Natural Law Theory

Slightly to my own surprise I haven't written anything about "natural law theory"; in part this is because it is hard to know exactly what it is. Wiki has a decent intro:

Natural law is a philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles that are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory asserts that certain rights and moral values are inherent in human nature and can be universally understood, independent of enacted laws or social norms. In jurisprudence, natural law holds that there are objective legal standards based on morality that underlie the creation, interpretation, and application of human-made laws. This contrasts with positive law which emphasizes that laws are rules created by human authorities and are not necessarily connected to moral principles.

But if you read on into the article, you'll discover a major problem: that although people are content to witter on about the theory, they are very short on actual things that are natural laws - with the noble exception of Hobbes¹; but sadly not everyone agrees with Hobbes.

To return to my starting point, the normally sensible ACX, which says I have to admit that [Bentham’s Bulldog’s] Natural Law Theory Is Obviously False is either pretty devastating.... But the linked article begins "The core claims of natural law theory are something like: (1) Morality is solely concerned with one’s own happiness..." which is drivel³. A possible, though misleading, reading of NLT could be that it is ultimately concerned with happiness, in the sense that it eschews teleology; it is after all trying to do without a god to prescribe means and therefore the god cannot prescribe the ends either. But even on that reading it is not about individual happiness; it is about flourishing - a better word than happiness - of society; it is therefore intrinsically interested in interactions, as it must, to be capable of talking about morality or law.

I said that NLT is pretty thin on examples; the few it gives, such as not-killing and not-stealing fall into the do-no-harm paradigm from The Righeous Mind or better from The Foundations of Morality, which supersedes NLT. But Aquinas thinks that drunknenness is NLT-wrong, and so we see how people tend to read into it whatever their own prejudices demand.

Notes

1. We might do well to recall some of Hobbes' reading: The fourth law is "that a man which receiveth benefit from another of mere grace, endeavour that he which giveth it, have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good will. ... The breach of this law is called 'ingratitude'". The fifth law is complaisance: "that every man strive to accommodate himself to the rest. ... The observers of this law, may be called 'sociable' ...; the contrary, 'stubborn', 'insociable', 'forward', 'intractable'." The sixth law is "that upon caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that repenting, desire it. The seventh law is "that in revenges, ... men look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the good to follow. The eighth law is "that no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare hatred or contempt of another. The breach of which law is commonly called contumely." The ninth law is "that every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature. ... The breach of this precept is 'pride'." The tenth law is "that at the entrance into the conditions of peace, no man require to reserve to himself any right which he is not content should be reserved to every one of the rest. ... The observers of this law are those we call 'modest', and the breakers 'arrogant' men."

2. I should probably expand on that a little. The theory of NLT is that we can reason out what morality and the law should be. This is nice, but isn't really true. Eventually we realise that, by "reason", we're really reconstructing the do-no-harm morality that is shared; and is shared because it is necessary to construct a working society; and when we say "reason" we are consciously or not mostly reading from the examples we have before us and in our books, not constructing ab initio.

3. BsB replies "But I quoted one of the main defenders who gave this characterization!". I'm not sure what quote he means, but this reply is either disingenuous, naive or dumb: the problem being that there are a zillion writers on NLT; you can't just pick one and claim they represent NLT.