Why should we follow the natural law?

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MarcoPolo said:
I think this gets to the heart of morality. Is the measure of right or wrong based on any individual’s feelings? I would say no.
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So if doing the “right” things in all cases made us feel bad, that would *not *be evidence against their status as “the right things?”

Or, put another way, how something makes us feel is irrelevant to the question of whether it is right or wrong. Any assertions that following natural law will make us feel happy or fulfilled are misguided. There is no contradiction in saying it may be possible to feel happier or more fulfilled by doing the wrong things instead of the right things.
 
FireFromHeaven said:
I’ve been doing some reading recently to try to understand natural law ethics. I’ve read some stuff by Edward Fester and by David Oderberg. Both have done an excellent job of explaining how humans have an essential nature and how this nature entails certain moral ideas. However I’m still struggling with the question in the title. Why exactly should someone strive to fulfill their nature?
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We should strive to fulfill our nature because it is only in doing so that we can be genuinely happy and at peace. If it is the nature of a chicken to cluck then the chicken is being what it was meant to be whenever it clucks. However if a chicken is led to believe it doesn’t have to cluck but rather could oink if that’s what it felt like doing, then it rejects itself. For a chicken to oink is only to pretend its a pig. A chicken is not a pig and never will be a pig no matter how much it oinks. Can anyone be genuinely happy when they are pretending to be something they aren’t?
 
ignatius777 said:
Can anyone be genuinely happy when they are pretending to be something they aren’t?
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Possibly this is why so many actors live neurotic lives. 🤷

And it almost seems, the greater the actor the greater the neurosis.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
I’m simply asking if it is possible to modify what is considered “natural” according to natural law in the same way it is possible to modify the “normal” functions of our bodies.
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Could you illustrate this possibility with a concrete example?

I haven’t been following this thread too closely, but the distinction has to be drawn between natural law as it applies to physics, and natural law as it applies to morals.

In the case of physics, it was natural that scientists should find a way to fly above the earth. The objections raised against that, which might be that if God wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings and therefore flight is unnatural, doesn’t hold. God also gave us intellect, and the purpose of intellect is to discover and invent new ways of surviving. To say that we should not drive in cars because if God wanted us to travel that way he would have given us wheels instead of feet makes no sense for the same reason. The natural law is operant in science in many other ways.

But when you come to morals the natural law operates under different conditions.

Natural law is what nature directly intended as a way for us to behave. We cannot plead that anal sodomy is natural, for the simple reason that the penis is not designed for the anus, and all kinds of dire consequences will most certainly follow if we argue otherwise and behave accordingly.

Likewise, the natural law is that once impregnated, we ought to carry a child to term instead of pretending we have the right to butcher the child and toss it in the garbage. Nature and nature’s God designed pregnancy to continue the race, and there will be dire consequences of guilt and self destruction if we think we can fool Mother Nature.
 
I think asking why we should follow the n.l. is like asking why should I follow my conscience?
Even after the fall we still have a conscience.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Could you illustrate this possibility with a concrete example?
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Nietzsche’s philosophy is pretty much all about creating new virtues and transcending the old. He says that only by an evolution of virtues can we surpass what is currently thought of as “human nature” and become “ubermen.”
 
I think that natural law is a very nebulous and evolving subject on all fronts. The morality on survival 5,000 years ago is quite different than today, for example.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
Nietzsche’s philosophy is pretty much all about creating new virtues and transcending the old. He says that only by an evolution of virtues can we surpass what is currently thought of as “human nature” and become “ubermen.”
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He failed though in his project because neitzsche had no idea what transcending even means or looks like. He thought he could be like unto God but God is objectivity.

You are still left with the 7 deadly sins, superficiality, sociopathy, narcissism etc. Read the Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment that address this.

You cannot cure the disease of sin without the transcendent God: Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.
 
opusAquinas said:
He failed though in his project because neitzsche had no idea what transcending even means or looks like. He thought he could be like unto God but God is objectivity.

You are still left with the 7 deadly sins, superficiality, sociopathy, narcissism etc. Read the Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment that address this.

You cannot cure the disease of sin without the transcendent God: Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.
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Nietzsche was a very unhappy and angry man who had virtually no real friends and for the most part despised women. Not only that, he despised the human race and longed for its gradual disappearance from the earth, to be replaced by the Superman. It’s no wonder his gradual descent into insanity was so complete. Only that other madman, Hitler, was able to excel the insanity of Nietzsche by invoking him for the purpose of justifying the deaths of millions that he too despised as unworthy of being human.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
So if doing the “right” things in all cases made us feel bad, that would *not *be evidence against their status as “the right things?”
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Feelings can be indicators of a good conscience, so it’s a little over-simplified to say ignore them altogether. But feelings objectively cannot be said to be the determining factor of morality.

I maintain that we must have a sense of what is properly ordered in order to identify a disorder. Hence, in biology, we have to know what is proper to a healthy body in order to identify a wound or sickness. Spiritual health would be measured by the same principle to identify what is properly ordered. That’s the natural law in about as small a nutshell as my understanding reaches at this time. :o
 
oldcelt said:
I think that natural law is a very nebulous and evolving subject on all fronts. The morality on survival 5,000 years ago is quite different than today, for example.
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I would agree with you completely if not for Christ’s incarnation and installation of a Church to sort through the nebulae.
 
What a wonderful thread full of very insightful and witty comments.

What Edward Feser and David Oderberg talk about should properly be called The Natural MORAL Law. The Natural MORAL Law deals with ethics.

But there is another Natural Law and that is what built the cosmos. This history of this idea comes from the Ancient Greeks, more specifically the Doric Greeks of Crete and Laconia, i.e. Sparta. The terms “laws of nature” and “natural law” in Greek mean the same thing. The first phrase “law of nature” came first and then later on in Greek literature, under the Stoics, it was shortened to “natural law”. But before “laws of nature” was coined it was “kata physis”, “according to nature”. The Doric Greeks did things “according to nature”.

In the Republic, the translator translates “according to nature” as “a city established upon the principles of nature are wise”. He translated “according to nature” as “principles of nature”. Here we see in Plato’s Republic the beginning conception of the natural law. The original Natural Law is those laws and principles that are in Nature. For me, under the Stoics, the principles and laws of nature were tossed and the idea concentrated on human behavior, or ethics. The Stoics were trying to do an end run around the religions at that time and trying to set up a Universal ethics.

But to get to the heart of the Natural Law or the laws of Nature is that Nature is from God. The Natural Law comes from God and therefore we have to be obedient to them.

I have a small 800 word article that explains that:
“Christ, Reason (Logos) and Greek philosophy”

Christ is the Logos and one part of the Logos is the Natural Law. It should then that the real, original Natural Law should guide the formation of the Catholic Natural Moral Law. I wrote that article in response to Dr. Makow who didn’t know what truly is philosophy; he liked it and posted it on his website.
 
MarcoPolo said:
Feelings can be indicators of a good conscience, so it’s a little over-simplified to say ignore them altogether. But feelings objectively cannot be said to be the determining factor of morality.

I maintain that we must have a sense of what is properly ordered in order to identify a disorder. Hence, in biology, we have to know what is proper to a healthy body in order to identify a wound or sickness. Spiritual health would be measured by the same principle to identify what is properly ordered. That’s the natural law in about as small a nutshell as my understanding reaches at this time. :o
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But in biology there is a simple objective standard against which everyone and every trait is compared: ability to stay alive. “Proper orderings” are typically “orderings best suited to keeping us alive.” That is why we don’t call red hair an illness, despite its origin as a genetic mutation. There are a few other biological criteria, (e.g. ability to pass on genes) but they work the same way.

But with regards to “spiritual health,” it’s a lot harder for me to justify the use of that same standard. Certainly we could label certain actions as right and wrong based on “how likely are they to get us killed” but we certainly know that just because someone engages in a “likely to get killed” action doesn’t mean that person is somehow disordered. And so, I think that we actually have no objective standard for judging “spiritually well ordered.”
 
As the Roman poet Horace wrote, “You may throw nature out with a pitchfork, but she will keep coming back.”
 
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