Lesson 1: Divine Command

Theory
Lesson 1.1: Basic Views
Lesson 1.2: Some Challenges
 

Lesson 2: Natural Law Theory

Lesson 2.1: Basic Views
Lesson 2.2: Some Challenges
Lesson 1: Divine Command Theory
Lesson 1.1: Basic Views
God’s Will as the Basis of Moral Law
• Does God command what is good because it is good or it is good
because God commands it? Divine Command Theory (DCT): Whatever is good is good only
because God wills it to be good. DCT has two versions:

1.Strong Version: God’s will is the sole basis of morality.

2.Weak Version: Morality can be based on God’s will or some independent standard
(usually reason), but if a conflict arises between God’s will and some other standard,
God’s will overrides the other standard.
DCT-Strong Version
• The sole basis of morality is God’s will. As such, as Dostoevsky
remarked, ”If there is no God, everything is permissible.” Moral decisions
should thus be made on the basis of what God commands,
not on what reason tells us.
• DCT-Strong Version consists of three theses (Pojma 1999):
1. Morality (i.e., rightness or wrongness) originates with God.
2. Moral rightness simply means “willed by God,” and moral wrongfulness means
“being against the will of God.”
3. Since morality is essentially based on divine will, not on independently existing
reasons for action, no further reasons for action are necessary.
DCT-Weak Version
• Omits or qualifies one of two of the three theses (listed above).
• Best represented by Soren Kierkegaard’s theory of the teleological
suspension of the ethical.
• Morality has an independent foundation in reason (and so even
if there is no God, morality will still stand by itself--contra
Dostoevsky’s previous remark). But if one believes in God and His
commands conflict with the dictates of reason, God’s commands
should override the dictates of reason.
• Illustrated in the Biblical story where Abraham was asked by God to make his son,
Isaac, as a sacrificial offering.
• Elaborated in Kierkegaard’s three stages of life: (1) aesthetic stage (life of
pleasure); (2) ethical stage (life of reason); and (3) religious stage (life of faith).
 sson 1.2: Some Challenges

Criticisms of the DCT

1. How can we know for sure what God wills?
• Sacred texts of different religions are usually stated in very general terms; and
human conscience, religious leaders, and self-proclaimed messengers of God
sometimes give different, if not conflicting, accounts of what God wills.
2. If God can will anything and it would be good, the theory may lead to moral
arbitrariness.
• But if God can only will what is good or those in conformity with His divine
qualities (such as goodness and justice), then these qualities would have value
independent of God. Furthermore, this would mean that there is a higher standard
of good which God must conform to, which contradicts DCT.
3. The theory undermines our autonomy as rational beings.
• What is our reason for if we are bound to just conform
to whatever God commands us to do?
• There are times in which what religion teaches as
God’s will may or should be put into question (e.g.,
some religions prohibit their members from
undergoing blood transfusion even when that is the
only way to cure their sickness or save their lives.)
Importance of the Concept of God in Morality
1. God’s existence ensures that ultimate justice exists.
• God guarantees that the just will be duly rewarded, and the unjust will be duly punished.
Morality would not make sense if there is no justice.
2. God’s existence provides hope that the good will eventually prevail over the evil.
3. Religion provides a strong motivation for why we should be moral.
• The existence of a perfectly just God and an immortal soul, along with the fear of eternal
damnation and the yearning for an eternal life of happiness, provide a strong motivation
to be moral.
4. Religion provides practices and structures that support its values.
• There is usually a church of some kind and a community of faithful who provide mutual
support to one another.
 Lesson 2: Natural Law Theory
Lesson 2.1: Basic Claims
Basis of Right Action
• Morality is part of the natural order of things. Actions are right by nature, apart from
the opinions or practices of humans.
• Reason can discover valid moral principles by looking at the nature of humanity and
society. If something is “unnatural,” it is also immoral.
Natural Law and God
• Older versions of the theory share similarities with DCT in that they point to God as
the source of the natural law. Modern and recent versions, however, claim that
natural law is inherent in the universe and in humanity, and hence does not need a
supernatural force.
Major Proponents
1. The Stoics (1st Century BC)
• They were one of the first thinkers who conceived
of the idea of natural law as the basis of morality.
They believe that God is immanent in or even
identical with nature (pantheism). Nature, for the
Stoics, refers to the natural order as a whole
—”cosmic nature.” To live a good life, humans have
to align themselves to a kind of “cosmic” nature.
• Fundamental cosmic principles govern and unify
everything in the world. Natural order is thus rational.
• To reason and act rationally is to be in harmony with
nature. Thus, rationality is a key to pursing a moral life.
Subsequently, violence and vice are consequences of
irrationality and not being in harmony with nature’s
universal laws.
2. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274)
• He synthesized the Stoics’ sense of cosmic natural law with Aristotle’s view that
human beings have a specific nature, purpose, and function. (If the function of a
knife is to cut sharply, a pencil’s function is to make marks on a paper, and a “good”
knife or pencil then is one that performs its function well.)
• Humanity’s function is to exhibit rationality in all its forms. Fundamental precept
of the natural law: good is to be done and evil avoided.
• What is the good or evil? All those things to which man has a natural inclination
are naturally apprehended by reason as good, and consequently as objects of
pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance.
• Good is acting in accordance with our natural inclinations, fundamental of which
include our desires for life and procreation, knowledge, and sociability.
 Lesson 2.2: Some Challenges

Moral Absolutism and the Qualifying Principles

• Natural Law Theory (NLT) subscribes to the view of moral absolutism which
claims that certain kinds of actions are always wrong or always obligatory
regardless of the consequences.
• When basic values conflict (or when forced to choose between two actions
which both violate some value), NLT appeals to the following principles:
• Principle of Forfeiture: a person who threatens the life of an innocent person
forfeits his/her own right to life.
• Principle of Double Effect: It is always wrong to do a bad act intentionally in order
to bring about good consequences, but that it is sometimes permissible to do a
good act despite knowing that it will bring about bad consequences.
 Principle of Double
Effect Elaborated
When an act has a good and bad effect, the act is good if:
• The act, considered in itself and apart from its consequences, is good. (The Nature-of-the-Act Condition)
• The bad effect must not be the means by which one achieves the good effect. (The Means-End Condition)
• The intention must be the achieving of only the good effect, with the bad effect being only an unintended
side effect. If the bad effect is a means to the achieve the good effect, the act is bad. The bad effect may be
foreseen but must not be intended. (The Right-Intention Condition)
• The good effect must be at least equivalent to the importance of the bad effect. (The Proportionality
Condition)
How the principle of double effect works
• Case 1: A pregnant woman was diagnosed with a cancerous uterus, and
subsequently has to undergo hysterectomy to save her life, but such procedure
will lead to the termination of pregnancy.
• Case 2: Nita’s father has planted a bomb that will detonate in half an hour. Nita is
the only person who knows he hid it, and she has promised him that she will not
reveal the location to anyone, being a devoted daughter. However, if the
authorities fail to locate the bomb, and dismantle it within the next half hour, it
will blow up a building and kill thousands of people. Suppose we can torture Nita
in order to get this information form her. Given this situation, is it morally
permissible to torture Nita?
Some Criticisms
• Regarding the principle of double effect, how do we
distinguish unforeseen from unintended consequences?
• Hume’s challenge: how can we derive an ”ought” from an
“is”? How can what is natural be obligatory?
• The assumption of NLT that moral laws are written in
natural laws is challenged by the Darwinian evolutionary
theory which claims that nature has no inherent design.
“Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can
charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives
meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light
of reason and the light of faith, through which the
intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of
charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and
communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into
sentimentality.

Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary

way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk
facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective
emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and
distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the
opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an
emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social
content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and
universal breathing-space.”
Benedict XVI, Truth in Charity #3
GEETHIC Blueprint Presentations
Prepared by: Napoleon M. Mabaquiao, Jr
Department of Philosophy
DLSU, Term 3, AY 2019-20

Reference: Evangelista, F. and N. Mabaquiao. Ethics: Theories and Applications

(Anvil Publishing Inc., 2020).