Perhaps a simple illustration may help. Take a second to support Dr John Messerly on Patreon! If we want friends and friendship demands justice, then we ought to be just. The other alternative uses human reason to understand the gods law. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Its defense necessitates philosophical arguments to prove a god exists, or is at least rational plausibility. April 4, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/utilitarianism-and-natural-law-theories/. The example is significant, because it indicates the lengths to which proponents of natural law ethics were prepared to go in order to preserve the absolute nature of their prohibitions. ~ Thomas Aquinas. If character plays less of a role in determining moral behaviour than is commonly supposed, an ethics that emphasizes virtuous character to the exclusion of all else will be on shaky ground. May we then suppose the divine command theory adequately accounts for morality? Underlying this account was the tacit assumption that genuine self-interest cannot be served by lying, stealing, cheating, or other similarly antisocial conduct. An individual will always decide to take an action that will give him maximum happiness in terms of the benefits he will derive from the action. The ethical theory that best represents my opinion is the application of natural law. On this view, the gods commands things because they are right. Open his mind to different possibilities or mindsets that are not mentioned here. For the sake of argument, let us grant that we can demonstrate some the gods existence, know that the gods commands, know that those commands are good, and interpret the commands correctly. The natural law approach to solving ethical dilemmas begins with the basic belief that everyone has the right to live their life. Whatever satisfies its teleology is fulfilled; whatever fails to do so is defective. Natural Law approaches to Sexual Ethics There are different ways of applying natural law to the issues of pre/extra-marital sex and homosexuality. Their challenge raised questions in metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. This would be especially difficult, since people have imagined the gods to command antithetical things like: celibacy and polygamy, the right of kings and social revolt, war and peace, humanitarian aid and witchburning. Others pointed out that, even if there are “feminine” values that women are more likely to hold than men, these values would not necessarily be “feminist” in the sense of advancing the interests of women. This general principle may be specified into moral axioms like: “Do not kill!” “Be faithful!” “Preserve your life!” “Care for you children!” “Do not lie or steal!” “Life is a universal human good!” All of these axioms are both natural and good. But this is much different from making something right. When we derive what we ought to do from what is the case, we commit what philosophers call the naturalistic fallacy. Natural Law. Unfortunately for ethical egoism, the claim that everyone will be better off if each person does what is in his own interests is incorrect. There is now a large body of psychological research on what leads people to act morally, and it points to the surprising conclusion that often very trivial circumstances have a decisive impact. Thus, if life is a good, any action that led to a preventable loss of life would, other things being equal, be wrong. Politics, on the other hand, is a study of the good, goal, end, or purpose of society. IvyPanda. A good life consists in the acquisition, over the course a lifetime, of all the real (natural) goods. The moral law demands that we develop our reason, and act in accordance with reason’s imperatives. Unfortunately, your browser is too old to work on this site. Most textbooks mention Aquinas and perhaps Humanae Vitae, and in fact these are on the spec. This general principle may be specified into moral axioms like: “Do not kill!” “Be faithful!” “Preserve your life!” “Care for you children!” “Do not lie or steal!” “Life is a universal human good!” All of these axioms are both natural and good. The Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, in his pessimistic work After Virtue (1980), lent further support to virtue ethics by suggesting that what he called “the Enlightenment Project” of giving a rational justification of morality had failed. Although the example might seem bizarre, analogous situations occur quite frequently on a larger scale. Natural law ethics recognizes a special set of circumstances in which the effect of its absolute prohibitions would be mitigated.
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