THE NATURAL LAW

GROUP 5
AMANTILLO, KRIS NIELSEN
ARCE, MARY ANNE
COCJIN, JESSICA
DELFIN, GUEZIL JOY
TABLO, JAN MILENO
 THE NATURAL LAW TRADITION
The vortex of argumentation to Roman Catholic Moral philosophy and
theology is the concern about the natural law. It is a sort of “reasoning” which
“faith” informs. The church teaches a morality which is applicable always,
everywhere, and for everyone for it is dependent on the natural law as the
foundation of its teaching. Moral knowledge is accessible not just to believers but
limited to those who are willing to reflect critically on human experience. Natural
law is universal, obligatory, recognizable, and immutable or unchangeable. For
Aristotle, all things did have a natural and distinctive activity.
 THE NATURAL LAW TRADITION
This activity is the purpose, function, or end. The Greeks understood this
activity as the object's telos. So, Aristotle's science is called teleological. Aristotle's
Nichomachean Ethics is an attempt to discover our final end or highest good. It is
an analysis of character and intelligence as they relate to happiness. Many ends of
life are only means to further ends such as our aspirations and desires. Such chief
end is universally known as happiness. He exemplified his notion of happiness
through an analysis of the human soul, which structures and animates a living
human organism.
 THE PARTS OF THE SOUL ARE DIVIDED AS:

Calculative - Intellectual Virtue

Rational

Appetitive - Moral Virtue

Irrational

Vegetative – Nutritional Virtue

 MORAL
AND
INTELLECTUAL
 INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES
• not subject to the doctrine of the mean
Vegetative faculty- responsible for nutrition and growth
Appetitive faculty- responsible for the emotive spheres and desires such as joy, grief,
hope, and fear.
Calculative- accountable for the human ability to contemplate, reason logically, and
formulate scientific principles.
Mastery of these competences is known as intellectual virtue.
 MORAL VIRTUES

• an expression of character, formed by habits reflecting reiterated

choices. It is always a mean between two less desirable extremes.

TYPES OF NATURAL OBJECTS

• Those that are alive and those that are not.
• The principle of life, known as the "psyche" which was later translated as
the soul, is the characteristic activity of living things.
• Aristotle described three fundamental activities of life: nutrition,
sensation and thinking.
• Some living things possess only one (the nutritive soul). Others possess two (the
nutritive and appetitive or sensitive), and others possess all three types (the
nutritive, appetitive and thinking).
• Plants possess only the nutritive soul. Their characteristic activities are only the
powers of nutrition, growth and reproduction.
• Animals possess appetitive powers and nutrition. Their natural activities are the
powers of sensation, desire and motion.
• Humans possess the three life activities of nutrition, appetite and thought. This
teleological framework was further advanced by Thomas Aquinas on the 13th cent.
• The fulcrum of argumentation in Aristotle' moral virtue is the
doctrine of the Mean. Moral virtues are desire regulating character
traits, which are at a mean between two extremes. The virtue of
courage, for example, lies at the mean between the excessive extreme
of rashness, which is a vice, and the deficient character trait of
cowardice, which is also a vice. Most moral virtues are falling at the
mean between two accompanying vices:
 VICE OF DEFICIENCY VIRTUOUS MEAN VICE OF EXCESS
COWADICE COURAGE RASHNESS
INSENSIBLE TEMPERANCE INTEMPERANCE
ILLIBERALITY LIBERALITY PRODIGALITY
PETTINES MUNIFICENCE VULGARITY
HUMBLE-MINDEDNESS HIGH-MINDEDNESS VAINGLORINESS
WANT OF AMBITION RIGHT AMBITION OVER-AMBITION
SPIRITLESSNESS GOOD TEMPER IRASCIBILITY
SURLINESS FRIENDLY CAVILITY OBSEQUIOUSNESS
IRONICAL DEPRECIATION SINCERITY BOASTFULNESS
BOORISHNESS WITTNESS BUFFOONERY
SHAMELESSNESS MODESTY BASHFULNESS
CALLOUSNESS JUST RESENTMENT SPITEFULNESS
ADVANTAGE AND
DISADVANTAGES
NATURAL LAW
 ADVANTAGE S OF NATURAL LAW

1.The Church exhibits great respect for human goodness and trusts
the human competence to know and opt for what is right.

2.2. The church address its argumentation and claims for the rightness
or wrongness of specific actions to all persons of good will, not just
to those who share its religious convictions.
 DISADVANTAGES OF NATURAL LAW
1. It can easily lead to handling Christian morality over to moral philosophy wherein
religious beliefs do not really diverged for moral claims.
• 2. The Magisterium has appealed to the Natural Law as the foundation for its
teaching’s pertaining to a just society , sexual behavior, medical practice , human life,
religious freedom, and the engagement between morality and civil law.
• 3. Natural law is neither “natural” nor is it “law”. It is not natural in the aspect that the
natural moral law cannot identified with physical, chemical, or biological laws of
nature which try to articulate the mode the natural world works. It is not law in the
sphere that it is not a written code or precepts, which carry public sanctions from
legislator.
NATURAL LAW
BY: MARY ANNE R. ARCE
BSN 2 BLESSED WEICKA
God is the creator of the world, the source of all its being. As
God brings about the human world and human nature, so the
eternal law brings “natural law.”
Natural Law is that reality of our situation whereby things are,
in fact, good or bad, right or wrong.
Natural Law is the reality of moral values as these impinge
upon our consciousness. Natural law is coexistent and
coextensive with creation – Von Hildebrand
In Rm 2:15, the natural law is not a written law. It does
not exist in books or in official pronouncements but rather
it is “written in their hearts.”
The Natural Law does involve demand. It can be
experienced as a coercive force. It is the demand of
creation, experienced on the lives of human person and
promulgated through the light of human reason. So while it
is a law, it is a law of special sort.
The natural law is rooted in the eternal law, that is, in
God himself. All must obey the natural law, as situated
in creation through the usage of right reason, because of
that law discloses to us the will of God.
It is an exercise of divine intellect with which we are
expecting to collaborate.
The bible gives some basis for appealing to human nature as a
source of moral enlightenment(e.g., the wisdom literature of the
Old Testament) stems upon collective human experience to
explore moral value.
In the New Testament, the parable of Jesus exemplifies
ordinary human experience to heightened basic human values.
The Natural Law, the Creator’s very good work, provides the
solid foundation on which man can build the structures of moral
rules to guide his choices. It also provides the indispensable
moral foundation for building the human community.
Finally, it provides the necessary basis for the civil law, which
it is connected, whether by a reflection that draws conclusion
from its principles, or by additions of a positive and juridical
nature.
The precepts of natural law are not perceived by everyone
clearly and immediately. In the present situation sinful man
needs grace and revelation so moral and religious truths may be
known by everyone with facility, with firm certainty and with
no admixture of error.
The natural law provides revealed law and grace with a
foundation prepared by God and in accordance with the work of
the Spirit.
For Joseph Fuchs, the Natural Law is graced. The rational
demands of morality are the commandments of the Creator. As
a source of moral knowledge, Scripture reinforces a new
motivation for living the moral life.
The perspective of Bruno Schuller converged with Fuchs,
saying that the natural law is authorized by Scripture for it is
essential to understand disclosed morality.
 THE GREEK INFLUENCE
Among the greeks, the stoics contributed to the natural law tradition
by highlighting “ nature” and the moral demands to “be in accord” in
what is given by nature. It is the objective demand on human kind to
accord to the life. Stoics’ goal of philosophy was to gain moral right
conduct. As materialist , they understood the world as an
interconnected series of events and the right moral living is generated
congruously to the given world order. Their moral imperative “ don’t
fool with mother nature”
 THE ROMAN INFLUENCE
As the greeks highlighted “ the human nature” and the world” , the
romans highlighted the “ law” of the natural order and of human nature.
The romans were the activists, conquerors, pragmatic rules, the politicians
and lawyers of the ancient world. Their expansionist commitments were
roman state itself but throughout the world. For cirero, the Natural law is
the innate power of reason, human intelligence, prudent, and thoughtful
actions in accord with nature to direct action on human ends. Gaius stated
that there are two sorts of law for regulating political order:
1. JUS CIVILE ( Civil Law ) regulates the civil rights within a legally
autonomous society such as the roman state itself.
2. JUS GENTIUM ( Law of the peoples) regulates the connection
between legally autonomous boundaries/territories.
ULPIAN(228 A.D) took Gaius viewpoint and added another version of
law. There is threefold division of law:
3. JUS CIVILE- What is the proper to humans
4. JUS GENTIUM
5. JUS NATURALE - What is common to humans and animals.
 The moral act becomes identified with the physical act, which corresponds to
animal processes. Moral accountabilities stems from what is already prescribed in
the physical structures on being human apart from their connection to the totality
of the person involving the sphere of reason, freedom, affections and engagements
or connections.
During the medieval period, Isadore of Seville (d.636) advanced Gaius and
Ulpian's views. He accepted Ulpian's tripartite conceptualization of law but
modified as jus naturale. For isadore, jus naturale is a peculiar human exercise of
specific human reason. He considered the natural law as what distinguishes
humans from animals. The natural law is a summation of all cultures.
 THOMISTIC INFLUENCE
• Thomas Aquinas synthesized Aristotle's science by
interpreting it as an evidence of a divine plan
operating in nature. Nature obliges all to perfect their
nature by means of actions that promote self-
development and fulfillment. All find their happiness
by acting in accord with not just nature but also
reason, grace, and virtues.
• The foundation of natural law is the eternally established order of God.
It is in the context of the exitus et reditus principle: All things come
from God and return to God. The Natural Law is exemplified in the
Treatise on Law as a means of returning to God. It is anchored with
practical reason and eternal law. God is the ultimate source of moral
value and moral accountabilities. Everything created participates in the
eternal law conforming to its nature. Insensible beings participate
passively by following the direction of physical, chemical, and
biological forces. The animal world participates by instinct. Humans
participate in eternal law rationally or through the use of
reason/intellect.
• This participation is understood to be the natural
law. This participation of the rational creature in
God's eternal law is just what natural law means. He
made this identification in explaining why it is
appropriate for the human persons to participate in a
special way in God's providence.
•The implications of the Natural Law are the
human mode of knowing the ultimate norm of
morality-eternal law, or what God demand and
intensifies. It knows this by reflecting critically
on the proximate norm of morality.
 The natural law is a special kind of knowledge, not about bad,
but about human beings and human nature. Through human
reason reflecting on human nature, human beings can determine
what is for their own good and at the same time what God
requires. Aquinas then moves on to the specific norms of natural
law based on the natural inclinations. The principles of natural law
are those basic aspects of human perfection toward which person
have natural inclinations. The three basic inclinations of human
nature are those we share with all substances (the preservation and
conservation of our being):
a. The first inclination to the good is common to all created
reality. It is the tendency to persevere in this being.
Preserving and protecting life as a basic value belongs to the
natural law on the basis of this inclination. Do good and evade
evil. Doing good is ensuring reason’s lead to realize human
competence. Evil prohibits that full actualization. Preserving
and protecting life, as a basic value is constitutive to the
natural law. St. Thomas appeals to this argument in
contradictory to suicide, and for killing in self-defense.
b. The second inclination to the good is generic to animals. Insofar as
humans are animals, what nature has taught all animals belongs to the
natural law. Included here is the tendency toward the precaution and
education are offspring. For St. thomas , the most serious actions are
those, which are in contradiction to nature. Thus, Masturbation is a
more serious violation than incest, adultery, rape, or fornication
( actions do not fulfill the finality written by God into biological
nature).
c. The third inclination to the good is specific to humans. Whatever
pertains to reason belongs to the natural law. It knows the truth about
God and to live in human community.
 MODERN WORLDVIEW OF
CONTEMPORARY MORALITY
 It visualizes nature as evolving e.g., the laws and properties of the given world
can and do mixed with unexpected circumstances offering us something new.
Nature and freedom can intervene to generate something new. The Magisterium
upholds that the Natural Law is not merely a set of norms on the biological sphere.
The Magisterium considered the Natural Law as the rational order whereby man is
called by the Creator to direct and regulate life and actions and in specific to make
use of his own body.
The implications would be on the sphere of technology such as
artificial interventions concerning Procreation and the genesis of life
must be afforded a moral assessment in allusion to the dignity of man
who is called to actualize his vocation from God to the gift of love and
the gift of life.
• Pope Paul VI Populorum Progressio (1967) appeals to
the creative intervention of man and the community to
direct natural processes toward fulfillment (every life is a
vocation) and salvation. Each person can advance in
humanity, can unfold his personal worth, and can become
a better person. Pope Paul VI in A Call to Action said:
Moral Standpoint must be open to development.
 ARGUMENTS IN CONTRADICTORY TO NATURAL
LAW [O’CONNELL, 139-141]

1. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

For Freud, the human person is composed of id, ego, and superego. The
accentuation upon the id, the cauldron of libidinal energy and source of life force
was visualized by the superego. Its energies are channeled by the ego. It cannot be
negated, however, that our image of ourselves as free of these drives, or as master of
them, is illusion. Authentic freedom resides in apprehending these forces, which
cannot be restrained. Thus, we are the victims of our own being and our
unconscious is what rules our life.
• 2. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
The Marxist envision the human person as a free person. The source
of unfreedom is not the depths of the inner person but the forces of the
environment or society. In ideology, we visualize life not as it is betrayal,
deceived by its shared and supported untruths. Whence, even by
pretending to rationally rule our life, the truth is we are victims.
• 3. Charles Darwin (1807-1882)
The discomfort in natural law was the realization that we are not only
like animals, we are animals. The continuity of human evolution with
animal evolution is categorizing that human person are the categories of
zoology and related sciences. Freedom and dignity is only an illusion. It
must be acknowledged and accepted. The human person is being who
can be trained but not really educated. They can be manipulated but not
respected. The admirable human creature envisioned by natural law
theorists does not exist.