Natural law
autonomous or heteronomous? the thomistic perspective
pp. 37-45
in: Francisco J. Contreras (ed), The threads of natural law, Berlin, Springer, 2013Abstract
According to Aquinas, human creatures participate in the eternal law in two different ways: as a mere material inclination stamped in nature (the improper concept of law), and as a formal participation, as imperative towards an end, constituted by human reason (the proper sense of law, insofar as it only exists in rational creatures). According to this second sense, human reason is regulatory and prescriptive, the creative source of law, in an analogous way as divine wisdom is. Natural law consists properly in this participation of human reason in the divine reason; in that it manifests itself in such a way that, in a similar manner to divine reason and cooperating with it, human reason is able to contribute to the ordering of everything —of oneself first of all— towards its end. In this ordering task, man's reason and appetitive power interact, being perfected by moral virtue.