Natural Moral Law

• Worship God - Build a relationship with God
• Ordered Society - Live in an ordered society
• Reproduce - Continue your bloodline in your offspring
• Learn - learn about the world and God
• Defend the Innocent (and protect life) -Protect and preserve life

• Material - Made of?
• Formal - Shared qualities
• Efficient - Caused by?
• Final - Purpose/goal

''Do good and avoid evil''

How:

1) 5 Primary Precepts

2) Secondary Precepts

3) Laws

4)Double Effect and Proportionalism

Eternal: From God and applies to all

Divine: Revealed in scripture like the Bible

NML: Discovered through human reason

Human: Our legal systems

What: Doing something morally good with a bad side effect is ethically allowed providing the side effect was not intended-Aquinas

Rules:

1- The good result is achieved independantly of the bad.

2- The action must be proportional to the cause

3- The nature of the act itself is good or morally neutral

4-It must try to minimise harm

e.g// A doctor giving drugs to a patient even though the drugs may shorten life. The doctor is not intentionally killing the patient, this is a side effect of the pain relief.

What: You choose the lesser of two evils by weighing up the good and the necessary evils caused by the action chosen.

e.g// The inquiring murderer(Kant)

e.g//The pope allowing the use of condoms in Africa in order to stop the spread of AIDS despite the action going against catholicism as condoms prohibit reproduction

Strengths:

-Some flexibility

-Interested in intention, makes people explore intention before acting

-Valid way to promote good end

Weaknesses:

-Logic can be flawed

-Ignores numbers, cant sacrifice 1 to save 1000- against common sense

-If we need it, NML must be flawed in flexibility

-Not practical to go through all the rules before making a decision

-Subjective

Strengths:

-Existed a long time, fairly robust

-Part of 'just war' theory

-Based on common sense such as lieing to save a life

-Widely used

Weaknesses:

-Condemned by Catholic Church on the grounds itdenies any act can be intrinsically evil

-Acts such as **** can be commited, this is intrinsically evil

-Principle VS Practice- good in theory but hard to put into practice

Real good: Glorifies God, is good in action and good in reason

e.g// Man giving to charity to help the charity.

Apparent good: Pulls you away from God, good in action, wrong in reason

e.g// Man giving to charity for glorification.

Interior Act: Thought (reason)

Exterior Act: Action

Cardinal :

Prudence

Temperance

Fortitude

Justice

Theological:

Love

Hope

Faith

What: Secondary Precepts are derived from the primary precepts and are usually found within our laws, for example ''Do not kill''

Strengths: Add Flexibility to NML

Weaknesses: Are Culturally Relative, what may be a secindary precept in one culture is not the same in another e.g// Gun laws in America VS Gun laws in the UK

• Flexible
• Fair to all, all treated the same in every situation
• Objective
• Doesnt allow emotion to be mixed into decisions
• Gives the individual autonomy
• Values life very highly

• Simplistic- Vardy and Grosch (Purpose of sex)
• Need to believe in God
• Science could give us purpose
• Secondary Precepts are culturally relative
• Jesus opposes the legalistic set up
• Proportionalism and double effect are not always helpful
• Doesnt change with the times - isnt modern
• Kant- Lying is always wrong
• Kai Neilson: there is no common human nature e,g// Eskimos kill the vulnerable. This rebutes the strength that NML is fair to all and everyone is treated the same.

• Violates Primary Preceot of living in an ordered society: cant be ordered if everyone lies ot eachother
• Breaks Aquinas' emphasis on virtues of Courage and Justice
• Aquinas said it is not lawful to lie to save a life
• HOWEVER: You can withhold the truth, for eample with the inquiring murderer, Aquinas may respond with''I saw him at the shop two hours ago'' This states the exact truth without revealing the truth the murderer wants to hear.

• Breaks the Primary Precept of living in an ordered society and the Secondary Precept ''Do not steal'', which can also be called a divine law as it is a commandement given to Moses.
• HOWEVER: Aquinas said it would be lawful for a man to steal in order to save his life as it is in accordance with the Primary Precept to preserve life and protect the innocent.

• General principles of natural law are applied to specific cases and are used for any sytem that start with fixed principles and then applies them logically to situations

• NML was put forward by Aquinas, it is a deontological and teleological system as the five primary princples are teleological goals and the secondary precepts are deontological rules. It is an absoloute system meaning it applies to everyone at all times with no exceptions.

• Aquinas determined that the ultimate purpose for human life is fellowship with God, NML exists to help humans direct their actions in such a way that we may reach eternal destiny with God