On the prudential limitations of the law
Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, for which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft, and such like.
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St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274),
Summa Theologicae,
II, 1, Art. 2, Qu. 96.
2 comments:
Reminds me of something I just read by modern-day Confucian scholar Tu Weiming:
"Although law is essential as the minimum requirement for social stability, organic solidarity can only resort from the implementation of humane rights of interaction, therefore the idea of civility. The civilized mode of conduct can never be communicated simply through coercion. According to one account, we have in the United States now maybe one half million or more prisoners in jail, more than China as a whole with four times the population. Exemplary teaching, as a standard of inspiration, invites voluntary participation. Law alone cannot generate a sense of shame to guide civilized behavior. It is the ritual act that encourages people to live up to their own aspirations."
source: http://www.andrewcusack.com/2011/07/14/towards-a-confucian-modernity/
Lots of overlap between the wisdom of the Aristolean/Thomist tradition in the West and the Confucian tradition in the East. Probably why the early Jesuit missionaries to China were so taken with Confucianism when they first encountered it.
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