Description: Although most natural law ethical theories recognize moral absolutes, there is not much agreement even among natural law theorists about how to identify them. The author argues that in order to understand and determine the morality (or immorality) of a human action, it must be considered in relation to the organized system of human practices within which it is performed. Such an approach, he argues, is to be found in the natural law theory of Thomas Aquinas, especially once it is recognized that the logical structure of Aquinas's ethical theory is basically that of an Aristotelian science.

In order to depict this structure and to explain how it bears upon the analysis of action, the author investigates a number of issues that have attracted the attention of Thomistic and Aristotelian scholarship. He examines the nature of practical reason, its relationship with theoretical reason, the derivation of lower from higher ethical principles, the incommensurability of human goods, the relationship between will and intellect, and the principle of double effect.

The book will be useful to students and scholars interested in ethics, especially from an Aristotelian and/or Thomistic perspective. One appendix reproduces the Leonine text of the De malo (question 6), with facing English translation. Another appendix provides facing Latin text and English translation of the Summa Theologiae I-II (question 94, article 2).

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