Natural Law Flashcards
What is natural law based on?
Natural law ethics is based on Aristotelian teleology; the idea that everything has a nature which directs it towards its good end goal. Aquinas Christianised this concept. The Christian God designed everything with a telos.
Why did Aquinas argue that telos is 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.
What are all human being born with, according to Aquinas?
All humans are born with God-given reason, which involves the innate ability to intuitively know the moral precepts of natural law.
What is telos?
The ancient Greek idea of telos refers to a thing’s behavioural inclination towards its good end due to its nature.
How do humans differ from animals and natural objects?
Animals and natural objects have their behaviour determined by their telos. Humans, however, have free will. We are capable of choosing whether to follow God’s moral law or not.
How is eudaimonia achieved?
Aquinas thought eudaimonia can be achieved at the societal as well as the individual level. God has designed the telos of human beings so that a harmony of their individual interests can be achieved if they follow the natural law.
What is synderesis?
Synderesis is the habit or ability of reason to discover foundational ‘first principles’ of God’s natural moral law.
What is the synderesis rule?
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
What are the primary precepts learned through the synderesis rule?
Worship God, live in an orderly society, reproduce, educate, protect and preserve human life and defend the innocent.
What is conscientia?
The ability of reason to apply he primary precepts to situations or types of actions. The judgement we then acquire is a secondary precept.
What is a strength to telos based ethics?
Telos-based ethics that they are empirical. 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.
Why does modern science reject final causation?
The issue is, modern science tells us that things are merely atoms moving in a field of force. 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.
How is natural law based on universal human nature?
The primary precepts are found in the morality of all societies. 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. 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.
What is a weakness to a belief that there are universal moral principles?
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.
Why does Aquinas believe there to be moral disagreements?
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.
