Telos

Context of Natural Law:

Natural law has been especially influential in Catholicism.

Natural law is a Normative, Deontological theory.

📎 The theory was pushed by Thomas Aquinas who's main aim was to show how faith and reason could work alongside each other.

Aquinas aimed to demonstrate how humans could achieve eudaemonia by following God's will.

🔑 The key precept

Synderesis: The inclination to do good and avoid evil.

The argument:

Aristotle initially developed the idea of Eudaimonia, the belief in achieving God-like perfection in order to live a moral life and flourish.

Aquinas developed Aristotle's argument and argued that telos was the key to understanding and fulfilling God's will in order to live a good Christian life.

As the creation of God, Aquinas argued that God placed within us an innate sense of God-given purpose to help us navigate our moral decisions.

As the Universe is also a creation of God, there are laws within the universe that directly lead to the conclusion that the world has God-given order that helps us understand our telos.

Natural law: The moral law of God within human nature that is discoverable through the use of reason.

Biblical backing:

"The law of God is written on their hearts" Humans are "made in the image of God" imago dei.

Strengths of Aquinas' telos argument

• Natural law creates a link between the creator, the creation, and our purpose.
• Following Aquinas' argument, it is clear that humans are oriented towards certain acts.

• There are common expectations and natural inclinations across many societies and cultures, suggests that Aquinas is correct to state that we all have an innate God give telos.
• Having a set purpose, in the name of achieving eudaemonia and fulfilling God's will allows humans to have purpose and direction in what they do, using the guidelines to help them navigate society and moral decisions.
• Humans can often be influenced by unpredictable emotions and feelings, and having an innate knowledge of our purpose helps to guide us through these inconsistent emotions.
• Polkinghorne: Science is limited and cannot answer all questions. If purpose does exist, that is not a question for science.

Weaknesses of Aquinas' telos argument

• Satre: Existence predates essence, humans have to exist before our purpose is decided.
• Francis Bacon: The idea of telos is unscientific
• Karl Barth: Our reason has become corrupted by the original sin and we therefore cannot know our God-given purpose as "the finite has no capacity for the infinite."
• If we did all have the same god given purpose, there would be a lot more agreement within society.
• The belief that we have an orientation towards the good in order to fulfill our God-given purpose is undermined by the sheer amount of evil and suffering that takes place in the world.
• Humans are too scared to choose their own purpose and therefore rely on superficial beliefs of purpose being innate as psychologically the freedom to choose your own destiny scares society.
• If humans are tainted by the original sin, can we be trusted to follow our inclination and what we believe to be our telos?

Real and apparent goods

💡 Aquinas responds to the criticism that humans can't have a god-given purpose as there are too many evil and contrasting views in the world by real and apparent goods.

Apparent goods: Something that you believe to be the right/good thing to do but, does not contribute to your moral development.

Real goods: Actions that are in line with eternal law, successfully contributing to your progression towards your telos of God-like perfection.

Aquinas argues that even though we have an inclination towards the good, he does not commit us to the good. He acknowledges that we still have the impacts of the original sin and we can therefore still be misguided.