End of the Middle Ages and William of Ockham.
The intransigeant Augustinian conception of Chris-
tianity was thus subdued and a return to the ancient
sources was bound to occur. Saint Thomas Aquinas was
going to refer back to these sources, more particularly
to Aristotle's natural law. From Aristotle he borrowed
the evolutionary feature of a changing natural law, for
human nature is variable. Hence, laws are themselves
susceptible to variations. The precepts of natural law
are the first principles of human action. Man's initiative
returned to the forefront in the quest and discovery
of law.
In short, Aquinas viewed the universe as governed
by eternal law; man is subject to natural law, which
is only the reflection of divine reason, and finally
human law simply applies the precepts and principles
of natural law by adapting them to the particular needs
and circumstances of social life. The eternal or divine
law integrates natural law, but natural law is distinct
from divine law in that the latter includes the many
truths of a supernatural order foreign to natural law.
Natural law appears here not as natural in the first
sense of the term, but as rational human law for man
is a reasonable creature.
Natural law consists henceforth in fundamental
primordial judgments of a moral order; synteresis is
its habitus or way of functioning. Natural law is there-
fore not the synteresis but its object. The system thus
is clear: natural law constitutes the principle of uni-
versal order and archetype of all law; natural law
permits man to participate through his reason in divine
or eternal law; finally, human law is integrated in
natural law by being a projection of it as the function
of fulfilling social needs. Hence it is possible to resist
unjust laws. Since natural law is the intended product
of natural reason, it participates in nature.
What then happens to the universality and immuta-
bility of natural law? Universality holds only through
certain universal principles (act according to sound
reason), immutability is relative by virtue of the very
nature of man. Man is impelled by sound reason to-
wards the quest of the common good, for an individ-
ual's ideal is realizable only to the extent that the
community's ideal is realized.
The voluntarist current was not however obliterated,
and the return to this position was very plainly dis-
cernible in William of Ockham, in the fourteenth cen-
tury. He opposed both Aristotle's realism and Aquinas'
moderate form of realism. For Ockham, only individ-
uals exist; man as an abstract category is a creation
of the mind—such is his essentially nominalist thesis.
Hence, there arises the tendency to think of law chiefly
as starting from the individual and not by virtue of
relationships among individuals, which tendency will
lead ultimately to formulating individual prerogatives
and to setting down exactly the rights of individuals.
The very idea of natural order appeared to Ockham
contrary to divine omnipotence. Participation in any
reason (logos) whatever, which would impose on God
rules external to Him, would be unacceptable.
Henceforth legal precepts are not and cannot be
based on reason, nor possess any intrinsically good
value. God, all powerful, can order what He pleases.
The law thus finds the justification of its validity simply
in the fact that it is a command. Consequently, Ockham
cannot recognize as sources of civil law any other laws
than the expression of the will, and no longer of nature.
Natural law, in such a conception, becomes again
justice “contained... in writing” (in scripturis...
continetur), and no longer the group of rationally nec-
essary precepts.
