A Note on “Self-Evident Truths”
Introduction
My recent texts for To Be a Thomist have been summary notes and “primers.” This is not intended to be my only style of article, but of late such general “maps” have been on my mind a good deal. Today, in particular, I have in mind the issue of the “self-evidence” of the truths of the moral order, whether of the individual or social order of moral reasoning. This is prompted by the recent cases related to IVF embryos and claims made regarding so-called “Christian Nationalism.” The plasticity of this latter term has come to shock me as it has many others. To our surprise, at least one progressive commentator has remarked that those who hold that rights come from God, not the state or civil law are, in fact, Christian nationalists.
This comment is manifestly absurd. The amount of equivocation involved in such a claim is evident—unless, of course, one wishes to claim that the whole of even the deist-rationalist tradition of natural rights is “Christian-nationalist” (a claim that I thought was relegated only to certain corners of protestant-American apologetics). But, I don’t really feel the need to say much more about the proximate cause of this note. Leave presentism for the platform formerly known as Twitter and for substack “hot takes.”
Nor, moreover, am I concerned so much with the immediate subject matter of the remark as well, namely the issue of “rights” as such. This is not because I am numbered among those who—echoing Jeremy Benthem, though in a different tone of voice—think they are “nonsense on stilts.” There is room for notions of “right” and “rights” in Thomist thought. Thus, though I have criticisms of the liberal order, I do not (with MacIntyre) believe that rights are conceptually suffused with liberal errors, nor do I think, necessarily, that one necessarily1 travels down a nominalist road if one takes seriously the new political phenomena of modernity.2 Ius is an important concept in the analysis of justice, and there are matters of political-legal justice that do in fact articulate the kind of ius involved between citizens and the state. I admit modern discussions of “right” tend to absolutize the human person into a kind of nebulous X, wielding endless claims. The human person would be a free subject detached from substantive and normative accounts of human flourishing and the common good. Thus, there is a kind of nominalist logic of rights, seeking protection for the libidinous desires of the subjective depths of the human person. Nonetheless, while granting all of this in the critique of modernity, I believe that the notion of “the political rights of subjects” represent an important advance regarding the articulation of the citizen as citizen and the citizen as “ruler.”
In any event, however, my focus in this note will lay elsewhere, upon an expression that is often associated with such questions of natural rights: “self-evidence.” The connection of “self-evidence” to questions of rights and the aforementioned supposed “Christian nationalism” is itself all too obvious: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights…” Here, what I wish to do is to lay out some precisions about self-evidence, by way of map, not in all of the details of philosophical history or implication.
Self-Evidence in the Purely Speculative Order
In the Thomist noetic, something is intellectually self-evident when the grasping of such a truth takes place precisely through the immediate connection of the terms of the statement itself. The Latin expression per se nota is more revealing than the English expression “self-evident.” The latter gives the impression of a kind of knowledge that is blankly obvious: “Bill, it’s a self-evident fact…..” But the expression per se nota indicates something more nuanced: the “self-evident” is per se in the sense of not being per aliud. In other words, we know “self-evident” truths without the otherness, the aliud-ness, of a middle term used in objectively inferential reasoning.3
The tradition tends to cite simple examples of such self-evident truths: “The whole is greater than its parts…. Being is not non-being….” These simple examples can obscure the fact that the manifestation of self-evidence requires great labor.4 The subject and predicate of such truths are rarely understood with sufficient distinctness and explicitness to provide such self-evident insight. Instead, we must undertake the critical labor of definition5 or, as my dear professor Msgr. Sokolowski so often insisted: the labor of making distinctions.6 The so-called Socratic method is, at least in its most profound lineaments, the labor of making distinctions and arriving at definitions.
And this is quite an intellectual labor! We all know what it is like to claim that we know something when, all of the sudden, we are struck at the fact that we cannot say what it is that we are thinking. We bumble about and at best have inexact descriptions for what we are discussing, accidental and partial articulations of our knowledge, unable to cut to the essential causes and distinctiveness of things. In the Thomist noetic, this is one reason7 why the distinction between the impressed intellectual species and the expressed species is so necessary. The labor of coming to a terminal articulation of thought takes place “between” the initial emergence of the “many eyed cloud”8 that is the impressed species and the ultimate speaking of the internal word of thought, the expressed species. In the intellect’s first operation, that of defining, the definition is expressed in and through this expressed verbum mentis, which is the fruit of an entire spiritual-cognitional labor.
The structural scaffolding of defining–the key relations that exist between objective concepts–are the so-called “predicables,” the relationes rationis that are referred to as genus, species, difference, property, and accident. These relations were treated by Aristotle most profoundly in his Topics, where he lays out dialectical reasoning (a fruit of the discussions concerning “collection” and “division” in the Platonic Academy), precisely as regards the common arguments that can be used in the discovery of genera, species, etc. (He also adds important precisions in the 2nd book of Posterior Analytics concerning the methods for defining scientific middle terms.9)
The primary role of such reasoning is what we could call “manifestive”: manifesting that which is a property, that which is merely accidental, that which is a genus of something, etc. Its purpose is to manifest the essences of things with increasing precision, on a kind of march from nescience, through possibility and hypothesis, through probability, to certitude.10 It is through such reasoning that we gradually add specificity to our knowledge of the terms of our discourse.
How necessary all of this is! And how often must such intellectual labors be undertaken, even for that which might be considered “self-evident.” But, despite all of this dialectical reasoning, the ultimate judgment in which we understand a well-defined, well-defended, well-distinguished subject and predicate will take up the fruit of such dialectical and definitional labors and, then at last, render a judgment immediately, using the more fully defined subject and predicate.11
We will come to some moral examples soon. However, consider first some relatively classical metaphysical self-evident principles:12
Every agent acts for an end. (= Every agent is that which acts for an end.)
Whatever is moved is moved by another.
Good is self-diffusive.
Every agent assimilates its affect to itself. (= Omne agens agit sibi simile)
Causes are mutually causes to each other in diverse order of causation.
Each and every one of these per se nota principles in fact requires a great deal of defense and precision in order to be understood aright. An entire monograph could be written concerning each principle: not so as to materially gather every position held by every thinker who discussed the topic, but so as to carefully address the senses of the terms in question so as to make clear what is at stake.13 And, of course, what would be most important in such studies would be, after all such dialectics that engage the historical record of thought, to present a definitive articulation and defense of such truths, along with their implications.
Likewise, an entire scientific (or sapiential) structure can be erected in which one explains the relationships between certain first principles.14 One does not deductively erect an account of how, for example, the whole of metaphysics is deduced from the principle of non-contradiction, or the whole of moral philosophy from the first principle of practical reason.15 Rather, one shows, in metaphysics, how the denial of a lower principle—e.g., every agent assimilates its effect to itself—would imply a kind of logically anterior denial of the principle of non-contradiction.16 However, one would prove this by a reductio ad absurdum, through what later scholastics called “extrinsic middle terms,”17 not by way of direct inferential proof. Likewise, one could do something similar by showing that the denial of the principle of non-contradiction immediately leads to a denial of this given principle and many, many others (indeed to the denial of all principles in all disciplines…). Such reasoning is a very important aspect of scientific and sapiential cognition.18 It is the way that one synthetically organizes the principles that give light to all of the conclusions within a discourse.
All that I have said heretofore was intended to be a kind of (sotto voce) defense and development concerning the distinction between truths that are per se nota omnibus, to all, and those whose self-evidence is only per se nota sapientibus, “to the wise.”19 Although some would deny this distinction,20 I believe that it is a point of capital importance regarding the noetics and logic of all three operations of the speculative intellect.
[Allow a side observation. Not only does this distinction respect the progressivity of the human cognition of an individual thinker. This distinction is also, thereby, a bulwark for a true conception of the historicity of human knowledge. There is such a thing as progress in science, as well as in philosophical and theological wisdom. Though such progress will be more in the direction of new conclusions in scientific disciplines and more in the direction of deepening of principles in sapiential ones, nonetheless, either form of discursive knowledge is marked by an objective21 that possibly,22 in each generation, bears witness to the labors of articulation that even affects our increased and deepened perception of principles, at least if we are willing to enter into the tradition of inquiry that has enabled such deepened intellectual perception.]
But, let us emphasize again our fundamental point: Such per se nota truths are difficult affairs! Very often, even though they are objectively certain per se, nonetheless for particular knowers, they are not known as deeply as they can be. That is, they are marked by a kind of contingency and hesitation, even once they are at first articulated in sufficiently clear terms. As Ambroise Gardeil remarks in an important work on “the Probable” and Probable Certainty (available here on To Be a Thomist):
By the very fact that they are self-evident to all, to the many, [or] to the learned, these truths are approved by them and receive their testimony. And as such [that is, as being approved by such testimony], they also rank among the probable. And let it not be said that this is a useless shift in value. How many times, when I have tried to provoke in a mind a truly analytic knowledge of a first principle, have I come up against an irremediable inability for my listener to hear the terms properly, to abstract them with enough clarity for their reciprocal inclusion to appear. Instead of making things clear, I was confusing them. Before the explanation, my listener's mind grasped the truth; but afterwards—if you’ll pardon the expression—he saw nothing but fire. Now, if this happens with first principles, how much more so is it the case with demonstrations, with scientific laws, and with the very facts of everyday experience. It is therefore useful, at least for those—and they are legion—whose minds are incapable of looking the intelligible in the face, that the most obvious truths be presented to them as reflected in common approbation and under the species of probability.
One needn’t be a Straussian or Averroist to admit such things!23 It is true not only of supposed minores in materiis intelligibilis; it is true of all. For before great truths, all men and women, even the best educated, stand in need of extrinsic aids to our cognition. We are like men and women staring up at a large statue, whose true lineaments and proportions we struggle to see.24 (And this is doubly, triply, and many more times true in the supernatural order!)
Self-Evidence and the Practico-Moral Order
Yet, we have heretofore remained only within the domain of purely speculative truths! How much more difficult matters become in the domain of the practico-moral! The truths of ethics have a “bite” that mere metaphysical truths do not have. For example, one may well agree to the first principle of practical reasoning: The good is to be done and evil avoided. And all the cardinal virtues, at least in their most general forms, are quite unobjectionable: debts should be repaid in accord with the just measure of the situation; anger and fear should be measured in relation to the ends of justice and right reason; so too for desires, joys, and sorrows… But, one rightly senses that the glutton (perhaps someone with very refined tastes) will be ready to redefine such “relation to the ends of justice and right reason” in a way that is agreeable to his state of soul and gastronomic attachments. So too, the employer who looks to maximize profits for himself will very often have a distorted sense of what is “owed” to workers—not only his but to workers in general. And infidelity to one’s spouse will possibly lead to all sorts of attempts to redefine the nature of marital justice, perhaps even in law… Qualis unusquisque est, talis finis videtur ei; as a given man is, so does the end seem to him.25 And this not only applies to prudence but even to the basic apprehensions we have in the moral life.
Another way of saying this is that synderesis enables us to know truths that have a formal bearing upon our very lives and choices. The truths known in the “speculatively practical”26 order, tell us something about our action. The formality of justice, that of fortitude, etc. is each destined to measure human action, to be the formal causality that molds and shapes the will in choice (in the terminal practical judgment) and execution (in command).27 But long before even this, we have the “simple willing” or “wish” that stands at the root of our activity. By it, we do not only wish for things that are impossible; we also rest in the good that we truly affectively stretch out to as spiritually-volitionally desirable.28 If we have such a character as to not “rest” in such truths, we will be all the more likely to close our intellectual eyes to it as well or to distort our estimation of its particular applications in our experience.
Therefore, the knowability of first truths of the moral order are even more capricious than those of the purely speculative order, even if some of the latter (such as metaphysical truths) are more difficult in their objective abstraction. Moral truths are “capricious” because the will is capricious, the human heart is capricious. And thus, evil morals can blot out large swathes—not all, but large swathes, if wicked enough—of our knowledge of the natural law.29 A morally upright culture—both social culture and personal cultivation (above all through the healing and elevating power of grace)—is a necessary component to moral insight and the understanding of the more specific precepts of the natural law (which we could also refer to as more specific virtuous formalities).30 But, on the flipside, the “self-evidence” of the moral order is quite a difficult affair, and regression is possible if a moral culture degrades in these or those ways. And, likewise, how great is the moral experience that a person must have in order to understand moral truths! Experience is not a completely sufficient condition for moral acuity, but it is a peerless support, as it is for all induction.
All of this is merely said as a kind of reiteration of the sound advice of Aristotle:
Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general. Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science;31 for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit.32
Thus, the self-evidence of the moral order will be quite a difficult affair. No wonder, therefore, that the domain of politics is a mess when one begins to discuss “self-evident truths” which no longer seem self-evident. And, no doubt, we could blame a culture that has departed from its Christian roots. But, also, too it is a failure in rhetorical imagination—partly due to media and culture, but also due to a dearth of truly political rhetoric, above all in the form of epideictic praise of the good and disparagement of evil. This plays an important role alongside the preliminary dialectical labors necessary for openly and explicitly articulating the nature of moral essences.33 One must raise one’s heart—both personally and collectively—to such truths in order to be prepared to also openly look them in the face and accept their potential implications.
There are many universal moral truths beyond such per se nota truths. There is a domain of moral “science,” above all moral philosophy.34 In addition to moral philosophy’s sapiential defense of first principles (akin to what was discussed above35), it also draws its own conclusions. I have argued elsewhere that such scientific, objectively illative moral conclusions are what St. Thomas meant by the ius gentium.36 But, in such discourse, we have passed from things per se nota to those which are per aliud nota.
Conclusion
The above reflections, of course, should be supplemented by the works that I have cited in the footnotes (and doubtlessly others which I have overlooked here). But, these observations give a sense for the important nuances that must be made regarding what is meant by “self-evident.” There is such a thing as intellectual insight, and a solidly expressed per se notum truth is the fruit of one of the most important sorts of intellectual activities that we undertake. But, let us remember the various diversifications involved within the veritates per se nota:
The diversification between speculative and practico-moral, the latter having a much more intimate connection to the character of the persons who know such truths.
The diversifications arising amid the defining terms, laboriously, first through descriptive, then causal, then (where possible) essential definitions, along with all the experience necessary for such defining.
The deepening and solidifying of per se nota judgments through extrinsic (sapiential) defense and organization of such truths.
The often-merely-probable assent that is given to such truths, despite the fact that they are per se nota (and, hence, the importance of intellectual and moral authority, the gravity of its right exercise, and the importance of a culture that gives deference to such authorities).
The important role of epideictic rhetoric in communicating moral truths in particular, so as to encourage a kind of first “via” toward fully evidential knowledge.
It may well be difficult to determine the state of a per se notum truth in this or that intellect: is it only grasped with probability? Is it truly and deeply defended in a wisdom-illuminated way? Nonetheless, unless one wishes to abandon at once the scientific vision of the Posterior Analytics and the sound data of common sense, one must recognize the importance of the notion of the per se notum, both as known “to all” and “to the wise.”
And this helps us to think—perhaps, I would hope, with a bit of gratitude—upon the era of our own nation’s founding, when particular important truths were held to be “self-evident.” But, given the precarity of our current intellectual, moral, and political situation, it should remind us, also, of the immense labor that is necessary so as to guard the moral and intellectual environment which conditions the possibility of the manifestation of self-evidence. Self-evidence is neither simplistic tautology, nor the consecration of one’s biases. Rather, it is the fruit of the objects of knowledge manifesting themselves to human intellects that find themselves within a given moral culture. We should be doubly and triply dedicated to the work of establishing such a culture, first within ourselves but then within those spheres where we exercise the influence that happens to be our Providential calling.37
Note the adverb. One might well travel down such a conceptual path based on the modern conceptions of right. Yet, I am not numbered among those who seem to think that philosophical and theological thought is merely a narrative of pure and simple decline from 1274 onward.↩︎
Although merely popular in tone, for an outlook akin to my own, see Thomas Howes, “Stand up for your (Subjective) Rights,” July 5, 2023, https://www.athwart.org/stand-up-for-your-subjective-rights/. As a point of general criticism of “narratives,” one cannot emphasize enough his observation, “Clichéd narratives, even if widespread, often depend on outdated scholarship.”↩︎
Consult my various translations of Garrigou-Lagrange for a brief treatment of the distinction between different types of illation / inference.↩︎
Yet, if one takes seriously the entire book (Γ) of Aristotle’s Metaphysics devoted to the second example, the principle of non-contradiction, it is already very clear that even this “simple” example can require a great deal of defense against its deniers.↩︎
This is a repeated theme in Garrigou-Lagrange. For example, see Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “On the Search for Definitions According to Aristotle and St. Thomas,” Philosophizing in Faith: Essays on the Beginning and End of Wisdom, ed. and trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2019), 21–34; idem., The Sense of Mystery, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2017), 23 (especially the footnote).↩︎
See Robert Sokolowki in “Making Distinctions,” in Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 55–91.↩︎
There are capital reasons, also, in the domain of Trinitarian theology and the theology of revelation / faith that should give pause to those who would deny its philosophical importance. Also, one wonders how in the world those who deny the importance of the internal word in philosophical noetics can account not only for the labor of definition, but also for the expression of complex statements and the results of discursive reasoning.↩︎
I am taking this expression from a remark made by Jacques Maritain in the early lectures in Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry.↩︎
See the text of Garrigou-Lagrange cited in note 4 above, where he focuses in particular on bk. 2, chs. 12–14.↩︎
I am translating, for To Be a Thomist, the studies on probability written by Ambroise Gardeil as an attempt to begin a conversation regarding the importance of probable certitude in Thomistic logic.↩︎
In addition to the kind of “common principles” commonly spoken of in the treatments of such dialectical reasoning, there is also an important role played by extrinsic middle terms. The classic example of such “extrinsic” middle terms is the case of reductions ad absurdum. A reductio shows that the denial of a position leads to the denial of some other truth. This does not intrinsically prove what one intends to manifest, but it does indicate the relative strength of the position under consideration. More will be said about this topic below.
It is a further research project—whether for myself or someone else, I am not sure—to more fully consider the various forms of such reasoning that go beyond the reductio form. See my indications in this direction in the aforementioned Gardeil article, especially the bibliographical entries directly related to the Topics.↩︎
I attach here for the reader’s consideration a list of some such principles (admittedly, wrongly referred to as “some principles of reason,” for the principles in question are first principles of being itself) drawn from the lecture notes of Dr. Raphael Waters, a student of Austin Woodbury.↩︎
Sometimes, such labors could well be very detailed, for we live now in the wake of many “positions” that have been articulated, both in truth and in error. Although Mortimer Adler leaves something to be desired in some of his philosophical positions, this was the noble aim of his lengthy The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Conceptions of Freedom, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1958). And although I am very much an admirer of the philosophical labors of Maritain in the domain of the “philosophy of making,” one should not forget the noteworthy historical dialectics undertaken by Marie-Dominique Philippe in his L’activité artistique: Philosophie du faire, 2 vols. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1969–1970).
Obviously, however, the citing of Philippe is not meant to be an endorsement of his relationship to his very problematic brother Thomas, nor a diminution of the serious accusations made against him in recent years. On this sad history, see Tangi Cavalin, L’affaire: Les dominicains face au scandale des frères Philippe (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2023); also in both English and French, see the reports written by L’Arche and the Community of St. John.↩︎
For a presentation of my understanding of the relationship between scientia and sapientia, see Matthew K. Minerd, “Wisdom be Attentive: The Noetic Structure of Sapiential Knowledge,” Nova et Vetera 18, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 1103–1146.↩︎
This would be the pretense of a certain kind of rationalism, which one can detect not only in the maniacal geometric methods of Spinoza, but at certain critical junctures in texts by Kant as well, as a kind of residue of something from his pre-critical days.↩︎
The effect is not the formal source of its received formality. It is this only in potency until actualized. If the opposite were the case, it would be and not be formally what it will become: an implied denial of the principle of non-contradiction. Therefore, the cause (the source of actuality) assimilates the effect (which is potential, precisely as effect) to itself.↩︎
See John of St. Thomas, Material Logic, trans. Yves Simon et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), q. 25, a. 2 (esp. p. 486–487). Also John of St. Thomas, The Gifts of the Holy Spirit, trans. Dominic Hughes (London: Sheed and Ward, 1950), 145–146 (Cursus theologicus, I-II, q. 70, disp. 18, a. 4, no. 46-47): “Wisdom proceeds from principles in such a way that it reflects upon the principles, not indeed proving them, but by explaining and defending them from contrary arguments…. [He first explains how one truth of faith can be proven from another.] Similarly, one principle proves another, not by an essential and intrinsic medium, since principles are self-evident propositions which need no medium of demonstration. Rather, one principle explains another by an extrinsic medium, by an explanation from a similar principle or an example. This may also occur when many inadequate reasons mutually concur in one nature or essence in such a way that one may be inferred from the other. Yet each ought to pertain to the integrity of the essence, its definition or principle… Wisdom, therefore, reflects upon its principles not by proving them through middle terms or from intrinsic principles, as it might prove conclusions, but by explaining them from other principles used as extrinsic or similar mediums, or within the same nature by inferring one inadequate reason from another.” Emphasis added.
Also see Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 137–160; idem., On Divine Revelation, vol. 1, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2022), 466–477.
I plan to return to this topic in a future note for To Be a Thomist.↩︎
Not necessarily its most important, though among one of its most important functions. See Minerd, “Wisdom Be Attentive,” 1129ff.↩︎
For a detailed textual study related to this matter, see M.V. Doughert, “Thomas Aquinas on the Manifold Senses of Self-Evidence,” The Review of Metaphysics 59, no. 3 (Mar. 2006): 601–630.↩︎
For example, see the discussion by Scotists discussed in Petr Dvořák, “Self-Evident Propositions in Late Scholasticism: The Case of ‘God Exists,’” Acta Comeniana 27 (2013): 47–73.↩︎
In the classical scholastic sense of the object as contrasted to the res ut res.↩︎
Though not always, for regression is possible in intellectual culture.↩︎
As I remark in a footnote to the translation of the text by Gardeil: No doubt, one might at times feel that there is a kind of “Averroism” of the Decisive Treatise sort in the remarks by Gardeil here. But, it is quite sane to note the great difficulty involved in reaching fully scientific demonstrations (in a state of fully established science). And one must have a way of navigating the difference between those who can hear scientific demonstrations and those who need to have demonstrations of lesser certitude, though it is a certitude that is indeed fit to their particular knowledge, abilities, situation, etc. It is not “esoteric” subterfuge to recognize this.
Along these lines, I concur fully with the following remark in Jacques Maritain, “Appendice 1: Sur le langue philosophique” in Réflexions sur l’intelligence, 3rd ed. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1930), 338: “I know of but one solution to this difficulty [concerning how to communicate such technical philosophical truths to intelligent non-philosophers]. In short, it is the same solution offered by the ancients: alongside the philosopher’s properly scientific and demonstrative work written above all for experts, the philosopher rightly should present the fruits of his works to the educated public, to ‘everyone,’ though using an expositional style that henceforth will be that of the art of persuading (‘dialectical’ in the Aristotelian sense), a style aiming to beget within his listeners true opinions, rather than science. This was what led Plato and Aristotle to write their dialogues.”↩︎
I take the image from Plato’s Sophist.↩︎
See Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics, bk. 3, ch. 5.↩︎
Concerning this term, see Matthew K. Minerd, “A Note on Synderesis, Moral Science, and Knowledge of the Natural Law,” Lex naturalis 5 (2020): 43–55; “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 (here, 266–70).↩︎
This cannot be emphasized enough. This is what is unique about speculatively-practical truths grasped through synderesis: they are destined to inform the will. Practical reasoning is ultimately ordinative.↩︎
I have discussed this view concerning “wish” or “simple willing” in Matthew K. Minerd, “A Synthetic Overview of Conscience and Prudence in Moral Reasoning,” in Conscience: Four Thomistic Treatments (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2022), 59–62.↩︎
See ST I-II, q. 94, a. 5 and 6. Also the texts cited below.↩︎
Thus, we also have the important insights of Maritain concerning the historical growth of the knowledge of the natural law. See See Jacques Maritain, Loi naturelle ou loi non écrite, ed. Geroges Brazzola (Fribourg, CH: Éditions Universitaires, 1986), 133–200; Raïssa Maritain, “Abraham and the Ascent of Conscience,” The Bridge: A Yearbook of Judeo-Christian Studies, vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon, 1955), 23–52. Interestingly, if one consults the Journet-Maritain correspondence from the 1940s, one sees that the Maritains are very desirous to ensure that Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange review this last work, which he did appreciatively read, with only very minor corrections (included by the Maritains).
Also, for a detailed study of Thomas’s texts regarding primary and secondary precepts of the natural law, see R. A. Armstrong, Primary and Secondary Precepts in Thomistic Natural Law Teaching (The Hague: Martinus Niijhoff,1966). Also, see Sr. Mary Georgetta St. Hilaire, “Precepts of Natural Law in St. Thomas,” Ph.D. diss. (St. Louis University, 1963).↩︎
For him, this is the ultimate formality of ethical discourse, although he also does propose the foundational distinctions that would give rise to the classical distinction between individual, familial, and political ethics.↩︎
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 1, ch. 3 (trans. Ross).↩︎
I think that there is also a pedagogical and maybe even sapiential role for rhetoric in purely speculative disciplines such as metaphysics. But that is not our topic here.↩︎
And moral theology too–but in that case, we enter the domain of truths that are certain but are not yet evident, the De fide truths of the Triune Deity and the Christic order of redemptive acts of God.↩︎
But, perhaps also involving something like rhetoric in its extrinsic defense. What is an epideictic argument ad ethos (or perhaps also ad pathos) but a kind of extrinsic but important assertion: Is not this man who would argue on behalf of virtue X good? Is not a man who would defend vice Y wicked? It is a kind of mixture of pathos and ethos argument against a position. Though formally fallacious in demonstrative matters, I wonder about the possibility of use of such arguments rhetorically in matters of moral. Classical Aristotelianism was not opposed to such an idea. (And yet all of this is possible without falling into “emotivism,” if one takes seriously the truth value of such rhetorical arguments.)
Also, recall that the “ad hominem” argument of the ancients was one in which the position of the interlocutor was presupposed, despite its limitations, so as to show the interlocutor either that his conclusion was either not necessary or even false. Cf. Tommaso Zigliara, Summa philosophica in usum scholarum, 12th ed., vol. 1 (Paris: Briguet, 1900), 157: An ‘absolute’ demonstration is one which proceeds from premises whose truth we admit and assume in order to then draw an inference, absolutely speaking, as when we demonstrate the real existence of God on the basis of the contingent character of creatures, and other such demonstrations. However, a relative (that is, ad hominem) demonstration is one which proceeds from principles which are admitted by the person we are arguing against and which we assume for the sake of refutation, setting aside the question of the truth of such principles, as when someone assumes principles admitted by materialists or by rationalists, in order to convince them that their doctrine is false.↩︎
See Matthew Minerd, “Ius Gentium as Publicly Articulated Moral Science,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition 21, no. 3 (Summer 2023): 1043–1058.↩︎
It is not so much in the direction of Blondel’s sort of morality of human knowing that I am thing (though, there are things in the élan of his thought deserving of honest appraisal and re-appraisal). Rather, closer to my own perspective would be something like (though with new and updated inflections) the reflections offered by Cardinal Georges Cottier in Humaine raison: contributions à une éthique du savoir (Paris: Lethielleux, 2011).↩︎
