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Essay / Aquinas' Natural Law - 1524
Natural law can be considered the root of human morality and Aquinas' idea of a natural law implies that it is divine, immutable and eternal, but also very general with many gray areas. The fact that natural law is very general causes us humans to create human laws created to deal with specific cases, for which natural law may not be able to find a just solution. According to Aquinas, natural law is too "general" to handle the many different situations that can be found in the legal system and human law allows us to find a clear and fair answer with a minimum of errors; which is not the case with natural law. Aquinas also believes that for a human law to have binding force so that people will actually obey it, the law must be enacted. This essentially means that the law must be made by a being of reason with an end or goal in mind. The law must also be oriented towards the common good, so it cannot help a specific group or community but must be good for all. Likewise, the lawgiver, or in Aquinas' case, God, must put the needs of the community above all else when making law, rather than making law that will only benefit himself or herself. a small part of the community. Finally, the law must be promulgated; this means that a secret law cannot be made if you want it to be considered a law, the real laws must be announced or well known throughout the community for it to be a law. This factor is promulgation, the law must be known to the entire community. actually have a binding force. The legislator; if he wants his law to have “binding force”, he must advertise it or correctly inform the people who will see it applied. This means that we cannot expect people to obey a law if we are not informed of its existence; in order for us to follow a law, we must know how and when we might violate it. Without promulgation, it is as if the law itself did not really exist and did not have this "binding force" that a promulgated law