Natural Law, Rationality and the Social Contract Essay

Each day, billions of people throughout the world affirm their commitment to a specific idea; to be part of a society. While this social contract is often overlooked by most citizens, their agreement to it nevertheless has far-reaching consequences. Being a member of society entails relinquishing self-autonomy to a higher authority, whose aim should be to promote the overall good of the populace. While making this decision to become part of a commonwealth is usually performed without explicit deliberation, there is a common consensus amongst philosophers that something unique to the human experience is the driving force behind this decision. Contained within this something are highly contested points of debate amongst both past and†¦show more content†¦Aquinas believed that God allowed the realization of natural laws to be derived from eternal laws through the rationality that He gave His creations. Aquinas stated that â€Å"the natural law is promulgated by God when he imp lants it in the minds of human beings so that they know it by nature,† (Aquinas, page 16). Aquinas devised that all laws fell into specific categories that were ordered relative to their distance from God’s eternal law. The importance of natural law for Aquinas was found within what it provided to humanity; the guidance from God on what should be considered good or evil. Quoting Romans 2:14, Aquinas noted that â€Å"although they do not have the written law, they have a natural law, whereby each of them understands and is conscious of good and evil,† (Aquinas, page 18). This knowledge was twofold according to Aquinas; it provided mankind with the general guidance that God wanted us to follow (the primary percepts) and allowed for the creation of more specific human law (the secondary precepts). He stated â€Å"†¦human reason needs to advance from the precepts of the natural law, as general and indemonstrable first principles, to matters that are to be more particularly regulated,† (Aquinas, page 19). Thus, Aquinas saw natural law as the product of utilizing reason to decipher God’s commands from eternal law, which in turnShow MoreRelatedSocial Contract Theory: Natural Rights and Personhood Within Democracy 1387 Words   |  6 PagesPersonhood is a central issue within ethics and natural rights debates. For any theory of ethics or system of declaring natural rights which purports how man should be treated and/or to what rights he is so entitled must begin with what ‘man’ is. There is no doubt man has an inherent value that entities such as flies and trees lack. 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