NATURAL LAW

 

The nature of a thing, from an Aristotelian point of view, is the form or essence it instantiates. Ex.: it is of the essence, nature, or form of a triangle to have three perfectly straight sides. 

In biological organs, we have things whose natures or essences more obviously involve certain final causes or purposes. Ex.: the function or final cause of eyeballs is to enable us to see. Objections: Ex.: if it is wrong to go against nature, then it is wrong to wear glasses. Again: If homosexuality is genetic, doesn’t that show that it’s natural too.?

To wear eyeglasses isn’t contrary to the natural function of eyeballs; rather, it quite obviously restores to the eyeballs their ability to carry out their natural function. The question of homosexuality’s genetic basis is quite irrelevant; it does not by itself prove anything about whether it is natural. The possibility of a genetic basis for clubfoot doesn’t show that having clubfeet is “natural”. It is obviously unnatural in the Aristotelian sense of failing perfectly to conform to the essence or nature of a thing. No one who has a clubfoot would take offense at someone’s noting this obvious matter of fact, or find it convincing that the existence of a genetic basis for his affliction shows that it is something he should “embrace” and “celebrate”.

Of course, that by itself does not show that homosexuality is immoral either. After all, having a clubfoot is not immoral, and neither is being born blind or with a predisposition for alcoholism. 

Morality in general from a point of view informed by Aristotelian metaphysics takes a thing’s form, essence, or nature to determine the good for it. A non-moral sense of good, examples: a triangle with sides as perfectly straight as possible, a squirrel which fulfills the characteristic activities of a squirrel’s life. It is the foundation for the distinctively moral sense of goodness.

Even from the squirrel example it is obvious that for any animal there are going to be various behaviors that are conducive to its well being and others that are not, and that these latter will be bad for it whatever the reason it wants to do them.

Now, when we turn to human beings we find that they too have a nature or essence, and the good for them, like the good for anything else is defined in terms of this nature or essence. Unlike other animals, though human beings have intellect and will, and this is where moral goodness enters the picture. Human beings can know what is good for them, and choose whether to pursue that good. And that is precisely the natural end or purpose of the faculties of intellect and will—for like our other faculties, they too have a final cause, namely to allow us to understand the truth about things, including what is good for us given our nature or essence, and to act  in light of it. It follows that it is good for us to understand the truth about things, it follows that it is good for us—it fulfills our nature—to pursue truth and to avoid error. To choose in line with the final cause or purposes that are ours by nature is morally good; to choose against them is morally bad.

 The good for us is in fact whatever tends to fulfill our nature or essence in the sense of realizing the natural ends or purposes of our various natural capacities, then there can be no doubt as to why someone ought to do what is good in this sense. For you do by nature want to do what you take to be good for you; reason reveals that what is in fact good for you is acting in a way that is conducive to the fulfillment of the ends or purposes inherent in human nature. This may require a fight against one’s desires and such a fight might in some cases be so extremely difficult and unpleasant that one might not have the stomach for it. But that is a problem of will, not of reason. Our nature or essence is to be rational animals, and reason or intellect has as its final cause the attainment of truth. These are just objective facts; for the sense of good in question here is a completely objective one, connoting, not some subjective preference we happen to have for a thing, but rather the conformity of a thing to a nature or essence as a kind of paradigm.

If there are no Aristotelian forms, essences, or natures, then there is no such things as what is good for human beings by nature. If there are no final causes, then reason does not have as its purpose the attainment of truth or knowledge of the good. What we are left with are at best whatever desires we actually happen to have, for whatever reason—heredity, environment, luck—but these will be subjective preferences rather than reflective of objective goodness or badness.

Natural law approach to sexual morality.

It is hardly mysterious what the final cause or natural purpose of sex is: procreation. Procreation is inherently heterosexual. Pleasure is not the final cause or natural end of sex; rather, sexual pleasure has as its own final cause the getting of people to engage in sexual relations so that they will procreate. Pleasure is secondary.

The teleology or final causality of sex thus pushes inevitably in the direction of marriage which exist for the purpose of generating and nourishing offspring not only biologically but culturally.

If human beings didn’t reproduce sexually, sexual organs wouldn’t exist at all, an neither would sexual pleasure. Hence neither would romantic love or marriage exist. Human beings might still have affection for one another, but this affection wouldn’t have any of the distinctive features we associate with the feelings that exist between lovers, or between husbands and wives or parents and children. 

Since the final cause of human sexual capacities is procreation, what is good for human beings in the use of those capacities is to use them only in a way consistent with this  final cause or purpose. This is a necessary truth; for the good for us is defined by our nature and the final causes of its various elements. This remains true whatever the reason is for someone’s desire to act in a way contrary to nature’s purposes –whether simple intellectual error, habituated vice, genetic defect, or whatever—and however strong that desire is.

Traditional morality does not rest on arbitrary divine commands backed by the threat of punishment, but rather on the systematic analysis of human nature entailed by classical philosophy. Plato’s and Aristotle’s condemnation of homosexuality was not based on the Bible, after all, but on their respective rationally grounded systems of metaphysics and ethics.

Does that mean that God is irrelevant to natural law theory? Not at all. He is the Author of the natural law, even if knowledge of the grounds and content of that law can largely be had without to reference to Him. Obedience to the natural law is thus obedience to God.

Without keeping in mind that our ultimate destiny is an eternal one and that knowing God is our natural end or purpose, our understanding of our lives in the here and now, including our understanding of morality, becomes massively distorted. This life takes on an exaggerated importance. Worldly pleasures and projects become overvalued. Difficult moral obligations come to seem impossible to liver up to when our horizons are this-worldly. Harms and injustice suddenly become unendurable. 

Secularists do not see hope for a world beyond this one and thus insist that heaven or some reasonable facsimile, simply must be possible here and now if only we hit upon the right socio-economic-political structures.