Universe of Platonic Thought 2024

32nd International Conference “The Universe of Platonic Thought: Plato’s Heritage in the History of Science and Education”

Konstantin Morozov; Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia), Postgraduate

Does the new natural law presuppose a platonic concept of the good?

New natural law (NNL) is an approach in contemporary normative and applied ethics, legal and political philosophy and moral theology that is closely associated with the work of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen. NNL arose in the second half of the 20th century as a result of a critical revision of the neo-scholastic natural law, as well as an attempt to reconcile Thomism with contemporary analytical philosophy.NNL is based on the idea that there are a number of basic goods that are valuable to all people, such as life, friendship, knowledge, beauty, love, practical reason, etc. NNL theorists further argue that all people have natural rights to have these goods in their lives free from targeted harm. Some more orthodox Thomists criticize NNL on the grounds that such a commitment to respect the goods in the lives of all people implicitly relies on a Platonic concept of the good, which gives these goods an ontological status independent of their actualization in a particular life.While some NNL theorists do accept Platonic conceptions of the good, there are alternative ways of justifying such a duty by appeal to more “subjective” notions. In this case, the duty of respect for the goods in someone else’s life will be included in the conditions for the actualization of goods in one’s own life. Four arguments of this kind can be proposed, referring to four different goods: friendship, justice, harmony with oneself and practical reason.

Keywords: natural law, natural rights, Platonism, practical reason, good, justice, moral realism

New natural law (NNL) as a philosophical movement arose in the second half of the 20th century and is closely related to the works of Catholic thinkers Germain Grisez and John Finnis. Also, Joseph Boyle, Robert George, Christopher Tollefsen, Patrick Lee, Gerard Bradley and others made a great contribution to the development of this tradition. Initially, NNL was a critical reaction to non-scholastic (old) natural law and legal positivism, but subsequently NNL emerged as a full-fledged interdisciplinary theoretical direction at the intersection of Thomistic moral theology and analytical legal philosophy. Despite NNL’s close connection with Catholicism, this tradition has supporters both among other Christian denominations (Jonathan Crowe, Gary Chartier, Timothy Chappell) and among atheists (Michael Moore, David Brink).

Proponents of NNL base their theory on the thesis that there are a number of objective goods, such as life, friendship, knowledge, beauty, love, practical reason, etc. These goods, NNL theorists believe, should never be intentionally damaged, and therefore every person has a natural right to respect for the goods in her life. Neo-scholastic critics of NNL, such as Jean Porter, Henry Veatch, and Joseph Rautenberg, argued that this right implicitly rested on Platonic notions of the good. From this point of view, goods have value in themselves, regardless of in whose life they are realized or whether they are realized at all.

Some NNL authors acknowledge their reliance on a Platonic metaphysics of the good, but most either reject such charges or do not explicitly comment on the ontological status of objective goods. However, is it possible to formulate a version of NNL in which the right to respect for basic goods does not depend on the acceptance of Platonic metaphysics? Such an argument can be formulated if respect for the goods in another’s life is necessary in order to realize the goods in one’s own life. Four different arguments of this kind can be formulated in terms of four different goods.

First, it can be argued that the good of friendship depends on the development of a special attitude towards other people—responsiveness to their interests and needs. Since everyone needs friendship to live a flourishing life, it is equally reasonable for everyone to develop the qualities that make a person a “good friend”. And one of these qualities is responsiveness to the needs of others, the ability to put oneself in the place of another. And this responsiveness in itself gives people reason to respect the goods in the lives of others.

Second, it can be argued that all people need to live in a flourishing life in a community of people who are subject to single, universal, stable, understandable, non-arbitrary and publicly justified rules. This system of rules constitutes the basic good of justice, driven by the need for peace, stability and security. And the need to realize this good imposes an obligation on people to obey such universal rules.

Third, it can be argued that every person should live in harmony with herself and her nature. And human nature is essentially aimed at realizing basic goods. Therefore, any action that intentionally damages such goods introduces disharmony into a person’s realization of her nature and harms her true well-being.

Fourth, it can be argued that respect for the goods in the lives of all people is simply a requirement of impartiality, which in turn is a component of the goods of practical reasonableness or rationality. A practically rational person respects the good in the lives of all people because they understand that all people have equal moral status and, accordingly, any damage to the good in the life of another is irrational and arbitrary.

Neither of these lines of argument is without its problems, but each of them together and separately demonstrates that the duty to respect the goods in another’s life can be justified without positing a Platonic metaphysics about the good. These arguments assume that reasons for respecting the rights of others are agent-relative (or subjective) rather than agent-neutral (or objective). However, the most promising route to justifying natural rights assumes that reasons are intersubjective, which requires a more nuanced conception of human nature than that adopted by NNL theorists.