is why we can, finally, trace these goods back to the first goodness and see the fundamental unity of the whole order of being and goodness. For we can consider the actual goods of the natural inclinations. We thus can aim at the goods according to their proper existence.
And this is the important point from all this for our present purposes. The account of the good that Aquinas puts forward recognizes that goodness is in things and thus in accord with the natures of things. Man does not merely incline to things and see that he inclines to them and can therefore categorize them as good, but he inclines to them—or he can so incline to them—according to their actual goodness. That is why he can distinguish between the common and the private goods precisely insofar as the end he seeks is in itself something shared or not.
Predicable good is not in things
The NNL theory, and any theory that begins in the predicable good, makes it impossible for one to aim at a common good in reality (or at least to be motivated by it as such), because things are not desired according to their actual existence, but rather according to the abstraction in the mind. Goodness is not in things, or at least not in accordance with the being or existence of things.
To see this point with clarity, consider John Finnis’ account of why there is no hierarchy amongst the basic goods:
If one focuses on the value of speculative truth, it can reasonably be regarded as more important than anything; knowledge can be regarded as the most important thing to acquire; life can be regarded as merely a precondition, of lesser or no intrinsic value… But one can shift one’s focus. If one is drowning, or, again, if one is thinking about one’s child who died soon after birth, one is inclined to shift one’s focus to the value of life simply as such. The life will not be regarded as a mere precondition of anything else; rather, play and knowledge and religion will seem secondary, even as optional extras. But one can shift one’s focus, in this way, one-by-one right round the circle of basic values that constitute the horizon of our opportunities.[15]
The order of desire in this account is separated from the being of the goods in question. Now, I do not disagree (at least necessarily) that in a moment of crisis especially, one can be motivated by the goodness of health and not even be thinking of the goodness of speculative truth. However, what you desire when you desire health is ordered to further goodness. Just because in the moment of choice I focus upon one kind of good by separating it in thought from another kind of good does not mean that I want it according to that separation. I want the being that good has in itself, and thus I desire it according to its actual being.
The NNL theorists are forced in this direction, because, again, the universality of the predicable good is rooted in a unity according to abstraction. Thus, if one’s account of actual desire towards any good is rooted in predicate universality, the actual movement to this or that good is in accordance with the separation that comes from an added difference. My desire for this good must be not-for-that-other good. Goodness, or at least the order of goodness, is no longer the order of nature, but merely the order of predication. When I desire health, I desire it as separated from the goodness of truth. And so also with every kind of good.
PART III
Predicable goodness orders God to man
In stripping goodness from things and ordering it according to the existence things have in the mind (abstracted and separated), the view that the ground of action is the predicable good leads to the further position that God is not only not the end, but rather a means to the end.
First of all, desire cannot be unified under one single good, so God cannot be the end. For, in desiring one good, I do not in that movement desire any other good. But all the basic goods are aspects of the desirable-for-its-own-sake, so I must not abandon them. To seek one basic good is to not seek another, and yet I must not destroy the pursuit of any one. The best kind of unity, then, that action can achieve is a synthetization or integration in which the pursuit of one or another good does not destroy the possibility of pursuing another.
Hence, the NNL theorists, who are quite consistent with the logic of their principles, define the ultimate end as a state of affairs in which all goods can be pursued by all persons. (As an aside: The NNL treatment of the ultimate end has developed over time. But from the beginning it was always a state of affairs in which all goods can be pursued by all persons.) Here is one of the more complete accounts given by Grisez:
In sum: whenever one has a choice to make, one always has one or more options, among those available, that one can choose for the ultimate end that I will call “integral communal fulfillment”—divine good together with the well-being and flourishing of created persons in respect to all of their fundamental goods—and every choice should be made with the intention of that ultimate end. In other words, persons and groups making choices can and should always play their part in the vast community of persons by making their contribution to integral communal well-being and flourishing, and they always can and should avoid intentionally impeding or detracting from integral communal fulfillment.[16]
If the beginning of your practical reasoning is the indefinite end (because the abstract goodness of predication is your starting point), you are led to precisely this kind of actual end at best. For no single operation is complete, but each is ordered to something necessary for a human being.
Again, it is already clear that God is not the end, but only, at best, a part of the ultimate end. But the situation is worse. For the terminus of desire is only in the persons here. To say it is in the state of affairs is insufficient, for such states are desired for the sake of the pursuit of the goods. And to say the terminus of desire is in the goods is also false, for we cannot seek them all at once, and must not seek any one of them as the complete end but must rather order them to something further.
This may seem a vicious circle; the goods for the state of affairs and the state of affairs for the goods. But Grisez has something else in mind as the terminus of desire:
We love both (persons/communities of persons and the goods). But we love persons and communities for themselves, while we love only as contributions to their good the benefits we seek. Therefore, our ultimate end should include all the benefits that can be realized by protecting and promoting all the fundamental goods of persons in every way compatible with loving all of them and all aspects of their well-being and flourishing. [17]
And to be fair, again, this is what one has to say. For there is no finality in a good abstracted from the source of its goodness, and the state of affairs is for the sake of activity. Hence, the only kind of finality that can be in this system is in the persons as such. The integration is good because in the integration persons can seek their goods, and we love, finally, persons most.
Hence, when we consider the contemplation of God, or the fellowship with God, or the harmony with God, or any basic good that touches upon his goodness, we are desiring him for the sake of the community of persons. His goodness is ordered to that as to the final end.
The NNL theorists think, as the above passage implies, that God is included in the community of persons, and—while his fulfillment means something different than ours inasmuch as he is complete in himself—he is also an end. But this at best places God on the same level as man and the community of man. He is loved for man and for God. What is not the case is that man be loved for God.
So, if you ground practical activity on the predicable good, you confuse kinds of community and universality, strip goodness from the existence of things in reality, destroy the order of inclinations, and upend the order of nature and man to God.
I would like to finish this section with a brief contrast. While Grisez et al. can profess a love of persons, they provide no clear motivation for why one should. Saying that the basic goods are equally intelligible for every person does not make clear at all why I should care for these goods for another person just because I see that it is good for that person. It is natural to love one’s fellows and the whole point of what I have been arguing is that it is natural to see oneself as a part of a whole. But the NNL theory has muddied this point. Why should I care for my neighbor?
In the end, it is because the good that we seek is in itself a common good, and thus to order oneself to it is to desire to communicate it. Not because you make it better through that, but because to love its being is to love communicable being. In his lecture on common and private goods, my father, Marcus Berquist, sums up this point (and really the whole of the natural law):
How often have you found yourself in the middle of an argument, defending and even advocating a position, because it is your own, even though you can see, if only dimly, through the haze which the passion of disputation creates, that your adversary has a better case? For those of us who are involved in the intellectual life, this is a major stumbling-block and occasion of sin. If the truth is not a common good, what is? If we subordinate the good of truth to the private good of our self-esteem, what excuse can we offer to the One Who is the Truth itself and the Good Who is common to every creature? Given the universal goodness of the truth, the only right attitude is to order oneself to it—to discover it, communicate it, and defend it.[18]
To love a good common in its being involves ordering yourself to it, or you do not really seek it but rather abuse it. The natural order mirrors the order of charity here,[19] because to rest in the good without ordering ourselves to its communication is incomplete: we do not order ourselves to it fully. Here is the point. If you love someone, you want their good, but their good is to be conformed to the common good as well. The ground of loving someone is the common character of the actual human good.
PART IV
Several broader implications of the confusion
I finish today by emphasizing how this confusion of the common and the predicable good is of broader significance today. The NNL theory is a helpful example, for they work with their principles all the way to the end. But the kind of error is made, I would contend, by many who don’t see the whole of what they do.
The example I want to bring up to broaden the point is the majority opinion, written by Neil Gorsuch, relating to the case of Bostock vs. Clayton.
Gorsuch, whom I was happy to see confirmed, all things considered, does have a link to the NNL theory, inasmuch as he was a student of John Finnis. However, it is the way in which he manifests the same confusion that helps to see the danger of this error far beyond the realm of academia.
In Bostock vs. Clayton, the majority decided that when discharging an employee on the basis of sexual orientation, an employer necessarily discriminates on the basis of sex. Here is the essence of Gorsuch’s argument via his examples:
Consider, for example, an employer with two employees, both of whom are attracted to men. The two individuals are, to the employer’s mind, materially identical in all respects, except that one is a man and the other a woman. If the employer fires the male employee for no reason other than the fact he is attracted to men, the employer discriminates against him for traits or actions it tolerates in his female colleague. Put differently, the employer intentionally singles out an employee to fire based in part on the employee’s sex, and the affected employee’s sex is a but-for cause of his discharge.[20]
Here is the ‘fateful party’ example, as Alito calls it:
A model employee arrives and introduces a manager to Susan, the employee’s wife. Will that employee be fired? If the policy works as the employer intends, the answer depends entirely on whether the model employee is a man or a woman. To be sure, that employer’s ultimate goal might be to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. But to achieve that purpose the employer must, along the way, intentionally treat an employee worse based in part on that individual’s sex.[21]
Gorsuch is manifesting the same kind of confusion. He is arguing that because I can say ‘attracted to men’ of both a man and a woman, therefore the reality is identical in each. But there is no reality ‘attracted to men’ that actually exists according to that abstraction except in our minds, but it is not that that we should be talking about when we talk about the motivation of the employer. He is or could well be concerned with the reality of the erotic drive, and the perversion of it.
In the realm of goodness and the natural order, Gorsuch is positing, whether he sees it or not, that the inclination to good according to things “said to be of the natural law, which nature has taught to all animals, such as the conjunction of male and female”—as Thomas puts it—is not a naturally ordered reality.
The response is simple. Certainly, just as I may abstract and consider in separation many and various realities, I do not think that their being or goodness or order follow the order of my mind. But while that is a simple answer, it is remarkably hard for many people to see.
[1] I-II, Q. 94, A. 2. “Hoc est ergo primum praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum.” (All translations are my own)
[2] See the replies to the objections of the same article, especially the first.
[3] Para. 39
[4] THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON: A COMMENTARY ON THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE, 1-2, QUESTION 94, ARTICLE 2
[5] 184
[6] 188
[7] Grisez, “First Principle of Practical Reason,” 199-200.
[8] 200
[9] Christopher Tollefsen, “The New Natural Law Theory,” Lyceum X, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 2.
[10] Tollefsen, “New Natural Law,” 3.
[11] ST, I-II, Q. 90, A. 2, ad 2 (Marietti ed., Vol. II, 515). “…operationes quidem sunt in particularibus, sed illa particularia referri possunt ad bonum commune, non quidem communitate generis vel speciei, sed communitate causae finalis, secundum quod bonum commune dicitur finis communis.”
[12] Questiones Disputatae de Veritate {henceforth, QD de Veritate}, XXII, 2, c. (Marietti VIII ed., 176). “Et ideo, sicut Deus, propter hoc quod est primum efficiens, agit in omni agente, ita propter hoc quod est ultimus finis, appetitur in omni fine. Sed hoc est appetere ipsum Deum implicite. Sic enim virtus primae causae est in secunda, ut etiam principia in conclusionibus; resolvere autem conclusiones in principia, vel secundas causas in primas, est tantum modo virtutis rationalis: unde solum rationalis natura potest secundarios fines in ipsum Deum per quamdam viam resolutionis deducere, ut sic ipsum Deum explicite appetat. Et sicut in demonstrativis scientiis non recte scitur conclusio nisi per resolutionem in prima principia, ita appetitus creaturae rationalis non est rectus nisi per appetitum explicitum ipsius Dei, actu vel habitu.”
[13] ST, I, Q. 2, A. 2, ad 1.
[14] ST, I-II, Q. 94, A. 2.
[15] Finnis, Natural Law, 92-93.
[16] Grisez, True Ultimate End.
[17] Grisez, True Ultimate End.
[18] Marcus Berquist, “Common and Private Goods,” Learning and Discipleship, pp. 422-423.
[19] De virtutibus, Q. 2, A. 11, ad 6. (Three grades of Caritas, the third is loving God so as to want to share Him.)
[20] See pp. 9-10 of the majority opinion.
[21] See p. 11 of the majority opinion.