Delitos contra la libertad sexual

How does human reason arrive at the norms of natural law (like the golden rule and the wrongness of stealing)? While Aquinas’s answer here is sketchy, it seems to involve self-evident truths, human inclinations, and practical reason. In his Summa Theologica (Part I–II, Question 94, Article 2), Aquinas speaks of the basic norms of natural law as being “self-evident.” He explains this in terms of the predicate being contained in the notion of the subject. In contemporary terms (see Section 5.1), such principles are said to be “analytic” or “true by definition”; the standard example is “All bachelors are single,” which is true because “bachelor” means “single man.” Accordingly, Aquinas defines “good” and then derives the first precept of natural law:

The first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that “good is that which all things seek after.” Hence this is the first precept of law, that “good is to be done and pur- sued, and evil is to be avoided.”

So here we have a definition and a norm based on it: 1. Definition: “Good” means “what all things seek after.”

2. First precept of natural law: Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.

There are two problems here. First, not all good things are sought after by all humans, let alone by all things. So it seems better to define “good” as “what we (humans) ought to seek after.” Second, if we define “good” in terms of what in

fact is sought after, we can’t derive a norm about what ought to be sought after. We can avoid these problems by cleaning up Aquinas’s definition and norm to become: 1. Definition: “Good” means “what we ought to seek”; “evil” means

“what we ought to avoid.”

2. First precept of natural law: We ought to seek good and avoid evil.

So modified, the norm become true by definition and self-evident. However, the norm has no content. To give it content, Aquinas must specify what things are good and what things are evil.

So Aquinas goes on to say: “All those things to which man has a natural inclination are naturally apprehended by reason as being good.” But don’t we have a natural inclination toward bad things too, such as selfishness, laziness, and revenge? In response, Aquinas clarifies that our inclinations insofar as they are ruled by reason belong to the natural law. So we discover what is good by seeing what is reasonable to desire. Much in the same spirit, some contemporary thinkers suggest that we pick our beliefs about good by seeing what we desire insofar as we are rational (informed, consistent, and so forth—as in Section 10.5).

Another approach is that of John Finnis, an Australian thinker who tried to restate Aquinas’s natural-law ethics in intuitionist terms. Finnis argues that we can uncover the basic goods of human life by rational reflection, after which their goodness becomes self-evident. The basic goods include seven items: life/health, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability, practical reasona- bleness/autonomy, and religion. We cannot say that one of these goods is more important than another; each good can, from a certain perspective, seem like the most important thing in life. Since these goods can’t be measured on a common scale and totaled, the consequentialist norm to maximize total value is meaningless. Instead, we are free to choose which goods we want to emphasize in our lives; for example, we might choose research (emphasizing knowledge) or medicine (emphasizing health). Choosing directly against a basic good, however, is always wrong; this leads to exceptionless norms (for example, against murder, which violates the basic good of life). Thus Finnis arrives at a nonconsequentialist ethics (see Chapter 11).

13.3 Controversies

Natural law is more a broadly pluralistic tradition of doing ethics than a precisely formulated ethical theory. People in the natural-law tradition are much impressed by the work of St. Thomas Aquinas; but after that they go in different directions.

For example, some in the natural-law tradition base ethics on God’s will, along the lines of supernaturalism (Chapter 3, which has some arguments from natural-law thinkers). Others in the natural-law tradition base ethics on a naturalism that deduces ethical norms from empirical facts about desires—or, alternatively, on an intuitionism that appeals to moral intuitions or self- evident moral truths (Chapter 4). But all are (or at least claim to be) true to the inspiration of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Most in the natural-law tradition are nonconsequentialists, and defend exceptionless norms (for example, against killing the innocent, see Chapter 11). But a few adopt a “proportionalism” close to utilitarianism (Chapter 10). Still others follow a virtue ethics (Chapter 12).

While almost everyone in the natural-law tradition accepts the golden rule, many put it at the core of morality (so that it sums up the whole natural law); but many others see it as less important than “Do good and avoid evil.” In either case, I see no reason why a natural-law approach couldn’t incorporate the insights of our Chapters 7 to 9 about the golden rule.

While natural law has been especially important among Catholics, some non-Catholics have also pursued the natural-law tradition; prominent examples include Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) and Samuel von Pufendorf (1632–94).

Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae (1967) argued, along natural-law grounds, that the inherent natural purpose of intercourse is to procreate life; he concluded that the use of the birth control pill and other forms of artificial birth control (but not the rhythm method) are wrong. While Elizabeth Anscombe defended the Pope’s reasoning, many thinkers of a natural-law slant (including most of the committee that the Pope had established to advise him) disagreed with it. Some such thinkers argued that it is fallacious to draw moral conclusions from claims about what is biologically “natural.” So there are deep controversies within the natural-law tradition.