Natural Inclination in Aquinas

Degree awarded: Ph.D. Philosophy. The Catholic University of AmericaIn Summa theologiae I-II.94.2, St. Thomas Aquinas says that "the precepts of the natural law follow upon the order of the natural inclinations." This statement has generated much controversy, but little discussion of what the term "natural inclination" (inclinatio naturalis) means. This dissertation is a study of Aquinas's use of that term in 94.2 and throughout the corpus. Chapter I is a study of the terms inclinatio and inclinare. It distinguishes these terms from their English cognates "inclination" and "incline," examines Aquinas's use of inclinare in the sense of a lawgiver's "inclining" his subjects towards an end, and distinguishes natural inclinations from other inclinations. Chapter II investigates the sources of Aquinas's natural inclination language and threefold schema of inclinations in 94.2 and argues that natural inclination provides the "linchpin" that holds together the divergent, yet authoritative, natural law definitions of Gratian, Cicero, and Ulpian. Chapter III contrasts Aquinas's use of the term natura with prevalent senses of the English word "nature," argues that natural inclination in the sense proper to natural law is the inclination of human nature as a rational-animal composite, and argues that the "order" of the natural inclinations is within nature, not imposed by reason. Chapter IV discusses Aquinas's use of naturalis with regard to human beings, in contrast to prevalent senses of "natural" in modern English. It discusses man's natural inclination to virtue as an example of the "humanly natural." Chapter V examines natural inclination in relation to natural evil, fallen nature, sinful inclination, and reason's governance of unruly human inclinations. Chapter VI discusses how natural inclination is related to appetites and their objects. It shows that the acts of the sensitive and rational appetites are distinct from, but rooted in, "natural appetite." Chapter VII explains how natural inclination is both an intrinsic disposition following upon form and an extrinsic inclining of the created nature by God. It discusses natural inclination in terms of Aquinas's notions of divine direction by "impression," divine art, natural intentionality, and divine cognition of the ends of nature. An appendix provides an "Index of Natural Inclinations According to St. Thomas Aquinas."Made available in DSpace on 2013-06-25T14:58:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cunningham_cua_0043A_10403display.pdf: 3858903 bytes, checksum: 9f383d689ed23059f2a4868e94fb29f3 (MD5