It is usual to classify the moral thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas as a theory of natural law. The purpose of the present article is to challenge such a classification. While the notion of natural law does play a part in Aquinas’s teaching on morality, this does not seem to me to be a central role. Indeed there are many reasons why it might be better, today, to stop talking about natural moral law, both in the context of Thomistic philosophy (...) and in the broader context of contemporary ethics. What I now advocate is the position that right reason is the key theme in the ethics of Aquinas. (shrink)

The "observer" approach is investigated as a device for developing ethical theory, not for its use in private moral decision-making. Earlier discussions by Firth, Brandt, Harrison and Aiken of the impartial spectator are related to eighteenth-century British and German ethics using this theme, in order to uncover the meanings of the observer theory. Advantages and disadvantages of this approach to ethics are then examined, and the conclusion is that it does not provide a complete basis for ethical discourse but is (...) of limited use in developing some general principles in a ruleethics. (shrink)