The Natural Law Theory

Human Nature
Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module, you will be able

to:
1. explain the basic idea of the Natural Law
Theory; and
2. evaluate the advantages and difficulties of
the Natural Law Theory.
Basic Idea
• The things in nature have a nature. Perhaps we can say the
same thing about human beings.
• At its most basic, natural law theory tells us that actions are
right just because they are natural, and wrong just because
they are unnatural. And people are good or bad to the extent
that they fulfill their true nature—the more they fulfill their
true nature, the better they are.
The Theory and Its Attractions
1. Natural law theory promises to explain how morality
could possibly be objective, that is, how moral standards
depend on something other than human opinion.
• According to this theory, human nature can serve as the
objective standard of morality.
• What is human nature? What is natural for human beings?
The Theory and Its Attractions
2. Natural law theory easily explains why morality is especially
suited for human beings, and not for anything else in the natural
world.
• Only human beings have the sort of nature that enables them to
be moral agents. This capacity for rational thought also seems to
be the cornerstone of morality.
• Moral agents—those who bear responsibility for their actions,
and who are fit for praise or blame—are those who can control
their behavior through reasoning.
The Theory and Its Attractions

3. Natural law theory has a clear account of the origins

of morality.
• Morality depends on human nature. No humans, no
human nature. No human nature, no morality.
• But it is important to remember that morality does
NOT depend on human opinion.
The Theory and Its Attractions
4. Natural law theory may solve one of the hardest problems in
ethics: how to gain moral knowledge.
• According to natural law theory, moral knowledge requires
two things: we must know what our human nature is, and
know whether various actions fulfill it.
Conceptions of Human Nature

• Human nature is what makes us human.

• It is the set of features that is essential to being human
(human essence), so that if we were to lose these features, we
would also lose our humanity.
• What is the nature of human nature?
What makes us human?

What makes us human is …………………

Three Conceptions of Human Nature

1. The first possibility is that we are animals

by nature, and so to act according to our
nature is just to behave as other animals
do.
Should we just behave as other animals do?
Three Conceptions of Human Nature
2. The second possibility is that human nature is the set of traits that we
have innately. Innate traits are ones we have from birth. They are
natural in the sense of being inborn, natural as opposed to being learned,
or acquired from parents and society.
• If Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was right, we are innately
angelic. Before society corrupts us, our noble nature shines through.
We are by nature pleasant, cooperative, and considerate.
• But what if Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) had it right? He thought that
we are innately selfish, competitive, and distrustful.
Three Conceptions of Human Nature
3. The third conception of human nature says that our
nature is whatever traits we all share. These universal
human features would make up the essence of humanity.
• We could discover our human nature just by observing
the features that all humans have in common.
• What is that feature that ALL humans have in
common that has something to do with morality?
4. Natural Purposes
• Human nature is what we are designed to be and to do.
It is some function of ours, some purpose that we are
meant to serve, some end that we were designed for.
• What is human nature? What is natural for human
beings?
• What is our purpose as human beings?
Natural Purposes
• It may seem that this conception of human nature places us squarely
outside the realm of science and in the domain of religion. How could
science tell us what our purpose is? Doesn’t talk of our being designed
for something imply the existence of an Intelligent Designer?
• Thomas Aquinas - God is our Intelligent Designer. When God created
us, He assigned us a specific set of purposes.
• Since God is all-good, frustrating God’s purpose is immoral. That’s
what we do when we act unnaturally. That’s why it is wrong to act
unnaturally.
Natural Purposes

•Two basic secular accounts might offer some

insight.
oThe Efficiency Model,
oThe Fitness Model.
Natural Purposes - The Efficiency Model
Efficiency Model.
• Example: The function of a heart, we can say that pumping
blood is its natural purpose, because nothing pumps blood as
well as a heart.
• Human beings can have a function or a purpose, then, if we
are more efficient than anything else when it comes to certain
tasks.
•What are we efficient of? Will that
define our nature / purpose?
Natural Purposes - The Fitness Model
Fitness Model
• Our organs have the purposes they do because it is extremely
adaptive for them to serve these roles. The natural purpose of the
heart, brain, liver, and lungs is to do what enhances fitness:
roughly, our success at survival and reproduction.
• Since our natural purposes are survival and procreation, we
can see why so many natural law theorists have thought suicide
immoral and have condemned birth control and homosexual
activity.
•Are survival and reproduction our
natural purposes?
Conclusion
• It is difficult to try to glean recommendations for how we
ought to act from descriptions of how nature actually
operates.
• Natural laws describe and predict how things will behave.
• Moral laws are not meant to describe how we actually
behave, but rather to serve as ideals that we ought to aim for.
• Nature has, at best, only a limited role to play in moral theory.