Obey the Natural Law

Obey the Natural Law

Please make high quality threads. You're on Veeky Forums.

No.

I’ll make your mom obey my natural law.

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I don't remember anything about natural law in the Nicomachean Ethics.

Aquinas would be immensely flattered to know that someone could mistake his work for being pilfered wholesale from Aristotle.

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>human ethics should be entirely based around the specific location of a male's sexual orgasm
I respect Aquinas and all but natural law ethics is pretty disgusting.

It always amazes me how people talk shit about things they know nothing about

This is an English board.

what

Eh, a lot of people abuse natural law principles like that, but Aquinas wasn't nearly as mockable in those terms.

>Based upon a comparison of the sexuality of humans and the sexuality of lower animals (mammals, in particular), Aquinas concludes that what is natural in human sexuality is the impulse to engage in heterosexual coitus. Heterosexual coitus is the mechanism designed by the Christian God to insure the preservation of animal species, including humans, and hence engaging in this activity is the primary natural expression of human sexual nature. Further, this God designed each of the parts of the human body to carry out specific functions, and on Aquinas's view God designed the male penis to implant sperm into the female's vagina for the purpose of effecting procreation. It follows, for Aquinas, that depositing the sperm elsewhere than inside a human female's vagina is unnatural: it is a violation of God's design, contrary to the nature of things as established by God. For this reason alone, on Aquinas's view, such activities are immoral, a grave offense to the sagacious plan of the Almighty.
>Sexual intercourse with lower animals (bestiality), sexual activity with members of one's own sex (homosexuality), and masturbation, for Aquinas, are unnatural sexual acts and are immoral exactly for that reason. If they are committed intentionally, according to one's will, they deliberately disrupt the natural order of the world as created by God and which God commanded to be respected. (See Summa Theologiae, vol. 43, 2a2ae, qq. 153-154.)
>In none of these activities is there any possibility of procreation, and the sexual and other organs are used, or misused, for purposes other than that for which they were designed. Although Aquinas does not say so explicitly, but only hints in this direction, it follows from his philosophy of sexuality that fellatio, even when engaged in by heterosexuals, is also perverted and morally wrong. At least in those cases in which orgasm occurs by means of this act, the sperm is not being placed where it should be placed and procreation is therefore not possible. If the penis entering the vagina is the paradigmatic natural act, then any other combination of anatomical connections will be unnatural and hence immoral; for example, the penis, mouth, or fingers entering the anus. Note that Aquinas's criterion of the natural, that the sexual act must be procreative in form, and hence must involve a penis inserted into a vagina, makes no mention of human psychology. Aquinas's line of thought yields an anatomical criterion of natural and perverted sex that refers only to bodily organs and what they might accomplish physiologically and to where they are, or are not, put in relation to each other.

Catholic philosophy has a very creepy fixation on the act of male orgasm, and it stems from this crude mechanistic conception.

>God designed the male penis to implant sperm into the female's vagina for the purpose of effecting procreation. It follows, for Aquinas, that depositing the sperm elsewhere than inside a human female's vagina is unnatural: it is a violation of God's design

Well I'm sorry I didn't get that Adam & Eve deal with a rib. It ain't easy.

>the male penis is supposed to implant sperm into the female's vagina for the purpose of effecting procreation
>crude mechanistic conception
Even if you don't believe in some sort of intelligent designer, the principles of evolution kind of necessitate that males have a sexual organ effective at impregnating their female counterparts, and that this is the necessary relationship between the two. There can be other factors that shape the development of a male sexual organ, but at the end of the day if it can't knock a girl up as easily as the next dude then it will get outbred.

Why is pleasure bad again? Didn't God create the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve's enjoyment?

Evolution by natural selection has no necessary bearing on moral evaluation. I shouldn't have to point out what absurd positions you would fall into if you advocated that moral goodness = evolutionary advantage.
Furthermore, evolution is wholly different from a teleological conception of humanity which Aquinas talks about here. One consequence of this theory is that it sees women as nothing but receptacles for male seemen, since their pleasure or orgasm don't matter in the moral evaluation of the act. Not to mention that it isn't even true that animals only engage in heterosexual coitus. Do you not see the implications of reducing something so universal in the human experience as sex to a crude functional moral theory like this?

This is why we need a revival of non-religious virtue ethics and drop this whole nonsense.

The thing is you can very easily say 'morality comes from feelings of empathy, and feelings of empathy come from evolution'. (empathy is probably not enough alone, but empathy and some other similar emotions). You will be called a fedora reductionist uneducated brainlet but nobody will be able to point out exactly why this is wrong

Fight the Natural Law

>non-religious virtue ethics
Unlikely.

>Didn't God create the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve's enjoyment?
Yes, to enjoy the beauty of God's creation. Pleasure, in earthly terms, is much more hedonistic and immoral. We get pleasure from sex, but sex outside marriage with contraception goes against God's design. We get pleasure from drugs, but they corrupt our body, therefore corrupting God's creation. We get pleasure from food, but if we eat more than we need to survive then that's gluttony. We get pleasure or satisfaction from beating somebody who has wronged us, but that is wrath.
It's not the idea that enjoying oneself is wrong, its that the way we enjoy ourselves on Earth goes against what God created us for, and we all fall victim to these Earthly pleasures because of original sin.
You may get instant pleasure with masturbation, a blunt, or some junk food, but it will never be as pleasurable as the bliss of being with God in Heaven from your virtuous perseverance.

great discussion guys

please keep it up

>Is / ought.

Which is irrelevant

I *am* the law!
seriously he is stronger and better equipped and has the backing of a totalitarian government you better do what he says

That describes leftist "ethics" better than it does Christian ethics or Aquinas. The secular theocracy of globohomo liberalism effectively upholds abortion and sodomy as it's sacraments.

No it doesn't, stop living in your fantasy world of conspiracies.
There is nothing wrong with homosexuality, and your continued usage of "sodomy", meant to invoke some kind of medieval judgment, is honestly just laughable. The world isn't going to fall apart because gay people have rights now. Actually, isn't it a wonderful development that we have increasing numbers of gay conservatives nowadays? The answer was never to keep gay people outside of public discourse and force them to adopt transgression and alternative lifestyles to cope - there is no reason why loving gay relationships cannot be integrated into the average person's way of life. Shockingly enough, homosexuality really isn't a defining, essential characteristic of a person's life when he is allowed to express it in a healthy and culturally regulated form, namely legal partnerships.

Unfortunately, these are sick people we are dealing with. These ideologically motivated freaks believe in transgression and deviance as righteous actions in themselves.

eh. I don't really care that much about the gays or degeneracy in general, but I don't think homosexuals are just normal people who happen to like dick on average.

>The world isn't going to fall apart because gay people have rights now.
let the pedophiles marry our children dammit; they aren't harming anyone!

use a better argument

>Shockingly enough, homosexuality really isn't a defining, essential characteristic of a person's life
then why does the entirety of homos act like it
I agree's not but I know damn well homos dont act like that

Blow it out your ass, faggot

Have a seat

Christian LARPers are becoming worse than atheist fedoras.

>although aquinas does not say so explicitly
>fixation on male orgasm
I think whoever did this reading on aquinas is the one obsessed with the male orgasm.

Aquinas makes very little mention of the mechanical act itself, and mostly talks about the relationships between various parties and why that makes adultery different from fornication different from rape different from "unnatural venereal sins."

Aquinas' criterion of the natural is not that it be procreative. If it were, rape would be acceptable. His criterion is that it be towards the good of a possible future offspring, which is subtly, but importantly different. For this reason, he notes that in pretty much all species where the child takes a while to develop, in general either the mother is sufficient to raise the child or the father and mother are required. He argues that humans are among the latter group.

For Aquinas the law is something that is found as a generality, but exceptions must comply with the general rule. Infertile people do not have the capacity to reproduce, thus under a certain logic they should be allowed to have any kind of sex they want since no future offspring will possibly be harmed by it. But for Aquinas this infertile person is still required to engage in sexual activity that is appropriate for a fertile person.

I'm sure the guy you quoted thinks that Aquinas wants humans to engage in missionary only sexual activity, no foreplay allowed. I'm guessing Aquinas thinks the husband ought to treat the wife with respect, so he'd probably be against blowing a load on a girl's face.

The natural law states that everyone should strive to be cute

Like a harlot, natural law is at the disposal of everyone. The ideology does not exist that cannot be defended by an appeal to the law of nature. And, indeed, how can it be otherwise, since the ultimate basis for every natural right lies in a private direct insight, an evident contemplation, an intuition. Cannot my intuition be just as good as yours? Evidence as a criterion of truth explains the utterly arbitrary character of the metaphysical assertions. It raises them up above any force of inter-subjective control and opens the door wide to unrestricted invention and dogmatics.

>Like a harlot, natural law is at the disposal of everyone.
Not of the poor.

>waaaaaaw Christian morality is obvious inferior and wrong to my own because it won't let me fuck other men up the ass waaaaaaaaaaaaw

No.

Lmao, ESPECIALLY the poor. Some dumb pissant who's never read the bible is the king of fucking the harlot called natural law. Surely the latin the parish priest mumbles vindicates me

>being so frightened by sexuality you invent a theory that says masturbation and non-procreative sex leads to eternal damnation
Only a distorted mind actually believes in this. I'm sorry that it hurts having it pointed out how utterly bizzare and pernicious the catholic stance on sexuality is. An over-indulgence in sex is probably a vice and non-virtuous behavior, but banning it completely doesn't actually help anyone. Aquinas was a smart dude, but clearly his solitary life led him to some strange fixations on chastity. Aristotle would be utterly baffled by such a doctrine.

There would be no breaking of social norms if they had already been normalised. Gay pride is directly a response to their historic lack of rights

The Catholic stance on sex is not banning it completely.

Why are you a liar?

Shill poster. Make a trip so people can ignore you.

Teleology completely demolishes Hume's law.

It does for gay and other queer folk, and anyone outside of marriage. Why are you engaging in semantics?

Then it's not banned. If anyone wants to have sex all they have to do is get married to someone of the opposite sex and have sex with that person. The people you mentioned could do that if they so chose.

>queer folk

I cringed. You're so utterly lost that you'd utter a phrase like this.

>Aquinas was a smart dude, but clearly his solitary life led him to some strange fixations on chastity.

Before he even was a monk his family kidnapped him and had a prostitute come into his room. He chased her away with a burning wooden cross that was hanging from the wall. When she finally got out he prayed.

Also to add the poster seemed to forget that he was a Dominican, which was an order very different from the other monks. Dominicans were not very solitary.

You, your boyfriend, and every other faggot you've ever known are going to burn in Hell forever. Have fun faggot.

Friendly reminder that if you're not both a philosopher and a lawyer you have no business discussing the philosophy of law. Law has its own philosophical depth

Aquinas sounds like a self-hating homosexual.

Personally I like the word sodomy, keep in mind not all male homosexuals are technically sodomites.

Chew some gum, faggot!

Well, there you go, he was obsessed with chastity if he couldn't even converse with the woman like a normal person. According to aristotelian conception of the virtues, extreme abstinence would be a vice, the polsr opposite of promiscuity. Thomists can't come up with a logical reason to adopt such a stance without abandoning this conception and assuming Christian views on the body.

Imagine being this purposefully disingenuous.

I think of those "folks" not a people but as evil sex goblins with pink hair, screeching and wielding dildoes, evil cultists under the thrall of a few powerful "queer theory" professors, freaks bent on imposing a politically correct alien ideology on the masses.

aristotle did not believe in natural laws, he just believed man needed laws to achieve subjective goodness. natural law usually(but obviously not always) is on the side of man naturally gravitating towards the natural law, or that actual law usually or always reflects natural law.

I don't think a second has passed in the past six thousand years that one of those activities wasn't happening somewhere.

So much for the "natural" order if it's disturbed on a nonstop constant basis

There are way more ways to procreate.
Look at how Seahorses procreate for instance

The children are being taught that the anti-gay photographers will look for the most outrageous scene in a crowd of otherwise reserved people to create the impression that homosexuals are all leatherclad mad max villains with slaves on leashes

Duke nukem takes it up the poopem

Sounds like the sort of story a medieval monk tells after being sexually abused.

Obey what?

my waifu

Using post irony I have managed to fully internalize a cartoonish and highly stereotyped image of homosexuals and the LGBT community. If you are gay/bi/a tranny I'll won't be able to form a mental image of you except as one of those post apocalyptic wasteland bdsm warrior NPCs that occasionally assault the player in the popular western RPG video game series Fallout ™. I'm the last red blooded all American, 100% heterosexual, hypermasculine fash dudebro on earth, melting snowflakes with an original WWII Wehrmacht firetrower, a lone wolf skinhead with a bad attitude upholding the legacy of Hitler, Charles Manson and Commander Rockwell against the forces of ZOG and the New World Order.