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Here you will learn how to locate natural law within the
larger universe of theories about ethics, and consider both
the basic assumptions of natural law thinking and the basic
challenges that have been raised against them
The Natural Theories of Ethics
The Philosophical Approach
After Nuremberg Trial and Martin L. Kings letter from
Birhingham Jail, it is appealed for unwritten, universal
standards of justice. It further stimulate to philosophise the
theory
Law, Nature, Nature Law
What is nature and what is law?
Why study Natural Law?
Attractions of Natural Law
Origin of Natural Law ?
Different Principles of Natural Law ?
Natural Law and Jurists
Natural Law and Judiciary
Where the concept of Natural Law originated.
View of Socrates and Plato
Different theories of law will be discussed to trace
the principles of Natural Law and to enhance it’s
acceptance
Views of Jurists will be discussed here
Whether Judiciary follows the principles of Natural
Law
Natural Law in Contemporary Period
Does Natural Law believe in the existence of GOD
Whether Natural Law has any relevancy in
contemporary period?
Existence of GOD under severe urgument
Debate between Natural Law and Positive Law Hart – Fuller Debate
What is Natural Law ?
What is ‘Nature’ and what is ‘Law’?
“Whatever the practical reason naturally
apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs
to the precepts of natural law as something
to be done or avoided."
All those things to which man has a natural
inclination
What is Natural Law ?
Refers to the use of reason to analyze the
human nature and deduce binding rules
of moral behavior
Natural theory is a philosophical and legal
belief that all the humans are governed by
basic innate laws.
‘Natural law theory’ is a label that has been
applied to theories of ethics, theories of
politics, theories of civil law, and theories of
religious morality
What is Natural Law ?
If the word "natural” means anything at all, it
refers to the nature of a man, and when used
with "law," "natural" must refer to an ordering
that is manifested in the inclinations of a man's
nature and to nothing else
Any moral theory that holds that some positive
moral claims are literally true, counts as a
natural law view
Natural law and theology are inextricably
intertwined.
Small commentary on Natural Law
Small commentary on Natural Law
The real character of man is known only through
the history of his cultural expression
"the real man who grows in history amid changing
conditions of social life, acquiring wisdom by the
discipline of life itself - in many respects only
gradually exploring the potentialities and dignities
of his own nature."
Evolution in human life brings to light new
necessities in human nature which,
“struggle for expression and form” Father Murray,
Natural Law in Father Murray's treatment consists of
a gradual development of our knowledge of human
nature
Aristotelian idea of good life in the
Greek polis
Man by his nature is a ‘zoon polıtikon’
Reasonable life were defined as the
virtues of a community-based social
ethics and duties owned by each to the
Greek polis
Readers of the Bible would of course gather that God's law
rules human actions.
Much of the Bible is concerned with divine law,
Law of God as found in the Bible, "do by nature those things
that are of the law", they "show the work of the law written in
their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them", etc.
(Rom. 2:14).
"The law" here is "the Law", i.e. the Law of Moses, so the
passage suggests that the Law of Moses contains the natural
law.
Hence Gratian's remark that "the law of nature is what is
contained in the Law and the Gospel".
Historically, natural law philosophy can be
divided into four phases
(1) Classical natural law in the Antique Greece and Rome;
(2) Scholastic natural law in the Middle Ages;
(3) Rationalist natural law in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries; and
(4) Modern natural law since 1950s
Alternatively, the tradition of natural law philosophy could be
divided into two categories of
classical and
modern,
Thomas Aquinas classifies natural law on
the basis of normative order, i.e.
(a) lex aeterna, or “eternal law”,
(b) lex naturalis, or “natural law”,
(c) lex humana, or “human law”, and
(d) lex divina, or “divine law
Lex aeterna comprises the great world order by
God, the omnipotent Creator,
Reference may be drawn with the all-
encompassing “order of things” that is
imposed upon all the living creatures and
inanimate things alike.
Aquinas made no essential difference between
the inanimate heavenly bodies, the realm of
living creatures, and the human kind
All were equally subject to the order of creation
Lex naturalis is that part of the lex aeterna that
determines the duties of man among the living
creation.
The commands of the lex naturalis are situated
higher in Thomas’ hierarchy of normative orders
than any decrees of the lex humana,
i.e. positive laws issued by the sovereign ruler
for the benefit of the community.
The fourth normative order, i.e. lex divina,
consists of the express revelations and
commandments by the omnipotent God for the
mankind in Bible and other holy scriptures
For Thomas Aquinas, the supreme principle of natural law is that of
doing good and avoiding evil.
Moreover, the precepts of natural law are self-evident (per se nota) and
cannot be validated by reference to any other, still higher principles of
religious or social ethics
In all, he defined the concept of law as follows:
an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has
care of the community, and promulgated.
An unjust law is not binding and will not even qualify as a law
proper, being no more than a “corruption of law”
Thomas pointed out that detailed knowledge of the contents of natural
law could be gained by human reason. Thereby he significantly paved
the way to the breakthrough of a rationalist natural law thinking in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Natural Rights & Natural Law ?
What is the relationship between natural law and natural
right
"natural law and the natural rights derived there from”
“ought to be sharply distinguished from one another and
went on to contrast their different meanings”
"[N]atural rights and traditional natural law are, to put it
simply, yet altogether accurately, incompatible; to espouse
one teaching is to make it impossible reasonably to espouse
the other”
There is...a genuine, strong connection between the philosophy of
natural laws and right
Natural rights...may be traced back to natural law and natural law
transports us back to the Greeks."
John Finnis has claimed to derive a doctrine of natural rights
or human rights from Aquinas's teaching on natural law.
Ernest Fortin finds no such teaching in Aquinas
Aquinas derived the word lex (law) from ligare (to bind); but
a binding natural law is not the same as a natural right
“A rights version focuses on the self-assertion of agents; the
genuine natural-law version focuses on the moral command or
address to each”
A moral command of natural law limits our freedom of action;
a natural right affirms a sphere of individual autonomy and
free choice. One cannot deduce the one from the other.
[N]atural rights do not derive from natural law
Thomas Aquinas v Finnis
The idea of subjective rights was "logically
incompatible"
Subjective rights considered as a power or liberty of
the individual
Rights are as fundamental as duties"
"[T]here are rights which every member of our
species is entitled to: human rights”
‘Ius’ meant "what is just" or "what is right." In
this sense ‘ius’ was a restraint on power Justice has its own special object apart from the other virtues
and this is called the just, and this indeed is ius, so it is evident
that ius is the object of justice...in its original meaning ius
signifies the just thing...law (lex) is not ius itself but rather the
basis of ius ……… Summa Theologi
Hence it could not be the source of subjective
rights understood as licit powers inhering in
individual
Aquinas gave several derivative meanings of ius in this
context, they did not include any subjective sense of the
word as referring to a right of an individual
Thomas Aquinas v Finnis
Finnis, therefore, extracted a subjective meaning
from Aquinas's objective definition ….. "lus is the
object of justice”
Object of justice was the objective state of affairs
that justice sought to achieve.
But Finnis argued that, in the text of Aquinas, the
object of justice should be understood as referring
to "the other person's right(s) {ius}
But Aquinas's own definition did not have any
reference to other persons' rights.
Finnis therefore emphasized another usage of
Aquinas, his acceptance of the Roman law
definition of justice as a steady willingness to give
to others
"what is their right {ius suum}.""1 But the word ius
as used here did not have the same meaning as
our English word "right" used in a subjective
sense
The modern word implies a certain freedom of
choice, a freedom to act or not act in the relevant
sphere. The ius of an ancient Roman, what was due
to him, might be a punishment
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