Quotation
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“Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.”
Thomas Aquinas · Scholasticism · Medieval · 1265–1274
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes this as the first precept of natural law. Practical reason starts from pursuing good and avoiding evil, and later precepts specify that start rather than replacing it. A rival reading calls the line an empty tautology. He would half agree, because a first principle is not news, and the work is deciding what counts as good for a human being. It sits in the treatise on law, I–II q.94 a.2, beside his comparison with non-contradiction. The precept stays formal until the natural inclinations fill it in.
Did Thomas Aquinas really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. The Dominican Fathers' English of the first precept of natural law. The Latin is 'bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum'. It is the practical principle he says is first, not a complete moral code.
Where it comes from
Summa Theologiae I–II, question 94, article 2
Approximate date: 1265–1274.
How to use it
A planning committee in Bristol that says it is 'for the good of the town' has only reached his first line. The argument starts when someone asks which goods, for whom, and which harm is being filed as a side effect. The sentence will not choose between a clinic and a car park. It forbids pretending that the choice was never about good and harm at all.
A mindset reading
Do not quote the precept as if it settled a case. The habit is to treat it as the form of a practical question, then specify the good. People who find it obvious and therefore useless have missed why he compares it to the rule that the same thing cannot both be and not be. First principles are not where thinking stops.
Understand the philosophy
Aquinas is building a hierarchy of law: eternal, natural, human, divine. The key terms are synderesis, the habit of first practical principles, and natural law, participation in the eternal law by a rational creature. Question 94 asks whether natural law contains several precepts or one. His answer is one first precept, then others that follow. 'Good' here is not a private preference. It is what reason grasps as to-be-done.
- ethics
- virtue
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes this as the first precept of natural law. Practical reason starts from pursuing good and avoiding evil, and later precepts specify that start rather than replacing it. A rival reading calls the line an empty tautology. He would half agree, because a first principle is not news, and the work is deciding what counts as good for a human being. It sits in the treatise on law, I–II q.94 a.2, beside his comparison with non-contradiction. The precept stays formal until the natural inclinations fill it in.
Did Thomas Aquinas really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. The Dominican Fathers' English of the first precept of natural law. The Latin is 'bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum'. It is the practical principle he says is first, not a complete moral code.
Which work is it in?
Summa Theologiae I–II, question 94, article 2 Approximate date: 1265–1274.