Is there a Punishment for Violating the Natural Law?

Is there a punishment for violating the natural law? This important question has been neglected in the scholarship on Thomistic natural law theory. I show that there is a three-fold punishment proper to the natural law; the remorse of conscience, the inability to be a friend to oneself, and the inab...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Roniger, Scott J. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Philosophy Documentation Center [2020]
In: American catholic philosophical quarterly
Year: 2020, Volume: 94, Issue: 2, Pages: 273-304
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
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Summary:Is there a punishment for violating the natural law? This important question has been neglected in the scholarship on Thomistic natural law theory. I show that there is a three-fold punishment proper to the natural law; the remorse of conscience, the inability to be a friend to oneself, and the inability to be a friend to another work in concert to provide a natural penalty for moral wrongdoing. In order to establish these points, I first analyze sources of St. Thomas Aquinas’s natural law theory by discussing St. Augustine’s notion of law and fundamental ideas in Aristotle’s political philosophy. Next, I show how Aquinas unites aspects of Augustinian and Aristotelian thought in his treatment of natural law and thereby provides a framework for answering our question. Finally, I turn to Plato’s Gorgias and to Aristotle’s discussion of self-love in order to integrate these ideas with Aquinas’s natural law theory.
ISSN:2153-8441
Contains:Enthalten in: American catholic philosophical quarterly
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.5840/acpq2020312202