Història de la utilització catòlica del concepte de naturalesa en la fonamentació de la moral

• Autores: Jordi Manuel Escudé Casals
• Localización: Revista catalana de teología, ISSN 0210-5551, Vol. 3, Nº. 2, 1978, págs. 285-312
• Idioma: catalán
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• Resumen

  • This work essays to be an historical sketch of the use of the Nature concept in ethical theology. The Catholic ethic and its teaching has more often used the arguments based on so-called natural law than the strictly theological arguments. This fact can be explained if we go back to the origins of this morality. Christianity starts to develop against the background of the Greek culture, where the Nature concept and natural law were already in force, developed by the Stoic ethic. This concept would be used by Christianity to explain the pervasiveness and the universality of the decalogue prescriptions, and, above all, to justify the validity of a non-Christian ethic. The existence of this ethic was necessary to affirm universality of sin, and, consequently, of redemption. Under the medieval system of theology the ethic has abandoned these theological preoccupations, but it goes on using the concepts of natural law and natural right, as synonymous with deducible ethic laws of a complex human nature. One has to underline, nevertheless, that these laws possess an interior dynamism which permit a certain amount of flexibility at the moment of applying them to concrete cases. Following on from the Council of Trent ethic the natural law concept becomes impoverished. In the so-called text-book ethic, the naural law is increasingly more a group of principles universally valid and unchangeable. At the same time, the biological make-up and the physical structure of human acts are decisive at the time of applying an ethical judge- ment. This explains why, at the centre of the reforming movements of morality, it was thought to abandon completely these concepts and attempt to return to theology, and, above all, to the Scripture. This reformation has been overtaken, after the second Vatican, by the secular movement. Before the affirmation of the autonomy of earthly realities, morality has been tempted to go back again to the postu- lates of natural law. This does not mean that it is simply going back to the past, but rather, trying to construct a dynamic morality while, at the same time, looking into the future. This morality is directed towards the individual rather than towards the Nature. The morality of rights and duties of the individual begins to be the new Christian morality.