essay plan
Critically discuss one philosophical argument for or against Natural Law Theory as an approach to ethics.
Cultural relativism is strong opposition so write for Natural Law
natural law key ideas:
many types of natural law are based on the idea of telos = purpose
right actions complement these ends/purposes whereas wrong actions fail to do so
potential objections:
cultural relativism » morality is cultivated via environment rather than there being a universal standard
referencing: Harvard, always include page numbers, whether directly referencing or paraphrasing
plan
paraphrase 90%
Introduction (150–200 words)
Define Natural Law.
State that critics argue:
Cultural relativism disproves universality.
Morality is socially constructed.
Nature–nurture undermines fixed human nature.
Thesis: these objections fail.
Signpost structure clearly.
This essay will defend the Natural Law theory, the basis of which was proposed by Aristotle
it bases morality around ‘telos’ or the end purpose of an object
right actions are those that are done to reach this ‘telos’ or purpose, whilst wrong actions act outside of achieving this
common approaches of criticism include:
cultural relativism
nature vs nurture
Hume’s Is-Ought gap
natural law is often posited as being a structure innately known and once that humans are often inclined to abide by
the general universal agreement that exists, towards acts such as murder and theft, suggest that there is indeed an inherent moral structure that objectively exists
what natural law claims
Aquinas: primary precepts.
Aristotle: function argument.
Finnis: basic goods.
Clarify:
Natural Law does NOT claim cultural uniformity.
It claims basic goods are universally intelligible.
Important move:
Distinguish between:
Moral principles
Cultural applications
it comes within the umbrella field of moral realism, under which moral statements can hold objective correctness, like empirical scientific facts
Aquinas’ natural law:
“…there are two key features of the natural law…. The first is that, when we focus on God’s role as the giver of the natural law, the natural law is just one aspect of divine providence…. The second is that, when we focus on the human’s role as recipient of the natural law, the natural law constitutes the principles of practical rationality” (The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))
primary precepts:
worshipping God » the source of eternal law
ordered society » lawful, a society where it’s possible to follow the primary precepts
reproduce » “be fruitful and multiply”
educate children » teach people about God, the 4 types of law (eternal, natural, divine) and the primary precepts
defending innocent life » sanctity of life
“the eternal law, for Aquinas, is that rational plan by which all creation is ordered…the natural law is the way that the human being ‘participates’ in the eternal law” (The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))“the precepts of natural law are universally binding by nature and…are universally knowable by nature” ((The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))“the precepts of the natural law are binding by nature: no beings could share our human nature yet fail to be bound by the precepts of the natural law” ((The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))“these precepts direct us toward the good as such and various particular goods” ((The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))
“all human beings possess a basic knowledge of the principles of the natural law” (The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))“this knowledge is exhibited in our intrinsic directedness toward the various goods that the natural law enjoins us to pursue” (The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))
“Aquinas takes it that there is a core of practical knowledge that all human beings have, even if the implications of that knowledge can be hard to work out or the efficacy of that knowledge can be thwarted by strong emotion or evil dispositions” (The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))“Aquinas says that the fundamental principle of the natural law is that good is to be done and evil avoided” (The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy))
Aristotle’s function argument (ergon):
“Aristotle reasons that if anything has a function, its good lies in performing that function well” (p259) (Aristotle on Function and Virtue on JSTOR)“So, if human beings have a function, the human good, eudaimonia, will be the good performance of that function” (p. 259) ((Aristotle on Function and Virtue on JSTOR)
“the function argument identifies the activity of the rational part as the function of a human being” (p. 261) (Aristotle on Function and Virtue on JSTOR)“the function argument is: 1) Every species has a unique essence, which is its function…2) The good of each species is just doing well its function” (p. 5) (Aristotle on the Function of Man in Relation to Eudaimonia on JSTOR)
“the essence of man is activity in accordance with reason” (p. 5) (Aristotle on the Function of Man in Relation to Eudaimonia on JSTOR)
Finnis’ basic goods:
“according to Finnis, the justification for law lies in the concept of self-evidence. Self-evidence is the methodology by which Finnis identifies seven basic goods necessary for human flourishing: knowledge, life, play, aesthetic experience, sociability (friendship), practical reasonableness, and religion” (p. 594) (JUSTIFICATION IN FINNIS' NATURAL LAW THEORY on JSTOR)
“Finnis claims this method of identifying such goods…avoids the problem of non-cognitivism, which has plagued the other naturalists” (p. 594) (JUSTIFICATION IN FINNIS' NATURAL LAW THEORY on JSTOR)“ ‘authority’ of the decision-maker is justified in the eyes of the practically reasonable subject, in the natural law sense, when it is being exercised for the common good” (p. 614)(JUSTIFICATION IN FINNIS' NATURAL LAW THEORY on JSTOR)
objection 1: cultural relativism
Use examples:
Marriage norms
Sexual ethics
Honour cultures
Cite Benedict-style relativism.
“ ‘some cultures value the physical expression of difference,’ said one committee member” (p.303) (Young People, Relativism, and Natural Law on JSTOR)
“the committee members had lost (presumably they never had) confidence in their own ability to judge right from wrong” (p. 303) (Young People, Relativism, and Natural Law on JSTOR)
“the so-called primitives and savages were not inherently different from Americans or Europeans, their alleged sexual freedom was not a result of innate sexual propensities but culturally conditioned, and their behaviour was not necessarily lower or lesser than the sexual behaviour of anyone else” (p. 1065) ("How Common Culture Shapes the Separate Lives": Sexuality, Race, and Mid-Twentieth-Century Social Constructionist Thought on JSTOR)
“for the anthropologists, sex was not just a natural drive; it was shaped, conditioned, and constructed by cultures” (p. 1065) ("How Common Culture Shapes the Separate Lives": Sexuality, Race, and Mid-Twentieth-Century Social Constructionist Thought on JSTOR)
contrary to the primary precept of sex for reproduction
“as Sapir had suggested elsewhere, normality was relative” (p. 1067) ("How Common Culture Shapes the Separate Lives": Sexuality, Race, and Mid-Twentieth-Century Social Constructionist Thought on JSTOR)Benedict: “like other traits and behaviours, sexual expression was culturally constructed” (p. 1068) ("How Common Culture Shapes the Separate Lives": Sexuality, Race, and Mid-Twentieth-Century Social Constructionist Thought on JSTOR)“questions of right and wrong are relative to the particular culture in which the behaviour occurs…it challenges the notion of absolute standards of judgement to be applied uniformly regardless of time or place” (p. 31) (Cultural Relativism and Premarital Sex Norms on JSTOR)“to try to draw such inferences is to commit what has come to be called the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ - a kind of covert smuggling operation in which cultural values are transferred to nature and nature’s authority is then called upon to buttress those very same values” (p. 580) (The Naturalistic Fallacy Is Modern on JSTOR)example: “this sort of value trafficking can be politically consequential as when…late nineteenth-century opponents of higher education for women argued that the natural vocation of all women was to be wives and mothers” (p. 580) (The Naturalistic Fallacy Is Modern on JSTOR)
“contingent (and controversial) social arrangements were shored up by the necessity or desirability of allegedly natural arrangements” (p. 580) (The Naturalistic Fallacy Is Modern on JSTOR)Then defend:
Disagreement does not disprove truth (people disagree about science too).
Many core goods are shared (life, knowledge, community).
Variation concerns expression, not foundational goods.
Push implication:
If relativism were true, cross-cultural moral critique becomes incoherent.
objection 2: nature vs nurture
Strong version:
Morality is socially constructed.
Human nature is plastic.
Defence of Natural Law:
Plasticity ≠ absence of structure.
Language is culturally variable but biologically grounded.
Social conditioning presupposes a creature capable of reason, cooperation, vulnerability.
Key argumentative move:
Culture operates within natural limits.
Natural Law need not claim rigid instincts — only stable capacities and goods
examples:
historically, subordination of women, slavery both viewed as natural
if death is natural, is medical intervention immoral?
if one of Aquinas’ primary precepts for natural law is procreation, are monks and nuns under vows of celibacy acting immorally?
“…it is the similarity in the beliefs of this demographically diverse group of young people that is most striking. Being born and bred in America is by far the most important variable of all” (p. 304) (Young People, Relativism, and Natural Law on JSTOR)
“moral development happens through constant interaction with the social (and non-social) environment” (p. 236) (New Beginnings: An Interactionist and Constructivist Approach to Early Moral Development An Interactionist and Constructivist Approach to Early Moral Development on JSTOR)
“most agree that both environments and genes contribute to development” (p. 233) (New Beginnings: An Interactionist and Constructivist Approach to Early Moral Development An Interactionist and Constructivist Approach to Early Moral Development on JSTOR)
“there is also evidence that social-learning strategies, moral reasoning and metacognition are culturally learned” (p. 403) Psychological Mechanisms Forged by Cultural Evolution on JSTOR
“like the relation between the gift of language and the structure of cognition, the relationship between moral instinct and moral judgement is a relationship of nature and nurture, of an innate structural form and of empirical content continually acquired” (p. 245) (Moral Instinct and Moral Judgment on JSTOR)
Defence of natural law:
“a key feature of a developed morality in all communities is that it is generally wrong to intentionally cause harm to others” (p. 238) (New Beginnings: An Interactionist and Constructivist Approach to Early Moral Development An Interactionist and Constructivist Approach to Early Moral Development on JSTOR)
“moral judgement established on the basis of a posteriori nurture is only a complement to innate moral instinct. Without the ability of the inherent good in human nature, men cannot construct a moral mechanism merely by convention” (p. 248) (Moral Instinct and Moral Judgment on JSTOR)
objection 3: the is-ought gap
Present Hume clearly
Defence:
Natural Law does not move from arbitrary facts to norms.
It argues:
If something has a function, flourishing consists in fulfilling it.
Normativity is built into teleology.
You can argue:
Hume assumes a mechanistic view of nature that NLT rejects.
Hume » you cannot go from an ‘is’ (a statement of fact) to an ‘ought’ (a moral)
“Hume’s point is that ethical conclusions cannot be drawn validly from premises which are non-ethical” (p. 467) (The Naturalistic Fallacy on JSTOR)
“nature simply is; it takes a human act of imposition or projection to transmute that “is” into an “ought” (p. 580) (The Naturalistic Fallacy Is Modern on JSTOR)
“there is no legitimate inference that can be drawn from how things happen to be (equated with natural regularities) to how things should be (equated with human norms)” (p. 580) (The Naturalistic Fallacy Is Modern on JSTOR)
Defence:
“for the many Enlightenment thinkers who, like Condorcet, invoked the authority of universal natural law in the human realm, nature was an aspiration rather than an inexorable reality” (p. 583) (The Naturalistic Fallacy Is Modern on JSTOR) » aspiration for eudaimonia
sa
why this matters
What do we learn?
If morality is entirely constructed, power defines right.
it allows us to unpick the politicisation of norms and standards, both where natural law has been used to justify it and where it has not
Natural Law grounds human rights.
It allows critique of unjust cultures.
Bring stakes into view.
conclusion
reaffirm:
Disagreement ≠ subjectivity.
Plasticity ≠ absence of nature.
Teleology avoids is–ought problem.
end confidently
bibliography
The Natural Law Tradition in Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) » Kretzmann, N. (2023) The natural law tradition in ethics. In: Zalta, E.N. & Nodelman, U. (eds.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition). Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-law-ethics (Accessed 3 March 2026).