Lecture 15 Notes

A.   The idea of a Perfect or Complete Community

• Aquinas considers a number of communities: political society, humanity, Christendom, and the created universe.
• Each, he thinks, is, in a sense, complete or perfect, with a common good:
  

1. The political community is complete just as Aristotle thought.
   
2. Catholic Christendom is complete or self-sufficient in that there no larger, more embracing earthly spiritual society, no higher spiritual authority than the Pope, and no resources more efficacious than sacraments.
   
3. The created universe is pardigmatically self-sufficient.
   

B.    Human Beings Achieve Their Ends as Members of Such Community

• Political community.  Human beings cannot achieve goods of culture, intellect, leisure, various forms of work, friendship, outside complex political community THEREFORE cannot live good life outside political community
  
• Catholic Christendom.  The good life as Aristotle describes it is not all the good there is. To achieve eternal life, we need the sacraments.  To live as well as can in this one, we need to hear the gospel.  Therefore, we cannot attain human good without Christendom.
  
• The Created Universe.  Human beings are made in God’s image and likeness.  Insofar as we live well, we image one aspect of God’s perfection.  So too do other creatures.  Therefore, our good is appreciated in context of all creation
  

C.    Human Beings are Naturally "Parts" of Such a Community

• Because we achieve the good, i.e., live a good human life, within complete communities, we are parts of perfect communities, as hand is part of human body.
• "Moreover, since every part is ordained to the whole as imperfect to perfect, and since one man is part of the perfect community..."
  

D.    Such a Community Must be Good

• There must be good laws for various communities to be healthy and well-functioning.  Communities to which human beings belong have laws to guide their members to the common goods of those communities.
  
• "...the law must needs regard the proper relationship to universal happiness. Wherefore the Philosopher mentions both happiness and the body politic...since the state is a perfect community[.]"  (Question 90, article 3)
  

A.   People Achieve Their Good in Perfect Communities and are Naturally Parts of Such Communities.

• Core Idea: People lead good lives by being part of something bigger, more embracing than themselves.
  
• Therefore, thought that liberty and individuality are ultimate goods, just as anathema to him as to Plato, Aristotle.
  

B.    Human Good in This Life is Activity According to Reason.

• That is, the good life is a life of actions and choices governed by reason well-exercised. Therefore, the good exercise of reason is a standard or norm against which human act is judged: "the rule and measure of human acts is reason" (Q. 90, art. 1)
  
• Good law is also a measure or standard of human acts.  Therefore, good law is law made according to right reason.
• Together, good law is made by reason about what common good requires.
  

C.    Kinds of Law

• As we saw, Aquinas thinks human beings: members of many communities;
  
• achieve their good as such since communities are guided by laws, there must be various kinds of law to govern the various communities:
  

1. The Created Universe is governed by Eternal Law
2. Humanity is governed by Natural Law.
3. Catholic Christendom is governed by Divine Law.
4. Political Communities are governed by various codes of Human Law.