Reason as Rule of Human Action (A Draft Presentation Concerning the Relevance of a Debate involving Fr. Leonard Lehu, O.P.)

Click here for a PDF containing the texts spoken of below.

During my time in graduate school, I happened upon a debate concerning the way that reason is the rule of human actions in matters pertaining to moral cognition. In a now-unknown text—La raison: règle de la moralité d’après Saint Thomas (Paris: Lecoffre, 1930)—Fr. Leonard Lehu, O.P. strenuously opposes those who slur together practico-moral reason and human nature, reducing the proximate rule of natural human morality merely to human nature. At the time, I began drafting a volume to present anew this text, along with certain other texts that might help the reader appreciate what is at stake in the argument, the importance of which echoes certain debates in our own days surrounding the work of Fr. Martin Rhonheimer (the latter of whom recognizes several times the way that his presuppositions parallel many of the concerns voiced by Lehu). Interestingly, also, the work was of influence on elements of the “action theory” held by then- Karol Wojtyla, in his “Lublin lectures,” which at long last are in English translation.

I do not have the time to revisit these drafted translations in detail. Life has moved on, and I have many projects on my plate right now. However, I wanted to dust off these texts to make them available for a colleague and thought that, perhaps, they might be of use to the general reading public. The reader can look over the table of contents of the work to see the overall structure of the works that I have brought together. My only intention, at this point, is to encourage engagement with this important debate, in the hopes that Thomistic action theory might come to more deeply appreciate the unique character of practico-moral reasoning and to see how distinguishing esse naturae from esse moralis does not lead to a kind of mind-body dualism. (Instead, learning how to discuss these two “domains of being” helps us to be far more sensitive to the being of culture and of human freedom…)

A word should be said regarding the subject of the debate, so as to give the reader some sense of the argument at hand. In the 1910s, Fr. Lehu wrote a moral philosophy manual Philosophia Moralis et Socialis. The paucity of its discussion on certain points bears witness to the fact that much of the detailed discussion of virtue and morals took place in moral theology. Nonetheless, there are some sections in the text where Lehu strikingly dives deep into technicalities. One such area pertains to the relationship between human nature, reason, the natural law, and the measuring of human acts. The concern is not merely pedantic to him. He is clearly concerned 1˚ that the very understanding of Thomas’s (and the broadly Thomistic) position is being misunderstood and 2˚ substantively that most accounts of the natural law do not account for the role of human reason in promulgating the natural law (primordially by acts of cognition having their root in synderesis, the habitus for the grasping of first principles in the natural moral order).

His account was starkly opposed, at the time, to positions held by Jesuit authors Victor Frins and Victor Cathrein. Over the course of the next decade, it found itself to be opposed to the Louvain historian of medieval moral philosophy and theology (whose works are always a bit questionable in their theoretical interpretations, at least in my experience) Dom Odo Lottin, O.S.B. and another Jesuit writer, Fr. Edmund Elter.

The point of contrast hinges on this question: does Lehu undermine the importance of human nature in our knowledge of the natural law? It would seem that the rule of human morality should be human nature, not human reason. Is it not a form of surreptitious Kantianism to claim that human reason declares the natural law, in a seemingly autonomous fashion? Thus, in what I like to call the “scholastic bar fight” that is Lehu’s book, the latter defends his emphasis on the role of reason in measuring human actions, doing so by way of a series of bombastic citations from Thomas, followed by a more systematic presentation of practico-moral reasoning which explains why his position is important.

I think that this debate is still important because an immense weakness of many Thomistic accounts of moral reason (and of practical reason more generally) tends to overly liken our apprehension of moral truth to the model of speculative truth. In matters pertaining to the natural law, this leads to a kind of facile deductivism that would have us think that moral objectivity is only a kind of deductive extension from speculative knowledge. It is more complex than that, precisely because even in the knowledge we have through synderesis we are already considering not merely moral essences that tell us what the world is but also declare what human acts ought to be but are not yet, though as posited by virtuous agents. In the moral order, the human person is at once measured (by the natural law known by synderesis’s declaration and by the illumination of faith in the order of the law of grace) and also is a measure: through the exercise of human freedom, we become the measures of the moral world, stamping our freedom upon things, either for good or for ill. To restate this: we are measured measures. In the words of a very wise Socratic figure whom I know: as intelligent and free agents, we are co-provident (all appropriate reservations made, of course, for our subordination to God, the first cause of all that is positive and good). Or, in the words of Veritatis splendor: our autonomy is, in point of fact, a kind of participated theonomy.

This is all at stake in Lehu, and I think in a way that challenges certain persons who fear a kind of Kantianism (or something of the like) in a writer like Rhonheimer. Without judging in one direction or the other regarding Fr. Rhonheimer’s overall perspective, he nonetheless seems correct to point in the direction of Lehu, who sees—again, to use the terminology that was classically used by Thomists—the importance of articulating the distinction between esse naturae and esse morale. (As I discuss below in my remarks attached to a selection from Austin Woodbury, however, Rhonheimer tends to be too dismissive concerning the importance of this metaphysical distinction.) Perhaps Lehu could have discussed at greater length the primordial dependence of the latter upon the former; however, he does not deny it, as is clear by the end of his book.

There are, of course, theological addenda that I should like to make to what Lehu writes. (His account is far too “purely philosophical” for my comfort in moral matters. But, I am a partisan of Maritain’s position concerning “adequate consideration” of moral matters….) Moroever, I do think that Fr. Lehu tends to underemphasize the role of rectified appetite in moral cognition. (He is not unaware of it. However, at times, recta ratio seems, on his pen, to be a process of deduction that, arguably against the very grain of what he says elsewhere, is quite speculative in mode.) Nonetheless, at the level of natural-reason analysis, he has many important things to say and deserves to be heard today.

I welcome substantive discussion about this topic if anyone wishes to reach out to me. But, otherwise, I present these texts merely as drafts. I do not have time to deeply check them, though I have undertaken a review of them. They date from well before I had extensive translation experience and, therefore, are not as polished as I would now like. However, if read with a sympathetic eye, they hopefully can afford an opportunity for interesting insights among Thomistic (and Aristotelian) discussions concerning moral action theory.

In this file, I have gathered together translations of the following texts, in the following order:

Lehu, Leonard. La raison: règle de la moralité d’après Saint Thomas. Paris: Lecoffre, 1930.

Hamel, Ludovicus N. “Controversia Lehu-Elter, Lottin circa regulam moralitatis secundum S. Thomam.” Antonianum 7 (1932): 377-384. (A good overview of the controversy, with interesting observations at the end.)

Lehu, Leonard. Philosophia Moralis et Socialis. Paris: LeCoffre, 1914. (Some, not all, selections related to this controversy.)

Woodbury, Austin. Lecture notes on Ethics. The John N. Deely and Anthony F. Russell Collection, St. Vincent College, Latrobe, PA. (Selections related to the metaphysical constitutive of morality and the relationship between the moral rule and the physical rule of beings. I also register some introductory remarks, with extensive citations from the Thomist school. I have hinted at some of this in another work of mine, but in this text, I make some brief critical observations related to Rhonheimer.)

Lehu, Leonard. “Si la ‘recta ratio’ de S. Thomas signifie la conscience.” Revue Thomiste 30 (1925): 159-166; “A quel point précis de la Somme théologique commence le Traité de la Moralité,” Revue Thomiste 33 (1928): 521-532. (These are two supplementary texts that touch on relevant issues. The “recta ratio” article bears witness to some of the shortcomings that I mentioned above. However, it does contain a very important appendix discussion that seems to echo certain debates between proponents of “physicalist” and “non-physicalist” accounts of the natural law today.)

Further, Only-Partial Bibliography of Contemporary Discussions that Echo the Lehu-Elter/Lottin Debate

Armstrong, Ross A. Primary and Secondary Precepts in Thomistic Natural Law Teaching. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966.

Bourke, Vernon J. Ethics in Crisis. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1966. See especially, 95-149.

———. “Is Thomas Aquinas a Natural Law Ethicist?” The Monist 58, no. 1 (1974): 52–66.

Brock, Stephen L. Action & Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022.

———. The Light that Binds: A Study in Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics of Natural Law. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2020.

———. “Natural Inclination and the Intelligibility of the Good in Thomistic Natural Law.” Vera Lex 6 (2005): 57–78.

———. “Veritatis Splendor §78, St. Thomas, and (Not Merely) Physical Objects of Moral Acts.” Nova et Vetera [English ed.] 6 (2008): 1-62.

Dewan, Lawrence. “St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the Moral Order.” In Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics, 199-212. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.

———. “St. Thomas, Rhonheimer, and the Object of the Human Act.” Nova et Vetera [English ed.] 6 (2008): 63–112.

John Finnis. “Natural Inclinations and Natural Rights: Deriving ‘Ought’ from ‘Is’ According to Aquinas.” In Lex et Libertas: Freedom and Law According to St. Thomas Aquinas, edited by Leo Elders and Klaus Hedwig, Studi Tomistici 30, 43–55. Rome: Libr. Ed. Vaticana, 1987.

Grisez Germain. “The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1–2, Question 94, Article 2.” Natural Law Forum 10 (1965): 168–201.

Haggerty, Donald F. “A Via Maritainia: Nonconceptual Knowledge by Virtuous Inclination.” The Thomist 62 (1998): 75-96.

Hoffmann, Tobias. “Freedom Beyond Practical Reason: Duns Scotus on Will-Dependent Relations.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (2013): 1071–90.

———. “Prudence and Practical Principles.” In Aquinas and the Nicomachean Ethics, edited by Tobias Hoffmann, Jörn Müller, and Matthias Perkams, 165–83. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Hütter, Reinhard. “To Be Good Is to Do the Truth: Being, Truth, the Good, and the Primordial Conscience in a Thomist Perspective.” Nova et Vetera 15, no.1 (Winter, 2017): 53-73.

Jensen, Steven J. “A Defense of Physicalism.” The Thomist Vol. 61 (1997): 377-404.

———. “Getting inside the Acting Person.” International Philosophical Quarterly 50, no.4 (Dec., 2010): 461-471.

-———. Knowing the Natural Law: From Precepts and Inclinations to Deriving Oughts. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 2015.

———. “The Role of Teleology in the Moral Species.” The Review of Metaphysics 63 no.1 (Sept., 2009): 3-27.

———. “Thomistic Perspectives? Martin Rhonheimer’s Version of Virtue Ethics.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86, no.1 (2012): 135-159.

Lehu, Leonard. Philosophia Moralis et Socialis. Paris: LeCoffre, 1914. See especially 72-183, 218-288.

Long, Steven A. “Natural Law or Autonomous Practical Reason: Problems for the New Natural Law Theory.” In St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by John Goyette, Mark S. Latkovic, and Richard S. Myers, 165-93. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004.

Makdisi, John Abraham. “The Object of the Moral Act: Understanding St. Thomas Aquinas Through the Work of Steven Long and Martin Rhonheimer.” Ph.D. Diss. The Catholic University of America, 2017.

McInerny, Ralph. Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1992. See especially 103-132, 184-239.

Minerd, Matthew. “Appendix 2: On the Speculative, the Speculatively-Practical, and the Practically-Practical.” In Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Remarks Concerning the Metaphysical Character of St. Thomas’s Moral Theology, in Particular as It Is Related to Prudence and Conscience,” Nova et Vetera (English) 17, no. 1 (2019): 245–70, at 266–70.

———. “Beyond Non-Being: Thomistic Metaphysics on Second Intentions, Ens morale, and Ens artificiale.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 91, no. 3 (2017): 353–79.

———. “Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition 21, no. 3 (2023): 1043–1058.

———. “A Note on Synderesis, Moral Science, and Knowledge of the Natural Law,” Lex naturalis 5 (2020): 43–55.

———.“A Synthetic Overview of Conscience and Prudence in Moral Reasoning.” In Conscience: Four Thomistic Treatments, trans. and ed. Matthew K. Minerd. Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2022), 1–78.

Pilsner Joseph. The Specification of Human Actions in St. Thomas Aquinas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Rhonheimer, Martin. “Natural Law as a ‘Work of Reason’: Understanding the Metaphysics of Participated Theonomy.” American Journal of Jurisprudence 55 (2010): 41-78.

———. The Perspective of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy. Edited by William F. Murphy Jr. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008.

———. “Practical Reason, Human Nature, and the Epistemology of Ethics: John Finnis's Contribution to the Rediscovery of Aristotelian Ethical Methodology in Aquinas's Moral Philosophy: A Personal Account.” Villanova Law Review 57 (2012): 873-887.

Sokolowski, Robert. “Knowing Natural Law.” In Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology, 277-291. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.

———. Moral Action: A Phenomenology Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

———. “Moral Thinking.” In Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology, 245-260. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.

———. “What is Moral Action?” In Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology, 261-276. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.

Wojtyla, Karol. The Lublin Lectures and Works on Max Scheler. Translated by Grzegorz Ignatik. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 2023. (See index entries for Lehu.)