Applying and evaluating natural law

Overview

Recall questions on natural law as a guide to real decisions, whether goodness depends on purpose, proportionalism, real and apparent goods, the doctrine of double effect and self-defence, and the criticisms from design, human nature, the is-ought gap and the diversity of human lives, alongside its strengths.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Evaluate whether natural law is a helpful guide when someone actually has to make a moral decision.

   Model answer

   In its favour: it gives clear, teachable principles, it does not require you to predict consequences, it protects individuals from being sacrificed to majority benefit, and it is usable by believers and non-believers alike. Against: the primary precepts are stated so generally that they do not settle hard cases, the derivation of secondary precepts is contested, and its inflexibility can produce cruel results where circumstances are unusual. The decisive question is whether moral clarity is worth the cost of rigidity.

2. 2

   To what extent can calling something good or bad depend on whether it achieves its purpose?

   Model answer

   Supporters say purpose-based judgement is intuitive and objective: a poorly functioning heart really is a bad heart, and we readily judge human actions by whether they enable people to flourish. Opponents object that this works for artefacts and organs, which have purposes assigned by designers or by biology, but that extending it to whole human lives assumes precisely what is in dispute. It also risks branding people who cannot fulfil a supposed function as defective, which many find morally intolerable.

3. 3

   What is proportionalism, and why did it emerge?

   Model answer

   Proportionalism, associated with twentieth-century Catholic moral theologians, holds that it is permissible to set aside a precept when there is a proportionate reason for doing so. It emerged because strict application of the precepts produced conclusions many found inhumane in medical and social cases. It keeps natural law's framework of goods while allowing weighing, though critics within the tradition argue that this concedes the whole absolutist point and leaves the theory without a firm floor.

4. 4

   Give two strengths of natural law that a defender could rely on in an essay.

   Model answer

   First, universality: because it appeals to reason and shared human nature rather than to revelation, it can be used in argument with people who do not share the same faith, and it underpins language about human rights. Second, protection of the individual: because certain acts are ruled out absolutely, no person can be treated as expendable for the sake of an overall benefit, which is exactly where consequence-based theories are most vulnerable.

5. 5

   What is the difference between a real good and an apparent good in Aquinas' ethics?

   Model answer

   A real good genuinely serves the human telos. An apparent good only seems to, because it delivers immediate pleasure or advantage while working against what we are for. Aquinas held that nobody deliberately chooses evil as evil; wrongdoing is a failure of reason in which an apparent good is mistaken for a real one. Moral education is therefore a training of judgement, not just of will.

6. 6

   What is the doctrine of double effect, and what conditions must be met for it to apply?

   Model answer

   It permits an act that has both a good and a bad effect, provided that the act itself is not intrinsically wrong, the good effect is what is intended and the bad effect only foreseen, the bad effect is not the means by which the good is produced, and there is a proportionate reason for accepting it. The classic case is removing a cancerous womb from a pregnant woman.

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