explain what is meant by natural law essay

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Early formulations of the concept of natural law

• Natural law in the Enlightenment and the modern era

• Why is Thomas Hobbes important?
• What was Thomas Hobbes’s childhood like?

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natural law , in philosophy , system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society, or positive law .

There have been several disagreements over the meaning of natural law and its relation to positive law. Aristotle (384–322 bce ) held that what was “just by nature” was not always the same as what was “just by law,” that there was a natural justice valid everywhere with the same force and “not existing by people’s thinking this or that,” and that appeal could be made to it from positive law. However, he drew his examples of natural law primarily from his observation of the Greeks in their city-states, who subordinated women to men, slaves to citizens, and “barbarians” to Hellenes. In contrast, the Stoics conceived of an entirely egalitarian law of nature in conformity with the logos (reason) inherent in the human mind . Roman jurists paid lip service to this notion, which was reflected in the writings of St. Paul (c. 10–67 ce ), who described a law “written in the hearts” of the Gentiles (Romans 2:14–15).

St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) embraced Paul’s notion and developed the idea of man’s having lived freely under natural law before his fall and subsequent bondage under sin and positive law. In the 12th century Gratian , an Italian monk and father of the study of canon law , equated natural law with divine law—that is, with the revealed law of the Old and New Testaments , in particular the Christian version of the Golden Rule .

St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224/25–1274) propounded an influential systematization, maintaining that, though the eternal law of divine reason is unknowable to us in its perfection as it exists in God’s mind, it is known to us in part not only by revelation but also by the operations of our reason. The law of nature, which is “nothing else than the participation of the eternal law in the rational creature,” thus comprises those precepts that humankind is able to formulate—namely, the preservation of one’s own good, the fulfillment of “those inclinations which nature has taught to all animals,” and the pursuit of the knowledge of God. Human law must be the particular application of natural law.

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The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics

‘Natural law theory’ is a label that has been applied to theories of ethics, theories of politics, theories of civil law, and theories of religious morality. We will be concerned only with natural law theories of ethics: while such views arguably have some interesting implications for law, politics, and religious morality, these implications will not be our focus here.

This article has two central objectives. First, it aims to identify the defining features of natural law moral theory. Second, it aims to identify some of the main theoretical options that natural law theorists face in formulating a precise view within the constraints set by these defining features and some of the difficulties for each of these options. It will not, however, attempt to recount the history of the development of natural law thought. (For a very helpful detailed history of natural law thought up to the beginning of the modern period, see Crowe 1977. For a very helpful detailed history of natural law thought in the modern period, see Haakonssen 1996. For an article-length recap of the entire history of natural law thought, see Haakonssen 1992.)

1.1 Natural law and divine providence

1.2 natural law and practical rationality, 1.3 the substance of the natural law view, 1.4 paradigmatic and nonparadigmatic natural law theories, 2.1 natural goodness, 2.2 knowledge of the basic goods, 2.3 the catalog of basic goods, 2.4 from the good to the right, other internet resources, related entries, 1. key features of natural law theories.

Even though we have already confined ‘natural law theory’ to its use as a term that marks off a certain class of ethical theories, we still have a confusing variety of meanings to contend with. Some writers use the term with such a broad meaning that any moral theory that is a version of moral realism — that is, any moral theory that holds that some positive moral claims are literally true (for this conception of moral realism, see Sayre-McCord 1988)— counts as a natural law view. Some use it so narrowly that no moral theory that is not grounded in a very specific form of Aristotelian teleology could count as a natural law view. It might be thought that there is nothing that can be done to begin a discussion of natural law theory in ethics other than to stipulate a meaning for ‘natural law theory’ and to proceed from there. But there is a better way of proceeding, one that takes as its starting point the central role that the moral theorizing of Thomas Aquinas plays in the natural law tradition. If any moral theory is a theory of natural law, it is Aquinas’s. (Every introductory ethics anthology that includes material on natural law theory includes material by or about Aquinas; every encyclopedia article on natural law thought refers to Aquinas.)  It would seem sensible, then, to take Aquinas’s natural law theory as the central case of a natural law position: of theories that exhibit all of the key features of Aquinas’s natural law view we can say that they are clearly natural law theories; of theories that exhibit few of them we can say that they are clearly not natural law theories; and of theories that exhibit many but not all of them we can say that they are in the neighborhood of the natural law view but nonetheless must be viewed as at most deviant cases of that position. There remain, no doubt, questions about how we determine what are to count as the key features of Aquinas’s position. But we may take as the key features those theses about natural law that structure his overall moral view and which provide the basis for other theses about the natural law that he affirms.

For Aquinas, there are two key features of the natural law, features the acknowledgment of which structures his discussion of the natural law at Question 94 of the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae . The first is that, when we focus on God’s role as the giver of the natural law, the natural law is just one aspect of divine providence; and so the theory of natural law is from that perspective just one part among others of the theory of divine providence. The second is that, when we focus on the human’s role as recipient of the natural law, the natural law constitutes the principles of practical rationality, those principles by which human action is to be judged as reasonable or unreasonable; and so the theory of natural law is from that perspective the preeminent part of the theory of practical rationality.

While our main focus will be on the status of the natural law as constituting the principles of practical rationality, we should consider for a moment at least the importance within Aquinas’s view of the claim that the natural law is an aspect of divine providence. The fundamental thesis affirmed here by Aquinas is that the natural law is a participation in the eternal law (ST IaIIae 91, 2). The eternal law, for Aquinas, is that rational plan by which all creation is ordered (ST IaIIae 91, 1); the natural law is the way that the human being “participates” in the eternal law  (ST IaIIae 91, 2). While nonrational beings have a share in the eternal law only by being determined by it — their action nonfreely results from their determinate natures, natures the existence of which results from God’s will in accordance with God’s eternal plan — rational beings like us are able to grasp our share in the eternal law and freely act on it  (ST IaIIae 91, 2). It is this feature of the natural law that justifies, on Aquinas’s view, our calling the natural law ‘law.’  For law, as Aquinas defines it (ST IaIIae 90, 4), is a rule of action put into place by one who has care of the community; and as God has care of the entire universe, God’s choosing to bring into existence beings who can act freely and in accordance with principles of reason is enough to justify our thinking of those principles of reason as law.

When we focus on the recipient of the natural law, that is, us human beings, the thesis of Aquinas’s natural law theory that comes to the fore is that the natural law constitutes the basic principles of practical rationality for human beings, and has this status by nature (ST IaIIae 94, 2). The notion that the natural law  constitutes the basic principles of practical rationality implies, for Aquinas, both that the precepts of the natural law are universally binding by nature (ST IaIIae 94, 4) and that the precepts of the natural law are universally knowable by nature (ST IaIIae 94, 4; 94, 6).

The precepts of the natural law are binding by nature: no beings could share our human nature yet fail to be bound by the precepts of the natural law. This is so because these precepts direct us toward the good as such and various particular goods (ST IaIIae 94, 2). The good and goods provide reasons for us rational beings to act, to pursue the good and these particular goods. As good is what is perfective of us given the natures that we have (ST Ia 5, 1), the good and these various goods have their status as such naturally. It is sufficient for certain things to be good that we have the natures that we have; it is in virtue of our common human nature that the good for us is what it is.

The precepts of the natural law are also knowable by nature.  All human beings possess a basic knowledge of the principles of the natural law (ST IaIIae 94, 4). This knowledge is exhibited in our intrinsic directedness toward the various goods that the natural law enjoins us to pursue, and we can make this implicit awareness explicit and propositional through reflection on practice. Aquinas takes it that there is a core of practical knowledge that all human beings have, even if the implications of that knowledge can be hard to work out or the efficacy of that knowledge can be thwarted by strong emotion or evil dispositions (ST IaIIae 94, 6).

If Aquinas’s view is paradigmatic of the natural law position, and these two theses — that from the God’s-eye point of view, it is law through its place in the scheme of divine providence, and from the human’s-eye point of view, it constitutes a set of naturally binding and knowable precepts of practical reason — are the basic features of the natural law as Aquinas understands it, then it follows that paradigmatic natural law theory is incompatible with several views in metaphysics and moral philosophy. On the side of metaphysics, it is clear that the natural law view is incompatible with atheism: one cannot have a theory of divine providence without a divine being. It is also clear that the paradigmatic natural law view rules out a deism on which there is a divine being but that divine being has no interest in human matters. Nor can one be an agnostic while affirming the paradigmatic natural law view: for agnosticism is the refusal to commit either to God’s existence or nonexistence, whereas the paradigmatic natural law view involves a commitment to God’s existence. On the side of moral philosophy, it is clear that the natural law view is incompatible with a nihilism about value, that is, the rejection of the existence of values. It is also incompatible with relativist and conventionalist views, on which the status of value is entirely relative to one’s community or determined entirely by convention. It is also incompatible with a wholesale skepticism about value, for the natural law view commits one to holding that certain claims about the good are in fact knowable, indeed, knowable by all.

The center of Aquinas’s natural law view as described thus far concerns what we might call the metaphysics of morals: its role in divine providence and the universally authoritative character of its norms. What, though, of the normative content of Aquinas’s natural law position?  Is there anything distinctive about the normative natural law position?  Here it is difficult to say much that is uncontroversial, but we can say a sufficient amount about Aquinas’s natural law theory to make clear that it is an interesting alternative to utilitarian (and more generally consequentialist) ethics, Kantian views, and standard Aristotelian positions. (For a magisterial treatment of Aquinas’s natural law ethic, see Rhonheimer 2000.)

Aquinas says that the fundamental principle of the natural law is that good is to be done and evil avoided (ST IaIIae 94, 2). This is, one might say, a principle of intelligibility of action (cf. Grisez 1965): only action that can be understood as conforming with this principle, as carried out under the idea that good is to be sought and bad avoided, can be understood as an intelligible action. But no one can in acting simply pursue good — one has to pursue some particular good. And Aquinas holds that we know immediately, by inclination, that there are a variety of things that count as good and thus to be pursued — life, procreation, knowledge, society, and reasonable conduct (ST IaIIae 94, 2; 94, 3) are all mentioned by Aquinas (though it is not clear whether the mentioned items are supposed to constitute an exhaustive list).

So on Aquinas’s view it is the good that is fundamental: whether an action, or type of action, is right is logically posterior to whether that action brings about or realizes or is some good . The good is, on Aquinas’s view, prior to the right. But on Aquinas’s view we are, somehow, able to reason from these principles about goods to guidelines about how these goods are to be pursued. Aquinas’s thoughts are along the following lines: first, there are certain ways of acting in response to the basic human goods that are intrinsically flawed; and second, for an act to be right, or reasonable, is for it to be an act that is in no way intrinsically flawed (ST IaIIae 18, 1).

The important task, then, is to identify the ways in which an act can be intrinsically flawed. Aquinas does not obviously identify some master principle that one can use to determine whether an act is intrinsically flawed (though for an attempt to identify such a master principle in Aquinas’s work see Finnis 1998, p. 126), though he does indicate where to look — we are to look at the features that individuate acts, such as their objects (ST IaIIae 18, 2), their ends (ST IaIIae 18, 3), their circumstances (ST IaIIae 18, 4), and so forth. An act might be flawed through a mismatch of object and end — that is, between the immediate aim of the action and its more distant point. If one were, for example, to regulate one’s pursuit of a greater good in light of a lesser good — if, for example, one were to seek friendship with God for the sake of mere bodily survival rather than vice versa — that would count as an unreasonable act. An act might be flawed through the circumstances: while one is bound to profess one’s belief in God, there are certain circumstances in which it is inappropriate to do so (ST IIaIIae 3, 2). An act might be flawed merely through its intention: to direct oneself against a good — as in murder (ST IIaIIae 64, 6), and lying (ST IIaIIae 110, 3), and blasphemy (ST IIaIIae 13, 2) — is always to act in an unfitting way. Aquinas has no illusions that we will be able to state principles of conduct that exhaustively determine right conduct, as if for every situation in which there is a correct choice to be made there will be a rule that covers the situation. He allows for the Aristotelian insight that the particulars of the situation always outstrip one’s rules, so that one will always need the moral and intellectual virtues in order to act well (Commentary on NE, II, 2, 259). But he denies that this means that there are no principles of right conduct that hold everywhere and always, and some even absolutely. On Aquinas’s view, killing of the innocent is always wrong, as is lying, adultery, sodomy, and blasphemy; and that they are always wrong is a matter of natural law. (These are only examples, not an exhaustive list of absolutely forbidden actions.)

Part of the interest of Aquinas’s substantive natural law ethic lies in its not falling into the neat contemporary categories for moral theories. His natural law view understands principles of right to be grounded in principles of good; on this Aquinas sides with utilitarians, and consequentialists generally, against Kantians.  But Aquinas would deny that the principles of the right enjoin us to maximize the good — while he allows that considerations of the greater good have a role in practical reasoning, action can be irremediably flawed merely through (e.g.) badness of intention, flawed such that no good consequences that flow from the action would be sufficient to justify it — and in this Aquinas sides with the Kantians against the utilitarians and consequentialists of other stripes. And while Aquinas is in some ways Aristotelian, and recognizes that virtue will always be required in order to hit the mark in a situation of choice, he rejects the view commonly ascribed to Aristotle (for doubts that it is Aristotle’s view; see Irwin 2000) that there are no universally true general principles of right. The natural law view rejects wholesale particularism.

To summarize: the paradigmatic natural law view holds that (1) the natural law is given by God; (2) it is naturally authoritative over all human beings; and (3) it is naturally knowable by all human beings. Further, it holds that (4) the good is prior to the right, that (5) right action is action that responds nondefectively to the good, that (6) there are a variety of ways in which action can be defective with respect to the good, and that (7) some of these ways can be captured and formulated as general rules.

Aquinas was not the only historically important paradigmatic natural law theorist. Thomas Hobbes, for example, was also a paradigmatic natural law theorist. He held that the laws of nature are divine law ( Leviathan , xv, ¶41), that all humans are bound by them ( Leviathan , xv, ¶¶36), and that it is easy to know at least the basics of the natural law ( Leviathan , xv, ¶35). He held that the fundamental good is self-preservation ( Leviathan , xiii, ¶14), and that the laws of nature direct the way to this good (Leviathan, xiv, ¶3). He offered a catalog of laws of nature that constitute the “true moral philosophy” ( Leviathan , xv, ¶40). There are also a number of contemporary writers that affirm the paradigmatic view. These writers, not surprisingly, trace their views to Aquinas as the major influence, though they do not claim to reproduce his views in detail. (See, for example, Grisez 1983, Finnis 1980,  MacIntyre 1999, and Murphy 2001.)

It is also easy to identify a number of writers, both historical and contemporary, whose views are easily called natural law views, through sharing all but one or two of the features of Aquinas’s paradigmatic position. Recently there have been nontheistic writers in the natural law tradition, who deny (1): see, for example, the work of Michael Moore (1982, 1996) and Philippa Foot (2001). There were a number of post-Thomistic writers in the medieval and modern periods who in some way denied (2), the natural authority of the natural law, holding that while the content of the natural law is fixed either wholly or in part by human nature, its preceptive power could only come from an additional divine command: the views of John Duns Scotus, Francisco Suarez, and John Locke fit this mold.    Arguably the Stoics were natural law thinkers, but they seem to deny (4), holding the right to be prior to the good (see Striker 1986). Some contemporary theological ethicists called ‘proportionalists’ (e.g. Hallett 1995) have taken up the natural law view with a consequentialist twist, denying (6). (For a discussion of the relationship between proportionalism and natural law theory see Kaczor 2002.) And while some see Aristotle as being the source of the natural law tradition, some have argued that his central appeal to the insight of the person of practical wisdom as setting the final standard for right action precludes the possibility of the sort of general rules that would (at least in a theistic context) make Aristotle’s ethics a natural law position. There is of course no clear answer to the question of when a view ceases to be a natural law theory, though a nonparadigmatic one, and becomes no natural law theory at all.

2. Theoretical Options for Natural Law Theorists

Even within the constraints set by the theses that constitute the paradigmatic natural law position, there are a number of variations possible in the view. Here we will consider several issues that must be addressed by every particular natural law view, and some difficulties that arise for possible responses to these issues.

It is essential to the natural law position that there be some things that are universally and naturally good. But how is universal, natural goodness possible?  Given the variability of human tastes and desires, how could there be such universal goods?

Natural law theorists have at least three answers available to them. The first answer is Hobbesian, and proceeds on the basis of a subjectivist theory of the good. On subjectivist theories of the good, what makes it true that something is good is that it is desired, or liked, or in some way is the object of one’s pro-attitudes, or would be the object of one’s pro-attitudes in some suitable conditions. One might think that to affirm a subjectivist theory of the good is to reject natural law theory, given the immense variation in human desire. But this is not so. For one might hold that human beings’ common nature, their similarity in physiological constitution, makes them such as to have some desires in common, and these desires may be so central to human aims and purposes that we can build important and correct precepts of rationality around them. This is in fact what Hobbes claims. For while on the Hobbesian view what is good is what is desired, Hobbes thinks that humans are similarly constructed so that for each human (when he or she is properly biologically functioning) his or her central aim is the avoidance of violent death. Thus Hobbes is able to build his entire natural law theory around a single good, the good of self-preservation, which is so important to human life that exceptionlessly binding precepts can be formulated with reference to its achievement.

The second answer is Aristotelian. The idea here is to reject a subjectivism about the good, holding that what makes it true that something is good is not that it stands in some relation to desire but rather that it is somehow perfective or completing of a being, where what is perfective or completing of a being depends on that being’s nature. So what is good for an oak is what is completing or perfective of the oak, and this depends on the kind of thing that an oak is by nature; and what is good for a dog is what is completing or perfective of the dog, and this depends on the kind of thing that a dog is by nature; and what is good for a human depends on what is completing or perfective of a human, and this depends on the kind of thing a human is by nature. So the fact of variability of desire is not on its own enough to cast doubt on the natural law universal goods thesis: as the good is not defined fundamentally by reference to desire, the fact of variation in desire is not enough to raise questions about universal goods. This is the view affirmed by Aquinas, and the majority of adherents to the natural law tradition.

The third answer is Platonic. Like the Aristotelian view, it rejects a subjectivism about the good. But it does not hold that the good is to be understood in terms of human nature. The role of human nature is not to define or set the good, but merely to define what the possibilities of human achievement are. So one might think that some things — knowledge, beauty, etc. — are just good in themselves, apart from any reference to human desire or perfection, but hold that the pursuit of these are only part of the natural law insofar as they fall within the ambit of human practical possibility. This view of the good is not much defended — in part because of the scathing criticism offered of Plato’s view by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (NE I, 6) — but it was affirmed by Iris Murdoch (1970), and forms part of the natural law view defended by Michael Moore (1982).

None of these answers is without difficulties. While there are contemporary defenders of Hobbesian moral theories (see Gauthier 1986), there is no one who is on record defending Hobbes’s interesting combination of a thoroughgoing subjectivism about the good along with an account of a dominant substantive good around which the moral rules are formulated. The basic reason for this just seems to be that Hobbes’s arguments that the human desire for self-preservation is such an entirely dominant desire are implausible, and there do not seem to be any better arguments available. The Platonic version of the view has struck many as both too metaphysically ornate to be defensible, on one hand, and as not fitting very well with a conception of ethics grounded in nature, on the other. While the Aristotelian version of the view has also been charged with some of the metaphysical excesses that the Platonist view allegedly countenances, most contemporary natural law theory is Aristotelian in its orientation, holding that there is still good reason to hold to an understanding of flourishing in nature and that none of the advances of modern science has called this part of the Aristotelian view into question. (For defenses of such Aristotelian accounts of the good, see Foot 2001, Thompson 1995, and Thompson 2004.)

Another central question that the natural law tradition has wrestled with concerns our knowledge of the basic goods. How can we come to know these fundamental goods?

Return to Aquinas’s paradigmatic natural law position. His account of our knowledge of the fundamental goods has been understood in different ways (Murphy 2001, ch. 1). Some have understood Aquinas as affirming a theory of our knowledge of the fundamental precepts of the natural law that we can label ‘derivationism.’  The idea here is that we can derive from a metaphysical study of human nature and its potentialities and actualizations the conclusion that certain things are good for human beings, and thus that the primary precepts of the natural law bid us to pursue these things (cf. Lisska 1996). One can imagine a Hobbesian version of this view as well. One might say that by a careful study of the human being’s desire-forming mechanisms, one can see that there are certain things that would be necessarily desired by biologically sound human beings, and thus that the human good includes these items. (Hobbes in fact produces such arguments at [EL], I, 7.)  While a natural law theorist might downplay the importance of derivationist knowledge of the natural law, it is hard to see how a consistent natural law theorist could entirely reject the possibility of such knowledge, given the view that we can provide a substantial account of how the human good is grounded in nature: for to show that the human good is grounded in nature is to show that human nature explains why certain things are goods, and it is hard to see how one could affirm that claim while entirely rejecting the possibility of derivationist knowledge of the human good (see Murphy 2001, pp. 16–17). Some have thought, echoing criticisms of natural law theory by those entirely hostile to it, that derivationist theories of practical knowledge fall prey to ‘Hume’s Law,’ that it is impossible to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is,’ that is, any normative truth from any set of nonnormative truths. The most that this can show, though, is that the natural law theorist needs an account of those bridge truths that enable us to move between claims about human nature and claims about human goods.

It must be conceded, however, that a consistent natural law theorist could hardly hold that derivationist knowledge of the human good is the only such knowledge possible. For it is part of the paradigm natural law view that the basic principles of the natural law are known by all, and the sort of arguments that would need to be made in order to produce derivationist knowledge of the human good are certainly not had (or even have-able) by all. (Recently Jensen (2015) has offered a thorough defense of a derivationist account that aims to take such worries into account.) Another way that Aquinas’s account of knowledge of the fundamental goods has been understood — and it is an understanding better able to come to grips with the widespread knowledge of fundamental goods — can be labeled ‘inclinationism.’  On this view, one’s explicit grasp of the fundamental goods follows upon but is not derived from one’s persistent directedness toward the pursuit of certain ends, which directedness involves an implicit grasp of these items as good. So human beings exhibit a tendency to pursue life, and knowledge, and friendship, and so forth; and reflection on this tendency occasions an immediate grasp of the truth that life, and knowledge, and friendship, and so forth are goods. The affirmation of the claims ‘life is good,’ ‘knowledge is good,’ ‘friendship is good,’ etc. makes intelligible the persistent pursuit of these ends by rational beings like us.

While inclinationism and derivationism are distinct methods, they are by no means exclusive: one can hold that knowledge of fundamental goods is possible in both ways. Indeed, it may well be that one way of knowing can supplement and correct the other. There may be some goods that are easier to recognize when taking the speculative point of view, the point of view of the observer of human nature and its potentialities, and some that are easier to recognize when taking the practical point of view, the point of view of the actively engaged in human life. Indeed, by connecting nature and the human good so tightly, the natural law view requires that an account of the good reconcile these points of view.

There are, of course, reasons to be worried about both of these ways of knowing basic goods — worries that go beyond general skeptical doubts about how we could know any normative truths at all.  Derivationists have to explain how we come to know what counts as an actualization of a human potency, and have to explain how we connect these via bridge principles with human goods. Inclinationists have their own troubles. In particular, they need to deal with the fact that, even if they are not in the business of deriving goods from inclinations or identifying the goods precisely with what we tend to pursue, they take as their starting point human directedness.   And it has been rightly noted that human directedness is not always a lovely thing. Power and prestige seem to be a matter of human directedness — at least as much so as, say,  aesthetic enjoyment and speculative knowledge — but they do not make it to the natural law theorist’s catalog of goods (though they do appear to be part of the good in Aristotle’s picture; cf. the discussion in Hare 2001, p. 14). While these difficulties persist for inclinationist and derivationist accounts of knowledge of the basic goods, they may well be eased if one affirms both accounts: one might be able to use inclinationist knowledge to provide some basis for bridge principles between knowledge of human nature and knowledge of human goods, and one might be able to use derivationist knowledge to modify, in a non-ad-hoc way, the objectionable elements of the account that one might be bound to give if proceeding on an inclinationist basis alone. (Reconciling the inclinationist and derivationist approaches is a theme in Murphy 2001 and Wall 2010.)

The dialectic between inclinationist and derivationist accounts of knowledge of the first principles of the natural law is central to natural law epistemology, but there are other accounts of knowledge of the natural law that focus on its social dimension. Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, for example, that the first precepts of the natural law are to be understood as those that make possible communal inquiry into the nature of the good: both the positive and the negative precepts are enabling rules, norms that enable humans to engage in common pursuit of knowledge of what is valuable. The norms of the natural law preclude our acting toward other potential partners in inquiry in way that would undermine the possibility of common pursuit of the good (MacIntyre 1994, 183–184). To come to know the primary precepts of the natural law, then, is a matter of coming to know what sorts of social relationships make possible common pursuit of common goods.

A distinct sort of social emphasis on knowledge of the natural law asks why we should think of knowledge of the natural law as arising exclusively or even predominantly either from one’s own immediate rational insight into what is implicit grasped or from some sort of derivation from the fact that one’s own inclinations of the will have certain determinate objects. One might hold that we have excellent reason to believe that knowledge of the natural law unfolds historically. Jean Porter, for example, argues that by close attention to the various sorts of social structure exhibited cross-culturally, we can extract the necessary “starting points” (Porter 2005, p. 132) to begin assessing various proposed norms of action. And Jonathan Crowe emphasizes knowledge of the natural law as the outcome of the attempt to interpret human practices, and will be an historically-extended process that will be necessarily an unfinished task (Crowe 2019, pp. 6-7; there is also discussion of interpretation of social practices as a means to knowing the natural law in Murphy 2007).

A developed natural law theory includes within it a catalog of the fundamental goods, the basic values upon which the principles of right are founded. Suppose that we follow at least the inclinationist line, taking it to be faithful to the natural law idea that knowledge of the basic goods is widely distributed. Our task then is to provide an explicit account of those goods implicit knowledge of which is manifested in human inclination toward certain ends. What are the goods affirmation of which makes intelligible these inclinations?

It is clear from this way of putting the question that even if natural law theorists are right that this implicit knowledge is widely distributed, it would be easy for natural law theorists to disagree in their catalogs of basic goods. For the task here is that of formulating propositionally, and in as illuminating a way as possible, what items need be affirmed as intrinsically good in order to make sense out of our inclinations. And there are, unsurprisingly, disagreements in catalogs of basic goods. The goods that Aquinas mentions in his account include life, procreation, social life, knowledge, and rational conduct. Grisez 1983 includes self-integration, practical reasonableness, authenticity, justice and friendship, religion, life and health, knowledge of truth, appreciation of beauty, and playful activities (pp. 121–122). Finnis 1980 includes life, knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, play, friendship, practical reasonableness, and religion (pp. 86–90). Chappell 1995 includes friendship, aesthetic value, pleasure and the avoidance of pain, physical and mental health and harmony, reason, rationality, and reasonableness, truth and the knowledge of it, the natural world, people, fairness, and achievements (p. 43). Finnis 1996 affirms a list much like Grisez 1983, but includes in it “the marital good” (p. 5). Murphy 2001 includes life, knowledge, aesthetic experience, excellence in work and play, excellence in agency, inner peace, friendship and community, religion, and happiness (p. 96). Gomez-Lobo 2002 includes life, the family, friendship, work and play, experience of beauty, theoretical knowledge, and integrity (pp. 10–23). Crowe (2019) includes life, health, pleasure, friendship, play, appreciation, understanding, meaning, and reasonableness (p. 35).

Aside from the inevitable differences in lists of goods produced by natural law theorists, there are also more focused debates about the inclusion of particular alleged goods within the natural law theorists’ lists. Note, for example, that of the lists above, only Chappell’s includes pleasure and the absence of pain. Whatever else we say here, it seems that common sense is initially on Chappell’s side: what seems more obvious than that pleasure and the avoidance of pain are basic reasons for action?  The reasons for rejecting pleasure and the absence of pain from the list of goods are various: some writers argue, following Aristotle, that pleasure is not a good in abstraction from the activity in which pleasure is taken; some that the absence of pain is not a completion or a fulfillment of human nature, and thus cannot be among the basic goods; some that the avoidance of pain is simply an instance of some other basic good, such as inner peace. What this debate illustrates is the extent to which the formulation of a catalog of goods is not a straightforward matter. Everyone agrees that one who avoids touching a hot stove in part to avoid the awful pain has some reason to avoid touching the stove. The difficulty is to bring together our various sources of knowledge about the good to formulate an account that explains well precisely why it is that such an act is reasonable. These sorts of debates reappear with respect to goods like life (is life intrinsically or instrumentally good?  is merely being alive intrinsically good, or is life only intrinsically good when one is enjoying a certain level of vitality?), religion (is harmony with God really a human good?  is it merely a kind of friendship?  does its status as a good depend on whether there is a being such as God?), and what Finnis and Grisez now call the ‘marital good’ (is the good of marriage simply an amalgam of various other goods, as friendship, procreation, rational agency, or is it really a distinct, analytically separable value?). Thus Echeñique denies that life can be a basic good in the way that natural law theorists typically take it to be (Echeñique 2016); Cuneo has rejected religion as a basic good (Cuneo 2005, pp. 116–118); and Macedo has argued against the marital good (Macedo 1995).

Suppose that we were to have in hand satisfactory accounts of natural goodness and our knowledge of it, along with a rationally defensible account of the basic goods that are the fundamental reasons for action. All that we would have so far is the natural law theorist’s account of what we might call minimally rational action — action that seeks to realize some good. What we would not have yet is a full account of right action. For we are frequently in situations in which there are various different courses of action that we might pursue, each of which promises to realize some good; are there no guidelines to which we might appeal in order to show some of these choices superior to others?  After all, some of even the most obviously morally wrong actions can be seen to promise some good — a robber might kill in order to get the money he needs to pursue genuine goods — and the natural law theorist wants to be able to say why these obviously morally wrong actions are morally wrong. As we have seen, the paradigmatic natural law view holds that there are some general rules of right that govern our pursuit of the various goods, and that these rules of right exclude those actions that are in some way defective responses to the various basic goods. How, though, are we to determine what counts as a defective response to the goods?

There are at least three possibilities. One might appeal to a master rule of right that can be used to generate further rules; call this the master rule approach. One might appeal to a methodological principle by which particular rules can be generated; call this the method approach. Or one might appeal to some standard for distinguishing correct and incorrect moral rules that is not understandable as a method; call this (for reasons we shall see shortly) the virtue approach.

On the master rule approach, the task of the natural law theorist is to identify some master rule which bears on the basic goods and, perhaps in conjunction with further factual premises, is able to produce a stock of general rules about what sorts of responses to the basic goods are or are not reasonable. While it is far from clear whether there was a single way that Aquinas proceeded in establishing moral norms from the primary precepts of the natural law in the Summa Theologiae , John Finnis has argued (Finnis 1998, p. 126) that Aquinas employed this master rule approach: on his view, Aquinas held that this master rule is the rule of universal love, that one should love one’s neighbor as oneself. This rule bids us to respond to the good lovingly wherever it can be realized, and from it we can see that certain ways of responding to the good are ruled out as essentially unloving. Grisez clearly employs this approach: he writes that the first principle of morality is that “In voluntarily acting for human goods and avoiding what is opposed to them, one ought to choose and otherwise will those and only those possibilities whose willing is compatible with a will toward integral human fulfillment” (Grisez 1983, p. 184). This first principle, Grisez says, contains implicitly within it various “modes of responsibility” from which particular moral rules can be derived.

The central difficulty with this employment of the master rule approach is that of explaining how we are to grasp this first principle of morality as correct. What is the relationship between our knowledge of the basic goods and our knowledge of the master rule?  When Grisez defends his master rule, he writes that its status is due to a certain function that a first principle of morality must perform:  “It must provide the basis for guiding choices toward overall human fulfillment. As a single principle, it will give unity and direction to a morally good life. At the same time, it must not exclude ways of living which might contribute to a complete human community” (Grisez 1983, p. 184). But this presupposes an awful lot: why should we assume in advance that a proper response to the basic goods must be one that is oriented toward a “complete human community”?

On the method approach, by contrast, there is no need for a master principle that will serve as the basis for deriving some particular moral rules. The idea here is the natural law theorist needs not a master rule but a test for distinguishing correct moral rules from incorrect ones. We know from our earlier consideration of the paradigmatic natural law view that the test for distinguishing correct moral rules from incorrect ones must be something like the following: if a moral rule rules out certain choices as defective that are in fact defective, and rules out no choices as defective that are not in fact defective, then it is a correct moral rule. What would distinguish different employments of the method approach is their accounts of what features of a choice we appeal to in order to determine whether it is defective. The knowledge that we have to go on here is our knowledge of the basic goods. If a certain choice presupposes something false about the basic goods, then it responds defectively to them. So a moral rule can be justified by showing that it rules out only choices that presuppose something false about the basic goods.

This is very abstract. Here is an example of an employment of this approach. While Finnis now affirms Grisez’s master rule approach, in his 1980 work he defends various principles of practical reasonableness without adverting to a master rule. He argues, for example, that it is always wrong to intend the destruction of an instance of a basic good (Finnis 1980, pp. 118–123). (So, no lying, for lying is an intentional attack on knowledge; no murder, for murder is an intentional attack on life, and so forth.)  Why is it always wrong to do so?  It would be unreasonable simply to try to destroy an instance of a basic good, for no further purpose: for that would treat an instance of a basic good as something that it is not — that is, as valueless. And it would be wrong to destroy an instance of a basic good for the sake of bringing about some other instance of a basic good: for that would make sense only if the good brought about were more valuable than the good destroyed, but on Finnis’s view all distinct instances of basic goods are incommensurable — none is of more, less, or equal value with any other. So the rule forbidding intentional destruction of an instance of a basic good is justified because it rules out only choices that presuppose something false about the nature of the basic goods. (For a working out of the method approach, see Murphy 2001, ch. 5.)

The method approach presupposes less of substance about morality than the master rule approach presupposes. But it requires us to draw upon an interesting and rich knowledge of the features of the basic goods. Whether this information is available is a matter for debate. But the method approach has the advantage of firmly rooting natural law arguments for moral principles in the goods the pursuit of which those moral principles are supposed to regulate.

Neither the master rule nor the method approach implies that the natural law theorist must hold that all right action can be captured in general rules. The natural law view is only that there are some such rules. It is consistent with the natural law position that there are a number of choice situations in which there is a right answer, yet in which that right answer is not dictated by any natural law rule or set of rules, but rather is grasped only by a virtuous, practically wise person. It is, however, open to the natural law theorist to use this appeal to the judgment of the practically wise person more widely, holding that the general rules concerning the appropriate response to the goods cannot be properly determined by any master rule or philosophical method, but can be determined only by appeal to the insight of the person of practical wisdom. If it really is wrong in all cases to tell lies, as Aquinas and Grisez and Finnis have argued, our grasp of this moral truth is dependent on our possessing, or our being able to recognize the possessor of, practical wisdom. If such a person never tells lies, because she or he just sees that to tell lies would be to respond defectively to the good, then that lying is always wrong is a rule of the natural law.

It may be true that by the virtue approach we can learn of some general rules of the natural law. What is more interesting is whether a defender of the virtue approach would be right to dismiss the claims of the master rule or method approaches. (For, after all, one might be able to learn that lying is wrong either through moral argument or through the perceptive insight of practical wisdom.)  And it does not seem that the defender of the master rule or method approach should be particularly concerned to discredit the virtue approach. For if defenders of the master rule or method approach recognize the existence of a capacity of judgment like practical wisdom, then it would be strange to allow that it can be correctly exercised on a number of particular occasions while denying that we might learn of general rules from observing patterns of its exercise on various occasions.

One challenge to these various natural law attempts to explain the right in terms of the good denies that the natural law theorist can provide adequate explanations of the range of norms of right conduct for which moral theories ought to be able to provide explanations. That is, one might allow for the sake of argument the natural law theorist’s identification of some range of human goods, while denying that he or she can identify, and justify in natural law terms, adequately concrete modes of appropriate response to those goods. This challenge cannot be profitably addressed here; what would be required would be a close examination of the merits of particular natural law explanations of particular moral norms (a task taken up in, for example, Grisez 1993). One might also look to recent attempts to apply the natural law view to pressing contemporary moral problems — those of research ethics (Tollefsen 2008), economic justice (Chartier 2009), environmental ethics (Davison 2009), business ethics (Gonzalez 2015), the ethics of suicide and euthanasia (Paterson 2015), and population ethics (Delaney 2016), for example — as tests of the fruitfulness of that position.

A more radical critique of the paradigmatic natural law account of the connection between the good and the right calls into question the very idea that one can get principles of moral rightness merely from what constitutes a defective response to the good. According to this critique, while it is true that one might be able to come up with some notion of unreasonableness by appeal to the notion of what is defective response to the human goods, the notion of moral rightness belongs to a family of concepts distinct from that to which the notion of reasonableness belongs. On this view, moral rightness belongs to the obligation family, and the concept of obligation is irreducibly social : one is under an obligation only if one is subject to some sort of demand in the context of a social relationship (see, for an example of this view from a theological voluntarist perspective, Adams 1999, pp. 238–241; see, for an example of this view with a Kantian twist, Darwall 2006). It is part of the logic of obligation that when one is under an obligation, that condition has resulted from a demand imposed on him or her by some other party. So, according to this line of criticism, the paradigmatic natural law view is unable to show that the natural law is intrinsically morally authoritative: the precepts of the natural law can be rules that all of us human beings are obligated to obey, that it would be wrong for us to disobey, and that we would be guilty for flouting only if these precepts are imposed upon us by an authoritative being — perhaps a being like God.

The intrinsic moral authority of the natural law has been a matter of debate since Aquinas: it was a central issue dividing Aquinas’s view from those of Scotus, Ockham, and Suarez. It continues to be an issue between natural law theorists like Grisez (1983) and Finnis (1980) on one hand and theological voluntarists like Adams (1999) and Hare (2001) on the other. Natural law theorists have several options: they can argue against any meaningful distinction between morality and the reasonable more generally (Foot 2000, pp. 66–80); or they can embrace the distinction, but hold that on the clearest conception of the moral that we possess, the natural law account of reasonableness in action adequately satisfies that conception (Murphy 2001, pp. 222–227); or they can hold that the notion of ‘morally right’ is so muddled that it should be jettisoned, leaving in its stead the notion of the reasonable (cf. Anscombe 1958). It is at present far from clear which of these avenues of response the natural law theorist has most reason to embrace.

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Natural Law: Definition and Application

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Natural law is a theory that says all humans inherit—perhaps through a divine presence—a universal set of moral rules that govern human conduct.

Key Takeaways: Natural Law

• Natural law theory holds that all human conduct is governed by an inherited set of universal moral rules. These rules apply to everyone, everywhere, in the same way.
• As a philosophy, natural law deals with moral questions of “right vs. wrong,” and assumes that all people want to live “good and innocent” lives.
• Natural law is the opposite of “man-made” or “positive” law enacted by courts or governments.
• Under natural law, taking another life is forbidden, no matter the circumstances involved, including self-defense.

Natural law exists independently of regular or “positive” laws—laws enacted by courts or governments. Historically, the philosophy of natural law has dealt with the timeless question of “right vs. wrong” in determining the proper human behavior. First referred to in the Bible, the concept of natural law was later addressed by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and Roman philosopher Cicero . 

What Is Natural Law?

Natural law is a philosophy based on the idea that everyone in a given society shares the same idea of what constitutes “right” and “wrong.” Further, natural law assumes that all people want to live “good and innocent” lives. Thus, natural law can also be thought of as the basis of “morality.” 

Natural law is the opposite of “man-made” or “positive” law. While positive law may be inspired by natural law, natural law may not be inspired by positive law. For example, laws against impaired driving are positive laws inspired by natural laws.

Unlike laws enacted by governments to address specific needs or behaviors, natural law is universal, applying to everyone, everywhere, in the same way. For example, natural law assumes that everyone believes killing another person is wrong and that punishment for killing another person is right. 

Natural Law and Self Defense

In regular law, the concept of self-defense is often used as justification for killing an aggressor. Under natural law, however, self-defense has no place. Taking another life is forbidden under natural law, no matter the circumstances involved. Even in the case of an armed person breaking into another person’s home, natural law still forbids the homeowner from killing that person in self-defense. In this way, natural law differs from government-enacted self-defense laws like so-called “ Castle Doctrine ” laws. 

Natural Rights vs. Human Rights

Integral to the theory of natural law, natural rights are rights endowed by birth and not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government. As stated in the United States Declaration of Independence , for example, the natural rights mentioned are “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In this manner, natural rights are considered universal and inalienable, meaning they cannot be repealed by human laws.

Human rights, in contrast, are rights endowed by society, such as the right to live in safe dwellings in safe communities, the right to healthy food and water, and the right to receive healthcare. In many modern countries, citizens believe the government should help provide these basic needs to people who have difficulty obtaining them on their own. In mainly socialist societies , citizens believe the government should provide such needs to all people, regardless of their ability to obtain them.

Natural Law in the US Legal System

The American legal system is based on the theory of natural law holding that the main goal of all people is to live a “good, peaceful, and happy” life, and that circumstances preventing them from doing so are “immoral” and should be eliminated. In this context, natural law, human rights, and morality are inseparably intertwined in the American legal system. 

Natural law theorists contend that laws created by the government should be motivated by morality. In asking the government to enact laws, the people strive to enforce their collective concept of what is right and wrong. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted to right what the people considered to be a moral wrong—racial discrimination. Similarly, the peoples’ view of enslavement as being a denial of human rights led to ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. 

Natural Law in the Foundations of American Justice

Governments do not grant natural rights. Instead, through covenants like the American Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution , governments create a legal framework under which the people are permitted to exercise their natural rights. In return, people are expected to live according to that framework.

In his 1991 Senate confirmation hearing, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas expressed the widely shared belief that the Supreme Court should refer to natural law in interpreting the Constitution. “We look at natural law beliefs of the Founders as a background to our Constitution,” he stated. 

Among the Founders who inspired Justice Thomas in considering natural law to be an integral part of the American justice system, Thomas Jefferson referred to it when he wrote in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Jefferson then reinforced the concept that governments cannot deny rights granted by natural law in the famous phrase: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Natural Law in Practice: Hobby Lobby vs. Obamacare

Deeply rooted in the Bible, natural law theory often influences actual legal cases involving religion. An example can be found in the 2014 case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores , in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for-profit companies are not legally obligated to provide employee health care insurance that covers expenses for services that go against their religious beliefs.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 —better known as “Obamacare”—requires employer-provided group health care plans to cover certain types of preventative care, including FDA-approved contraceptive methods. This requirement conflicted with the religious beliefs of the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a nationwide chain of arts and crafts stores. The Green family had organized Hobby Lobby around their Christian principles and had repeatedly stated their desire to operate the business according to Biblical doctrine, including the belief that any use of contraception is immoral. 

In 2012, the Greens sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, claiming that the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employment-based group health care plans cover contraception violated the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment and the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), that “ensures that interests in religious freedom are protected.” Under the Affordable Care Act, Hobby Lobby faced significant fines if its employee health care plan failed to pay for contraceptive services.

In considering the case, the Supreme Court was asked to decide if the RFRA allowed closely held, for-profit companies to refuse to provide its employees with health insurance coverage for contraception based on the religious objections of the company’s owners. 

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that by forcing religion-based companies to fund what they consider the immoral act of abortion, the Affordable Care Act placed an unconstitutionally “substantial burden” on those companies. The court further ruled that an existing provision in the Affordable Care Act exempting non-profit religious organizations from providing contraception coverage should also apply to for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby.

The landmark Hobby Lobby decision marked the first time the Supreme Court had recognized and upheld a for-profit corporation’s natural law claim of protection based on a religious belief.

Sources and Further Reference

• “ Natural Law .” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• “ The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics .” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002-2019)
• “Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 .” U.S. Government Publishing Office.
• What Is Parens Patriae? Definition and Examples
• What Is Statutory Law? Definition and Examples
• What Is Civil Law? Definition and Examples
• What Is Qualified Immunity? Definition and Examples
• What Is a Writ of Certiorari?
• What Is Judicial Restraint? Definition and Examples
• What Is Sedition? Definition and Examples
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Natural Law

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What is a law of nature?

Laws of nature are impossible to break, and nearly as difficult to define. just what kind of necessity do they possess.

by Marc Lange   + BIO

In the original Star Trek , with the Starship Enterprise hurtling rapidly downward into the outer atmosphere of a star, Captain James T Kirk orders Lt Commander Montgomery Scott to restart the engines immediately and get the ship to safety. Scotty replies that he can’t do it. It’s not that he refuses to obey the Captain’s order or that he doesn’t happen to know how to restart the engines so quickly. It’s that he knows that doing so is impossible. ‘I can’t change the laws of physics,’ he explains.

We all understand Scotty’s point (although the Enterprise does somehow manage to escape). He cannot break the laws of nature. Nothing can. The natural laws limit what can happen. They are stronger than the laws of any country because it is impossible to violate them. If it is a law of nature that, for example, no object can be accelerated from rest to beyond the speed of light, then it is not merely that such accelerations never occur. They cannot occur.

There are many things that never actually happen but could have happened in that their occurrence would violate no law of nature. For instance, to borrow an example from the philosopher Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953), perhaps in the entire history of the Universe there never was nor ever will be a gold cube larger than one mile on each side. Such a large gold cube is not impossible. It just turns out never to exist. It’s like a sequence of moves that is permitted by the rules of chess but never takes place in the entire history of chess-playing. By contrast, if it is a law of nature that energy is never created or destroyed, then it is impossible for the total energy in the Universe to change. The laws of nature govern the world like the rules of chess determine what is permitted and what is forbidden during a game of chess, in an analogy drawn by the biologist T H Huxley (1825-95).

I n our science classes, we all learned some examples of what scientists currently believe (or once believed) to be laws of nature. Some of these putative laws are named after famous scientists (such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton). Some are generally called ‘laws’ (such as the laws of motion and gravity), while others are typically called ‘principles’ (such as Archimedes’ principle and Bernoulli’s principle), ‘rules’ (such as Born’s rule and Hund’s rule), ‘axioms’ (such as the axioms of quantum mechanics), or ‘equations’ (such as Maxwell’s equations).

Laws of nature differ from one another in many respects. Some laws concern the general structure of spacetime, while others concern some specific inhabitant of spacetime (such as the law that gold doesn’t rust). Some laws relate causes to their effects (as Coulomb’s law relates electric charges to the electric forces they cause). But other laws (such as the law of energy conservation or the spacetime symmetry principles) do not specify the effects of any particular sort of cause. Some laws involve probabilities (such as the law specifying the half-life of some radioactive isotope). And some laws are currently undiscovered – though I can’t give you an example of one of those! (By ‘laws of nature’, I will mean the genuine laws of nature that science aims to discover, not whatever scientists currently believe to be laws of nature.)

What all of the various laws have in common, despite their diversity, is that it is necessary that everything obey them. It is impossible for them to be broken. An object must obey the laws of nature. In this respect, a law of nature differs from the fact that all gold cubes are smaller than a cubic mile, the fact that all the apples currently hanging on my apple tree are ripe, and other so-called ‘accidents’. Although this fact about gold cubes is as universal, general and exceptionless as any law, it is not necessary. It could have been false. It is not inevitable or unavoidable that all gold cubes are smaller than a cubic mile. It just turns out that way.

But although all these truisms about the laws of nature sound plausible and familiar, they are also imprecise and metaphorical. The natural laws obviously do not ‘govern’ the Universe in the way that the rules of chess govern a game of chess. Chess players know the rules and so deliberately conform to them, whereas inanimate objects do not know the laws of nature and have no intentions.

For 4 to be a prime number would require more than merely a violation of the laws of nature

Furthermore, there are lots of things that we would describe appropriately (in a given conversational context) as ‘impossible’ but that do not violate the laws of nature. It is impossible for me to wish you ‘Good morning’ in Finnish because I do not speak Finnish, to borrow an example from the philosopher David Lewis (1941-2001). But my doing so would not violate a law of nature: I could learn Finnish. My car cannot accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in less than 5 seconds, but that impossibility is not the same as the kind of impossibility involved in my car accelerating from 0 to beyond the speed of light. Now we are using the laws of nature to help us understand the kind of impossibility that is supposed to distinguish the laws of nature. We have gone around in a tight circle rather than put our finger on what makes a fact qualify as a law rather than an accident.

Moreover, although accidents lack the kind of necessity that laws of nature possess, there are other facts that possess the kind of necessity that laws possess but are not laws – or, more accurately, they are not merely laws. While accidents are too weak to be laws because it would have been too easy to make them false, certain other facts are too strong to be merely laws because they are harder to break than even the laws themselves. For instance, the fact that all objects either contain some gold or do not contain any gold is a fact that has even more necessity than a law of nature does. It is still a fact even in the Star Trek universe, where the laws of nature are different (since starships routinely accelerate beyond the speed of light). For 4 to be a prime number is likewise impossible even in the Star Trek universe. It would require more than merely a violation of the laws of nature.

The laws of nature, then, fall somewhere between the accidental facts (which lack the laws’ necessity) and the facts that possess a stronger variety of necessity than the laws do. The laws are distinguished by having the variety of necessity that distinguishes the laws. But we must do better than that if we are to understand what a law of nature is.

Philosophers do not aim to discover the laws of nature. That’s a job for scientists. What philosophers aim to do is to figure out what sort of thing scientists are discovering when they discover the laws of nature. The philosopher’s aim is not to help scientists do their job. Instead, the philosopher’s aim is to better understand the job that scientists are doing. For instance, when scientists explain why something happens by appealing to a law of nature that they have discovered, what makes a law able to answer such a ‘Why?’ question? To understand scientific understanding is a job for the philosophy of science.

Of course, it can be difficult to reach this philosophical understanding, and I will ask you to bear with me as I guide you – step by step – towards understanding what a law of nature is. I hope that as a useful byproduct, you will also enjoy seeing how a philosopher utilises a few bits of logic (paging Mr Spock!) to grapple with the question ‘What is a law of nature?’ Hold on: I hope you will find the final result to be elegant and illuminating.

T o begin understanding the variety of necessity that distinguishes the natural laws (which, for simplicity, I will call ‘natural necessity’), let’s unpack the laws’ necessity in terms of the fact that the laws not only are true, but also would still have been true under various hypothetical circumstances. For instance, since it is a law that no object is accelerated from rest to beyond the speed of light, this cosmic speed limit would still have been unbroken even if the Stanford Linear Accelerator had now been cranked up to full power. On the other hand, since it is merely an accident that every apple currently on my tree is ripe, this pattern would have been broken if (for instance) the weather this past spring had been much cooler.

I have just compared two ‘conditionals’ (that is, two if-then statements) that state facts about what would have happened under various circumstances that did not actually occur – that is, two ‘counterfactual’ conditionals. We often assert counterfactual conditionals, as in ‘If I had gone to the market today, then I would have bought a quart of milk.’ (That I went to the market today – the falsehood in the ‘if’ position of the conditional – is the ‘counterfactual antecedent’.) The laws, having natural necessity, would still have been true even if other things had been different, whereas an accident is less resilient under counterfactual antecedents.

An accident is invariant (that is, would still have been true) under some counterfactual antecedents. For instance, all of the apples on my tree would still have been ripe even if I had been wearing a red shirt this morning. But an accident seems to have less invariance in some respect than a law. After all, we use the laws to figure out what would happen if we were to pursue various possible courses of action – for instance, what would happen to an object’s acceleration if we doubled the object’s mass or doubled the force on the object. We can rely on the laws to tell us what would have happened under various hypothetical circumstances because the laws are invariant (that is, would have remained true) under those circumstances.

No matter what, the laws would still have held. (As Scotty says, nothing can break the laws of physics)

Of course, we can find some counterfactual antecedents under which the laws are not invariant. Obviously, the laws would not still have remained true under counterfactual antecedents with which the laws are logically inconsistent (that is, under antecedents contradicting the laws). For example, the laws would have been different if an object had been accelerated from rest to beyond the speed of light. But presumably, the laws would still have held under any counterfactual antecedent that is logically consistent with all of the laws. No matter what circumstances permitted by the laws may come about, the laws would still have held. (As Scotty says, nothing can break the laws of physics.) By contrast, for any accident, there is some hypothetical circumstance that is permitted by the laws and under which that accident would not still have held. After all, if it is an accident that p , then not- p (ie, that p is false) is a circumstance that is permitted by the laws and under which p would not still have held.

I’ll use lower-case letters for statements that make no reference to lawhood, necessity, counterfactual conditionals, and so forth – what I will call ‘sub-nomic’ claims. (For instance, p could be the claim that all emeralds are green, but p could not stand for ‘It is a law that all emeralds are green.’) We have arrived at the following proposal for distinguishing laws from accidents: m is a law if and only if m would still have been true if p had been true, for any p that is logically consistent with all the facts n (taken together) where n is a law.

Let’s step back and take a look at what this means. This proposal captures an important difference between laws and accidents in their resilience – that is, in their range of invariance under counterfactual antecedents. However, this proposal cannot tell us much. That is because the laws appear in it on both sides of the ‘if and only if’. The proposal picks out the laws by their invariance under a certain range of counterfactual antecedents p , but this range of antecedents, in turn, is picked out by the laws. (It consists of the antecedents that are logically consistent with the laws.) Therefore, this proposal fails to tell us what it is that makes m a law.

This proposal also fails to tell us what makes the laws so important . The laws’ invariance under the particular range of counterfactual antecedents that the proposal mentions makes the laws special only if there is already something special about having this particular range of invariance. But the laws are what pick out this range. So if there is no prior, independent reason why this particular range of counterfactual antecedents is special, then the laws’ invariance under these antecedents fails to make the laws special. They merely have a certain range of invariance (just as a given accident has some range of invariance).

In short, we have not yet managed to avoid the circularity that hobbled our initial thoughts about the laws’ particular brand of necessity. But we have made progress: now we can see precisely what problem we have to overcome!

T here is a way to overcome this problem. Our proposal was roughly that the laws form a set of truths that would still have held under every antecedent with which the set is logically consistent. In contrast, take the set containing exactly the logical consequences of the accident that all gold cubes are smaller than a cubic mile. This set’s members are not all invariant under every antecedent that is logically consistent with this set’s members. For instance, if a very rich person had wanted to have constructed a gold cube exceeding a cubic mile, then such a cube might well have existed, and so not all gold cubes would have been smaller than a cubic mile. Yet the antecedent p that a very rich person wants such a cube constructed is logically consistent with (that is, does not contradict) all gold cubes being smaller than a cubic mile.

Let’s capture this idea by defining what it would be for a set of facts to qualify as ‘stable’. Suppose we are talking about a (non-empty) set 𝚪 (gamma) of sub-nomic truths that is ‘closed’ under logical implication. (In other words, the set contains every sub-nomic logical consequence of its members.) 𝚪 is ‘stable’ if and only if for each member m of 𝚪 and for any p that is logically consistent with 𝚪’s members, m would still have held if p had held. In short, a set of truths is ‘stable’ exactly when its members would all still have held under any counterfactual antecedent with which they are all logically consistent.

In contrast to our previous proposal, stability does not use the laws to pick out the relevant range of counterfactual antecedents. Stability avoids privileging the range of counterfactual antecedents that is logically consistent with the laws. Rather, each set of truths picks out for itself the range of counterfactual antecedents under which it must be invariant in order for it to qualify as stable. The fact that the laws form a stable set is therefore an achievement that the laws can ‘brag about’ without presupposing that there is already something special about being a law.

Had the price of steel been different, the engine might have been different. This ripple effect propagates endlessly

In contrast to the set containing all and only the laws, consider the set containing all and only the fact that all gold cubes are smaller than a cubic mile (together with its logical consequences). That set is unstable: its members are all logically consistent with some very rich person wanting a gold cube larger than a cubic mile, and yet (as we saw earlier) the set’s members are not all invariant under this counterfactual antecedent.

Let us look at another example. Take the accident g (for ‘gas’) that whenever a certain car is on a dry flat road, its acceleration is given by a certain function of how far its gas pedal is being pressed down. Had the gas pedal on a certain occasion been depressed a bit farther, then g would still have held. Can a stable set include g ? Such a set must also include the fact that the car has a four-cylinder engine, since had the engine used six cylinders, g might not still have held. (Once the set includes the fact that the car has a four-cylinder engine, the counterfactual antecedent that the engine has six cylinders is logically inconsistent with the set, so the set does not have to be invariant under that antecedent in order to be stable.) But since the set includes a description of the car’s engine, its stability also requires that it include a description of the engine factory, since had that factory been different, the engine might have been different. Had the price of steel been different, the engine might have been different. And so on.

This ripple effect propagates endlessly. Take the following antecedent (which, perhaps, only a philosopher would mention!): had either g been false or there been a gold cube larger than a cubic mile. Under this antecedent, is g preserved? Not in every conversational context. This counterfactual antecedent pits g ’s invariance against the invariance of the fact about gold cubes. It is not the case that g is always more resilient. Therefore, to be stable, a set that includes g must also include the fact that all gold cubes are smaller than a cubic mile (making the set logically inconsistent with the antecedent I mentioned, and so the set does not have to be invariant under that antecedent in order to be stable). A stable set that includes g must also include even a fact as remote from g as the fact about gold cubes. The only set containing g that might be stable is the set of all sub-nomic truths. (Let’s call it the ‘maximal’ set.)

Every non-maximal set of sub-nomic truths containing an accident is unstable. We have now found a way to understand what makes a truth qualify as a law rather than an accident: a law belongs to a non-maximal stable set. No set containing an accident is stable (except, perhaps, for the maximal set , considering that the range of antecedents under which it must be invariant in order to be stable does not include any false antecedents, since no falsehood is logically consistent with all of this set’s members).

W e saw earlier that the sub-nomic facts that are laws should be distinguished from two other sorts of sub-nomic facts. On the one hand, accidents are easier to break than laws. Unlike the accidents, laws possess natural necessity. On the other hand, some facts are even more necessary (harder to break) than the laws, such as the fact that all objects either contain some gold or do not contain any gold. Such a fact possesses an even stronger variety of necessity than natural necessity. (Let’s call it ‘broadly logical’ necessity.) By thinking of natural laws in terms of stability, we can understand how the laws differ from both the accidents and the broadly logical necessities.

Let’s investigate whether there are any other non-maximal stable sets besides the set of laws. Consider the set of all and only the sub-nomic truths possessing broadly logical necessity. It includes the truths of mathematics and logic. This set is stable since its members would all still have held under any broadly logical possibility. For instance, 2 plus 3 would still have been equal to 5 even if there had been a gold cube larger than a cubic mile – and even if there had been a means of accelerating an object from rest to beyond the speed of light.

There is a nice little argument demonstrating that, for any two stable sets, one of them must entirely contain the other. The stable sets, however many there are, must fit one inside the other like a series of matryoshka dolls. The argument’s strategy is to consider a counterfactual antecedent like the one involving g (concerning the gas pedal) and the fact about gold cubes – namely, an antecedent pitting the invariance of the two sets against each other. Here’s how the argument goes.

First, assume that there are two stable sets, 𝚪 and 𝚺 (sigma), where neither set fits completely inside the other. In particular, suppose that t is a member of 𝚪 but not of 𝚺, and s is a member of 𝚺 but not of 𝚪. Now we can show that this assumption must be false because it leads to a contradiction. (Ready? Here we go…)

Let’s start with 𝚪. Since s is not a member of 𝚪, the counterfactual antecedent not- s is logically consistent with 𝚪, and hence so is the counterfactual antecedent (not- s or not- t ). Therefore, since 𝚪 is stable, as we have assumed, every member of 𝚪 would still have been true, if (not- s or not- t ) had been true. In particular, t would still have been true, if (not- s or not- t ) had been true. So t and (not- s or not- t ) would both have been true, if (not- s or not- t ) had been true. Hence, if (not- s or not- t ) had been true, then not- s would have been true; s would have been false.

Laws of nature can explain why something failed to happen by revealing that it cannot happen

Now we can make the analogous argument regarding 𝚺. Since t is not a member of 𝚺, the counterfactual antecedent not- t is logically consistent with 𝚺, and hence so is the counterfactual antecedent (not- s or not- t ). Therefore, since 𝚺 is stable, as we have assumed, no member of 𝚺 would have been false, if (not- s or not- t ) had been true. In particular, it is not the case that s would have been false, if (not- s or not- t ) had been true. But now we have arrived at a contradiction with the result reached at the end of the previous paragraph. So we have proved that the initial assumption is impossible: there cannot be two stable sets, 𝚪 and 𝚺, where neither fits completely inside the other.

What we have just demonstrated is that the stable sets must form a nested hierarchy. There are at least three members of this hierarchy: the truths with broadly logical necessity (the smallest of the three), the set of laws (which also contains all the broadly logical necessities), and the maximal set (which contains all the sub-nomic truths). There are no stable sets larger than the set of laws but smaller than the maximal set, since any such set would have to contain accidents, but we have already seen that no set containing accidents (except for the maximal set) is stable.

We can now understand what makes the natural laws necessary and how their variety of necessity differs from broadly logical necessity. By the definition of ‘stability’, the members of a stable set would all still have held under any sub-nomic counterfactual antecedent with which they are all logically consistent. That is, a stable set’s members would all still have held under any sub-nomic counterfactual antecedent under which they could (ie, without contradiction) all still have held. In other words, a stable set’s members are collectively as resilient under sub-nomic counterfactual antecedents as they could collectively be. They are maximally resilient. That is what makes them necessary .

There is a one-to-one correspondence between non-maximal stable sets and varieties of necessity. A smaller stable set is associated with a stronger variety of necessity because the range of antecedents under which a smaller stable set’s members are invariant, in connection with that set’s stability, is wider than the range of antecedents under which a larger stable set’s members are invariant, in connection with that set’s stability. Stability associated with greater invariance corresponds to a stronger variety of necessity – that is, greater unavoidableness.

Scientists discover laws of nature by acquiring evidence that some apparent regularity is not only never violated but also could never have been violated. For instance, when every ingenious effort to create a perpetual-motion machine turned out to fail, scientists concluded that such a machine was impossible – that energy conservation is a natural law, a rule of nature’s game rather than an accident. In drawing this conclusion, scientists adopted various counterfactual conditionals, such as that, even if they had tried a different scheme, they would have failed to create a perpetual-motion machine. That it is impossible to create such a machine (because energy conservation is a law of nature) explains why scientists failed every time they tried to create one.

Laws of nature are important scientific discoveries. Their counterfactual resilience enables them to tell us about what would have happened under a wide range of hypothetical circumstances. Their necessity means that they impose limits on what is possible. Laws of nature can explain why something failed to happen by revealing that it cannot happen – that it is impossible.

We began with several vague ideas that seem implicit in scientific reasoning: that the laws of nature are important to discover, that they help us to explain why things happen, and that they are impossible to break. Now we can look back and see that we have made these vague ideas more precise and rigorous. In doing so, we found that these ideas are not only vindicated, but also deeply interconnected. We now understand better what laws of nature are and why they are able to play the roles that science calls upon them to play.

Knowledge is often a matter of discovery. But when the nature of an enquiry itself is at question, it is an act of creation

Céline Henne

Human reproduction

When babies are born, they cry in the accent of their mother tongue: how does language begin in the womb?

Darshana Narayanan

History of ideas

All that we are

The philosophy of personalism inspired Martin Luther King’s dream of a better world. We still need its hopeful ideas today

Bennett Gilbert

A novel kind of music

So-called ‘classical’ music was as revolutionary as the modern novel in its storytelling, harmony and depth

Joel Sandelson

Psychiatry and psychotherapy

Decolonising psychology

At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory thought

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Meaning and the good life

Beyond authenticity

In her final unfinished work, Hannah Arendt mounted an incisive critique of the idea that we are in search of our true selves

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Reason and Meaning

Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life, summary of natural law ethics.

• The Divine Command Theory

Let us now consider the view that morality rests upon religion. Assuming that a relationship between some God and morality exists, how do we characterize it? A classic formulation of this relationship is the  divine command theory  which states that “morally right” means commanded by God, and “morally wrong” means forbidden by God.

But there are multiple problems with this theory. Its defense necessitates philosophical arguments to prove a god exists, or is at least rational plausibility. Next, one needs to determine the gods commands. This would be especially difficult, since people have imagined the gods to command antithetical things like: celibacy and polygamy, the right of kings and social revolt, war and peace, humanitarian aid and witchburning. But even if we knew the gods commands, we would still have  to interpret them .

This last point presents grave difficulties. Take a simple command, “thou shalt not kill!” When does it apply? In self defense? In war? Always? To whom does it apply? To animals? Intelligent aliens? Serial killers? All living things? The unborn? The braindead? Religious commands such as “do not kill,” “honor thy parents,” or “do not commit adultery” are ambiguous. For instance, where do the Christian Scriptures speak unequivocally about abortion?  For the sake of argument, let us grant that we can demonstrate some the gods existence, know that the gods commands,  know that those commands are good, and interpret the commands correctly. (This is saying a lot.) May we then suppose the divine command theory adequately accounts for morality?

The great Greek philosopher  Plato  suggested that it did not. In the dialogue the  Euthyphro  Socrates posed one of the most famous questions in the history of philosophy:  Is something right because the gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is right?   It seems the relationship between the gods and morality must be characterized in one of these two ways.

If we characterized the relationship the first way, then right and wrong  depend  on the the gods will. Something is right because the gods say so! Two basic problems attach to this view. First, it makes the the gods will arbitrary. The gods could have commanded lying, killing, cheating, and stealing to be right! You might be tempted to say that the gods wouldn’t command us to do these things. But why not? Remember the the gods will determines right and wrong, on this view, so that if the god said, “thou shalt kill,” that would be right. The second problem is that the theory renders the notion of the the gods goodness superfluous. We ordinarily attach meaning to the notion that “The the gods commands are good.” We believe we are attributing a property goodness to the the gods commands. But on this second account good simply means “commanded by the gods” so that “The gods commands are good” just means “the gods commands are commanded by the gods,” a useless tautology.

If we characterize the relationship the second way, then we must accept some standard of morality  independent  of the gods will. What the religious want to say is that in the gods’ infinite wisdom, they know that truthfulness, for example, is better than untruthfulness. On this view, the gods commands things  because they are right.  But this is much different from  making  something right. On this second view, the gods recognize the moral truth, but can’t change it. The gods can’t make killing, lying, cheating, and stealing right anymore than we can. Thus, the moral law limits the gods, since they can’t change it. And if we accept this second option, we have given up the divine command theory.

Two options present themselves if the standard of morality is independent of the gods. First, the standard for morality may lie beyond our comprehension, forcing us to rely on authority, revelation, or tradition to explain morality. Going this route ends philosophical ethics. The other alternative uses human reason to understand the gods law. Let’s pursue this second alternative.

• The History of Natural Law Ethics

The genesis of natural law ethics is in the writings of Aristotle , who first identified the natural with the good. All things “aim at some good,” he says at the beginning of his treatise on ethics, “and for this reason the good has rightly been declared that at which all things aim.” For individuals, ethics is a study of  the goal, end or purpose of human life . Politics, on the other hand, is a study of the good, goal, end, or purpose of society .

But what is good? Aristotle distinguished between  real  and  apparent  goods. Real goods satisfy natural needs, and they are good for us independent of our desires. Food, clothing, and shelter are examples of real goods. Apparent goods satisfy acquired wants, and are called good because we desire them. Shrimp, designer clothes, and mansions are apparent goods. A good life consists in the acquisition, over the course a lifetime, of all the real (natural) goods. These include external and bodily goods such as food, clothing, shelter, health, vitality, and vigor, and, “goods of the soul” like love, friendship, knowledge, courage, justice, honor, and skill. To obtain these real goods requires that we must act with good habits or virtues .   The person of good character exhibits moral virtues such as temperance, courage, and justice, and intellectual virtues like wisdom and prudence. A life full of  virtue is a good, happy, and fulfilling life. It is a life in accordance with our nature.

The idea that each thing has a goal or purpose in accordance with its nature, Aristotle called  teleology . (From the Greek  telos ; meaning goal, end, or purpose.) We can understand this if we consider an artifact like a pen. A pen that writes well is a good pen; it fulfills its purpose. Aristotle also believed that teleology was also a component of the natural world. Acorns develop into oak trees, caterpillars into butterflies, and little children into mature adults; the eyes are meant to see, the hands to grasp, and the kidneys to purify. Whatever satisfies its teleology is fulfilled; whatever fails to do so is defective. To be fulfilled means to actualize the potential inherent in the thing, whereas to be defective refers to the failure to do so. Thus,  actualization of natural potential is the essence of teleology and supplies the moral imperative for human beings.

The  Stoics  further developed the doctrine and first used the term  natural law . Stoicism flourished in Athens in the third century B.C.E. and later in the Roman Empire in such great figures as Seneca , Epictetus , Marcus Aurelius , and Cicero . Unlike Aristotle, the Stoics believed that human happiness was possible  without  external and bodily goods. They also emphasized rationality and the control of emotions. The Stoics insisted that we have a duty to follow nature, particularly our rational nature, rather than convention. The source of natural law was  Logos , the universal power or energy personified in nature’s laws.

That natural laws should prevail over cultural conventions led the Stoics to the idea of the cosmopolitan citizen. Roman jurisprudence, which needed to formulate rules to deal with various cultures, adopted the idea of a natural law for all the world’s citizens. Its basic premise was the natural law’s independence from cultural mores.

This idea had tremendous repercussions throughout human history and would inform the interaction of western Europe and much of the new world. In the sixteenth century, for instance, the Spaniards vehemently debated its applicability for the civilizations they discovered in the New World, and in the eighteenth century the idea influenced the founders of the American government. But the next great development in the idea after Stoicism occurred in the thirteenth century.  

3.  St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas (12251274) synthesized  Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and Christianity to give the natural law its classic formulation. In addition to Aristotle’s natural virtues, he added the  theological virtues  faith, hope, and charity. And to earthly happiness he added eternal beatitude. For Thomas, action in accordance with human nature fulfills God’s eternal plan, and Scripture’s commandments. Thus,  the natural law is God’s law known to human reason . Unlike the lower animals, we have the ability to understand the laws of our nature, and the  free will  to follow or disregard these laws. But how do we attain knowledge of the natural law? It is not innate, intuited, or easily derived from sense experience. Instead, we use  reason  to determine the conformity of moral conduct and nature. Since fulfilling natural needs makes us happy,  the natural is the good.  What then constitutes the law? While all mature individuals know its most general principles like do not kill the innocent, controversy surrounds reasoned conclusions about its specific applications.

The fundamental principle of natural law ethics is  that good should be done and evil avoided . This general principle may be specified into moral axioms like: “Do not kill!” “Be faithful!” “Preserve your life!” “Care for you children!” “Do not lie or steal!” “Life is a universal human good!” All of these axioms are both natural and good. We further specify these axioms by rational analysis and by reliance on Church, scripture, or revelation. As Aristotle pointed out, natural inclinations and tendencies are good, and we fulfill them by acquiring the elements which constitute human happiness such as: life, procreation, friendship, and knowledge. Nevertheless, within the boundaries set by human nature, the specific way one satisfies natural inclinations may differ. So a range of activities might satisfy, for instance, our aesthetic or intellectual needs. However, we all need the universal human goods. Thus, morality demands that we follow the laws of our nature which are the same for all on the basis of our shared humanity.

Still, we need not satisfy all of our natural tendencies. For instance, we must curb aggression and dishonesty, so that friendship and society thrive. In this way, we see how reason makes value judgments and imposes moral obligations upon us. The moral law demands that we develop our reason, and act in accordance with reason’s imperatives. As we have seen, nature directs us to live well, flourish in human communities, and, finally, to experience the beatific vision. Therefore, beginning with human nature and using reason to determine the goals nature sets for us, we determine what we  ought to do.

Perhaps a simple illustration may help. If we want to become nurses, then we  ought  to go to college and study nursing. Employing our rational faculties, we impose a non-moral obligation upon ourselves, given an antecedent goal or purpose. Analogously, reason imposes moral obligations upon us. If we want friends and friendship demands justice, then we ought to be just. Of course, the examples are very different. Moral obligations may not depend upon self-interest in the same way that non-moral obligations do. But the basic idea is the same, without goals nothing is obligatory. If we don’t want to be nurses or don’t want friends, then we probably have no obligation to study nursing or be just. And if there are no ultimate purposes in human life, then there probably are no moral obligations either. On the other hand, according to the natural law, the complete actualization of human potential demands that we develop our talents and be just. If we fail to do this, we violate the natural law.

4.  Some Philosophical Difficulties

Natural law theory derives values about what we ought to do from facts about our human nature. This is a major philosophical difficulty. When we derive what we  ought  to do from what  is  the case, we commit what philosophers call  the naturalistic fallacy . This fallacy involves the derivation of ethical conclusions from nonethical facts. Isn’t there a logical gap between what is the case and what ought to be the case? Even if it  is  true, for instance, that humans are naturally aggressive, does that mean they  should  be? Though a conception of human nature is relevant to morality, it seems unlikely that one could explain morality by appealing to human nature. Yet, if values don’t come from facts, where do they come from?

A second difficulty with the theory is that modern science rejects teleology. Explanations in science don’t refer to goals, values, or purposes. Rocks don’t fall because they desire the earth’s center, as Aristotle thought, nor does it rain in order to make plants grow. Rather, physical reality operates according to impersonal laws of cause and effect. Evolutionary theory rejects teleology and all of cosmic evolution results from a series of fortuitous occurrences. This brings to light another difficulty. Natural law theory traditionally maintains the immutability of human nature, which contradicts modern biology. Furthermore, technology transforms human human nature. What happens when gene splicing, recombinant DNA, and genetic engineering become normal? For various reasons then, natural law as traditionally conceived and modern science are at odds.

5.  Final thoughts

Of course the fact that, with the exception of the Catholic Church, the theory of natural law has fallen into disfavor doesn’t mean it is mistaken. If we believe that we can philosophically demonstrate the existence of a source of values and purposes for human beingsand believe also that knowledge of this source is accessible to human reasonthen one may rationally defend the theory. Furthermore, without such presuppositions, moral thinking is likely futile. A number of contemporary philosophers suggest that without some ultimate, objective source for morality, notions like obligation, duty, right, and good make no sense.

Nevertheless, natural law theory does rest upon a number of dubious philosophical propositions. We should not forget that, at least in the formulation of the Catholic Church, the natural law ultimately comes from God. Like the divine command theory, natural law ethics is open to all of the objections of philosophical theology. Is there a God? Are there any significant proofs for God’s existence? Why is God so “hidden?” How do we know our reason is sufficient to understand God’s natural moral laws? Moreover, a nontheistic natural law ethics must answer the challenge of the naturalistic fallacy. Why is the natural, good?

Whatever the conclusion, the gap between a nonteleological, factual, and scientific account of human nature and a teleological, ethical, and religious conception constitutes the central dispute in contemporary culture. We do not know how to reconcile the two poles, or if one or the other is bankrupt. But, as the historian of philosophy W.T. Jones asserts: “The whole history of philosophy since the seventeenth century is in fact hardly more than a series of variations on this central theme.”

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2 thoughts on “ summary of natural law ethics ”.

I would like to speak to the author in person; and discuss this subject. Open his mind to different possibilities or mindsets that are not mentioned here. And let him put myself in test of my own vision to update and improve my own knowledge and comprehension.

The unfortunate result of the ideal of equal rights in the sharing of goods, has produced a theoretical Socialism that simply does not work in practice. It has resulted as George Orwell wrote in his masterpiece “Animal Farm” that: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others!”

Inevitably the society becomes polarized into management and workers, with unequal shares and rights going to each. The kind of control by the management results from their greed– an effect by those whose forceful control becomes quickly apparent. We are all naturally greedy, so we need laws that protect our society from this being harmful to a part of it.

We should have realized long ago that what we should be ethically sharing is not the product of our labor (as in Socialism), but instead the socially just access rights to the natural resources, which enable us to be productive (according to our particular motivations). In particular this applies to land values. High productivity in cities compared to the rural areas, makes the values of the sites far greater, when they are at the center of the population.

Were the potential earnings of these resources (in the form of ground rent), collected and re-distributed through national investments in infrastructure and social needed help, like health (both individual and public), disability benefits and education according to ability and talent, there would be no resulting great division between the rich and the poor and taxation would no longer necessarily supply the government with an income.

Useful sites would be better available because any site owner who does not make proper use of it (but speculates in its growing value), would no longer find this behavior worthwhile.

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A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

Natural Law ethics

Introduction.

Natural law ethics goes back to Aristotle and his theory of telos; that everything has a nature which directs it towards a particular end goal. Aquinas Christianised this idea, adding that it is the Christian God who set a thing’s telos according to his omnibenevolent plan for the universe.

Christian ethics is most associated with the commands and precepts found in the Bible. Aquinas’ contribution was to argue that telos is also a source of Christian moral principles. Human nature has the God given ability to reason which comes with the ability both to intuitively know primary moral precepts and to apply them to moral situations and actions. Following this ‘natural law’ is thus also an essential element of living a moral life.

Aquinas was influenced by Aristotle’s views that there is a natural end to all beings. Everything has a purpose ( telos ) built into it by its nature. The nature of a thing determines the behaviours that are ‘natural’ to it. An acorn naturally grows into an oak tree, because of its inherent nature. Whereas Aristotle thought the final cause of all things was the prime mover, Aquinas claimed that it was the Christian God. The telos/end/goal of rational beings is the goodness of God, which for us involves glorifying God by following God’s moral law.

Ethics is therefore about using reason to discover the natural law within our nature and conforming our actions to it. God designed the universe to operate according to his divine plan by instilling telos in every being, to direct it towards its good end. Human beings are unique in that we have free will and are thus capable of either following or rebelling against the divine plan. Following God’s natural law results in flourishing (eudaimonia) both for individuals and society. Disobeying what is naturally good for us has the opposite effect.

“the light of reason is placed by nature in every man, to guide him in his acts towards his end”. – Aquinas.

The four tiers of law

The ultimate source of moral goodness and thus law is God’s omnibenevolent nature, which created and ordered the universe with a divine plan, known as the eternal law. However, that is beyond our understanding. We only have access to lesser laws that derive from the eternal law.

The eternal Law . God’s plan, built into the nature of everything which exists, according to his omnibenevolent nature.

The divine law – God’s revelation to humans in the Bible.

The natural law – The moral law God created in human nature, discoverable by human reason.  

Human law – The laws humans make which should be based on the natural and divine law. Human law gains its authority by deriving from the natural and divine law which themselves ultimately derive authority from God’s nature.

“Participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law”. – Aquinas

The Primary Precepts & Synderesis

Reason is a power of the human soul. Synderesis is the habit or ability of reason to discover foundational ‘first principles’ of God’s natural moral law.

“the first practical principles … [belong to] a special natural habit … which we call “synderesis” … is said to incite to good, and to murmur at evil, inasmuch as through first principles we proceed to discover, and judge of what we have discovered.” – Aquinas

The first principle synderesis tells us is called the synderesis rule: that the good is what all things seek as their end/goal (telos). This means that human nature has an innate orientation to the good.

“This therefore is the principle of law: that good must be done and evil avoided. ” – Aquinas

Further to this, through synderesis we learn the primary precepts: worship God, live in an orderly society, reproduce, educate, protect and preserve human life and defend the innocent. These primary precepts are the articulation of the orientations in our nature toward the good; the natural inclinations of our God-designed human nature, put into the form of ethical principles by human reason. Simply having reason allows a being to intuitively know these precepts. We are all born with the ability to know them.

Secondary precepts & conscientia

“there belongs to the natural law, first, certain most general precepts, that are known to all; and secondly, certain secondary and more detailed precepts, which are, as it were, conclusions following closely from first principles.” – Aquinas.

Conscientia is the ability of reason to apply he primary precepts to situations or types of actions. The judgement we then acquire is a secondary precept. E.g euthanasia: the primary precepts don’t say anything about euthanasia exactly, but we can use our reason to apply the primary precepts to euthanasia, and realise that it goes against the primary precept of protecting and preserving human life. Arguably it even disrupts the functioning of society too. Therefore, we can conclude the secondary precept that euthanasia is wrong.

Interior & exterior acts

A physical action itself is an exterior act because it occurs outside of our mind. Our intention; what we deliberately choose to do, is the interior act because it occurs inside our mind.

The point of natural law ethics is to figure out what fulfils the telos of our nature and act on that. By doing so, we glorify God. This cannot be done without intending to do it. A good exterior act without a good interior act does not glorify God because it is not done with the intention of fulfilling the God-given goal/telos of our nature.

The act of giving money to charity is an example of a good exterior act, but is only morally good when combined with the right kind of intention, which would be an interior act. If the intention was only to be thought of as a good person, which is not the right kind of intention, then the action is not truly morally good.

Whether telos exists

It is a strength of telos-based ethics that they are empirical, i.e., based on evidence. Aristotle observed that everything has a nature which inclines it towards a certain goal which he and Aquinas called its telos. It is a biological fact that certain behaviours cause an organism to flourish. Telos thus seems an empirically valid concept.

Weakness: Modern science’s rejection of final causation. Francis Bacon, called the father of empiricism, argued that only material and efficient causation were valid scientific concepts, not formal and final causation. The idea of telos is unscientific.

Aquinas and Aristotle claim every being has a unique essence which gives it a particular end/purpose. The issue is, modern science tells us that things are merely atoms moving in fields of force – i.e., material and efficient causation. The idea that entities have an ‘essence’ and thus a telos is unscientific. Physicist Sean Carroll concludes that purpose is not built into the “architecture” of the universe.

All supposed telos of a thing can be reduced to non-teleological concepts regarding its material structure and forces operating on it (material & efficient causation). There is no basis for grounding telos in God like Aquinas did, or as a required explanation of change like Aristotle did. For example, Aristotle would regard the telos of a seed as growing into a tree/bush. However, we now understand that change as resulting from the seed’s material structure which was itself caused by evolution, not anything like telos. Similarly, if there is anything in human nature which orients us towards certain behaviours, it is only because evolution programmed them into us because they happened to enable survival in our environment, not because of telos. So, Modern science can explain the world without telos. Telos is an unnecessary explanation.

Evaluation defending telos:

Polkinghorne, a modern Christian philosopher and physicist, argued that science is limited and cannot answer all questions. It can tell us the what but not the why . Science can tell us what the universe is like, but it cannot tell us why it is this way, nor why it exists. It cannot answer questions about purpose.

Polkinghorne’s argument is successful because science is limited. It cannot rule out something like a prime mover or God which could provide some kind of telos. If purpose existed, science would not be able to discover it. So, science cannot be used to dismiss the existence of purpose.

Evaluation critiquing telos:

Dawkins responds that it’s not valid to simply assume that there actually is a ‘why’. He makes an analogy: ‘what is the color of jealousy?’ That question is assuming that jealousy has a color. Similarly, just because we can ask why we and the universe exist, that doesn’t mean there actually is a purpose for it.

Dawkins’ argument is successful because it makes use of the burden of proof. Those who claim purpose exists have the burden of providing a reason to think it exists. There is no scientific basis for thinking anything other than material and efficient causation exists. Furthermore, scientists may one day actually explain ‘why’ the universe exists, but even if they don’t, that doesn’t justify a non-scientific explanation of purpose such as telos.

Universal human nature & moral dis/agreement

A strength of Natural law is that it is based on universal human nature. The primary precepts are found in the morality of all societies. For example, not killing for no reason and rules about stealing are universal. Valuing reproduction and education are also universal. Moral thinkers from different cultures came up with similar moral prescriptions such as the golden rule; to treat others as you would like to be treated, which can be found in ancient Chinese Philosophy, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity. This suggests that moral views are influenced by a universal human moral nature. This is good evidence that we are all born with a moral orientation towards the good (telos), which is the foundation of Aquinas’ theory.

Weakness: If all humans were really born with the ability to know the primary precepts, we should expect to find more moral agreement than we do. In fact, we find vastly different moral beliefs. Furthermore, the disagreement is not random but tends to fall along cultural lines. This suggests that it is actually social conditioning which causes our moral views, not a supposed natural law in human nature. This has been argued by psychologists like Freud. Fletcher argues this shows there is not an innate God-given ability of reason to discover a natural law. He concludes that ethics must be based on faith, not reason (Fletcher’s positivism).

Evaluation defending Aquinas:

Aquinas’ claim is merely that human nature contains an orientation towards the good, it doesn’t involve a commitment to humans actually doing more good than evil, nor to incredibly evil acts or cultures occurring infrequently. Aquinas acknowledges that there are many reasons we might fail to do good despite having an orientation towards it. These include original sin, mistakes in conscientia, lacking virtue and a corrupt culture. So, the fact that there is a core set of moral views found cross-culturally shows his theory is correct. 

Evaluation critiquing Aquinas:

Furthermore, cross-cultural morality might result merely from the basic requirement of a society to function. If anyone could kill or steal from anyone else for no reason whenever they wanted, it’s hard to see how a society could exist. That might create an existential pressure which influences the moral thinkers of a society, yielding prescriptions such as the golden rule. Cross-cultural ethics therefore has a practical reality as its basis, not God.

Alternatively, some of the cross-cultural similarities in moral codes might also have resulted from a biologically evolved moral sense rather than one designed by a God, which would mean they are not related to morality or telos at all.

Aquinas’ Natural theology vs Augustine & Karl Barth

A strength of Aquinas’ ethics is its basis in what seems like a realistic and balanced view of human nature as containing both good (reason & telos) but also bad (original sin). Natural law adds an engagement with autonomy to Christian ethics. Sola scriptura protestants like Calvin regard humans as mere passive receptacles for a set of biblical commands. However, Aquinas argues that God presumably gave humans reason so that they may use it.

Natural theology is the view that human reason is capable of knowing God, in this case God’s moral law. Aquinas defends this by first accepting that original sin destroyed original righteousness, meaning perfect rational self-control. However, it did not destroy our reason itself and its accompanying telos inclining us towards the good.

Only rational beings can sin. It makes no sense to say that animals could sin. Original sin made us sinners, but human nature was not reduced to the level of animals. We still have the ability to reason. Furthermore, Aquinas diverges from Augustine, claiming that concupiscence can sometimes be natural to humans, in those cases where our passions are governed by our reason. So, a comprehensive approach to Christian morality must include the use of reason to discover and act on the telos of our nature.

Weakness: Natural theology places a dangerous overreliance on human reason. Karl Barth was influenced by Augustine, who claimed that after the Fall our ability to reason become corrupted by original sin.   Barth’s argument is that is therefore dangerous to rely on human reason to know anything of God, including God’s morality.   “the finite has no capacity for the infinite” – Karl Barth.   Our finite minds cannot grasp God’s infinite being. Whatever humans discover through reason is not divine, so to think it is divine is idolatry – believing earthly things are God. Idolatry can lead to worship of nations and even to movements like the Nazis. After the corruption of the fall, human reason cannot reach God or God’s morality. That is not our telos. Only faith in God’s revelation in the bible is valid.

Final judgement defending Aquinas:   Barth’s argument fails because it does not address Aquinas’ point that our reason is not always corrupted and original sin has not destroyed our natural orientation towards the good. Original sin can at most diminish our inclination towards goodness by creating a habit of acting against it. Sometimes, with God’s grace, our reason can discover knowledge of God’s existence and natural moral law. So, natural moral law and natural theology is valid.

Arguably Aquinas has a balanced and realistic view, that our nature contains both good and bad and it is up to us to choose rightly.

Final judgement critiquing Aquinas: Barth still seems correct that being corrupted by original sin makes our reasoning about God’s existence and morality also corrupted. Even if there is a natural law, we are unable to discover it reliably. The bad in our nature unfortunately means we cannot rely on the good. Whatever a weak and misled conscience discovers is too unreliable.

Humanity’s belief that it has the ability to know anything of God is the same arrogance that led Adam and Eve to disobey God. Humanity believing that it has the power to figure out right and wrong is what led to the arrogant certainty of the Nazis in their own superiority. This arrogance of natural theology is evidence of a human inability to be humble enough to solely rely on faith.

Whether Religious & Natural law ethics is outdated

A strength of Natural law ethics is its availability to everyone because all humans are born with the ability to know and apply the primary precepts. Regarding those who do not belong to Abrahamic religion the Bible says:   “Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires … God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right” (Romans 2:14-15).   So, it is possible to follow the natural law even if you are not Christian and/or have no access to the divine law (Bible).

Weakness: Secularists often argue that biblical morality (divine law) is primitive and barbarous, showing it comes from ancient human minds, not God. J. S. Mill calls the Old Testament “Barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people”. Freud similarly argued that religious morality reflected the “ignorant childhood days of the human race”.   Aquinas’ Natural law ethics is criticised as outdated for the same reason. Medieval society was more chaotic. Strict absolutist ethical principles were needed to prevent society from falling apart. This could explain the primary precepts. For example, it was once useful to restrict sexual behaviour to marriage, because of how economically fatal single motherhood tended to be. It was useful to simply ban all killing, because killing was much more common. It was useful to require having lots of children, because most children died.   The issue clearly is that all of these socio-economic conditions have changed. So, the primary precepts are no longer useful. Society can now afford to gradually relax the inflexibility of its rules without social order being threatened.

Conservative Catholics often argue that natural law is not outdated because it serves an important function without which society flourishes less. They argue that secular liberal western culture is ethically retrograde because of its abandonment of traditional moral principles like the primary precepts. This shows that we really do need to follow God’s natural law in order to flourish.

Marriages are fewer and less successful. Mental illness increases. Rates of etcetc

People are no longer united by an ethic of devoting our lives to something greater than ourselves. Self-interest and materialistic consumerism is all modern society has to offer by way of meaning and purpose.

“[excluding] God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a ‘reductive vision of the person and his destiny’”. – Pope Benedict XIV.

Here, Benedict XVI references an encyclical called “Caritas in Veritate”, where he argued that while there is indeed religious fanaticism which runs against religious freedom, the promotion of atheism can deprive people of “spiritual and human resources”. The atheist worldview is that we are a “lost atom in a random universe”, in which case we can grow and evolve, but not really develop morally.

“ideological rejection of God and an atheism of indifference, oblivious to the Creator and at risk of becoming equally oblivious to human values, constitute some of the chief obstacles to development today. A humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism. Only a humanism open to the Absolute can guide us in the promotion and building of forms of social and civic life — structures, institutions, culture and ethos — without exposing us to the risk of becoming ensnared by the fashions of the moment.” – Pope Benedict XIV.

So, religious and natural law ethics is not outdated but is a vital societal anchor for morality, meaning and purpose.

Natural law ethics is outdated because Aquinas’ theory was actually a reaction to his socio-economic context and since that has changed, Natural law is no longer relevant.

Aquinas thought that he discovered the primary precepts through human reason, as God designed. However, it’s a simpler explanation that Aquinas was simply intuiting what was good for people in his socio-economic condition. The idea that the resulting principles actually came from God was only in his imagination.

The great strength of religion as a form of social organisation is also its greatest weakness. By telling people that its ethical precepts (such as the primary precepts or sanctity of life) come from God it creates a strong motivation to follow them. Yet, because those precepts are imagined to come from an eternal being, they become inflexible and painstakingly difficult to progress. This makes them increasingly outdated.

The double effect

A single action can have two effects, one in accordance with the primary precepts and one in violation of them. Aquinas claims that such actions can be justified the good effect is intended while the bad effect is “beside the intention”. This is because being a good person involves developing the kind of virtuous character which acts with the intention of following God’s natural law.

Aquinas illustrated this with killing in self-defence. There are two effects; the saving of a life and the killing of a life. Killing someone, which clearly violates the primary precept of preserving human life, can be justified so long as it is an effect which is a secondary effect beside the intention of an action whose other effect was intended and was in accordance with the primary precepts.

There are four generally accepted conditions in modern Catholicism for an action to be justified by the double effect:

The intentionality condition. The good effect must be intended and the bad effect must be ‘besides the intention’. Aquinas illustrated the double effect with the example of killing someone in self-defence. So long as you intended to save your own life, then it is morally permissible to kill someone in self-defence. The bad effect is ‘besides the intention’. 

The proportionality condition. The good effect must be at least equivalent to the bad effect. Saving your life is equivalent to ending the life of the attacker. You can’t use more force than is necessary to save your life – there must be proportionality there too. 

The means-end condition. The bad effect and the good effect must both be brought about immediately – at the same time. Otherwise, the person would be using a bad effect as a means to bring about a good effect – which is not permissible.

The double effect only applies to actions which have two effects – one good, one bad – where both effects are brought about immediately.

The nature of the act condition. The action must be either morally good, indifferent or neutral. Acts such as lying or killing an innocent person can never be justifiable. An attacker would not count as an innocent person.

Whether the double effect is unbiblical

A strength of the double effect is that it helps to resolve seemingly disparate biblical themes. Jesus’ commands were not merely about following certain rules, but also about having the right moral intention and virtue (E.g. sermon on the mount). The double effect provides important clarity to Christian ethics by showing the relation between the important moral elements of intention and following the moral law. Good intention is important, not to the degree of justifying pure violations of the law, but when involved in an action that has a good effect it can justify permitting a bad side effect. 

Weakness: the double effect is unbiblical. Some theologians reject the double effect as unbiblical because God’s commandments are presented as absolute and not dependent on someone’s intention. For those theologians, the distinction between intended effects of actions and merely foreseen effects “beside” the intention has no morally relevant significance. It’s not that intention has no relevance in traditional Christian ethics. Most theologians accept that people are not immoral for consequences of their actions which they could not have foreseen which violate God’s commands. For example if you decide to drive your car at the time a drunk person happened to be out and you ran them over, that would not be considered your fault even through it was an effect of your action. However if you could foresee a bad consequence, the fact that it was a secondary effect beside the effect you did intend doesn’t justify it for theologians who take this view.

Evaluation defending Natural law:

This criticism is unsuccessful because Natural law is different to the Bible. The Bible might be inflexible, but that is the divine law. The natural law in our nature is more flexible because it is in the form of very general precepts which require application and the telos of the natural law is glorifying God, which requires that it be our intention to glorify God – thus showing how intention is relevant.

Evaluation criticising Natural law:

This weakness is successful because it shows natural law is trying to add flexibility to inflexible biblical law – e.g. thou shalt not kill. Self-defence, passive euthanasia, even perhaps abortion could be justified by the double effect. The natural and divine law do not cover separate areas but cross-over and therefore conflict on this point of inflexibility. Christians must choose the Bible over Natural law.

Proportionalism & the double effect

A strength of Natural law is its flexibility due to the doctrine of the double effect.

This has been used by modern Catholics to allow, for example, passive euthanasia, abortion to save the life of the mother (though this is complex and controversial in catholicism), and contraception to prevent the spread of AIDS.  

Weakness: B. Hoose’s proportionalism

Hoose developed natural law into what he claimed was a more flexible and coherent form called proportionalism.

Proportionalists agree about following the primary precepts, but argue it is acceptable to go against them if you have a proportionate reason for doing so – i.e., if your action will bring about more good than bad.

The nature of the act condition is invalid because what matters is the proportion of value to disvalue produced by your action. The means-end condition is invalid because what matters is the ultimate value/disvalue proportion.

For proportionalists, the only valid condition in the double effect is proportionality and your intention must be to act with with a proportionate reason.

E.g., Hoose would agree with Fletcher’s example of killing a baby to save the lives of its family. It brings about more value than disvalue, so we have a proportionate reason for breaking the primary precepts in that case.

A resulting strength of proportionalism is it’s far greater flexibility.

Euthanasia, abortion, genetic engineering, anything natural law said to be wrong could in principle be right depending on whether there is a proportionate reason for doing them in a particular situation. There are no intrinsically evil actions. An action can be intrinsically in violation of the principles of natural law, but for proportionalism that doesn’t establish wrongness.

Hoose’s argument for the greater coherence of proportionalism.

Aquinas said it’s bad to go against the primary precepts, but it could overall be justified through the double effect in some cases.

Hoose objects that an overall good act cannot be composed of bad parts (e.g breaking the precepts). Moral evil is moral evil, it could never be a component of moral goodness.

Moral actions are composed of parts like intention and their dis/accordance with the precepts, but those parts cannot be called good or bad in themselves. Only the overall act can be good or bad. So, no part of an action can be morally bad, including what the action itself is and whether it breaks the precepts.

The ‘parts’ of an action are still good/evil, not in a moral sense but in a factual or physical sense, regarding their enabling or disabling of flourishing (eudaimonia).

Factual enabling of flourishing ‘Ontic goods’. These are physical or factual goods, such as health, life and knowledge (these all enable flourishing and are thus ontic goods). ‘Ontic evils’ are the deprivation of such goods. Whatever in an action enables flourishing is an ‘ontic good’, whatever disables it is an ‘ontic evil’.

To decide whether the action is overall morally good however, we need to judge whether the action produced more ontic good compared to ontic evil. If it does, we have a proportionate reason for doing it, even if it goes against the primary precepts.

Aquinas would say killing the baby in Fletcher’s example is just morally evil – but Hoose is saying no, it’s only an ontic evil – which must be measured against the ontic good caused by the action (saving the whole family). If there’s a proportionate reason for doing it, then it is a morally good act to kill the baby.

“An act is either morally right or morally wrong. It cannot be both. If we talk of morally evil (meaning morally wrong) elements in an act that is morally right and is performed by a morally good person, we confuse the whole issue.” – B. Hoose.

Evaluation defending Natural law

John Paul II defends Natural law ethics, arguing that proportionalism is not a valid development because it misunderstands the objective/intention required for ethical action.

“Acting is morally good when the choices of freedom are in conformity with man’s true good and thus express the voluntary ordering of the person towards his ultimate end” – John Paul II

Under natural law, we intentionally act on the moral law discovered in our nature by reason (primary precepts). God designed us to intuitively know these moral laws – so our telos/purpose is to follow them. The goal of natural law is to follow the primary precepts. John Paul II is correct that Proportionalism misdirects our goal/intention towards the balance of ontic goods over evils produced by our action. God has designed us to follow the primary precepts – so that is our ethical purpose. Hoose misdirects us away from that.

“The morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the “object” rationally chosen by the deliberate will,  as is borne out by the insightful analysis, still valid today, made by Saint Thomas.” – John Paul II.

Evaluation criticising Natural law

Defenders of traditional Natural law like John Paul II assume that our ultimate end is simply to follow the precepts of natural law in a ridged deontological way.

Calculating the ontic goods over evils of our actions could actually be part of our ultimate end.

Even Aquinas accepted that his list of primary precepts was not final but could be added to. The project of understanding the telos of our nature is ongoing. Developments like those of proportionalism cannot be dismissed simply because they differ with the traditional approach.

Whether proportionalism is better suited to our fallen world

A strength of the double effect is that it is pragmatic.

It fits with the reality of moral decision making. Sometimes actions can have two effects and a method is required that makes sense of how to judge them. Aquinas’ self-defence illustration is intuitive.

Proportionalism has the strength of being better suited to moral decision making in our imperfect world.

The Fall destabilised creation, including the moral order. God designed the natural law to perfectly fit following it with human flourishing. In a post-lapsarian world, the presence of ontic evil around acts that follow the natural law sometimes mean they prevent flourishing. Taking a deontological approach to natural law doesn’t make sense.

Ontic goods and evils are defined in relation to whatever enables or disables flourishing. Flourishing is part of our telos. So arguably following proportionalism would successfully orientate us towards our telos.

Weakness: John Paul II argues that although consequences matter, proportionalism takes that too far when it claims that there are no intrinsically evil actions.

It can never enable achievement of our telos to do such acts. Consequences certainly matter, but they can never make an intrinsically evil act acceptable. Such acts disorder us; they can never rightly order us towards our end, even if done with the intention of bringing about a greater balance of ontic goods over ontic evils. It is better to avoid them and bear the consequences, even if it means suffering and dying. JP2 reminds us that early Christians were prepared to be martyred for their faith.

Only intentionally following of the natural law within our nature aims us at our telos of glorifying God. Consequences matter to some degree, but not to the point of justifying intrinsically evil acts.

“Christian ethics, which pays particular attention to the moral object, does not refuse to consider the inner ‘teleology’ of acting, inasmuch as it is directed to promoting the true good of the person; but it recognizes that it is really pursued only when the essential elements of human nature are respected. The human act, good according to its object, is also capable of being ordered to its ultimate end … If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it … an intention is good when it has as its aim the true good of the person in view of his ultimate end. But acts whose object is ‘not capable of being ordered’ to God and ‘unworthy of the human person’ are always and in every case in conflict with that good.” – John Paul II.

Evaluation defending proportionalism

John Paul II’s reference to the Christian Martyrs is a self-serving illustration. It’s easy for most people to make sense of sacrificing oneself rather than break the natural law. However, what about cases where if we don’t break the natural law, we will be letting others suffer and die? Euthanasia is a clear example.

Evaluation criticising proportionalism

This is the ultimate argument against all forms of religious consequentialism. They misunderstand the purpose of morality. We are not here on earth to achieve happiness, but to follow God’s moral law. If suffering results from following God’s law due to living in a fallen world, that doesn’t invalidate God’s law. Aristotle and Aquinas both explained that flourishing is not happiness, but cultivating the virtues which rationally order us in our actions towards our end. As JP2’s example of the martyrs shows, if it is virtuous to suffer and die then that is what we should do, technically that is flourishing. Cardinal Newman expressed this sentiment in a poetic if stark manner:

“The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony … than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.” – John Henry Newman.

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The Declaration Of Independence: The Natural Law Theory

Natural law has taught the need for individual survival, law and government are required if there is to be order and security. Hobbs adopted an authoritarian philosophy which places order above justice. By presenting social contracts , we surrender natural freedoms in order to create an orderly society. An example of said social contract between citizens would take the form of an agreement not to harm one another. Hobbes also acknowledges that out of self-interest we are likely to breach social contracts, and to do that there must be a political sovereign to punish the violators of said social contracts (Wacks, 2012).

The social contract preserves the natural rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as the pursuit of happiness, and the common good” (Wacks, 2012). Natural rights to freedom is constrained by the law of nature and its sanction that we should not harm each other in life, health, liberty, or possessions’. Locke advocated a limited form of government, the checks and balances between branches of government, this would reduce government and exploit individual liberties (Wacks, 2012). There is not social contract between Annunaki and humans, which creates wonder if there would be social contract between the humans themselves.

Locke’s theory would have the humans raising up against the Annunaki, to fight for the natural rights granted to all under God. However, the Annunaki are the Gods that have saved the human, and are claiming that it is their divine right to enforce such a Constitution on the humans. Jean-Jacques Rosseau For Rosseau’s works, social contract plays the main role , while natural law takes more of a back seat. As an individual may be egotistic and elect that his/her personal interest should supersede the mutual interest.

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U.S. Constitution.net

Natural Law in American Government

Foundations of natural law.

Natural law is the cornerstone behind the formation of American government. This concept has roots that stretch back to ancient philosophical traditions, having been elaborated upon by key thinkers.

Thomas Aquinas, the medieval philosopher and theologian, saw natural law as part of a larger framework called "eternal law." Eternal law was God's blueprint for the world, and natural law was how this divine plan could be understood by human beings. According to Aquinas, natural law is discovered through reason. When we're thinking rationally about right and wrong, we're essentially tuning into natural law. It's like a built-in moral compass everyone has, pointing towards fundamental principles like justice and fairness.

Moving to the Enlightenment period, John Locke refined these ideas even more. For Locke, natural law wasn't just about moral obligations but also about individual rights. Born into a person's essence, these rights included life, liberty, and property—an echo that resounded powerfully with the American Founding Fathers. The logic here is straightforward. If people naturally hold rights by virtue of their human nature, any government must respect these rights to maintain legitimacy. A government that fails in this regard loses its right to govern.

Locke's thoughts, in tandem with Aquinas's principles, profoundly influenced the American Founders. The Founding Fathers were heavily guided by centuries of philosophical discourse. They knew they wanted a government that acknowledged and protected the natural rights of its citizens. Hence, these philosophies shaped their construction of a new political order.

It's also crucial to understand that natural law played a role not just in declaring rights but also in limiting government power. The Framers carefully created a system of checks and balances designed to prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful. They wanted to make sure no one's natural rights could be easily trampled.

This deep-seated respect for natural law is what provided a rationale for the structure of the American government. It wasn't just about creating laws and policies but aligning them with an existing, timeless moral order. The Founders' design was intended to serve as a safeguard for the natural rights everyone is born with, ensuring that the government remained an instrument for the people, not a force against them.

Natural Law in the Declaration of Independence

In analyzing the Declaration of Independence, we find the essence of natural law principles intricately incorporated into its text. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author, encapsulated these concepts masterfully. The declaration's preamble famously states:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

This proclamation is a profound expression of natural law.

Jefferson's articulation of "unalienable Rights" echoes the Enlightenment ideas that were so central to the Founders' philosophy. These rights are depicted as self-evident truths, aligning with the natural law view that such principles are inherent to human nature and universal. They do not depend on the whims of governments or external authorities but are intrinsic to our existence.

The Declaration also embeds the social contract theory—a cornerstone of natural law philosophy. Jefferson asserts that governments are instituted to secure these natural rights, deriving "their just powers from the consent of the governed." This reflects Locke's belief that a legitimate government must be built on the consent of those it governs. The purpose of this government, according to natural law, is not to grant rights but to recognize and protect those rights that individuals inherently possess.

When Jefferson lists the grievances against King George III, he is essentially cataloging the violations of the colonists' natural rights, thereby justifying the colonies' quest for independence. Each grievance underscores the ways in which these innate rights were trampled—whether through unjust laws, taxation without representation, or denying trial by jury. These grievances weren't random complaints; they were foundational arguments rooted in natural law principles, asserting that the British Crown had breached the social contract.

The Declaration of Independence is a testament to the profound influence of natural law on the Founding Fathers. Through Jefferson's articulation, we see natural law principles operating as the moral foundation upon which American independence was justified and a new government erected. The commitment to these principles is what made the Declaration an enduring manifesto of freedom, aligning America's revolutionary cause with the ageless truths of natural law theory.

Natural Law and the Constitution

Natural law also had a profound impact on the crafting of the U.S. Constitution. The debates during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were deeply influenced by natural law principles. The Framers sought to create a new system of government that would strike a delicate balance—a government strong enough to maintain order and protect liberty, yet restrained enough to avoid tyranny.

James Madison, often hailed as the "Father of the Constitution," brought a nuanced understanding of natural law to the table. He recognized the importance of protecting inherent rights while also ensuring that the government could govern effectively. Madison's contributions were pivotal in shaping a constitution that honored natural rights while providing a practical framework for governance. His advocacy for a system of checks and balances aimed to safeguard natural rights by preventing any one branch from becoming too powerful.

Alexander Hamilton also played a crucial role in integrating natural law principles into the Constitution. In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton argued eloquently for a strong central government that could effectively protect the rights of its citizens. He believed that a well-constructed union would best preserve the ideals of natural law by ensuring stability and coherence across the states.

The balance between federal and state powers was a contentious topic at the Convention. The Framers had to address the challenge of creating a national government that was powerful enough to unify the diverse states while still respecting the individual sovereignty of each state. This tension reflects natural law philosophy: the need to balance individual liberties with societal needs.

Natural law also informed the inclusion of specific rights within the Constitution. The Bill of Rights, drafted by Madison, was heavily influenced by the natural rights philosophy that underpinned the Declaration of Independence. These first ten amendments were not just legal protections; they were a reaffirmation of the inherent rights that every person possessed by virtue of human nature. Rights such as freedom of speech, religion, and the press were seen as essential to protecting the individual against government overreach.

Through the process of drafting and ratifying the Constitution, it became clear that the Framers were intent on creating a government that was in harmony with the moral order prescribed by natural law. This is evident in the very framework of the Constitution, which prioritizes individual rights and the common good through a well-balanced system of governance. The Constitution thus stands as a testament to the enduring influence of natural law on American political thought, shaping a government that respects and protects the fundamental rights and liberties of its citizens.

Judicial Interpretation and Natural Law

Judicial interpretation of the Constitution has, over time, oscillated between various schools of thought, including textualism, originalism, and adaptive approaches. Central to these discourses is the role of natural law in shaping judicial decisions, a concept that several justices have actively incorporated into their jurisprudence.

John Marshall, often hailed as the greatest Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, set a critical precedent for integrating natural law principles into constitutional interpretation. In the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison (1803), Marshall articulated the principle of judicial review, empowering the courts to nullify any law conflicting with the Constitution. 1 This decision was not merely about procedural justice but about upholding an overarching moral and legal order. Marshall's reasoning was deeply anchored in the understanding that the Constitution inherently reflects a commitment to protecting natural rights, thereby obligating the judiciary to act as a guardian of these fundamental principles.

In the contemporary era, justices like Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch offer renewed emphasis on natural law within the framework of originalism. Justice Clarence Thomas has often drawn upon natural law to frame his understanding of the Constitution. For instance, in his concurring opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), which dealt with the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, Thomas extensively cited the natural rights philosophy of John Locke and the commitment of the Founders to these principles. 2 Thomas argued that the rights enumerated in the Constitution are rooted in the natural rights of individuals, pre-existing the document and thus deserving of protection against governmental encroachment.

Justice Neil Gorsuch has similarly echoed these sentiments, frequently referencing natural law in his opinions and extra-judicial writings. His judicial philosophy, often reflecting a commitment to the inviolability of human life, demonstrates how natural law continues to shape modern constitutional interpretation. In his approach to rights and liberties under the Due Process Clause, Gorsuch has underscored the Constitution's protection of deeply rooted rights and liberties, a principle aligned with natural law's emphasis on fundamental human goods. 3

The judicial landscape has not been solely dominated by natural law, though. The Supreme Court's approach has also reflected other interpretative frameworks. Yet, the enduring relevance of natural law illuminates how the Constitution is seen not just as a legal document but as a moral proclamation—an instrument for achieving justice in line with the inherent dignity of individuals.

Through historical and modern applications, we observe that judicial reliance on natural law offers a unique perspective that aligns closely with the original intent of the Constitution. Whether through Marshall's foundational principles or through Thomas and Gorsuch's contemporary originalism, the invocation of natural law serves to remind us that the Constitution is deeply infused with a commitment to the natural rights that form the bedrock of individual liberty and justice. This continuing interplay between natural law and judicial interpretation underscores the Constitution's role as an enduring defender of those unalienable rights so eloquently articulated by the Founding Fathers.

Contemporary Debates on Natural Law

In contemporary American jurisprudence, the role and relevance of natural law theory have sparked lively debates. The resurgence of interest in natural law among conservative legal scholars and judges highlights the enduring impact of these philosophical principles on our understanding of the Constitution and its application. However, this revival is not without its critics, chiefly among legal positivists and other schools of thought who challenge the practical implications and theoretical foundations of natural law theory.

Organizations like the Federalist Society, a group of conservative and libertarian legal professionals and academics, have played a pivotal role in reshaping American legal thought, emphasizing the principles of originalism and textualism. For many within this movement, natural law serves as the moral foundation that guides their interpretation of the Constitution.

Justice Clarence Thomas maintains that the Constitution's text and principles are deeply rooted in natural law. His jurisprudence reflects the belief that the Constitution is imbued with moral imperatives that pre-exist its writing and demand adherence. Similarly, Justice Neil Gorsuch has championed natural law through his judicial decisions and academic writings, evident in his reasoning around moral and ethical issues.

Legal positivists argue that natural law's reliance on moral reasoning can lead to judicial overreach and subjectivity. They contend that the law should be determined by the will of the people and enacted through established legal processes. The interpretation of laws should be grounded in their literal text and the intentions of the legislature, rather than abstract moral principles. This positivist approach aims to create clear, predictable, and democratically accountable legal standards.

Critics raise concerns about the potential for natural law theory to undermine pluralism and lead to a form of judicial activism that imposes a particular moral viewpoint on society. In a diverse society, legal interpretations grounded in natural law can become contentious, as they rely on philosophical assertions about human nature and moral goods that are not universally accepted.

Some suggest that natural law theory's historicity and perceived lack of clarity make it difficult to apply consistently. Unlike legal positivism, natural law requires judges to engage in intricate moral reasoning, which can vary widely depending on the individual's philosophical convictions, potentially leading to unpredictable legal outcomes.

Proponents of natural law argue for its indispensable role in maintaining justice and moral order. They assert that without an underlying philosophical framework, legal systems risk becoming arbitrary and disconnected from fundamental principles of human dignity and rights. The Constitution's preamble and the Declaration of Independence are seen as enduring affirmations of natural law principles, intended by the Framers to guide American governance.

The ongoing debates about natural law in contemporary jurisprudence highlight a fundamental tension within the American legal tradition, reflecting broader questions about the nature of justice, the role of government, and the interpretation of our foundational legal documents. These debates remind us of the enduring intricacy and richness of the American constitutional project, as envisioned by the Framers, who sought to balance the immutable principles of natural law with the practicalities of governance in a constitutional republic.

The enduring influence of natural law on American governance underscores a commitment to fundamental rights and liberties. By grounding the Constitution in these timeless principles, the Founding Fathers created a framework that continues to protect individual freedoms and ensure just governance, reflecting the vision of a constitutional republic dedicated to safeguarding human dignity and justice.

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5 5 What is Natural Law Like?

• Published: March 2013
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This chapter analyses the theory of natural law. While acknowledging that John Finnis' work in Natural Law and Natural Rights is a valuable contribution to jurisprudence and practical philosophy, the chapter attempts to show that there is a further question worth asking — what is natural law like? — to which answer Finnis's book does not actually make much of a contribution.

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Explain what is meant by natural in natural moral law

Natural Moral Law is another ethical theory produced by Thomas Aqunius. Within it he refers to moral decision making as natural and instinctive and argues the differences between apparent and real good, plus interior and exterior good.

Firstly Natural Moral Law is said by Aqunius to be instinctive, what he meant by that was that to make the right moral decisions is in our nature so we don’t have to think about it. For example when arguing over disputes within sexuality using natural moral law would mean that the right thing would be heterosexuality because it is the one which comes naturally to us. We know this because it is what God has built in us so we are designed for it unlike the unnatural sexual ways of homosexuality and bisexuality.

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Another key concept within Natural Moral Law is the distinguishing differences between apparent and real good. This belief is that no one actually seeks evil, we all seek good but instead of real good we sometimes settle on apparent good which seems to be real but is actually resting on a mistake. For example Hitler sought to do good by ethnic cleansing which was the real good thing to do in his eyes but in reality was the apparent good as the real good thing to do would have been for everyone to live harmoniously with each other. To distinguish real good from apparent good we need to understand what is right which Aqunius believed we can do through reason and experience which God makes in people, this is what makes Natural Moral Law natural.

Another aspect to consider in Natural Moral Law is the distinguishing differences between interior acts and exterior acts. Aqunius explained that intensions are important as actions. For example giving money to charity with the intension to look good to other people would be classified as an exterior act of good, where as giving money to charity with the intension to do good because it is your purpose would be classified as an interior act of good. So to distinguish interior acts from exterior acts we need to understand the intension behind the act, as an act may be good in itself but done for a wrong intension, the intensions are as important as the actions taken. The natural part within this is that the right intension would be to reach are potential for which God has created us for which is to live a virtuous life.

In conclusion what is meant by natural in Natural Moral Law is the ideal nature which enables us to use reason and experience to understand what is right in which God has designed within us, the distinguishing between real good and apparent good, and lastly the distinguishing between interior acts and exterior acts.

Document Details

• Author Type Student
• Word Count 471
• Page Count 1
• Level AS and A Level
• Subject Religious Studies & Philosophy
• Type of work Coursework

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Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

Donald J. Trump intends to bring independent regulatory agencies under direct presidential control. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

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By Jonathan Swan Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman

• Published July 17, 2023 Updated July 18, 2023

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

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