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    4 Kinds of Laws

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    Pinky Manguera
    ETHICS

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    4 Kinds of Laws

    Uploaded by

    Pinky Manguera
    4 views1 page
    ETHICS

    Original Title

    4 KINDS OF LAWS

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    ETHICS

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    4 views1 page

    4 Kinds of Laws

    Uploaded by

    Pinky Manguera
    ETHICS

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    4 KINDS OF LAWS

    1. Eternal law. A law is nothing else but a dictate of practical reason emanating from the
    ruler of a community. The world is ruled by Divine Providence, meaning that it is
    governed by Divine Reason. It’s ideas of the government are thus a law, and since
    Divine Reason is not subject to time, this law is eternal.
    Aquinas believes God’s wisdom includes a sense of the proper ordering of the whole
    community of the universe. God’s Divine Reason must have a most perfect ‘idea’ of how to
    order things. This wisdom is the eternal law.
    2. Natural law. Rational creatures, insofar as they partake of a share of providence, have a
    share of the Divine Reason, whereby they have a natural inclination to their proper acts
    and ends. This participation in the eternal law is natural law. Natural law allows us to
    discern between good and evil, and is an imprint of Divine Light.
    Natural law is the group of universal obligations of right reason concerning the good of
    nature that we should pursue and the evil we should avoid.
    3. Human law. Human laws are the dictates of practical reason. They particularize the
    general principles we know from the natural law. It’s the law of states, of our societies.
    We cannot ‘act’ natural law since it encompasses universal obligations. We do not fully
    participate in Divine Reason and thus cannot know each and every single truth. We thus
    look to the general principles we have in the natural law (such as the precept ‘do good,
    avoid evil’) and use our reason to draw particular conclusions (‘Help the elderly lady
    carry her bags’).

    4. Divine Law. We need this because our end is eternal happiness with God, which is
    disproportionate to our natural faculties. Furthermore, divine law establishes one rule of
    what one should or should not do, eliminating multiple standards. Third, divine law helps
    govern our interior selves, which human law cannot. Fourth, human law does not
    criminalize all evils since to do so would do away with many good things, and would
    hinder the advance of the common good. Divine law thus covers and forbids all evils that
    human law cannot address.

    5th Art. Divine law is God’s self-revelation. It comes in two forms: The revelation to the
    Jews, and Christ: The Old and the New Law.
    6th Art. Sin is not another law, because it deviates from the law of reason. It is rather an
    inclination of sensuality stemming from the body, and has the ‘nature’ of a law.

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