Research Paper On Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was a Catholic priest who lived in the 13th century. He was a Doctor of the Church, often writing about important topics relevant to morality. In his writings, Thomas Aquinas explains his stance on law. His writings are split up into multiple different sections and each section builds upon the previous, as follows in the paragraphs below. The first section is one of the shorter ones. Here, Aquinas talks about is whether law is something pertaining to reason. First he states that the Latin word for law, “lex”, is derived from the word “ligare”, which means to bind, because a law binds us to one act. For example, a speed limit binds us to only drive below a certain speed and thus be more safe. He goes on to cite Aristotle, saying that rule and measure of human activity is reason and that rule and measure is the first principle of human acts. Therefore, he concludes that because reason is the

In all honesty, this should not even be a question, but Aquinas elaborates anyways. He utters statements: that law is imposed on others as rule and measure and that rule and measure is imposed by being applied to those being ruled and measured. In order for law to have any binding power, it must be applied to those for whom the law was created. Therefore, the promulgation of laws is necessary for those members of society to follow them, and for the laws to have any meaning whatsoever. The next section covers whether or not there is eternal law. I will not go into specific details on this section because Aquinas basically just says that if there is a ruler of the universe, there is eternal law. Because Aquinas was a Catholic, clearly his answer would be that God is the ruler of the universe and therefore He creates eternal law. But to an atheist or anyone of the sorts, this would not be the case on account of their disbelief in a higher