Natural law in Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

Journal of Religious History

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 10-22

  Grace, Damian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES   (Australia)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61049194224     PISSN: 00224227     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9809.00024     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. A. P. d'Entrèves, Political Thought; A. P. d'Entrèves, Natural Law: An Historical Perspective, London 1951;
2. Munz, Place of Hooker;
3. J. S. Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition, London 1963. Ch. VIII.
4. 'The Philosopher of the "Politic Society": Richard Hooker as a Political Thinker', in W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, Studies in the Reformation: Luther to Hooker, C. W. Dugmore (ed. ), London 1980, pp. 149, 153.
5. Robert K. Faulkner, Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England, Berkeley and London 1981, pp. 61-2.
6. Faulkner, Richard Hooker, p. 61.
7. Peter Munz provides a survey of Hooker's indebtedness to Thomistic sources in Appendix A, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought. Paul Forte finds similar usage between Aquinas and Hooker in dealing with law in 'Richard Hooker's Theory of Law', Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Vol. 12, 1982, p. 139.
8. Peter Lake states that 'Since Munz wrote, the influence of Thomism on Hooker has been undeniable', Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker, London 1988, p. 226.
9. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?, p. 226.
10. ST, 1a2ae. 90, 1, 3.
11. ST, 1a2ae, 91, 2: 'The end of divine government is God himself, and his law is none other than himself. '
12. St Thomas has it that 'his will is better spoken of as intelligence itself. ST, 1a2ae. 93, 4.
13. ST, 1a2ae. 93, 3;
14. Laws, 1, 3.
15. Peter Lake remarks that, 'compared to the views of other protestants, Hooker's vision of sin as a species of ignorance, a sort of intellectual laziness, seemed almost benign'. Anglicans and Puritans?, p. 150.
16. This point is also made by Egil Grislis in 'The Hermeneutical Problem in Hooker', in Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works, W. Speed Hill (ed. ), Cleveland 1972, pp. 178-9.
17. Faulkner, pp. 86-7.
18. Faulkner, p. 62.
19. See C. Condren, The Status and Appraisal of Classic Texts, Princeton 1986.
20. ST, 1a2ae, 93, 6.
21. ST, 1a2ae, 91, 4, 1.
22. Laws, 1. 6. 3;
23. cf. St Thomas at ST 1a2ae, 91, 3: 'The practical reason is concerned with things to be done, which are individual and contingent, not with necessary things that are the concern of theoretic reason. That is why human laws cannot have inerrancy that marks conclusions of demonstrative science'.
24. Laws, 1. 12. 2; 1. 8. 7; 1. 8. 9.
25. Cf. ST, 1a2ae, 94, 4: 'as for its first common principles, here natural law is the same for all . . . Nevertheless in fewer cases where the desire or the information may be wanting . . . The knowledge . . . of what is right may be distorted by passion of bad custom. '
26. De Legibus, C. W. Keyes (trans. ), London and Cambridge, Mass. 1928, II,4,10.
27. ST, 1a2ae, 91, 3.
28. ST, 1a2ae, 94, 2.
29. Aquinas distinguishes between primary and secondary precepts of natural law, the first being self-evident to theoretical reason and the second being the deductions from first principles applied to particular cases. ST, a12ae, 94, 4.
30. See e. g. , Laws, 1. 12. 2; 8. 9; 11. 8. 6; 111. 7. 2; 9. 3.
31. R. Orr, Reason and Authority, Oxford 1967, p. 179.
32. E. De Jonghe, 'Locke and Hooker on the Finding of the law', Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 42, 1988, p. 316.
33. For convincing parallels see De Jonghe, 'Locke and Hooker'.
34. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, section 1.
35. John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics, Oxford 1983, p. 44, and more generally Ch. 11.
36. Utilitarians might find Finnis' emphasis on satisfactions too strong: see e. g. , J. Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 2nd edn, New York 1993, pp. 104-5.
37. M. B. Crowe, The Changing Profile of the Natural Law, The Hague 1977, p. 137.
38. Crowe, Changing Profile, pp. 138-9.
39. Crowe, pp. 139-40.
40. Munz, p. 64.
41. J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, London 1960, p. 186.
42. It was held, for example, by Cardinal Bessarion. See B. Copenhaver and C. B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy, Oxford 1992, p. 141.
43. A. S. McGrade, 'Rights, Natural Rights, and the Philosophy of Law', in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, N. Kretzmann, A. Kenny, J. Pinborg and E. Stump (eds), Cambridge 1982, p. 752.
44. The whole point of Moore's doctrine of intuitionism was to put a stop to questions about reasons, not to invite reason giving as Hooker does. For Moore, one just intuits certain simple properties, and they cannot be analysed further: 'If I am asked "What is good?", my answer is that good is good and that is the end of the matter. ' Principia Ethica, Cambridge 1903, p. 6.
45. For a survey of the 'forgotten' philosophy of the Renaissance and the tendency of histories of philosophy to be proleptic, see Brian Copenhaver's comments in Renaissance Philosophy, B. Copenhaver and Schmitt (eds), pp. 339-46.
46. G. Grisez, 'The First Principle of Practical Reason', in Aquinas, A. Kenny (ed. ), London and Melbourne 1969, pp. 340-82.
47. For concise criticism of the interpretation of Grisez and Finnis (above), see Ralph McInerny, Ethica Thomistica, Washington 1982, pp. 44-59.
48. Grisez, 'The First Principle', p. 378.
49. See Grisez, pp. 372-82.