Natural Moral Law Flashcards
(11 cards)
What type of approach to ethics is Natural Moral Law?
Deontilogical - Rates to your moral duties (comes from greek for dean meaning duty).
It starts from the point that actions are good or bad. The consequences of an action are therefore seen as irrelevant and not considered when making moral decisions about what is right and wrong.
What are the key features of Aquinas’s NML?
- Eternal Law – law which comes from GOd’s nature as creator. Represents how God created and continues to control the Universe and all within it.
- Divine Law – The principles of Natural and Moral Order are revealed to humans through divine law (special revelation or bible and teachings of church). The revealed will of God is found in the Bible if 10 commandments which God tells humans rules.
- Natural Moral Law: The natural moral order is discovered through human reason and not through revelation. Although Divine Law says murder is wrong, we already know this through reason
- Human Law – Through understanding NML, we can then formulate human laws which are not set by God. The laws of the land that are created by humans as they try to form a functioning society.
What is the Syndereisis rule?
The syndereses rule – Aquinas taught that since the fall (Adam and Eve), humans have been in a broken relationship with God. Aquinas believed that humans have a duty to try and repair this relationship by doing good and avoiding evil.
“This therefore is the principle of law: that good must be done and evil avoided” - Aquinas.
What is a Cannon Law?
Canon Laws are secondary precepts
Canon Law is the legal system of the Church, especially the Roman Catholic Church.
Rules about marriage annulments
What are the 5 Primary Precepts?
Aquinas believed the use of reason will lead everyone to 5 primary precepts.
The 5 primary precepts are:
1. Preserve and Sustain Life
2. Reproduction
3. Teach and Educate Offspring
4. Maintain an Orderly Society
5. Worship God
Summarise the main points of NML
- Four fold division of Law (human law etc)
- Main guiding principle is that “good is to be done and pursued and evil is to be avoided”. Aqainas taught our function was to use reason to guide our free will towards doing good and avoiding evil.
- Main guiding principle brings us to the primary precepts
- Primary Precepts are not deontological, they’re teleological (concerned with our final end)
- From the Primary Precepts, we derive secondary precepts
What are Secondary Precepts?
Secondary Precepts - Practical Rules for living can be worked out form the primary precepts using reason.
In example - Don’t have an abortion can be worked out from PP “Preserve and sustain life”.
Why is Natural Moral Law seen as an Absolutist Ethic?
Because Aquinas taught that the primary precepts are duties that cannot be changed.
“Natural Law is the same for all men … there is a single standard of truth and right for everyone”.
However, Secondary Precepts can be changed with human reason “depending on observance of such precepts”.
What are Apparent Goods and REAL GOODS?
AG - when bad things result as people think what they are doing is good
RG - One that is consistent with the moral laws
What is the Doctrine of Double Affect?
This doctrine says that if doing something morally good has a morally bad side-effect, it’s ethically OK to do it providing the bad side-effect wasn’t intended. This is true even if you foresaw that the bad effect would probably happen.
Doctrine in Double affect allows for some flexibility because it says that we can think about the interntion behind an action.
What is proportionalism?
one can determine the right course of action by weighing up the good and the necessary evil caused by the action.
For example, it seems to be common sense to lie in order to save a life and to steal to avoid dying of hunger.
