Abstract
Thomistic natural law (NL) theorists can be neatly divided between two camps. Those in the first accept the no-is-from-ought thesis, and those in the second reject it as a pseudo-problem. The first camp holds that the is-ought problem can be circumvented in a Thomistic NL theory through Aquinas’s distinction between the practical and speculative intellects, a distinction he develops and applies to the NL in Summa Theologiae (ST) I-II 94.2. Ought-statements belong to the realm of practical reason (which starts from apprehension of good, and considers reality as that which ‘is to be pursued’), while is-statements belong to the realm of speculative reason (which starts from the apprehension of being); because the practical intellect has its own first principles, derived from its own proper notions, we need not—they hold—derive our first ought-statements from speculative knowledge or bridge the is-ought chasm. This allows them to safeguard the universality of the NL: an individual need not have explicit, speculative knowledge of anthropology in order to understand his primary obligations. The second camp conceives of the practical intellect as depended on the speculative, so that speculative knowledge of human nature becomes a foundation for our knowledge of obligations. This provides the link that grounds the natural law in human nature. The first camp includes the ‘New Natural Lawyers’ (NNL)—for example, Grisez and Finnis—as well as Rhonheimer. In Knowing the Natural Law, Jensen places himself in the second of these camps; his thesis is that, ‘contrary to Grisez, Aquinas does think that practical truth is founded upon speculative truth’, and he sets out to show how, consequently, one can move ‘from is-statements to ought-statements, in particular as this move is found in Aquinas’ (p. 7).
Jensen’s system is developed from Aquinas’s distinction of four sorts of knowledge with respect to their practicality. Although Jensen does mount independent arguments, some quite strong, against particular theses of the NNL theory (for example, his critique of its account of human goods throughout chapter 5), his explanation of this fourfold division of knowledge constitutes the foundation of his account, the hermeneutical key to his interpretation of Aquinas, and the organizing principle of the entire work. Consequently it is this feature of his interpretation that must command our attention.
He draws this fourfold division of knowledge from ST I 14.16. Jensen explains it as follows (pp. 9–12): The first sort of knowledge is ‘purely speculative’, which is in no sense directed towards action, and needn’t further concern us.
The second is what Jensen terms ‘materially practical’; it is speculative knowledge of operabilia, for example, knowledge of how a car engine works as might be had by a person who is simply curious about their operation but who has no interest in building or repairing an engine. Jensen holds that statements of what is good belong to this sort, for example, ‘dirt in engine oil is bad for engines’.
The third sort he terms ‘virtually practical’; like materially practical, it is only practical in a qualified sense—at heart it remains strictly speculative. This Jensen identifies with how-to knowledge, and, more particularly, it is to this category that ought-statements belong, for example, ‘one ought to change the oil in his car every 3,000 miles’.
The final sort of knowledge is what he terms ‘purely practical’; it has the form of a command, and it arises when virtually practical knowledge is directed to action by being united to actual desire, supplies the content of a command, and thereby becomes the form of willing (p. 115), for example, ‘change the oil!’
Jensen holds that these four sorts are successive, each building on the prior (pp. 221–24). This progression forms the outline of the work (pp. 24-25). After laying out the state of the question (chapter 1) and carefully examining the foundational text, ST I-II 94.2 (chapter 2), he turns to purely speculative knowledge of natural inclinations in chapter 3, which, he argues, we grasp in recognising effects as effects of some agent.
In chapters 4–6 he shows how one progresses from knowledge of these inclinations to a materially practical knowledge of the good: since goods are correlative to inclination, by recognising a natural inclination, we recognise the object of that inclination as a good (pp. 73–76).
Chapters 7–9 treat virtually practical knowledge of ought-statements. These, he holds, can be derived from statements of the good because ought-statements are like predictions that abstract from possible impediments (p. 140): they are speculative statements about what will be in the future, provided nothing impedes the fulfilment of present inclinations, for example, ‘The cake ought to be done in one hour’. Ought-statements ‘judge what an agent needs insofar as it is working toward some goal’ (p. 143); they are ‘in fact a certain kind of is-statement’ (p. 149).
Applied to rational agents, this system arrives not at categorical but at hypothetical oughts (p. 151). These, Jensen argues (pp. 172–74), can offer a quasi-categorical obligation insofar as, first, men are naturally inclined to some shared goods and, second, nature is capable of removing those shared goods from individuals who arrogate them to themselves as private goods: ‘Those who opt out of the common good opt out of a good they naturally desire’ (p. 174). While Jensen is clear that such oughts are not the same as the moral ought (p. 174), he holds the moral ought in suspicion, and repeatedly cites Foot to the effect that moral ought has never been well defined (pp. 151, 166, 174). Such hypothetical oughts might well—I contend—provide an approximation of moral obligation if it were true, not just that ‘all natural inclinations are ordered to a common or shared good’ (p. 171), but further that they were so apprehended by the agent. Yet, as Jensen elsewhere notes, this doesn’t seem to be generally the case: ‘Every inclination of every creature seeks its own good … What is less apparent … is that every inclination is directed to the common or shared good’ (p. 114).
Finally, chapter 10 discusses fully practical knowledge and how we move from virtually practical knowledge to action by uniting virtually practical knowledge to the will (pp. 204–205).
If Jensen is right in positing this progression from speculative to purely practical, then his principal contention (namely, that practical knowledge and ought-statements depend on speculative knowledge and is-statements) will have already been established. Hence it is necessary to examine Jensen’s defence of this system.
First it must be noted that the pairing of the sorts of practical knowledge to particular sorts of statements is not in the text where Aquinas lays out the division; Aquinas does not say that materially practical knowledge is knowledge of the good; he says only that it is speculative knowledge of operabilia, practical only as to its matter, though speculative as to its mode and end. He does not identify virtually practical knowledge with ought-statements; rather he defines it as knowledge that is practical as to its matter and mode but speculative as to its end (he does, however, seem to identify it with a sort of how-to knowledge in his example of knowing qualiter fieri aliqua domus). He says of purely practical knowledge only that it is practical, with respect not just to its mode (like virtually) but also to its end.
Most importantly, Aquinas says nothing in the cited text to imply a progression from one sort of knowledge to another, nor does he suggest an essential dependence of one on another such as would necessitate some progression.
These essential elements of Jensen’s system are derived by establishing a correspondence between the three sorts of practical knowledge—materially, virtually and purely—and the three acts of the practical intellect, listed in ST I-II 57.6—deliberation, judgement and command. This second passage says that the first two acts (viz., deliberation and judgement) ‘correspond to acts of the speculative intellect’ while only command ‘properly belongs to the practical intellect’ (p. 144). This Jensen takes to mean ‘that deliberation and judgment are not purely practical’ (p. 144, original emphasis) while command is purely practical. Hence Jensen correlates deliberation with the materially practical, judgement with the virtually practical, and command with the purely practical (pp. 145–47). Since Aquinas is clear that there is a progression of deliberation to judgement, and thence to command, once this correlation of knowledge to acts has been made, it is trivial to establish the parallel dependence and progression in the sorts of knowledge.
The problem with this interpretation is that Aquinas simply does not say that deliberation and judgement are speculative or that command is uniquely practical. What he says is that deliberation and judgement ‘correspond to acts of the speculative intellect’ while only command ‘is properly practical’ (ST I-II 57.6). This needn’t mean anything more than that deliberation and judgement have speculative analogues (that is, they ‘correspond to acts of the speculative intellect’) whereas command is unique to the practical intellect, having no speculative analogue (thus command ‘is properly practical’).
This alternate reading is confirmed by considering the parallel in ST II-II 47.8, where Aquinas discusses the three acts of prudence, using the same argument as he presents in ST I-II 57.6 to show that command is the principal act of prudence; although ‘deliberation … pertains to inquiry’ and ‘the speculative intellect stops [sistit]’ at the step of ‘judging of the things discovered’, ‘practical reason … continues [procedit ulterius], and its third act is [est tertius actus eius] to command’. Practical reason, says Aquinas, continues—not begins—when it moves from judgement to command; command is its third—not first—act. The passage unambiguously describes all three acts as acts of the practical intellect and as acts of prudence, a virtue that Aquinas is clear is in the practical intellect alone (cf. I-II 47.2).
To put rather a fine point on the difficulty, the practical intellect seems to be nothing but a name in Jensen’s system. Even purely practical knowledge is not, considered as knowledge, different from speculative knowledge; it is a particular sort of speculative knowledge that happens to be joined to an act of the will (p. 225). Since there is no difference on the side of the intellect between virtually and purely practical knowledge, it seems there is no longer a distinctive function for the practical intellect at all. Whatever led Aquinas to distinguish sharply the practical from the speculative appears to be wanting from Jensen’s system. The result is that the practical intellect becomes redundant and practical knowledge is subsumed by speculative: ‘Knowledge is practical through something extrinsic to it, namely through an act of the will. No knowledge is prescriptive by nature, apart from an act of the will’ (p. 226).
There is much meticulous scholarship to praise in this book; it constitutes an important contribution to the discussion and is on the whole remarkable in its subtlety. Indeed it seems to me to open a number of avenues for a rapprochement between the two sides of the debate while articulating a number of significant objections to the NNL account. Yet its principal contention appears to be founded on a misreading, and the system it proposes seems ultimately to question, if not deny, the very things it is meant to account for—namely, the prescriptive, moral ought and the practical intellect.