Thomas Aquinas on Natural Inclinations: Metaphysical Background, Philosophical Anthropology, and Relation to Goods and Precepts

Abstract

How and why does a being’s nature relate to what is good for it? Thomas Aquinas provides an account such that a being’s nature endows it with powers and natural inclinations – tendencies, strivings, directednesses – for the very goods that constitute a flourishing life for beings of that nature. In this essay, I aim to present, elucidate, and motivate Aquinas’s rich and nuanced thought on natural inclinations and how it illuminates some of his key views in metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, and ethics. I first provide the background in Aquinas’s philosophical psychology and metaphysics, including his natural theology. Next, I take up the objection that evolutionary theory renders Aquinas’s thought on these matters obsolete. I then consider the natural inclinations of human beings, and specifically how these natural inclinations relate to practical cognition of basic goods and precepts.