Natural Moral Law Flashcards
1
Q
How has the concept of telos developed and what was its influence on Aquinas?
A
- Aristotle believed that everything has a telos (purpose) built into it by its nature, which determines the behaviours that are ‘natural’ to it.
- Whereas Aristotle thought the final cause of all things was the prime mover, Aquinas claimed that it was the Christian God.
- Believed God has designed a moral law into human nature such as we are naturally inclined to certain moral behaviours.
- Humans must live a good and faithful life on Earth to achieve our purpose: human flourishing (similar to Aristotle) with God in Heaven (not like Aristotle).
- We do this using reason, which is also what separates us from plants (who have no consciousness) and animals (who use their instincts). Our rationality lets us work out what’s good for us and how to achieve our goal.
- Aquinas’ ethics are about using reason to determine 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 a telos in everything - we have the free will to follow/rebel against this.
2
Q
What are the criticisms of telos?
A
- Empirical + 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.
- 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. Modern science tells us things are merely atoms moving in fields of force - e.g material and efficient causation. Physicist Sean Carroll concludes that purpose is not built into the “architecture” of the universe.
- Evolutionary basis: 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.
- McGrath points out modern Christian philosophers (e.g Swinburne and Polkinghorne) have arqued science is limited and cannot answer all questions.
• 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 and therefore cannot be used to disregard the existence of purpose.
3
Q
What are the four tiers of law?
A
- ETERNAL LAW: God’s rational plan by which all of creation is ordered and controlled - only fully known to God. Omnibenevolent nature.
- DIVINE LAW: The law of God revealed in the Bible. Ethical guidance from the bible and church that should be an expression of God’s will (an element of faith is necessary to accept these teachings).
For Aquinas, divine law teaches what our natural reason is capable of knowing. - NATURAL LAW: The moral law God created in human nature - discoverable using God-given reason. ‘Right reason in accordance with [human] nature’.
- HUMAN LAW- The laws of the land humans make 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.
4
Q
What are the criticisms of the 4 tiers of law (+precepts idk this is rly rushed)?
A
- Accessible: all humans (Christian or not) born with the capacity to access natural law using innate reason.
- Not everyone has the same level of reason he describes, e.g lower/higher level of reasoning because all humans are unique. Could lead to unequal distribution of NML.
- But we all have the inherent power of reason within us - basic human function. It may just take some people longer to distinguish and reason as to hat the right course of action is - this does not mean
- Karl Barth: after the Fall our ability to reason became 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.
- 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.
- Balanced and realistic: whilst we might fail to do good sometimes e.g original sin, mistakes in our reasoning, incredibly evil acts occur infrequently. Most of the time people are good. Humans have both the capacity for good (reason/telos) and evil (original sin).
- Too optimistic: about human nature. If we really had an orientation towards good and the primary precepts, we should not expect to find the extent of human evil we do e.g Nazism. Many moral precepts aren’t actually universal.
5
Q
What is synderesis, the 5 primary precepts and secondary precepts?
A
- There is one key absolute precept: do good, avoid evil (this is God’s purpose in-built into the world, and we must fulfil this purpose). This is synderesis.
- Through synderesis, we learn the 5 primary precepts:
1. Preservation of life
2. Ordering of society
3. Worship of God
4. Education of children
5. Reproduction
These are the articulation of our natural inclination to do good. Simply having reason allows a being to intuitively know these precepts. - These primary principles inform the secondary principles (laws and rules) e.g. abortion is wrong. There is debate over if they are relative or absolute.
o In practice in the Catholic Church says they are absolute.
o Some Catholic theologians e.g Charles Curran argue that the rules from Natural Law must be subject to change and review. - Conscientia is the ability of reason to apply the primary precepts to situations or types of actions, and the judgements we acquire is a secondary precept. (E.g euthanasia opposes preservation of life + ordering of society, therefore we should oppose it).
- NB: none of these precepts (other than the first key principle) was explicitly named by Aquinas, commentators have implied these from his thoughts/writing. Shows how Aquinas’ insights have been treated in more legalistic terms than he would’ve used himself.
6
Q
What are the criticisms of the precepts?
A
- Based on universal human nature. Intuitive: appeals to our instinctive convictions of right and wrong. Primary precepts found in morality of most (if not all) societies. 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.
- In reality, we often find vastly differing moral beliefs. If we were really born with the capacity to know the primary precepts, we would expect more moral agreement. 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 and Skinner. 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).
- 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.
7
Q
What is the doctrine of double effect?
A
- An action may have more than one effect, with one being positive and another negative. (E.g saving life of one may mean harming another).
Aquinas states: - INTENTIONALITY: good effect must be intended, bad effect must be ‘besides the intention’ e.g saving mother’s life through abortion acceptable, termination of pregnancy ‘beside the intention’
- PROPORTIONALITY: good effect must be at least equivalent to the bad effect e.g saving own life equivalent to ending life of an attacker (but must not use more force than necessary).
- NATURE OF THE ACT: the action has to be either morally good or neutral e.g can administer medicine (to hasten death), but not kill an innocent person.
8
Q
What are the criticisms of the doctrine of double effect?
A
- Double effect: doesn’t always capture why certain rule breaking is deemed acceptable e.g soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his partners is heroic because he knew he would lose his life as a result (bad effect): it wasn’t ‘beside the intention’. It is heroic because that was part of his intention.
o However the soldier didn’t ultimately want to die, he wanted to save his team. His death wasn’t ‘unintended’ but it was indeed ‘beside’ his main intention. - Biblical moral law e.g ‘thou shalt not kill’ in the 10 commandments - no clarification as to whether this would be justified on the basis of intention.
- Unbiblical: some Protestant thinkers e.g John Calvin see scripture as the principal source of teaching. God’s commands are absolute, they do not depend on ‘intention’.
