It may, therefore, be better to think of synderesis and the natural law as the source of our ability to reason about practical matters, and our tendency to go for whatever seems best, rather than as providing a set of rules to follow when we are deliberating.10 But why does Aquinas describe all this in terms of “law”? Why not talk of moral “conscience” instead, as did other thirteenth-century authors? The answer lies with Aquinas’ ambitious undertaking to integrate the natural law within a whole legal theory. For him, law is defined as “a certain dictate of reason for the common good made by
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