(Page 9 of 21) - Young People, Relativism, and Natural Law authored by Alford, C..

exist no grounds to conclude that we “ought” to live according to this nature.
Nature is discovered; ought is created by the decision to observe certain values.
Between these two realms there is a chasm, one that a belief in God can no
longer bridge, as we live in a secular world.

Recognizing this, all is not lost for natural law theorists. People talk and

act as if goods such as life, friendship, family, health, knowledge, beauty, and
play are good in themselves. For example, we desire money in order to acquire
things (that is, money is an instrumental good), but health is a good in itself.
Goods in themselves do not require further justification, and because they are
already values, one is not committing the naturalistic fallacy in saying we ought to
pursue them. From the perspective of the new natural law theorists, as they are
called, such as Finnis, and George, Aquinas’s first principle of natural law, “do
good, avoid evil,” is a strictly analytic statement, along the lines of “all bachelors
are unmarried,” true simply by virtue of how we use words like good and evil.
The real action is with the list of basic goods, things we desire for themselves.
From the fact that we do, all else follows. Furthermore, because these goods are
not themselves moral values, but pre-moral, or so Finnis and George argue, the
freedom of the individual is preserved. Not enmeshed and obligated moral
beings, but free agents who would naturally choose these goods for themselves,
are the subjects of the new natural law. (George, 1999, 45)

There is, however, a problem with the empirical approach to natural law.

(The approach is “empirical” because it takes what is said to be desirable as truly
desirable.) Because basic goods are not derived from a “speculative philosophy
of nature,” but are simply goods people say they desire for their own sake, and
not for other purposes, there is no hierarchy among them. Necessary is a set of
principles, what Finnis calls “modes of responsibility,” to guide us in choosing
among basic goods. Otherwise, I might choose to continue chatting with my
friends instead of preventing a child playing nearby from running into traffic. (If
basic goods are equally valuable, who is to say that a child’s life is more
important than pursuing the pleasures of friendship?)

Modes of responsibility are, in fact, familiar moral guidelines, even if they

do not always look so familiar when expressed in academic-speak, such as
“choose and otherwise will those and only those possibilities whose willing is
compatible with integral human fulfillment.” (George 1999, 51) A more familiar
way of expressing the leading principle of responsibility is the Golden Rule, “do
unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Couple these familiar moral
guidelines with basic goods, and one has a natural law morality suited for a
contemporary world that no longer believes in “metanarratives.” No longer part
of a big story, the basic goods of natural law simply are.

And the hierarchy among goods? There is none, though what has long

been called prudence, the reason of everyday life, offers guidance. With the
term “prudence” I mean roughly what Aquinas means--knowledge of particulars
under the guidance of general principles.

Critics of the new natural law argue that it solves the naturalistic fallacy by

tacitly adopting the view of the one who made the fallacy famous, David Hume.
Basic human goods are simply what humans desire. They are natural only in the