How to Make Natural Law Arguments

“Contrary to what many influential voices in our culture, politics, and even our institutions of higher education would have you believe, the truth about even the most controversial matters can be objectively known, and cannot be altered by one’s subjective feelings or ‘lived experiences.’”

So says Princeton professor Robert P. George, one of today’s most distinguished conservative thinkers, and he backs up his claim in his new book, Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth, a model in the application of natural law.

That term does not refer to scientific laws. Nor does this use of “nature” refer to mountains, forests, and wildlife. As an approach to moral reasoning, it does not mean emulating behavior we see in nature. (I’ve read arguments claiming that homosexuality is in accord with the natural law based on descriptions of what dogs and chimps sometimes do.)

Rather, in this context, “nature” refers to something’s essential properties, as in “human nature” or “by its very nature.” Understanding “the nature of the job” helps us know how to do that job well. Understanding “human nature” or “the nature of society” helps us know how we should live and how society should function. Such knowledge constitutes natural law.

This way of thinking derives from Aristotle as mediated by Thomas Aquinas, and it is foundational to Western thought. Natural law is the basis of Catholic moral theology, though Protestants too—such as the Anglican Richard Hooker, the Lutheran Samuel von Pufendorf, and the Reformed Hugo Grotius—were also important natural law theorists.

And yet, natural law thinking does not rest on religion. Though George is a Catholic, his arguments are based on reason, not revelation. Natural law works with concepts such as ends and means (that is, purpose and how we achieve that purpose) and intrinsic and instrumental goods (that is, things that are good in themselves and things that are good because they lead to other good things).

When I would teach Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, we made a game of it. Name something that would be good to have. “Money!” Is money good in itself or because it can lead to other good things? “Lead to other good things!” Like what? “A new car!” Is a car good in itself or because it can lead to other good things? “Other good things!” Like what? “Going on vacation!” Is a vacation good in itself or because it can lead to other good things? “Other good things!” Like what? “Spending time with my family.” Is family good in itself or because it leads to other good things? [Pause.] “Good in itself!”

Making money an intrinsic good, as in pursuing money at the expense of your family, creates moral problems. So does instrumentalizing an intrinsic good, such as using one’s family members to extract their money. In the natural law tradition, human life is considered an intrinsic good. While we may sometimes “use” people instrumentally—as in doctors to heal our illnesses or carpenters to build our houses—we must respect their lives and their intrinsic value.

George quotes Kant: “Man, however, is not a thing and hence is not something to be used merely as a means. He must in all his actions always be regarded as an end in himself.” Such regard has consequences for how we treat others. “Therefore,” Kant continues, “I cannot dispose of man in my own person by mutilating, damaging, or killing him.”

Such a high view of human beings and their innate value is at the heart of all of George’s arguments as he works through today’s moral, political, and legal controversies.

[Keep reading. . .]

Let me give you some samples, both of my review and of what George does with Natural Law.

On abortion:

If we only value human beings according to their development, their characteristics, or what they can do, human equality and human rights become impossible.

Furthermore, the morality of abortion does not depend on speculations about when life begins. Medieval medicine considered the quickening of the child—when the mother can feel the baby’s movement—is the moment of “ensoulment,” when the fetus acquired an immortal soul (an argument I have heard from modern pro-abortion theologians). But the notion that the body is only a vessel for the soul was a tenet of the Gnostic heresy repudiated by orthodox theology. The notion that a fetus becomes a human only when it attains consciousness, or feels pain, or has brain waves, or can think for itself is simply more dualism. George, who calls such thinking “liberal Gnosticism” and “body-self dualism,” refutes such views. We are a union of body and soul.

Human dignity comes from what we are, he says, not the qualities that we have or do not have.

On euthanasia:

Some arguments for killing the sick are not really euthanasia at all. “Euthanasia is the killing of someone for the benefit of that person. There is also the killing of someone for the benefit of someone else—the caregiver, someone who wants to save money, someone who needs their organs, etc. That is not euthanasia.” That is ordinary murder.

But can we kill someone for their benefit? It all comes down to the question, “Is [death] something good or evil for a human being?” Killing someone can only harm them, not benefit them. It isn’t making their life better, but ending their life. This is because “life is intrinsically good for a human being.”

He goes on to offer such rigorous, objective, yet morally sensitive thinking on issue after issue, including contentions about law, economics, and politics.  To quote myself and George:

When it comes to political and economic issues, natural law applies another kind of “good”: the common good. “The common good of political society is fundamentally an instrumental good,” he says, “ and … this entails moral limits on justified governmental power.”

The book’s arguments are clarifying and persuasive, revealing contrary positions to be based on sheer subjectivity.  The book also models a way of thinking that can be used to sort through issues that he doesn’t even address, thus teaching the reader how to think– and argue–in terms of the Natural Law.

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