These reading guides are designed mainly to indicate the passages and topics in the reading that will be the focus of class discussion. In some cases, I will also provide background information and other introductory material. Another source for that are the introductions by Culver, the editor of Readings in the Philosophy of Law. These precede whole sections of the anthology and will not always focus on the material we will be reading, but I will sometimes refer you to parts of them.

• See Culver, pp. 29-33, for a little background on Aquinas and an introduction to this assignment. (Initially, Culver will speak also of a recent natural law theorist, John Finnis, along with Aquinas. A selection from him follows the one from Aquinas; it won’t be one of your assignments, but you may be interested in looking at it on your own.)

• The focus of our discussion on Friday will be Aquinas’s general definition of law and on his way of understanding the idea of natural law.

• Aquinas doesn’t highlight the definition but Culver will point it out for you (see pp. 32f). Think what might be said for and against each of the several features Aquinas puts in this definition. Which seems most open to question? What sorts of things does each seem designed to distinguish law from?

• Think also whether you agree that there is something like natural law (in Aquinas’s sense). What could be said in favor of his view, and what could be said against it?

• In order to set Aquinas’s view in a broader context, ask yourself what is “natural” about his natural law and whether there are other ways in which something like law might be said to be “natural.”