The Natural Theories of Ethics

Here you will learn how to locate natural law within the larger universe of theories about ethics, and consider both the basic assumptions of natural law thinking and the basic challenges that have been raised against them

The Philosophical Approach

After Nuremberg Trial and Martin L. Kings letter from Birhingham Jail, it is appealed for unwritten, universal standards of justice. It further stimulate to philosophise the theory

Law, Nature, Nature Law

What is nature and what is law? Why study Natural Law? Attractions of Natural Law

Origin of Natural Law ?

Where the concept of Natural Law originated. View of Socrates and Plato

Different Principles of Natural Law ?

Different theories of law will be discussed to trace the principles of Natural Law and to enhance its acceptance

Natural Law and Jurists

Views of Jurists will be discussed here

Natural Law and Judiciary

Whether Judiciary follows the principles of Natural Law

Natural Law in Contemporary Period

Whether Natural Law has any relevancy in contemporary period?

Does Natural Law believe in the existence of GOD

Existence of GOD under severe urgument

Debate between Natural Law and Positive Law

Hart Fuller Debate

What is Natural Law ?

What is Nature and what is Law? Whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of natural law as something to be done or avoided."

All those things to which man has a natural inclination

What is Natural Law ?

Refers to the use of reason to analyze the human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior

Natural theory is a philosophical and legal belief that all the humans are governed by basic innate laws.
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

What is Natural Law ?

If the word "natural means anything at all, it refers to the nature of a man, and when used with "law," "natural" must refer to an ordering that is manifested in the inclinations of a man's nature and to nothing else Any moral theory that holds that some positive moral claims are literally true, counts as a natural law view Natural law and theology are inextricably intertwined.

Small commentary on Natural Law

Small commentary on Natural Law

The real character of man is known only through the history of his cultural expression "the real man who grows in history amid changing conditions of social life, acquiring wisdom by the discipline of life itself - in many respects only gradually exploring the potentialities and dignities of his own nature." Evolution in human life brings to light new necessities in human nature which, struggle for expression and form Father Murray, Natural Law in Father Murray's treatment consists of a gradual development of our knowledge of human nature

Aristotelian idea of good life in the Greek polis Man by his nature is a zoon poltikon

Reasonable life were defined as the virtues of a community-based social ethics and duties owned by each to the Greek polis

Readers of the Bible would of course gather that God's law rules human actions. Much of the Bible is concerned with divine law, Law of God as found in the Bible, "do by nature those things that are of the law", they "show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them", etc. (Rom. 2:14). "The law" here is "the Law", i.e. the Law of Moses, so the passage suggests that the Law of Moses contains the natural law. Hence Gratian's remark that "the law of nature is what is contained in the Law and the Gospel".

Historically, natural law philosophy can be divided into four phases

(1) Classical natural law in the Antique Greece and Rome; (2) Scholastic natural law in the Middle Ages; (3) Rationalist natural law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and (4) Modern natural law since 1950s
Alternatively, the tradition of natural law philosophy could be divided into two categories of classical and modern,

Thomas Aquinas classifies natural law on the basis of normative order, i.e. (a) lex aeterna, or eternal law, (b) lex naturalis, or natural law, (c) lex humana, or human law, and (d) lex divina, or divine law

Lex aeterna comprises the great world order by God, the omnipotent Creator, Reference may be drawn with the allencompassing order of things that is imposed upon all the living creatures and inanimate things alike. Aquinas made no essential difference between the inanimate heavenly bodies, the realm of living creatures, and the human kind All were equally subject to the order of creation

Lex naturalis is that part of the lex aeterna that determines the duties of man among the living creation. The commands of the lex naturalis are situated higher in Thomas hierarchy of normative orders than any decrees of the lex humana, i.e. positive laws issued by the sovereign ruler for the benefit of the community. The fourth normative order, i.e. lex divina, consists of the express revelations and commandments by the omnipotent God for the mankind in Bible and other holy scriptures

For Thomas Aquinas, the supreme principle of natural law is that of doing good and avoiding evil. Moreover, the precepts of natural law are self-evident (per se nota) and cannot be validated by reference to any other, still higher principles of religious or social ethics

In all, he defined the concept of law as follows:

an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated. An unjust law is not binding and will not even qualify as a law proper, being no more than a corruption of law Thomas pointed out that detailed knowledge of the contents of natural law could be gained by human reason. Thereby he significantly paved the way to the breakthrough of a rationalist natural law thinking in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Natural Rights & Natural Law ?

What is the relationship between natural law and natural right "natural law and the natural rights derived there from ought to be sharply distinguished from one another and went on to contrast their different meanings "[N]atural rights and traditional natural law are, to put it simply, yet altogether accurately, incompatible; to espouse one teaching is to make it impossible reasonably to espouse the other
There is...a genuine, strong connection between the philosophy of natural laws and right

Natural rights...may be traced back to natural law and natural law transports us back to the Greeks."

John Finnis has claimed to derive a doctrine of natural rights or human rights from Aquinas's teaching on natural law.
Ernest Fortin finds no such teaching in Aquinas Aquinas derived the word lex (law) from ligare (to bind); but a binding natural law is not the same as a natural right A rights version focuses on the self-assertion of agents; the genuine natural-law version focuses on the moral command or address to each A moral command of natural law limits our freedom of action; a natural right affirms a sphere of individual autonomy and free choice. One cannot deduce the one from the other.

[N]atural rights do not derive from natural law

Thomas Aquinas v Finnis The idea of incompatible" subjective rights was "logically

Subjective rights considered as a power or liberty of the individual Rights are as fundamental as duties" "[T]here are rights which every member of our species is entitled to: human rights

Ius meant "what is just" or "what is right." In this sense ius was a restraint on power
Justice has its own special object apart from the other virtues and this is called the just, and this indeed is ius, so it is evident that ius is the object of justice...in its original meaning ius signifies the just thing...law (lex) is not ius itself but rather the basis of ius Summa Theologi

Thomas Aquinas v Finnis

Hence it could not be the source of subjective rights understood as licit powers inhering in individual
Aquinas gave several derivative meanings of ius in this context, they did not include any subjective sense of the word as referring to a right of an individual

Finnis, therefore, extracted a subjective meaning from Aquinas's objective definition .. "lus is the object of justice Object of justice was the objective state of affairs that justice sought to achieve. But Finnis argued that, in the text of Aquinas, the object of justice should be understood as referring to "the other person's right(s) {ius}

But Aquinas's own definition did not have any reference to other persons' rights. Finnis therefore emphasized another usage of Aquinas, his acceptance of the Roman law definition of justice as a steady willingness to give to others "what is their right {ius suum}.""1 But the word ius as used here did not have the same meaning as our English word "right" used in a subjective sense The modern word implies a certain freedom of choice, a freedom to act or not act in the relevant sphere. The ius of an ancient Roman, what was due to him, might be a punishment

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