Is Ethical Naturalism Possible in Thomas Aquinas?
Saturday, July 19 Morning session Anthony J. Lisska The role of philosophical anthropology in the moral theory of Thomas Aquinas is a hotly debated issue in contemporary Aquinas studies. Proponents of what has been called “the New Natural Law” argue that an analysis of practical reason is sufficient to develop a theory of natural law fully compatible with the insights of Aquinas. Other philosophers question this method of analysis on the texts of Aquinas. In this paper, I wish to probe what I take to be the metaphysical underpinnings of Aquinas’s moral theory. The argument is fundamentally that Aquinas’s moral theory is a second order inquiry based squarely on the metaphysical foundations of his natural kind ontology. The points to be made are the following: • How does the concept of “natural kind” fit into contemporary discussions in philosophy? • How can one, given a theory of natural kinds, transcend the limits of the naturalistic fallacy? The argument of this paper is that, in oppo
