law, natural

   Natural-law theories in ethics are theories that the moral standards that govern human behaviour are derived from the nature of rational creatures. These theories take their origin from Thomas Aquinas, who defines natural law as the rational creature's participation in the eternal law, which Aquinas says is God's way of government. The natural law also constitutes the basic principles of practical reason for all rational creatures, binding on, and knowable to some degree by, all. Aquinas states that the first precept of the natural law is that good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided; and that every action has goodness in so far as it pursues the good, whereas it is lacking in goodness, and thus is said to be evil, in so far as it is lacking in pursuit of the good. It is possible to group together the various ways in which actions might pursue or fail to pursue the good; these classifications will then yield the types of action that are good and the types that are bad. There are also naturallaw theories in the philosophy of law; these hold that the law gets its authority from the fact that many of its demands are codifications of moral demands. A leading contemporary theorist in both domains is John Finnis. Critics have charged that natural-law theories commit the 'is'/'ought' fallacy, that is, the (alleged) fallacy of moving from purely factual premises to an evaluative conclusion.

   See Aquinas, Thomas; ethics; Finnis, John Mitchell

   Further reading: Aquinas 1963-80; Finnis 1980; Lisska 1996; Oderberg and Chappell 2004