Abstract

This article explains how Aquinas understood: a) apprehension of the first intellectual concepts ens, verum et bonum simpliciter; b)establishment of the first and second commandments of natural law in a person, genuinely human or rational; and c) ethics as essentially derived from ontology.Metaphysically understood, Ens is a compound of human nature and act of being; d) therefore, natural law only makes sense from a metaphysical point of view, not a physical or material one.