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Finnis and Aquinas on the Good of Life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
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In his Natural Law and Natural Rights, Fundamentals of Ethics, and other works, the Oxford professor of jurisprudence and moral theologian John Finnis has elaborated a theory of ethics and natural law that he presents as being based on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. (Finnis has been influenced in this project by the moral theologian Germain Grisez, and has worked in cooperation with Grisez and Joseph Boyle on these issues, but I will confine myself to a discussion of Finnis’s thought, while noting that my conclusions will have implications for the views of Grisez and Boyle as well.) His account of natural law incorporates a particular account of human life as a good for practical reasoning, from which he concludes — in disagreement with Aquinas — that capital punishment is immoral. This conclusion has gained wide acceptance among Catholics, partly because of the influence of Finnis and Grisez’s moral theories. I want to examine his understanding of the good of life, contrasting it with the actual views of St. Thomas, and argue that it is mistaken. I will then explain why I think his mistake is an important one that needs to be avoided.
Finnis presents his account of natural law as being modelled on St. Thomas’s account of the first principles of natural law, which is given chiefly in the Summa Theologiae, la2ae q.94 a.2. It may be helpful to sketch St. Thomas’s understanding of practical as opposed to theoretical reason. Theoretical reason aims at knowledge of how things are, and its activity terminates in belief about how things are.
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References
1 la2ae q.94 a.2; ‘Inest primo inclinatio homini ad bonum secundum naturam in qua communicat cum omnibus substantiis: prout scilicet quaelibet substantia appetit conservationem sui esse secundum suam naturam. Et secundum hanc inclinationem, pertinent ad legem naturalem ea per quae vita hominis conservatur, et contrarium impeditur.’Summa Theologiae (Leonine ed.), vol. 2 (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1959), p. 610.
2 2a2ae q.64 a.5; ‘…seipsum occidere est omnino illicitum triplice ratione. Primo quidem, quia naturaliter quaelibet res seipsum amat [my italics]: et ad hoc pertinet quod quaelibet res naturaliter conservat se in esse et corrumpentibus resistit quantum potest. Et ideo quod aliquis seipsum occidat est contra inclinationem naturalem, et contra caritatem, qua quilibet debet seipsum diligere.’ Ibid., vol. 3, p. 439.
3 Foot, Philippa, ‘The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect’, in Virtues and Vices, and Other Essays in Moral Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), p. 23Google Scholar.
4 Ibid., pp. 21‐22.
5 Finnis, John, ‘Intention and side‐effects’, in Frey, and Morris, eds., Liability and responsibility (Cambridge: CUP, 1991), p. 57Google Scholar.
6 Elizabeth, Anscombe, ‘On the Source of the Authority of the State’, in Collected Papers Vol. III: Ethics, Religion and Politics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), p. 148Google Scholar.
7 John Finnis, Germain Grisez and Joseph Boyle, ‘“Direct” and “Indirect”: A Reply to Critics of Our Action Theory’, in The Thomist, Jan. 2001, p. 43.
8 It should be remarked that the Catechism is not very helpful in describing when infliction of the death penalty can be judged to be absolutely necessary. It asserts that ‘Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of an offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non‐existent” (Evangelium Vitae, 56)’ (para. 2267). In commenting on this assertion it needs to be kept in mind that the function of the Catechism is in part a legal one, because it serves as a norm for belief that binds the consciences of the Catholic faithful. In order to fulfil this function, several conditions must be met: the subject matter of a teaching must fall within the competence of the Church; the content of the teaching must be clearly expressed; and the teaching must be manifestly presented as a norm for belief. None of these conditions are met in this passage. The possibilities available to the state (which state?), and the frequency of occasions upon which the death penalty is absolutely necessary, are empirical questions of a sort that do not lie within the sphere of the Church's teaching authority. The significance of the possibilities available to the state is not clearly explained. Is it being claimed that the possibility of locking away an offender forever is sufficient to prevent crime, because the offender in question will then be powerless to do more harm? This claim rejects the notion of deterrence as a justification for the death penalty. Such a rejection, constituting as it does the condemnation of a position widely held by important Catholic thinkers, would contravene the usual norms for Church teaching, which only issues such condemnations in extraordinary circumstances; so one ought not, if possible, to assign this meaning to the claim. But then what does it mean? And whatever its meaning, it is not asserted as true by this passage, but only alluded to as a presupposition of the claim that the necessity of executions is rare or practically non‐existent; the latter claim being the only one that is actually made by the passage. So the Catechism's remarks on the conditions for the necessity of the death penalty do not get us anywhere; they do not even constitute teaching on the subject. If the conclusions reached in this paper are correct, this is not surprising. For it has been said, following Anscombe, that the justification for capital punishment is the necessity of inflicting it in order to protect people. But the question of when fear or actual infliction of death on evildoers is necessary for people's protection is an empirical one, that will vary with circumstances, and that does not fall within the field of the Church's teaching authority.
9 Anscombe, ‘Mr. Truman's Degree’, in Collected Papers vol. III, p. 63.
10 For Britain see Urban, Mark L., Big boys’ rules: the secret struggle against the I.R.A. (London: Faber and Faber, 1992)Google Scholar. Exceptions to this generalisation, like Italy and the Mafia, are not very encouraging, since they usually involve the violent criminals’ having connections to the government.
11 Finnis, Grisez and Boyle, ‘“Direct” and “Indirect”: A Reply to Critics of Our Action Theory’, p. 27.
12 I am grateful to Professor Finnis for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.