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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.
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 Aquinass. (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 Aquinass natural law theory as the central case of a natural law position: of theories that exhibit all of the key features of Aquinass 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 Aquinass 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 Gods 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 humans 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 Aquinass 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. The eternal law, for Aquinas, is that rational plan by which all creation is ordered; the natural law is the way that the human being participates in the eternal law. 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 Gods will in accordance with Gods eternal plan rational beings like us are able to grasp our share in the eternal law and freely act on it. It is this feature of the natural law that justifies, on Aquinass view, our calling the natural law law. For law, as Aquinas defines it, 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, Gods 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 Aquinass 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. 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 and that the precepts of the natural law are universally knowable by nature.
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. 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 Aquinass view is paradigmatic of the natural law position, and these two theses that from the Gods-eye point of view, it is law through its place in the scheme of divine providence, and from the humans-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 Gods existence or nonexistence, whereas the paradigmatic natural law view involves a commitment to Gods 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 ones 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.
1.3 The substance of the natural law view
The center of Aquinass 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 Aquinass 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 Aquinass 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 Aquinass 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 Aquinass 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 Aquinass view, prior to the right. But on Aquinass view we are, somehow, able to reason from these principles about goods to guidelines about how these goods are to be pursued. Aquinass 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.
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 Aquinass work see, though he does indicate where to look we are to look at the features that individuate acts, such as their objects, their ends, their circumstances, 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 ones 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 ones belief in God, there are certain circumstances in which it is inappropriate to do so. An act might be flawed merely through its intention: to direct oneself against a good as in murder, and lying, and blasphemy 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 ones rules, so that one will always need the moral and intellectual virtues in order to act well. But he denies that this means that there are no principles of right conduct that hold everywhere and always, and some even absolutely. On Aquinass 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.
Part of the interest of Aquinass 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 Aristotles 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 the natural law is given by God; it is naturally authoritative over all human beings; and it is naturally knowable by all human beings. Further, it holds that the good is prior to the right, that right action is action that responds nondefectively to the good, that there are a variety of ways in which action can be defective with respect to the good, and that 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, that all humans are bound by them, and that it is easy to know at least the basics of the natural law. He held that the fundamental good is self-preservation, and that the laws of nature direct the way to this good. He offered a catalog of laws of nature that constitute the true moral philosophy . 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.
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 Aquinass 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 Aristotles 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.
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.
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 ones pro-attitudes, or would be the object of ones 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 beings 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 Platos view by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics 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, there is no one who is on record defending Hobbess 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 Hobbess 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.
Return to Aquinass paradigmatic natural law position. His account of our knowledge of the fundamental goods has been understood in different ways. 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. One can imagine a Hobbesian version of this view as well. One might say that by a careful study of the human beings 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. 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. Some have thought, echoing criticisms of natural law theory by those entirely hostile to it, that derivationist theories of practical knowledge fall prey to Humes 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 Aquinass 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, ones explicit grasp of the fundamental goods follows upon but is not derived from ones 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 theorists catalog of goods. 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.
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. 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 ones own immediate rational insight into what is implicit grasped or from some sort of derivation from the fact that ones 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 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.
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. Finnis 1980 includes life, knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, play, friendship, practical reasonableness, and religion. 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. Finnis 1996 affirms a list much like Grisez 1983, but includes in it the marital good . Murphy 2001 includes life, knowledge, aesthetic experience, excellence in work and play, excellence in agency, inner peace, friendship and community, religion, and happiness. Gomez-Lobo 2002 includes life, the family, friendship, work and play, experience of beauty, theoretical knowledge, and integrity. Crowe (2019) includes life, health, pleasure, friendship, play, appreciation, understanding, meaning, and reasonableness.
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 Chappells includes pleasure and the absence of pain. Whatever else we say here, it seems that common sense is initially on Chappells 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, su
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