Friday, November 16, 2018

Kant’s Autonomous Morality


Fr. Austin Fagothey, “Right And Reason,” pp. 129-141

Kant’s Autonomous Morality

We reserved our discussion of Kant's ethical system for this place because he centers it all about the idea of duty. In contrast to the various systems of eudaemonism, the theory that man's last end is happiness of some kind, Kant's ethics is a stern deontologism, the theory that man's last end is the fulfillment of duty. It has an unmistakable affinity to Stoicism, "virtue is its own reward," "duty for duty's sake," but he develops it in an original way.

Kant never tired of saying that two things ever filled him with admiration, "the starry sky above and the moral law within." On the morallaw he based the whole structure of his philosophy, for after he had devoted his Critique of Pure Reason to demolishing the ability of human reason to discover truth speculatively, he tried in his Critique of Practical Reason to build it all up again on a practical and moral foundation. His thought is easier to follow in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.

He begins by stating that the good taken purely and simply is found only in a good will, and a good will is one which acts, not from natural inclination, but from duty. Only acts done from duty have moral worth. Even acts done in the line of duty but not from the motive of duty have no moral value. They lack the form of morality, that which precisely gives them their moral quality, and this can be nothing else but respect for the law, which is what he means by duty. Thus an act is not good because of the end to which it leads, but solely because of the motive of duty from which it is performed.

The moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect which is expected from it or in any principle of action which has to borrow its motive from this expected effect. For all these effects (agreeableness of condition, indeed even the promotion of the happiness of others) could be brought about through other causes and would not require the will of a rational being, while the highest and unconditional good can be found only in such a will. Therefore the pre-eminent good can consist only in the conception of the law in itself (which can be present only in a rational being) so far as this conception and not the hoped-for effect is the determining ground of the will. Thispre-eminent good, which we call moral, is already present in the person who acts according to this conception and we do not have to expect it first in the result.1

What is this law, respect for which must be the motive of an act to make it moral? It must be the pure concept of law as such. If any act I do is to be moral, I must ask myself: Can I make the maxim or principle on which this act rests into a universal law binding all?

The shortest but most infallible way to find the answer to the question as to whether a deceitful promise is consistent with duty is to ask myself: Would I be content that my maxim (of extricating myself from difficulty by a false promise) should hold as a universal law for myself as well as for others? And could I say to myself that everyone may make a false promise when he is in a difficulty from which he otherwise cannot escape? I immediately see that I could will the lie but not a universal law to lie. For with such a law there would be no promises at all inasmuch as it would be futile to make a pretense of my intention in regard to future actions to those who would not believe this pretence or—if they overhastily did so—who would pay me back in my own coin. Thus my maxim would necessarily destroy itself as soon as it was made a universal law.2

Kant goes on to say that, whereas everything in nature works according to laws, only rational beings can have an idea of law and consciously conform their conduct to principles. This capacity is will, which is the same as practical reason. An objective principle of law binding the will is a command, stated as an imperative expressing the ought. An imperative may be hypothetical (if you want this end, you mustuse these means), or categorical (you must do this absolutely).

If the action is good only as a means to something else, the imperative is hypothetical; but if it is thought of as good in itself, and hence as necessary in a will which of itself conforms to reason as the principle of this will, the imperative is categorical....
There is one imperative which directly commands a certain conduct without making its condition some purpose to be reached by it. This imperative is categorical. It concerns not the material of the action and its intended result but the form and principle from which it results. What is essentially good in it consists in the intention, the result being what it may. This imperative may be called the imperative of morality....
There is, therefore, only one categorical imperative. It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.3

This statement of the categorical imperative is repeated often by Kant, sometimes with a slightly different wording and emphasis, but the underlying meaning is always the same. What in Kant's view makes an act morally wrong? It is in making an exception for myself, and thus contradicting the law in my own favor.

When we observe ourselves in any transgression of duty, we find that we do not actually will that our maxim should become a universal law. That is impossible for us; rather, the contrary of this maxim should remain as a law generally, and we only take the liberty of making an exception to it for ourselves or for the sake of our inclination, and for this one occasion.4

The fundamental reason why such conduct is wrong is that it subjects other persons (as means) to myself (as end), perverting the whole realm of ends, according to which each rational being, each person, must be treated never merely as a means but always as an end in himself. The dignity of the rational being, the nobility of a person as such, is therefore the fundamental reason why I must be moral. But this principle involves a further and startling conclusion. If I must not subject other persons as means to myself as end, I myself am not subjected as means to another as end.

Who then imposes the moral law upon me? I impose it on myself. This is what he calls the autonomy of the will.

Reason, therefore, relates every maxim of the will as giving universal laws to every other will and also to every action toward itself; it does not do so for the sake of any other practical motive or future advantage but rather from the idea of the dignity of a rational being, which obeys no law except that which he himself also gives....
He is thus fitted to be a member in a possible realm of ends to which his own nature already destined him. For, as an end in himself, he is destined to be legislative in the realm of ends, free from all laws of nature and obedient only to those which he himself gives. Accordingly, his maxims can belong to a universal legislation to which he is at the same time also subject.... Autonomy is thus the basis of the dignity of both human nature and every rational nature.5

Kant goes on to derive from the moral law the three truths which hethought could not be established by speculative reason, but which we took as the three presuppositions to ethics: the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. Unless we are free, we can neither legislate the moral law for ourselves nor observe it. We can never reach but only approximate a perfect fulfillment of the moral law, but since our function in existence is always to tend to realize it more perfectly, we must be immortal. The One who does realize it perfectly, who is the absolute fulfillment of holiness and the ideal of all goodness, is God.

Granted that the pure moral law inexorably binds every man as a command (not as a rule of prudence), the righteous man may say: I will that there be a God, that my existence in this world be also an existence in a pure world of the understanding outside the system of natural connections,6and finally that my duration be endless. I stand by this and will not give up this belief.7

So these truths are neither mere hypotheses nor rational convictions, but practical postulates demanded by our moral needs which we accept on belief, an attitude Kant calls pure rational faith.8

Criticism. —Kant's vigorous assertion of the moral law, his stern preachment of the claims of duty, the paramount importance he attached to the ethical issue, and the high seriousness with which he approached the fundamental problems of philosophy, acted as a powerful antidote to the materialism and hedonism of a shallower age. All this was to the good, butit should not blind us to the defects of his system. We shall limit our criticisms to three:

(1) The motive of duty
(2) The categorical imperative
(3) The autonomy of the will

1. To rest all morality on the motive of duty is unnatural and inhuman. Kant nowhere says that an act not done from duty is immoral, only that it is nonmoral; nor does he say that to be moral it must be done from pure duty alone. All he says is that unless the motive of duty is present it cannot be moral, and, if it is done from both duty and inclination, only the motive of duty can give it its morality. But even this is overplaying the role of duty. Is it only her sense of duty and not her love for her child that gives morality to a mother's devotion? Is it only cold obligation and not large-hearted generosity that makes relief of the poor a moral act? Certainly a sense of duty will be present in such cases, but love and generosity are always esteemed as higher motives than mere duty and give the act a greater moral worth. We fall back on duty only when other motives fail. Duty is rather the last bulwark against wrong acting than the highest motive for right acting.

How could Kant explain heroic acts, such as giving one's life for one's friend? These are always thought the noblest and best, precisely becausethey go beyond the call of duty. Kant is then faced with this dilemma: either he must deny that heroic acts are moral, and thus fly in the face of all human evaluations, so as to make his ethics useless in practice; or he must make heroic acts a strict duty, thus putting a burden on human nature that it cannot bear and robbing these acts of the very quality that makes them heroic.

2. That the moral law commands us with a categorical imperative is undoubtedly true, and Kant emphasizes it well, but his formulation of it is faulty. The moral imperative is properly: "Do good and avoid evil," plus the more definite principles derived from this, rather than Kant's formula: "So act that the maxim from which you act can be made a universal law," which is only a negative rule. Evil ways of acting could never become universal laws, for they are self-destructive; but there are also good ways of acting that can never become universal laws, such as a life of celibacy. Hence the reason for the moral goodness of an act is not the fact that it can be made a universal law. Kant might answer that we can will celibacy to be a universal law for a definite type of person in definite circumstances; but this answer is no help, for if we start making exceptions of this sort the term universal law loses all meaning. It finally narrows down to just one single case. To use Kant's own example, I might will that anyone in my peculiar predicament could get out of it by lying, and still have the law universal for that class of people.

To determine the goodness of an act wholly from the maxim which governs it and not from the end to which it naturally leads is to adopt a purely subjective norm of morality. All three determinants, the nature of the act, its motive, and the circumstances, must be considered, and not the motive alone. It is difficult to square Kant's view here with the acceptance of intrinsic morality.

3. Kant's recognition of the dignity of the human person is one of the most admired parts of his philosophy. But he carries it so far as to make a created person impossible. We must never use each other merely as means, but God may do with us what He pleases, short of contradicting His own attributes. To make the human will autonomous does violence to the rights of God the Creator. Kant is forced to this position by his rejection of the traditional proofs for God's existence, thus paying the price for faulty metaphysics. In Kant's system our reason for accepting God's existence is ultimately that we will His existence, for we need Him to justify morality to ourselves. As Kant says, this is a practical faith rather than a reasoned conviction. But here is another dilemma. Really God either does or does not exist; if He does not exist, we cannot will Him into existence simply because we feel a need of Him; if He does exist, the human will cannot be wholly autonomous but is subject to the law God imposes on us.

Kant correctly argues that there can be no morality without free will. But in his discussion of freedom there is always a confusion betweenfreedom of choice and freedom of independence, as if one could not retain free will and still be under the command of another's law. To save freedom he demands autonomy, but by demanding autonomy he destroys all real obligation and therefore all real law.

The obligation an autonomous will imposes on itself is an obligation only in name. A will that binds itself is no more bound than a man who locks himself in but still holds the key in his hand. Kant does not think that we may either make or not make the moral law for ourselves as we please, or that we frame its provisions arbitrarily. We cannot escape from the categorical imperative, and the maxims that we will into universal laws cannot be otherwise than they are. Why not? If this necessity is founded on the very nature of things (and Kant thinks that it is, for it is our one grasp of the noumenon, the thing-in-itself), then it is determined for us by some other will than ours and to this will we are subject. Either there is no obligation or it is imposed on us from without. The only other alternative is an identification of the human will with the divine, the pantheistic trend taken by Kant's followers.

TRUE NATURE OF OBLIGATION

We return now to the alternatives proposed at the beginning of this chapter: that moral obligation must be imposed on us either by ourselves or by our fellow man or by God.

Moral obligation does not come from oneself. We have just discussed Kant's version of this theory and found it unacceptable. One cannot have authority over oneself and be subject to oneself in the same respect, be one's own superior and inferior. A lawmaker can repeal his own laws. If man made the moral law for himself, he could never violate it, for he cannot will both its observance and its violation at once, and his act of violation would simply be an act of repeal. Such a law could impose no obligation.

Moral obligation cannot come from fellow man. As moral beings all men are equal. They all have the same last end and must use the same means to it under the same moral law. Therefore no man or body of men has original jurisdiction over another so as to bind him under moral guilt, under pain of losing his last end, since it is in no man's power to grant or refuse to another the attainment of the last end. Even the state, man's most powerful organization, has no power here. For what obligation have men to obey the state? Of itself the state can exert only physical compulsion, unless it can appeal to the authority it receives from a Source beyond itself that controls man's last end and enjoins obedience to the state as necessary for reaching that last end. Hence moral obligation cannot come from fellow man, whether taken individually or as organized into society.

Moral obligation, therefore, can come only from God. But a negativeargument by elimination is insufficient in so important a matter. We must show positively why and how this proposition is true.

Voluntarists have immediate recourse to the will of God. Man is obliged to live a moral life because God wills it, and no further reason need be sought why God wills it than the freedom and supremacy of the divine will itself. Intellectualists agree that God does will that a man live a moral life, but they are also concerned to show that the divine will, though supremely free, is not arbitrary or capricious. The following explanation is deduced from St. Thomas' principles.

Obligation is moral necessity, imposed on a free will, thus differing from physical necessity, which controls nonfree beings. How does any kind of necessity arise? St. Thomas9 notes that necessity arises from the causes of a thing. From the efficient cause arises the physical necessity of compulsion and restraint, for these are brought about by the action of an external agent. From the material and formal causes arises the physical necessity of internal determination, for matter and form constitute the nature of a being and specify for it its type of activity; only intellectual natures having free will partially escape this determinism. We are left with the final cause, and it is from this that moral necessity arises.

Moral necessity, which binds a free will without destroying its freedom, must come from the final cause, for only an end or good known by the intellect can move the will, either to arouse or to restrain it. But onecannot will an end and at the same time refuse to will the means necessary to the end; otherwise he would have a mere ineffectual wish, not a decision of the will. Four possibilities occur:

(1) Neither the end nor the means are necessary
(2) The end is necessary but not the means
(3) The means are necessary but not the end
(4) Both the end and the means are necessary

1. Obviously there is no obligation when both end and means are optional. There is no obligation of going to this particular college, because there are other colleges as means, and a college education is not an absolute necessity as an end.

2. If there are several alternative means to the same end, there is no necessity of willing these means rather than those. Even if the end is absolutely necessary, other means can be used and the end can still be reached. Doing good and avoiding evil would not be of obligation if there were some other way of achieving our last end.

3. If the end is not absolutely necessary, there is no necessity of using the means even when they are the only possible means. This is always the case when the end is not an absolutely last end, for every intermediate end is also a means to a further end and is not necessary unless this further endis necessary. The study of medicine is necessary for a doctor, but one need not become a doctor. Good moral conduct is the only possible means to happiness, but there would be no obligation to good moral conduct if happiness itself were not necessary.

4. The end is an absolutely last end that must be obtained at all costs, and there is but one means to it with no substitute possible. The means are necessary if they are the only means and if the end is necessary. By fulfilling both conditions, we pass beyond hypothetical necessity to categorical necessity and arrive at the absolute ought of moral obligation. We may now define it as the moral necessity of acting in a certain way, laid on the free will by the intellect perceiving the necessary connection of these acts as necessary means to a necessary end.

Applying this analysis to man's moral life, we find both requirements fulfilled:

(1) A necessary end absolutely to be obtained
(2) One necessary means with no substitute possible

1. Man has an absolutely last end, attainment of which is absolutely necessary for man. The human will is not free to seek or not seek happiness, but must of its very nature seek it. This quest is universal, inescapable, irresistible. It is the sole purpose for which man exists, theonly reason why he has any being at all, and to miss it means utter futility and frustration. The human intellect perceives this design of his Creator impressed on man's very nature not merely as the offer of a reward which may be sought if one wishes but as the objective order inherent in creation itself and exacted by man's being the kind of being God made him to be.

2. Man has only one means of reaching his last end, morally good human acts, and only one means of losing his last end, morally bad human acts. We have already proved that both the wisdom of God and the dignity of man demand that man's attainment of his last end depend on his human acts done in the present life. The norm of morality, especially the ultimate norm, shows how the distinction of right from wrong is in the last resort founded on the nature of God Himself, who could not, without contradicting Himself, provide a substitute.

So much about the nature of moral obligation. But what of its source? Who imposes moral obligation? The one who has established the end and the means and their necessary connection. This objective order of things, commanded by God's intellect and carried out by His will, is what we have called the eternal law, whose created counterpart is the natural law, faintly and imperfectly reflected in human law. Thus God, the Eternal Lawgiver, is the ultimate source of all moral obligation.

When we say that all moral obligation comes from our last end, do wemean the subjective or objective last end, do we mean the happiness we are to experience in possessing God or God Himself as the Supreme Excellence and Highest Good? The two are inseparable, but the second is logically prior. God deserves our obedience primarily because He is good in Himself, and only secondarily because He is good to us. His command is not, "If you do this, you will be eternally happy," but simply, "Do this." This command, being absolute, unconditional, categorical, imposes moral obligation. The obligation, once established, is then enforced by a suitable sanction, the gain or loss of ultimate happiness.

We can sum up our main point, that all moral obligation comes from God, as follows:

Only he who determines the necessary connection between the observance of the moral law and man's last end, and makes the attainment of the last end absolutely mandatory, can be the ultimate source of moral obligation.

But only God determines the necessary connection between the observance of the moral law and man's last end and makes the attainment of the last end absolutely mandatory.

Therefore only God can be the ultimate source of moral obligation.

ALL OBLIGATION THROUGH NATURAL LAW

Apart from supernatural revelation, God manifests His plan and will to man through the natural law. All human positive laws, therefore, if they are to impose any moral obligation, must derive this binding force from the natural law. In our study of social ethics we shall see that human authority does, as a matter of fact, owe its origin to the natural law. We are interested at the moment only in seeing why human law must find its basis in the natural law.

There are only three reasons why a person obeys a law:

(1) The law commands what is personally advantageous.
(2) Threat of punishment makes it expedient to obey.
(3) The subject feels a sense of duty or moral obligation.

The first two reasons cannot guarantee obedience to the law. It will be kept as long as it seems advantageous or the vigilance of the police cannot be eluded. Since the subjects feel no moral obligation to keep the law, they will break it as soon as it becomes more expedient to break it than to keep it. In these cases it is not the law itself that binds the human will, but the attractiveness of what the law prescribes or the fear of the punishment threatened. A law, as a law, can bind the human will only by imposing moral obligation.

But human positive laws can impose no moral obligation on their ownaccount, since they cannot determine man's last end or the means to it. They can impose moral obligation only if the natural law commands that just laws enacted by legitimate human authority are to be obeyed. We shall see that the natural law does command this. Therefore human positive laws derive their binding force from the natural law. Divine positive law is only an apparent exception, for, though it imposes moral obligation on its own account, it is confirmed by the natural law, which commands that God's commands shall be obeyed. Therefore all moral obligation comes from the natural law, or at least (in the case of di vine positive law) is accompanied by a parallel obligation from the natural law.

SANCTION

The concept of obligation leads to that of sanction. It is notorious that not all people keep their obligations, that laws are disobeyed. What means can a lawgiver use to insure obedience to his law? We saw that obligation is moral necessity, a necessity resulting from the final cause. The final cause is a motive urging a person to act but not destroying his free will. The only way, therefore, that a lawgiver can get his law obeyed is by proposing a motive sufficiently strong to attract the subjects to free acts of obedience. Such a motive, such a means a lawgiver uses to enforce his law, is called sanction.

Sanction means the promise of reward for keeping the law or the threat of punishment for breaking the law, or both; it also means the rewards or punishments themselves. It is used more commonly of punishment than of reward, for human lawgivers do not usually give prizes to those who keep their laws, but both are genuine meanings. The function of sanction is twofold:

(1) To induce people to keep the law and to dissuade them from breaking it
(2) To restore the objective order of justice after the law has been kept or broken

As laws may be natural or positive, according as they are inherent in a being's very nature or are the result of legislative enactment, so may sanction. A natural sanction follows from the very nature of the act performed, as sickness from intemperance, loss of business from dishonesty to customers, social ostracism from surly and boorish behavior. A positive sanction is decided by the will of the lawmaker and has no natural connection with the act, as a fine for speeding or imprisonment for tax evasion.

A sanction may be more or less perfect according to its capacity for fulfilling its purpose. A perfect sanction is one that is both strong, in that itprovides a rational will with a sufficient motive for keeping the law, and just, in that it sets up equality between merit and reward, demerit and punishment. An imperfect sanction is in some measure either weak or unjust or both.

As moral philosophers we must discuss the kind of sanction attached to the natural law. The following questions call for an answer:

(1) Has the natural law any sanction in the present life, and, if so, what kind is it?
(2) Has the natural law a perfect sanction anywhere, and, if so, where?
(3) What does the perfect sanction for the natural law consist in?

Imperfect Sanction in This Life.—The natural law from its very nature cannot have positive sanctions, for the lawgiver is God and any direct revelation of His will to us would be divine positive law and not natural law. But it has some natural sanctions. Observance of the natural law brings about the harmony between our acts and our nature that we described when discussing the norm of morality, harmony between our animal and rational tendencies, and between our creatural, social, and proprietary relations. Barring accidents, there should result peace of mind,friendship, honor, prosperity, health, and a long life, as the result of the natural virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Frequent violation of the natural law should result in remorse of conscience, loss of friendship, dishonor, poverty, disease, and an early death, as the expected consequences of folly, dishonesty, cowardice, and debauchery. So it would be if all evils were of our own making.

But, as life is actually lived, this sanction is imperfect. Poetic justice is not always done. Too often the good suffer and the wicked prosper all life long. This occurrence is accidental in the sense of being nonessential, but not in the sense of being infrequent. Few violate the whole natural law, and the punishments for breaking part of it are offset by the rewards for keeping the rest. Crimes are concealed and the social punishments avoided; the progress of science is eliminating even some of the physical punishments. If everybody else kept the natural law, the one criminal in the world would find the natural sanctions crushing, but too many cooperate with the wicked and persecute the good. Unforeseen calamities play a large part in life and they are not distributed according to one's moral condition. It may be true in general that "crime does not pay," but in many particular instances it pays well. Earthly sanctions are too weak against strong temptations; one may find a bad conscience easy to live with for a million dollars dishonestly gained. For some sins, as suicide, there can be no sanction in this life. One may be put to the supreme test, tochoose between death and sin, and no possible temporal reward can be offered for loss of life.

Perfect Sanction Hereafter.—This imperfect kind of sanction to the natural law cannot satisfy God, the Perfect Lawgiver. The determination of the sanction depends on the lawgiver, and God does not work in a slipshod fashion. To make the argument conclusive we must prove:

(1) That God must assign a sanction to the natural law
(2) That this sanction must be a perfect one
(3) That it will be applied in the life to come

1. God must assign a sanction to the natural law. A lawgiver must use the means necessary to secure the observance of his law, otherwise he is not sincere in imposing the law. But the only means which respects free will is sanction, for it provides a motive without using external force or internal determination, thus imposing moral but not physical necessity. Therefore God, the Supreme Lawgiver, assigns a sanction to the natural law.

2. This sanction must be a perfect one. This proposition is evident from the fact that God is a wise and just lawgiver, and from the definition of a perfect sanction as one that is both strong and just. A wise lawgiverassigns a sanction strong enough to achieve the end of the law. Otherwise it will appeal only to the upright who do not need it, and will fail to influence those whom the law is especially designed to curb. It must counterbalance any advantage to be gained in breaking the law. A just lawgiver assigns a just sanction, distributing rewards and punishments in proportion to the degree in which the law has been kept or broken, to the good or evil done. Otherwise a small observance might compensate for a grave violation.

3. This perfect sanction will be applied in the life to come. Since there must be a perfect sanction to the natural law, and, as we have seen, the sanction in the present life is not perfect, the perfect sanction must be applied in the life to come.

Gain or Loss of Man's Last End.—What does this perfect sanction consist in? It must be the gain or loss of happiness in the possession of God, our last end. No other sanction would be sufficient to make men keep the natural law. Those who deliberately refuse to use the means should be deprived of the end. So long as men feel that they can attain their last end, they seem to be willing to chance any amount of temporal punishment that might befall them. Doubtless they have a grossly inadequate realization of what such punishment might amount to, but, even so, what temporal punishment can compare with utter and hopeless frustration? If even this threat does not always prevent sin, and experience shows that it does not, surely nothing less would do so. God Himself is unable to provide astronger sanction, for He cannot offer a greater reward than Himself or threaten a greater punishment than the loss of the Highest Good. To go further would be to encroach on man's free will, and this God will not do.

The above conclusion of natural reason leads as far as the philosopher can go. What the precise nature of this reward or punishment will be, except that it must consist in the gain or loss of final happiness in the possession of God, is beyond the purview of unaided human reason.

SUMMARY

How does moral necessity, which is the same as oughtness, obligation, or duty, accomplish its effect? Immanuel Kant held that we impose obligation on ourselves. Nothing, he says, is simply good except a good will. A good will is one that acts from the motive of duty. Duty is the necessity of acting from respect for law. The moral law commands with a categorical imperative: So act that the maxim from which you act can by your will be made into a universal law. The basis for the categorical imperative is the human personality. A person is never to be used as a means, always to be regarded as an end. The human will is an end in itself, autonomously imposing the moral law on itself.

Kant is criticized for overstressing the idea of duty, incorrectly formulating the moral imperative, and making the human will usurp theplace of God while emptying obligation of all meaning. Moral obligation cannot come from oneself, for any lawmaker can repeal his own laws, nor from fellow man, for as moral beings all men are equal and cannot control another's last end.

Moral obligation must come from God, who alone determines by the eternal law the necessary connection between the observance of the moral law and man's last end, and makes the attainment of the last end absolutely mandatory. This determination of His intellect and will He manifests to us through the natural law, which is the proximate source of all obligation; from it alone positive laws derive their binding force.

Sanction is the promise of reward or threat of punishment added to a law to secure obedience.

There is an imperfect sanction to the natural law in the present life. Some evil acts have natural punishments, but they are not equally applied and are often evaded.

There must be a perfect sanction to the natural law in the life to come. God cannot be indifferent as to whether His law is kept, He must provide a sufficiently strong motive for keeping the law, He must distribute rewards and punishments justly.

This perfect sanction consists in the gain or loss of man's last end. No stronger sanction is possible without destroying human free will.


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