St Thomas Aquinas, sin and puppy training

Anyone who has raised a puppy knows that dogs can be trained. After proper training a puppy knows, in a sense, right from wrong.

Now the 'right' and 'wrong' may be purely contingent positive commandments imposed by humans -- it is hard to explain any deep morality as to why a dog ought not sleep on a sofa but for most dogs that is ingrained as 'wrong' -- but the training is effective.

That said, a dog that disobeys training, while subject to punishment, is not criminal. Indeed, the very concept of crime (except in the strictest of positivist senses) is meaningless when applied to animals. An animal cannot be 'criminal' -- animals may be cruel but they cannot be wicked.

But why is crime a meaningful concept for people? Why do we insist on there being a moral component to criminal actions?

Only because, at some level, we assume an Aristotelian view of humanity and accept there is a natural law that humans can follow by use of reason. Put otherwise, to follow St Thomas Aquinas, sin is a violation of divine law while also being an error contrary to reason. And there is something known as sin and humans, as opposed to puppies, can sin.

Humans can, through reason and the aid of tradition, follow the will of G-d and be righteous. Actions are right in themselves because the promote the proper end, or goal, of human life and those actions are approved by G-d. Actions that are malum in se are contrary to the proper end of human experience and are, accordingly, sins. The proper end of human life is a life that fulfils the capacities of rational human nature.

Obviously the fulfilment of the rational capacities of humans is beyond the ability of any animal and so sin, or crime, is limited to humans.

But here a question arises -- are most, or even many, people such as to be able to exercise rational choice? Do most of the people going through our criminal system have even a slim capacity to make rational choices about anything more than a day or two distant? Perhaps, as with the puppy, a criminal's actions are defined by their strongest passion? And if so, punishment may control conduct (through fear), but reason has little to do with decision making except in the most instrumental sense.

It is an ignoble thought that humans are not different in quality from animals. And some humans are clearly able to exercise reason -- Aquinas or Maimonides could sin because they could reason and control their will through reason, but such men as these are seldom seen in Canadian criminal courts.

If criminals cannot be said to act rationally then crime cannot be reasonably coupled to morality except perhaps as a method of added punishment. The 'sin' of crime is, at most, a way of adding to the punishment by claiming divine disapproval. Crime prevention should focus on what, if anything, would deter the non-rational criminal.

This might lead to re-education in place of a jail term. Or it might lead to punishment being replaced altogether by something else entirely. The point is not to coddle the criminal but to ask what will stop crime? This is a matter of social engineering and not morality.

Put otherwise, if your puppy pees in the front hall, what is more effective, (a) wacking the puppy's nose with a newspaper or (b) lecturing the puppy on the obligations of dogs in a household of responsible and self actualized beings?