Natural Law: What Is It?

Academicius wrote to Simplicimus:

I do want to comment on one of your presuppositions about what makes for a good argument (for a particular version of natural law or for any other claim).

You say that "those of you who want to assert such a natural law (similar to natural condemnation of murder) have the burden to show that mankind pretty universally has felt that homosexuality is an offense against nature, or, to use Scholasticus' happy phrase, 'devalues the traits that make us human.'"

I think it is a fallacy to think that the general opinion is relevant here. In this case, the burden on natural-law advocates is to make a valid argument for some version of natural law from plausible premises, which is a standard of justification which is independent of the feelings or opinions of any particular person, or of mankind in general.

Simplicimus responds to Academicius:

Since I am very interested in natural law (temperamentally, I'd like to see it work), I'd appreciate it if we'd pursue in more detail your objection to my assertion that natural law proponents have to show that a belief is near-universal. Actually, I did not expect that to be a controversial statement : even Aquinas agrees that basic principles of natural law are universal (S.T., Q. 94, Article 4 -- how do you guys abbreviate references to the Summa?). And when Aquinas and a Kantian agree on anything, I'd think we'd pretty well covered the field.

My experience of natural law has been that its proponents argue from the fact that "everybody recognizes X to be right/wrong" -- this is what J. Teleologus appears to do, though I may be misreading him. We could quibble over how nearly universal a view must to be in order to qualify as a "natural" law, but the idea is that if nearly everybody assigns the same moral standing to an act, then that is evidence of a natural law at work.

BTW, I say "evidence" rather than "proof" because there could be other explanations. For example, the way humans relate in societies may, in most cases, lead certain acts to be encouraged, others discouraged (e.g., murder, theft), but when social conditions change, those views of right and wrong could change. I've read Darwinist argumetns that along this line: there's no natural law (there's nothing eternal), just responses in particular places and times to the opportunities and demands of social success, and thus genetic success.

But you wrote, "I think it is a fallacy to think that the general opinion is relevant here. In this case, the burden on natural-law advocates is to make a valid argument for some version of natural law from plausible premises, which is a standard of justification which is independent of the feelings or opinions of any particular person, or of mankind in general."

Okay, I'll grant you that it might be logically possible for someone to show that something is a natural law principle apart from the evidence of its near-universal acceptance. While you did not say how that might be accomplished, I assume that you have in mind something like "first principles" reasoning. I guess we'll see in the Nicomachean Ethics how well that works. If you have some other approach in mind, I'd be interested to hear of it.