The Natural Law
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“There is indeed a law, right reason, which is in accordance with nature; existing in all, unchangeable, eternal. Commanding us to do what is right, forbidding us to do what is wrong. It has dominion over good men but possesses no influence over bad ones. No other law can be substituted for it, no part of it can be taken away, nor can it be abrogated altogether. Neither the people or the senate can absolve from it. It is not one thing at Rome, and another thing at Athens: one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow; but it is eternal and immutable for all nations and for all time.”
Cicero, On the Republic
Natural law moral theory describes a universally recognisable order of things, including human nature, and self-evident truths that guide us towards what is good, or best, for us. These truths are accessible to all people with sufficient reason and imply how we should - and ought - to live; that is, which acts are morally right or wrong. Good judgement, or practical reasoning, helps us to make decisions which align with an understanding of what is good and bad. There is a long tradition of natural law in Western civilisation evident in the works of the Stoic philosophers, Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and more. It was integrated into Roman law and was once widely accepted as a fundamental basis of moral agreement that helped ordinary people resolve disputes among themselves. Beliefs about human nature and knowledge have changed significantly in the modern age, and the idea of an objective order underlying human affairs is no longer widely accepted. But, despite this, the natural law retains an intuitive appeal for many. In this article, we examine the fundamental ideas of natural law moral theory as well as arguments against it.
Can we understand how to live from the way things are?
The common saying that that law is known by nature, should not be understood, it seems, as though…things to be done or to be avoided were inherent in men's minds at the hour of their birth. But it means in part that the law can be investigated by the light of reason…the common and important provisions of the natural law are so plain and clear that they at once find assent, and grow up in our minds, so that they can never again be destroyed…
Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to the Natural Law
If natural law theory is true, we can draw conclusions from human experience to the way we should behave if we want to obtain what is good in life, or just a good life[1]. We are able to develop these conclusions independently of experience (such knowledge is known as ‘a priori’) and do not need to be taught about them; they are self-evident, or perhaps ‘common sense’. The principle of non-contradiction in logic[2] is an example of a self-evident truth: every whole is greater than its part. If a person does not possess such knowledge, they are more likely to pursue things, often unintentionally, which cause them (or others) unhappiness or harm. This ignorance is not uncommon: the natural law is thought to be knowable but not necessarily known.
Our ability to recognise what is good in life is guided by reason. Aquinas, in Summa Theologiae, wrote:
By human nature we may mean either that which is proper to man…since the rational soul is the proper form of man, there is in every man a natural inclination to act according to reason: and this is to act according to virtue.
It follows that a rational person pursues what is good, and that what is immoral or unethical is also unreasonable; if reason guides us towards what is good, then pursuing what is bad is to act contrary to reason.
The Good, or goods
Human nature is evident in our natural inclinations: what we pursue and avoid. Aquinas wrote that good is “the first thing that falls under the apprehension of the practical reason” and something which we naturally pursue. We also recognise evil and act accordingly.
… to the natural law belongs those things to which a man is inclined naturally…
Aquinas, ST
We are naturally inclined towards ‘goods’ like health, self-preservation, knowledge, companionship, and some degree of wealth and material prosperity. The fact of their goodness is objectively true to a rational person. In life, we learn some things the hard way, but others are simply clear to us because our equipment is attuned to the realities of the world. Once we know what goods are, we can act in ways to best achieve them, and this keeps us on the right track towards living well. Moral behaviour is rational behaviour: to do right and avoid wrong is to behave in a rational way once we correctly perceive good and bad; what is right follows from a correct assessment of what is good. A virtuous man uses good judgement based on this knowledge and in doing so, his actions create positive outcomes for his community.
Aristotle and Aquinas believed that all things, including people, have a purpose, or way of becoming the best they can be[3]. For Aristotle, this was happiness (‘eudaimonia’), or human flourishing.
For Grotius, people are naturally driven towards self-preservation, but also possess judgement that allows them to maintain social relations with others. For him, there are certain rights that all possess - such as personal liberty - and the balancing, or reciprocal respect for the rights of others is inherently good (and necessary for society to function).
Hobbes argued that self-preservation is our primary concern and good. It enables all other goods and we have the right, or liberty, to do all things to achieve it. He believed that the compromises we make with others regarding their own liberty constitutes natural law, though these behaviours are not moral obligations. Unlike Grotius, who believed there to be objective goods and evils, Hobbes held a subjectivist view of goods which required a powerful ruler to compel people to act cooperatively.
Some philosophers emphasise the importance of community and cooperation in understanding and pursuing goods. Alisdair MacIntyre argued that life is a cooperative attempt to discover the human good, and that this is how we come to understand it: together. He, like Aquinas, believed that humans are innately social and that a person’s individual good can only be achieved through the achievement of a common good. MacIntyre argued that the answer to the questions ‘what is the common good?’ and ‘what is my good?’ are found during the process of a life of enquiry and practical reasoning among other people in communities, and through activities and practices as part of these communities. In what he describes as ‘cultures of advanced modernity’ such as North America, the individual is misunderstood as someone who must discover and choose their own good. MacIntyre argues that natural law theory is rejected in our society because people have been miseducated about the role of the individual in moral life; that ‘liberty’ entails being free to choose what is good, rather than discovering what good is.
In some modern accounts, ‘basic’ goods are pursued because of their inherent value, rather than as a means towards an end (or ‘telos’). Another view is that knowledge of goods is evident in the consistency, or consensus, of long-established tradition or precedent in law: various societies have, historically, created laws which direct people towards the same desirable outcomes.
Is there a moral obligation to act according to natural law?
It might be true that we can understand good and evil, but this does not in itself create a moral obligation, something often expressed by normative statements such as ‘ought’ and ‘should’. How can recognition of good or bad lead to an obligation to act in certain ways?
One view is that we are held accountable for moral behaviour in our social relationships with others as part of a community. People naturally live in communities, and it is as part of these that we recognise obligations to and for others as actions that are conducive or destructive of goods; we ought, or ought not, to act in certain ways on this basis. That is, acts and commitments are only obligatory in the sense that they are required to achieve the common good of people living in communities.
The traditional view is that God holds us accountable for compliance with the natural law. One form of this argument holds that human nature is created by God, and that we have an obligation to align our wills to God’s using our limited insight into it[4]. Aquinas makes the argument that there are divine sanctions against violations of natural law, one of which is conscience (Aquinas; ST IaIIae 87, 1), and also that obligation is a “rational necessity…of realizing an end or objective (i.e. a good)…which…renders one a fitting subject for the friendship of the being whose friendship is a basic good…” (Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights).
Does natural law imply, or require, the existence of God?
While God is by nature the goal of all beneficent serious endeavours, human beings…have been made as God’s playthings, and this is, indeed, the finest thing about us. All of us, men and women, ought to fall in with this role, and spend our lives in playing this noblest of plays.
Book VII of Plato’s Laws in Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights.
If there is an order to human affairs and nature, then one might ask whether this order was created, and by whom. If it was, and we can understand these things using reason (that is, our reasoning faculties are aligned with this order), does this mean we were also created?
For Aquinas, the answer is yes: natural law does involve a divine being and an eternal law created by that being[5]. Grotius wrote that our understanding of natural law and the requirements to maintain social order would exist even in the absence of God (whose existence he affirms):
What we have been saying would have a degree of validity even if we should concede that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, or that the affairs of men are of no concern to Him.
Grotius, The Law of War and Peace
Samuel Pufendorf argued that humans recognise natural law using reason, though its force comes from God:
…although those precepts have manifest utility, still, if they are to have the force of law, it is necessary to presuppose that God exists, and by His providence rules all things; also that He has enjoined upon the human race that they observe those dictates of the reason, as laws promulgated by Himself by means of our natural light…that God is the author of the natural law, is proved by the natural reason…The nature of man is so constituted that the race cannot be preserved without the social life, and man's mind is found to be capable of all the notions which serve that end.
Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen
Spanish philosopher and theologian Francisco Suárez differentiated between two views on the role of God in natural law: ‘intellectual’ (or ‘realist’) and ‘voluntarist’. According to the intellectual position, natural law does not depend on God’s will; it is evident to man through reason. The voluntarist position entails that natural law is derived from God’s will and sanction. Suárez attempted to reconcile the two positions, which meant retaining God’s role in understanding good and evil.
Among more recent accounts, John Finnis, in Natural Law and Natural Rights, is more cautious about the role of God in natural law, writing that understanding God’s will in a ‘human context’ and whether it should be obeyed goes beyond what can be taken from philosophical argumentation. For him, we pursue basic goods for their own sakes and to satisfy the practical requirements of life (such as community), though also describes how God could be the basis for moral obligation, or perhaps cooperation. He describes his approach in the book’s postscript as “resolutely ‘intellectualist’ as opposed to ‘voluntarist’”.
Arguments against natural law
Opponents of natural law might characterise the view as saying: “that which is natural is good and that which is unnatural is bad; we should act in accordance with nature” and then offering an arbitrary and unsupported view of what nature is[6]. It might be argued that if something can be done, it is natural; who is to say what parts of our human experience are contrary to good judgement? The argument that there is a relationship between ‘natural’ and ‘good’ seems tenuous to many who believe that what is right depends on context and circumstances, rather than any ‘real’ moral standards.
There are different interpretations of right and wrong in society. Different practices of, and disagreements about, morality between people and cultures show that natural law is not self-evident or imperative for all people because if it were, such disagreement would not occur. Opponents of this view argue that if there were not things that most people fundamentally agree upon, it is unlikely that we could ever resolve disputes or live together peacefully; some form of shared, objective morality must exist.
Human nature seems to include many bad things that come naturally (to some): torture, theft, and violence against innocents are examples. Such things are inherently bad even if they are part of human nature, which implies that human nature is not a sufficient guide to what is good or right. Perhaps many people lack sufficient reason and a proper understanding of what is good, but if we simply observe how people often behave, the theory of natural law fails; bad behaviour seems to come naturally to them.
The ‘is/ought’ objection popularised by David Hume tells us that we cannot interpret an ‘ought’ statement from what ‘is’. Things might appear wrong, such as murder or theft, but there is no necessary connection between an act and a moral judgement of that act. Opponents of this view might argue that if all things have a function, we can judge them based on this: a fireman who cannot fight fires; a watch that cannot tell the time; a door that cannot be opened. In cases like these, we might judge how things ought to be from the way they are. It is debatable whether human beings have a function or purpose and whether there are objective goods that lead us towards it, but if we do, what we ought to do becomes easier to understand.
Conclusion
Natural law theory describes objective truths about human nature, knowledge, and morality. This view was prominent throughout a large period of Western history until the rise of a more sceptical[7] and secular worldview which coincided with the advance of the scientific method and its many achievements.
Natural law is persuasive to those who believe we do know certain things prior to experience using reason, that there is some kind of objective order to human affairs, and that our knowledge of these things implies an obligation to act in certain ways. Those who reject it believe that knowledge does not work this way, and that human nature is not unchanging; it might even be improved. An acceptance or rejection of natural law often aligns with a belief in the existence of God (though need not).
Philosophers including Aquinas, Grotius, and Pufendorf believed natural law to be vital in establishing and maintaining order among cooperative beings. A lack of shared values and a subjective (or relative) conception of morality undermines the basis for human cooperation. For example, human law (‘positive law’) that lacks an underlying moral foundation might become arbitrary and increasingly rely on the judgement of specialists trained in positive law whose moral foundation is at odds with those bound by their judgments. A society with no clear moral foundation might find it hard to resist bad outcomes and rapidly become unsustainable (or need to acquiesce to Hobbes’ idea of a powerful ruler or governing system). A rejection of natural law that also involves a rejection of a definite path to human flourishing (telos) might even undermine a sense of meaning and purpose in life for many.
What does this all mean for us today? These ideas have been the subject of debate and discussion throughout history for good reason – they have great importance for the way we live our lives and what kind of society we want (or are able to) create and maintain. If natural law exists, in practical terms, it does so through the acts of men who understand and seek what is good; that is, good and virtuous men whose moral conscience correctly guides them towards what is right.
Whatever your thoughts on natural law moral theory, it raises interesting questions about the nature of the human experience and is essential to a complete understanding the Western intellectual tradition.
[1] Which might involve living harmoniously in community with others, or flourishing as human beings.
[2] Two contradictory positions cannot be true at the same time: A and not-A cannot both be true simultaneously.
[3] Beings have a complete state in which their potential is fulfilled. Under the right conditions, when things conducive to a complete state are encouraged (or not obstructed), they can achieve this state. This is true for people as well as animals and plants.
[4] God’s will might be understood as a universal common good as part of a teleological account: we are serving the good of the world as devised by God which is evident to us through reason. Thinkers such as Hume provided a more secular account of a common good based on socially useful practices and behaviour that are perceived and enforced as moral rules over time.
[5] Human beings can know the truths of God’s eternal law through the natural law; we ‘partake of the knowledge of truth’, but not directly (Aquinas, ST, Q93).
[6] The term ‘unnatural’ might be understood in several different ways: something artificial or inorganic, morally wrong, or harmful to health, dignity, and human flourishing. Sometimes these things overlap, as with artificial additives in food which are harmful to one’s health, or conversely, organic food and its health benefits.
[7] For example, in Rene Descartes’ attempt to find certainty in knowledge by abandoning all beliefs that were not certain, and his conclusion that he is certain that he, the thinker of his thoughts, exists: “I think, therefore I am”.
Sources and readings
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae.
Blackstone, William. Of the Nature of Laws in General, Introduction, Section 2.
Finnis, John. Natural Law & Natural Rights.
Haakonssen, Knud. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy.
McLean, Edward. Common Truths: New Perspectives on Natural Law.
Murphy, Mark. The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Pufendorf, Samuel. On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to the Natural Law.
Rothbard, Murray. Introduction to Natural Law. https://mises.org/mises-daily/introduction-natural-law
Seidler, Michael. Pufendorf’s Moral and Political Philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/pufendorf-moral
Shafer-Landau, Russ. The Fundamentals of Ethics (Chapter 6).
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