Natural Law and Ethical Non-Naturalism

There is a lack of clarity in the literature about what constitutes the natural law approach to ethics and what is incompatible with it. The standard, and largely historical, way of understanding the natural law approach risks overlooking theoretical differences of fundamental importance regarding w...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: O’Connor, John D. (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Sage 2021
Dans: Studies in Christian ethics
Année: 2021, Volume: 34, Numéro: 2, Pages: 190-208
RelBib Classification:KAJ Époque contemporaine
NCA Éthique
VA Philosophie
Sujets non-standardisés:B Non-naturalism
B natural law ethics
B Finnis
B Natural Law
B new natural law
B Metaethics
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Description
Résumé:There is a lack of clarity in the literature about what constitutes the natural law approach to ethics and what is incompatible with it. The standard, and largely historical, way of understanding the natural law approach risks overlooking theoretical differences of fundamental importance regarding what the natural law approach is usually taken to uphold. Against Craig Paterson, I argue that a necessary condition for an ethical account to uphold fully the natural law approach is that it does not contain any dependence upon the metaethical category of non-naturalism understood in non-supernaturalist (secular) terms. Using the ‘new natural law’ theory of John Finnis to illustrate my case, I also argue that an ethical theory can be largely in keeping with the natural law approach but nonetheless contain elements at odds with it: the issue is more complex than a simple binary. This is an under-explored possibility in natural law ethics.
ISSN:0953-9468
Contient:Enthalten in: Studies in Christian ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/0953946820962893