Personal Participation in the Thomistic Account of Natural Law

Abstract

The author seeks to show how participation serves as a focal point of a Thomistic personalist account of natural law. While Aquinas himself does not invoke the concept of person in his account of natural law, the author argues that participation can and should be understood as a personal act. According to her, justification for this interpretation is found in the commonality of rationality: that which both makes a substance to be a person and renders the participation of man in the eternal law to be a truly natural law.

Keywords

• Thomas Aquinas
• Karol Wojtyła
• John Paul II
• human being
• person
• personalism
• Thomistic personalism
• participation
• natural law
• nature
• metaphysics
• modern philosophy
• consciousness