TOMÁS DE AQUINO E JOHN FINNIS: DA TRADIÇÃO À NOVA ESCOLA DA LEI NATURAL

This article goes through two moments in the history of theories of natural law: first, Thomas Aquinas who represents the tradition in the investigation of the concept and, second, the contemporary discussion of John Finnis who represents, particularly, the break of this tradition. The choice for these authors is not random since, Aquinas' philosophy is considered by several commentators as one of the most important theories about the law of nature and Finnis' theory, on the other hand, is one of the best known and most criticized in the current literature about the law. Having said this, the purpose of this article is, besides presenting the theory of each of the aforementioned authors, to discuss some questions that arise from the connection between Aquinas and Finnis that is established by the latter, to the extent that he has in Aquinas a source of authority for his arguments. In this way, sometimes, with Finnis' text we have the impression that we are facing a re-reading of the Aquinas' theory, but we soon realize that this re-reading goes beyond the accepted limits of a reinterpretation that does not distort the original argumentation. Consequently, we find in Finnis a theory with numerous problems from a theoretical and practical point of view, an argument defended by commentators such as William May, Jeremy Shearmur and Russel Hittinger, who will be presented during this text.