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.

• Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) was a medieval philosopher and theologian who was strongly influenced by Aristotle (who he refers to as “the Philosopher”). The Summa Theologiae is a very large work spanning a wide range of topics. We will be reading a few selections from the “first part of the second part.”

The work is organized into questions, each of whose subordinate articles follows the pattern of a medieval academic debate. An article begins with a question framing an issue. A series of “objections” to a position on the issue are opposed by the contrary view, and the issue is resolved when Aquinas provides his “answer,” which then serves as the basis for replies to the objections. The answers are the key source for Aquinas’ views, but the replies to objections sometimes provide important further elaborations.

• The focus of our class 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 you can find it at the end of his answer in article 4 of question 90, where it serves as a summary of the four articles of this question. 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.”