Natural
Law
The General
Idea, Its History and
Aquinas’ Rendition Thereof
(This file
contains the contents of the PowerPoint file, for downloading and printing
out.)
Why we
might need something like Natural Law
wBecause laws can be
unjust: I.e. there must be a standard of justice above and beyond human
positive law
wWhy should we obey the
law? (because they are right.)
wLaws can be and
sometimes need to be changed
The
General Idea
wThat there is an
ethical or moral norm, a ‘law’ written into the nature of things (thus “natural
law”),
wwhose remote
promulgator is God the Creator and Author of Nature
wbut whose proximate
promulgator is the human reason or the human heart or conscience or moral sense
The
General Idea (cont’d)
wAnd that this law is
something which even human legislators have to conform to and which even gives
power to legitimate human laws, makes them right or wrong, just or unjust
wand which in certain circumstances can
make it right or even obligatory to disobey the human or ‘positive’ law.
The History
of Natural Law
wPythagoreans (inner
harmony and harmony with the cosmos)
wSocrates, Plato,
Aristotle
wCynics, and esp.
Stoics
wRoman law and
jurisprudence
wmedieval Islamic and
Jewish writers
wHebrew and Christian
Scriptures, esp. Rm 2:12-16.
Its
History (cont’d)
wAll this going to
Medieval Theologians and Jurists.
wWhich is to say,
altogether a complex and confusing heritage
Aquinas’
Rendition of Natural Law
w“Law” in ‘Natural
Law”, as Thomas notes, is an analogous concept:
wOn the one hand, there
is an analogy with respect to positive law: it’s a guide to activity for
rational beings
wOn the other hand
there is an analogy with respect to law of nature: with a basis in
nature, or a ground in the nature of things
Aquinas’
Rendition of Natural Law (cont’d)
wThe question is, which sense of ‘nature’?
wNature with a capital N, as with the
Stoics - fitting in with the Cosmos and the Logos at work in the Cosmos
wor nature as in primitive, natural versus
artificial, as with the Cynics and Rousseau
wor human nature,
the nature which we have, as in (Plato or) Aristotle: a ‘law’ written in to
human nature so to speak
Aquinas’
Rendition of Natural Law
wTo cut a long story
short, for Thomas, the reference is to human nature rather than Nature
or natural in the sense of versus artificial, following Aristotle rather than
the Stoics
wAs in Aristotle,
‘nature’ as in ‘human nature’ is a notion borrowed eventually from biology and
has an explicitly teleological sense
Aquinas’
Rendition of Natural Law
wNature = essence considered as a dynamism
or the foundation of an integrated group of potentialities, inbuilt tendencies,
directed dynamisms: acorns become oak trees, not puppy dogs. “Natural”, then, =
spontaneous rather than forced, the kind of spontaneities or natural tendencies
being relative to the kind of being.
Aquinas’
Rendition of Natural Law
wwhat’s in
line with natural law = what fulfills human potentialities, what accords
with its ‘natural bents’, what fulfills human being in its various aspects
wwhat’s
against natural law = what leads away or frustrates or prevents this, what
stops human nature progressing in the direction of its natural tendencies and
reaching its inbuilt goals
Aquinas’
Rendition of Natural Law
wIn more
contemporary language:
wWhat’s in
line with or contrary to natural law = what contributes to versus what
prevents or inhibits human flourishing, and eventually the fullness of
human flourishing
wOf course,
further explication of what fulfills human being in its various aspects will
depend on ones conception of what it is to be a human being
Aquinas’
Rendition of Natural Law
wAquinas in this
respect distinguishes various levels of directed dynamisms or natural
tendencies: (
•being: what we
share with everything, a striving to be, a tendency to go on being
•animality: tendencies we share with the rest of the animal
world
•rationality:
tendencies peculiar to ourselves as rational beings
Aquinas’
Rendition of Natural Law
wOne has to be a
bit careful here, of course: being and animal being e.g. sexuality, anger,
fear, motherly love, are not the same in human being as elsewhere: they are
personalized, also historicized and culturalized,
taken up into a world of meanings
Aquinas’
Rendition of Natural Law
wAlso, just to
distinguish such levels, of course, doesn’t solve the problem. As in Aristotle’s ethics and politics, what
makes for human flourishing has to be chiseled out of the messiness of human
life and sometimes requires a good deal of ‘phronesis’
or practical wisdom. But the bottom line is that there is a reference point, in
something called ‘human nature’.
Objections to Natural Law Theory
wObjection 1: the
theory presupposes that there is such a thing as ‘human nature’. This can be contested from a number of
different directions:
•(a) While there may be a biological base, e.g. a common ‘genome’, this
doesn’t decide very much: human nature in any interesting sense is socially and
historically determined
Objections (cont’d)
wObjection 1:
(cont’d) that there is no such thing anyway as ‘human nature’
•(b)On the other
side, isn’t it of the nature of human beings to be somewhat self-creative
anyway (Cf. the existentialists, esp. Sartre: in the case of human beings,
“existence comes before essence”).
Perhaps we do this even as a species??
Objections (cont’d)
wObjection 2: on
the other hand, the theory supposes that human nature is not totally corrupted,
e.g. by the Fall, that reflection on who we are and what we are in the concrete
can give reliable guidance on what’s the good thing for us to do.
wIf human nature is corrupted to this extent, then we have no recourse
but to rely on revealed, ‘divine command’ ethics.
Objections
wObjection 3: the
theory makes a jump from ‘is’ to ‘ought’, from facts to values. But no amount
of facts will tell us by themselves what’s good or right. (Cf. Hume)
wPartial Reply: all that the theory really needs is the
affirmations 1) that human flourishing is a good thing, and 2) that the good
ought to be sought and the bad avoided.
How do we know it?
w1) by
understanding human beings
w2) by being in
the right way ourselves: a person of phronesis, of
practical wisdom, equipped with the virtues so that our judgement
is not impaired as to what really leads to human flourishing in the concrete
How we know it (cont’d)
w3) Is it
entirely by reasoning, or by a mixture of reasoning and sentiment or feeling
response?
wIt doesn’t seem
to be purely intellectual, at least not in the concrete.
wDoes this make it less objective? It may be that certain kinds of feelings are intentional responses to value. But which feelings?