Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Law Theories
Jonathan Crowe, ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Law Theories’ in George Duke and Robert P. George (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
23 Pages Posted: 3 May 2018
Date Written: April 15, 2018
Abstract
The natural law outlook (as defended in the work of the ‘new natural law theorists’, such as Germain Grisez, John Finnis and Joseph M. Boyle ) involves a range of distinctive positions in ethics, political philosophy and jurisprudence. Specifically, it consists of an ethical theory that combines the incommensurability of the basic forms of good with the logical priority of the good over the right; a political theory that holds that all agents have a duty to promote the common good; and a legal theory that combines a normative account of law as social coordination with the ontological claim that law is necessarily a rational standard for conduct. This chapter explores the metaphysical foundations of these aspects of the natural law position. I will focus particularly on the metaphysical issues raised by the natural law outlook in ethics and jurisprudence. The emphasis placed in natural law ethics on the basic forms of good raises questions about the nature of the goods and their relationship to other sorts of entities. Similarly, the central claim of natural law jurisprudence—that law is necessarily a rational standard for conduct—raises fundamental questions about the nature of law. Natural law authors have adopted some characteristic positions on these issues, but there is significant debate about the details.
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