Natural Law

Question 1

What is the Natural Law normative ethical theory?

Answer 1

It is the theory that God has encoded a natural moral law into humans so we are inclined to follow specific moral actions. Ethics is therefore about discovering that ingrained moral law and fulfilling our telos of worshipping God.

Question 2

What are the four tiers of Law?

Answer 2

• Eternal Law - God’s omnibenevolent nature
• Divine Law - God’s revelations to humanity in the Bible
• Natural Law - the law that is present in each human due to God, discoverable by human reason.
• Human Law - the laws humans make that should abide by the Divine and Natural Laws.

Question 3

What did Aquinas believe human telos (purpose) is?

Answer 3

Our telos is God. The goal of rational beings is the good, which God can be described as. Aquinas took the idea of telos from Aristotle, who thought the telos of humanity was the prime mover and eudaimonia.

Question 4

What is the synderesis rule?

Answer 4

“Good must be done and evil avoided.”

Question 5

What are the Primary Precepts?

Answer 5

• Worship God
• Ordered society
• Reproduce
• Learn and Educate
• Don’t die! (Preserve life.)

Question 6

What is conscientia and the secondary precepts?

Answer 6

The primary precepts applied to a problem. I.e. the primary precepts don’t mention euthanasia directly, but because we have to preserve life, the secondary precept would be that euthanasia is wrong.

Question 7

How does Aquinas distinguish between interior and exterior acts?

Answer 7

An interior act is our intention and an exterior act is something we do. If we do a good exterior act without a good interior attitude, then it wouldn’t be seen as glorifying God.

I.e. giving to charity is only morally good if you genuinely want to help those in need.

Question 8

How does Aquinas distinguish between real and apparent goods?

Answer 8

Real Good - truly moral/good actions

Apparent Good - acts that seem good because of our own temptations and satisfaction, but are not moral. I.e. adultery may be pleasurable, but it disrupts the goal of reproduction and looking after the innocent.

Question 9

What is the Doctrine of Double Effect?

Answer 9

An action can have two outcomes: one against the precepts, and one in accordance with the precepts. Aquinas suggests that intention is significant in whether an act is moral or not.

For instance, if I shoot an attacker and kill him, my intention wouldn’t be to kill him, but to preserve my life. This is okay.

Question 10

What conditions apply to the Doctrine of Double Effect?

Answer 10

• Proportionality Condition: The good effect must be equivalent to the bad effect.
• The Means-End Condition: The bad and good effects must be brought about immediately at the same time.
• The act must either be morally good or neutral.

Question 11

Is Aquinas too optimistic about human nature?

Answer 11

YES: If you consider the amount of evil humans are capable of (i.e. slavery, the Holocaust), then it seems unlikely that humans have an innate orientation to the good.

NO: Aquinas isn’t trying to claim humans will always do good. Rather, he knows humans will be tempted to do sin (apparent goods.) We can have errors in conscientia and live in a corrupt society.

Question 12

How does modern science criticise Natural Law?

Answer 12

• NL is based on final causation (telos), and Bacon rejects this as it is unscientific and is a matter of the metaphysical.
• All ‘purpose’ of an object can be reduced to non-teleological concepts regarding the material of an object.
• Laplace, who wrote on the workings of the universe, said there is no need for a ‘God.’

Question 13

How does Fletcher criticise Natural Law?

Answer 13

Cultural relativism. If all humans were born with the ability to understand the primary precepts, then there should be more universal moral agreement, but differences often fall on cultural boundaries. Therefore, it is culture that defines our moral views. The precepts Aquinas argues for are just his cultural upbringing.

Question 14

How could a supporter of Aquinas respond to Fletcher’s criticism that morals are culturally relative?

Answer 14

There are some similarities between cultures. Killing for no reason and stealing is always seen as morally wrong. Look at similarities between Abrahamic religions, for example.

Question 15

How would Karl Barth criticise Natural Law?

Answer 15

“The finite has no capacity for the infinite.”

NL relies on human reason being applied to situations so we can use conscientia. But Barth says that human reason is damaged after the Fall, so how could we understand how to apply primary precepts, and why would we still be inclined to do good?

Question 16

How would Aquinas respond to Barth’s criticism of Natural Law and is this response successful?

Answer 16

Aquinas would respond that we only lost control of our desires. Only rational beings can sin, so we must preserve our rationality. Our reason still inclines us towards synderesis. He also says that concupiscence can sometimes be natural.

However, Barth is still correct in asserting our corruption due to Original Sin. Human arrogance of knowing what is right and wrong led to Nazism. It misleads us from our telos.

Question 17

Is Natural Law outdated today?

Answer 17

YES: The socio-economic conditions of Aquinas’ time have changed. It was necessary to prevent needless killing because murder was more common. It was necessary to have lots of children because many died. It was useful to restrict sex to marriage because single mothers went unsupported. Society has changed and can consider relaxing the rules.

NO: Being outdated doesn’t make the theory wrong. Perhaps our society has gone the way of the devil! Just because mainstream culture has moved on doesn’t mean it was right to do so.

Question 18

Is the Doctrine of Double Effect unbiblical?

Answer 18

YES: DoDE is unbiblical because God’s commandments are absolute and the distinction between intention and effect has no moral bearing. If we can foresee a bad consequence of our actions, we shouldn’t do it to begin with.

NO: NL is different to the Bible because the Bible is Divine Law. NL is our own nature which is more flexible in the form of general precepts.

Question 19

Does the Doctrine of Double Effect fail at making Natural Law more flexible?

Answer 19

YES: Take the example of a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers. It is a heroic act but the DoDE renders it nonsensical; suicide must be foreseen but beside the intention of the soldier, but the soldier’s death is what makes it heroic as it is the means of saving other soldiers.

NO: Aquinas might see the soldier as a hero because the soldier didn’t want to die; he wanted to save others, and the means of doing that is through death.