HUMAN NATURE AND MORAL GOODNESS
Patrick Lee
Professor of Philosophy
How is human nature related to moral
goodness? In what way is human nature
normative? These are the questions I
shall address from the perspective of a natural law theorist, or to be more
specific, from the perspective of what is often called the new natural law
theory, in the line of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and
others. To approach the question, I
shall first specify one way I think human nature is not morally normative. I
shall then explain what I mean by nature
when speaking of human nature, how I think free choice is related to human
nature, how we reach basic practical insights and basic moral principles based
on our nature, and I shall conclude by considering some theological worries
about our natural knowledge of basic moral principles.
I.
Human
Nature is Not Itself the Moral Criterion
One idea of how human nature and
morality are related is, in effect, that human nature just is the moral criterion. This
idea can be expressed quite simply, in the popular arena, or developed in a
sophisticated way (in, for example, the thought of Francisco Suarez and
scholastic followers of him, who, nevertheless often mistakenly claimed they
derived their view from St. Thomas Aquinas).
In either case, the thought is that human nature as given, as a
structure, and the biological and spiritual tendencies themselves which are
parts of human nature, constitute the moral criterion in this sense: when one asks whether an action is right or
wrong one simply compares the direction of the action to human nature or some
part of human nature; if the action conforms to human nature—if basically the
pattern of the action is the same as the pattern found in human nature—then the
action is morally permissible; if the action does not conform to human nature
then it is morally wrong.[1] This, I think, is an oversimplified view of
how human nature is normative or grounds moral principles.
Take the example of the kind of
argument this view has presented against lying.
Proponents of this view might say that lying is wrong because it does
not conform to the natural orientation or teleological direction in the faculty
of speech—that the faculty of speech is naturally oriented to communicating
what one thinks is true, but lying prevents that faculty or power from
attaining its natural end and is therefore immoral. The central problem with this type of
argument is that, given this conception of nature, it is not clear that we are morally required to keep within the
guidelines, or limitations set for us, by human nature. If I use a basic power or faculty but direct
it toward an end to which it is not naturally directed, why is that necessarily
wrong? May it not just be ingenuity on
my part, an end-run around the basic equipment I have been born with? Also, it is not clear that it is always wrong
to act against every faculty or power natural to us—for example, it does not
seem to be intrinsically wrong to induce vomiting, even, say, for experimental
purposes, in order to discover the nature of digestion. (Let me add parenthetically, that I agree
with many of the conclusions these arguments were supposed to support—I hold,
for example, that lying, contraception, and extramarital sex are morally wrong—but
I do not think this approach shows why
these acts are wrong.)
Nor do I think that human nature is a
norm the way in which some Aristotelians have argued (whether Aristotle himself
held this position in every part of his ethics is a vexed question I will
simply set aside here). Some
Aristotelians have argued that human nature grounds morals by indicating to us
the capacity that is distinctive of human beings, and, because distinctive,
most excellent. And so, on this view, the
morally ideal life is to develop to its utmost that part of us that is
distinctive of us. I see several
problems with this approach—though, I must apologize, that, for lack of time, I
have stated it rather boldly and without, as they say, “nuances.” In any case, the central problem with this
approach is that it ignores the fact that it is only in the abstract that we
share various capacities with other animals.
True, both we and other animals are biologically alive and
reproduce. But the biological life of a
human being is fundamentally different in kind from the life of a dog or a
cat. That is, in human beings there is
not one half that is animal and the other half personal; rather, the life of a
human being is through and through both a biological and personal life. This also is clear with reproduction: humans reproduce, but they reproduce in their
own distinctive manner, and what is generated is not just a biological entity,
but a whole human, personal being with both body and rational soul.
II.
Human Nature
So much for how human nature is not the criterion. Now let us examine how human nature is a ground of practical and moral
norms.
The nature of a being is its internal
structure or set of tendencies that distinguishes it from other types of
beings, coming from within, rather than imposed from outside. Some thinkers, notably existentialists, deconstructionists,
or anti-realists, have denied that humans have a nature in the proper sense of
the term. According to these thinkers, by
our free choice or preferences, we construct what we most fundamentally are. Indeed, anti-realists of various types deny
that there are real natures outside the human realm as well, holding that we
construct or impose all meaning rather than discover any objective structures,
or at least any important objective structures.
It is clear, however, that when we begin to make something or to
interact in any way with the external world, we must take account of
pre-existing differences in those things we interact with. Prior to our projects and plans, different
things have within them inherent tendencies to act and react in certain definite
ways. Thus, we treat a tree differently
than we treat a Rottweiler dog—we might kick a tree to vent our anger but will
not likely kick a Rottweiler to vent our anger.
The reason is obvious: within the
Rottweiler dog there is an inherent tendency to act and react in a way
fundamentally different than a tree. In
other words, the dog has a different nature
than the tree. Things in the world
differ in that they are different types of agents—within
each thing is a tendency, or an ordered set of tendencies, to act and react in
certain ways. This inherent tendency or set
of tendencies is the thing’s nature.
Aristotle spoke of nature as the intrinsic principle of motion and rest
in a being, that is, the internal source of its tendencies to act and react in
certain ways, or (put still another way) the internal source of the entity’s basic
potentialities.
Understood in this fashion it is
clear that human beings do have a
nature. Human beings have basic potentialities
that are not acquired, not constructed, not imposed, but are inherent within
them, basic potentialities that they have just by coming to be, that is,
potentialities they have in virtue of what they are. And so human beings do have a nature. Human beings have the inherent potentialities
to maintain their organic states, to grow, to reproduce, to perceive, to
remember, to imagine, to have emotions, to understand, and to will. Not every human being can immediately
exercise all of these potentialities, but every human being is oriented to
actively developing himself or herself to the stage at which he or she will
perform such actions.
III.
Human Nature and Free Choice
Now to how human nature is related to
free choice. I will bypass here most of
the complicated disputes about responsibility and free choice, and presuppose that
we do sometimes make free choices. Here I
want to ask how our free choices are related to our nature. Both those who deny that we have a human
nature, or that it has any role to play in morality, and those who just make
human nature itself the moral norm, both view free choice and human nature as
in tension or as opposed. Both groups view human nature as a limitation or
restriction placed from the outside on our freedom or our choices. This is obvious for those who deny human
nature or its significance, for they deny it in order to make room for freedom
or choice. It also is true of those who
view human nature as a pattern simply to be conformed with, for according to
them it turns out that a morally good act is one that is within the limits of
human nature and a morally bad act is one that strays outside those
restrictions.
But this is a profoundly mistaken
view of how free choice and nature are related.
Free choice is not something that occurs as opposed to or as outside the
framework set by one’s nature. To put
the point briefly, we choose among possibilities that are open to us, but what
possibilities are open to us is set by our human nature. To express the point slightly
differently: we choose actions, but actions are, in one way or
another, actualizations of one or more of our basic potentialities. So, free choice occurs within the context of
human nature—we do not choose to keep within human nature or to go outside it.
When I choose I choose among possible
courses of action. For example, I may
choose to eat breakfast or to skip breakfast, I may choose to go to the gym to
work out or to go home and study. Each
of these possible courses of action is attractive, is of interest to me,
because each, in one way or another, actualizes some basic potentiality in
me. What makes a course of action
attractive, what makes it desirable, and so in some basic sense, good, is that it is some way fulfilling
for me or those that I care about. A
possible action is desirable or good (not yet morally good, but practically
good) to the extent that it is, or at least seems to be, fulfilling (or is a
means to an activity or condition that is, or seems to be, fulfilling).
So each choice is a choice to realize
or actualize one’s potentialities in some way or other. Since we are complex beings we have various
basic potentialities. The
actualizations of our basic potentialities are what natural-law theorists
generally call basic human goods, or fundamental human goods. Such basic goods are the actualizations of
the kind of being we are. So, freedom is
not anti-thetical to nature; rather, our nature sets the possibilities within
which we act. But our nature is not a
limitation set upon our freedom or our desires either. Rather, the orientation to various types of
fulfillment makes possible our choices and our active, free self-constitution
in our choices.
I will return more fully to the issue
of moral goodness shortly, but it is worth making a brief remark about it here
at this abstract level. What could be
the difference between morally good choices and morally bad choices, if
whenever we choose we are choosing to pursue some basic good or other (or at
least some fragment of a basic good)?
Whenever we choose we are seeking to actualize one or more of our basic
potentialities. Since, according to the
natural law tradition goodness is the fullness of being possible for an entity,
or the actualization of its potentialities, the point I just made can be
re-phrased as follows: whenever we
choose we are seeking to realize some good or other. But if that is so, then how can we ever do
what is morally wrong?
The answer is that there are two ways
of seeking to realize one’s potentialities, that is, two ways, of seeking
fulfillment or the good. One can seek a
good in such a way as to remain open to and respectful of all the goods not
sought in this choice—and that is a morally good choice, or one can seek a good
in such a way as to turn away from, or diminish in oneself a respect for, some
other good (either in oneself or in another).
Thus, human nature is the ground or
criterion for what is morally good without being a limitation on free
choice. It is not as if morally good
choices are those in line with nature and morally bad ones follow our desires
and lead us outside the limits set by nature.
Rather, all choices realize our potentialities (or develop our nature)
in some way or other, but morally bad ones realize our potentialities in a way that
diminishes or mutilates in some way our further openness to other basic goods. Nor is it that morally good choices are for
the sake of good objects and morally bad ones are aimed at bad objects. Rather,
all choices are for the sake of something to which we have some natural
orientation, toward something good (or at least apparently good) but bad
choices pursue a good in such a way as to suppress our appreciation of some other
good (either in ourselves or in others).
IV.
Basic Practical Principles
The third point in our examination of
how nature is related to morality is how we arrive at first practical
principles—practical principles which are not yet, as I shall explain in a
moment, fully moral principles. How,
from these practical principles, we reach specifically moral principles, I
shall examine in the next section.
Famously, David Hume held that any
argument in which all of the premises are is-propositions, or descriptive
propositions, and yet the conclusion is a moral ought proposition, commits a
fallacy. Some natural law theorists have
protested that this is not a fallacy,
that propositions describing human nature together do imply moral propositions,
and have held that the basic moral principles are deduced from propositions
describing human nature. However, on
this one point I agree with Hume (of course that is what, in part, puts me in
the camp of the “new natural lawyers”).
What Hume called a fallacy is a
fallacy. For a practical proposition is
a fundamentally different sort of proposition than a theoretical or speculative
proposition—that is, an is-proposition.
A theoretical proposition attempts to describe what is the case. In a theoretical proposition one is
attempting to conform one’s mind to what is (I am presupposing here a realist
position on theoretical propositions).
In a practical proposition, however, one is attempting to order acts of
will, to put order in an act that has not yet come to be. A practical proposition is not a description
but a directive or a prescription. Now, in an argument the knowledge of the
premises is the cause of the knowledge of the conclusion. And the effect cannot be greater than the
cause. And so if all of the premises are
telling us about what is the case,
then, absent some implicit presupposition about what ought to be done, then those premises cannot by themselves generate
knowledge about what ought to be done. (I
do not say that some theoretical knowledge is not presupposed for practical and
moral knowledge and arguments—to have ethical knowledge about killing and
letting die, for example, one must know, at least in a general way, what life
is, that we can do things to endanger or end life, and so on. But my contention is that the first
principles of practical reason, and the first moral principles, are not
established by arguments all of whose premises are theoretical, for example,
theoretical propositions about human nature.)
So, while moral norms are grounded in human nature, they are not deduced
from propositions describing human nature. One need not first do philosophy of
human nature before doing ethics. The
first practical principles and the first moral principle are, in my view,
self-evident and underived from any other propositions, even though they arise
out of insight into the possibilities toward which we are oriented by our human
nature. One could put it this way: they are ontologically
grounded in human nature even though they are not logically derived from propositions about human nature. How, then, are they known, and how do they
generate specifically moral propositions?
The key texts in the history of the
natural law theory are, of course, found in St. Thomas Aquinas. According to Aquinas the first principles of
practical reason are per se nota,
that is, known through themselves, not deduced from any other
propositions. And they are per se nota, or self-evident, because in
each of them the predicate is contained within the intelligibility of the
subject—so once one understands the subject one thereby grasps that the
predicate belongs to it. An example in
the theoretical order would be: if one
knows what grass is, then one knows the truth of the proposition that grass is
a plant: knowledge of the nature of the
subject tells one that the predicate belongs to it. Something similar, but in a practical
directive, occurs in the knowledge of the first practical principles. Aquinas has this to say about how these first
practical principles are known:
Since indeed good has the
intelligibility (ratio) of end, and
evil the intelligibility of its contrary, hence it is that all those things to
which the human being has a natural inclination, reason naturally apprehends as
good, and consequently, as to be pursued by action, and their contraries as
evils and to be avoided. (Summa
Theologiae, I-II, q. 94, a.2)
In other words, by a practical insight one directly
apprehends in the object of a natural inclination that this object is
perfective or fulfilling and thus is good and to be pursued. This language of “to-be-pursued” (Aquinas
uses the gerundive to express the prescriptive mode, as opposed to the
indicative) indicates that the proposition is a directive, a prescriptive
proposition, not a descriptive or theoretical proposition. I believe Aquinas’s point here is correct. The basic practical propositions he is
describing here are propositions or directives toward the objects of our
natural inclinations or our basic potentialities. Thus, we arrive at such propositions as: Life is good and to be pursued, marriage is
good and to be pursued, knowledge is good and to be pursued, friendship and
society is a basic good and to be pursued, religion is good and to be
pursued—these are the basic goods Aquinas lists (without claiming to provide a
complete list. Following Grisez, Boyle
and Finnis, I would add some others, such as play or skillful performance,
aesthetic experience, and self-integration.[2] In any case, how do these insights with
respect to the objects of our natural inclinations occur?
I think they occur as insights into
experience of conditions or activities that are genuinely fulfilling. For, from the experience of these conditions
or activities one comes to understand that, for example, health, knowledge, or
harmonious relationships with other people, are of themselves fulfilling and
thus worthy of being pursued. This
insight is not an inference. Rather, if
one grasps health, for example, as genuinely fulfilling, that is at the same to
grasp it as to-be-pursued. An object’s
being genuinely fulfilling is the intelligibility under which one sees it as
worthy of pursuit. The natural
inclinations are, in a way, data for the practical insight. How this occurs may be illustrated, I think,
in the following way. As a young child I
experience being healthy as opposed to being sick or having my knees scraped up
or having burnt fingers. I enjoy, or take delight in, being healthy, and I dislike, or have an aversion
to being sick or wounded. That of
course is not yet a practical insight; the enjoyment or aversion so far
mentioned is on the level of emotion, or what Aquinas called sense
appetite. But at some point as a child I
go further and I come to understand
that being healthy is a condition worth pursuing, and being sick or wounded is
a condition I should take steps to avoid.
What has occurred here is a practical insight, an act of intellect, an
insight that being healthy is fulfilling and thus worthy of pursuit,
protection, deliberation about, and so forth.[3] These first practical principles, it should
be noted, are at the basis of anyone’s practical
deliberations. They are at the basis of
the practical deliberations when we decide to do something morally good, but
also at the basis of practical deliberations when we decide to do something
morally bad. We cannot begin to think
about what to do unless we understand some point, or some points, to
acting. Just as one will not begin to
think about what road to take unless one sees some point in going somewhere, so
one cannot begin to deliberate about what action to choose unless one first
apprehends some goods worth pursuing.
These first practical principles are just the knowledge that some
activities or conditions are worth pursuing, promoting, or preserving. .
V. From Practical
Principles to the Basic Moral Principle
So, given the first practical principles, where does morality come in? The practical proposition that health is a
good worthy of pursuit is not yet, or not yet formally, a moral proposition. The moral
issue arises when, having seen and appreciated various basic human goods, such
as health, friendship in a broad sense, understanding, and so on, one finds
oneself in a situation where one could choose in two distinct manners. One could choose in a way that is fully in
accord with all of these practical principles, or one could choose in a way
that is in accord with at least one of them to a certain extent (else the
option would not be attractive), but that is not fully in accord with all of
them. And one’s emotions have a role in
making the unreasonable option attractive.
Thus, moral normativity does
not arise from an entirely new proposition or new contrast. The difference between morally good choices
and morally bad choices is not that morally bad choices aim at something
bad—badness is not a nature possessed by any thing but is a privation. Nor is the difference between the morally
good and morally bad choices that morally bad ones are only in one’s self
interest and morally good ones are subjected to an implicit contract—though
there are some morally bad choices
which fit that description. Rather,
because, as Augustine, Aquinas and many others pointed out, goodness is the
fullness of being due a thing, the difference between morally good choices and
morally bad ones is just that the good choices are fully rational, they have
the fullness of being possible for a human choice, while the bad ones in one
respect or another, are lacking in regard to the integral directiveness toward
every aspect of human good that comes from the first practical principles in
their totality and fullness.
So, morality and nature are closely
interrelated, indeed, one can say that moral norms are grounded in human
nature, even though they are not deduced from propositions describing human
nature. However, to be clearer about the
relationship, one perhaps should say that morality directs us to real human
fulfillment (and I should add, not just individual fulfillment, but fulfillment
in communion with other persons).
Morality is based, not on human nature viewed as a static pattern or
structure, but rather on genuine goods, the basic goods, to which we are
directed by our nature. This
clarification or qualification is important for at least three reasons. First,
it makes it clear that natural law need not be conceived as a set of
limitations or as primarily negative. On
the contrary, when the emphasis is on the goods to which we are oriented by our
nature, then the positive comes first:
the basic moral norm is: energetically pursue and promote the basic
human goods both in oneself and in others.
The prohibitions, such as do not intentionally kill innocent persons, do
commit adultery, and so on, excludes choices and actions which are themselves
negative. The second reason for the
importance of this clarification (namely morality is based on the goods we are
naturally inclined to, not immediately on a nature conceived statically)—is that
it makes clear that we are not all called to have the exact same type of life;
there is room for a great deal of diversity and ingenuity in living out the
moral life. There are many basic goods,
not just one, and there are perhaps an infinite number of ways of realizing
these various basic goods. We are not
all called to realize all the basic goods equally, or in the same order—we are
called to fashion a life in which we energetically pursue some, and at all
times to respect all of them, both in ourselves and in others. But natural law theory, correctly developed,
does not prescribe that human beings attempt to be carbon copies of one
another. And the third reason why this
clarification is important is that it leaves room for supplement by faith and
grace. The natural basic human good of
religion invites us to inquire whether perhaps God might approach us to
establish more than a natural harmony with him.
The natural law directs us to human
fulfillment, but it is, correctly understood, open to God’s invitation to
the supernatural, that is, something more than human fulfillment.
V.
Human Nature and Divine Grace
So far I have not appealed to special
revelation or religious faith. However, my
claim that there are basic moral truths in principle knowable without appeal to
special revelation, may cause worry, even consternation, among some Christians. Thus, H. Tristram Engelhardt, commenting on
an article I wrote on abortion in the journal Christian Bioethics, complains about my “commitment to natural
reason.” He then says that, “This
commitment to natural reason, characteristic of much of Roman Catholic
bioethical analysis, tends to reduce moral theology and Christian philosophy to
secular philosophy and to be distinguished by an accidental connection to the
particularities of Christian commitments.”[4] Thus, I would like to say something brief
here, from a theological standpoint, in reply to the concern Engelhardt
enunciates.
The goal of the Christian life is the
completion of the
But I believe also, first, that the
eternal Kingdom begins now in mystery, that it is not just in the future,
though it is completed only in the next world.
For, Our Lord says that the Kingdom of heaven, or the
Second, the
For after we have
obeyed the Lord, and in His Spirit nurtured on earth the values of human
dignity, brotherhood and freedom, and indeed all the good fruits of our nature
and enterprise, we will find them again, but freed of stain, burnished and
transfigured, when Christ hands over to the Father: "a kingdom eternal and
universal, a kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love
and peace." (reference to the Liturgy of the Feast of Christ the
King) On this earth that Kingdom is already present
in mystery. When the Lord returns it will be brought into full flower.
Thus, the Christian life does include duties that transcend the
fulfillment of human nature and cannot be known, even in principle, by natural
reason unaided by the gift of faith. For
example, we have a duty to accept God’s Revelation handed on to us by Scripture
and Church teaching, and this Revelation contains a proposal from God to enter
into a personal communion with him, and to imitate Christ’s life, and, with
God’s grace, to join ourselves to Christ’s offering of himself on the cross for
our sins, for it is by our being joined to that offering, that obedience unto
death, that Sacrifice, that we are brought into that intimate personal
communion with God, called grace or sharing in the divine nature. We are thus called to do pray, to do penance
for our sins, to participate in the Sacraments in which (according to Catholic
belief) Christ’s sacrificial offering on the cross is made present to us. Hence Catholic Christians believe that
Christians have specific duties not
discoverable by the natural light of reason.
At the same time,
if the
Still, we should add that the human
intellect will certainly operate much more reliably, even as a human intellect,
if it operates within the context or horizon of faith. There is no doubt that selfishness, pride,
envy, lust and so on often bias the operations of the intellect. So, charity, humility, chastity, and, above
all, faith, can help to heal that bias.
[1] Cf.: Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, and John Finnis,
“Practical Principles, Moral Truth and Ultimate Ends,” American Journal of
Jurisprudence 33 (1988) 99-151; John Finnis, Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., Germain
Grisez, Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1987), chaps. 9-11. John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington,
D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1983); John Finnis, Aquinas, Moral,
Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); T. D.
J. Chappell, Understanding Human Goods:
A Theory of Ethics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998)
[2] Cf. Germain Grisez
[3] Following this practical intellectual insight, there occurs Aquinas refers to as simplex voluntas, that is a simple act of will, that is, a simple act of will in regard to an understood good—not a choice, which involves a willing to do something to bring about an instance of this good, but rather, simply a favorable inclination in the will toward the specific understood good. It seems to me that this simplex voluntas is part of the answer to the neo-Humeian argument that a reason for action must be motivational but that an understanding without an act of will is not motivational: the answer is to distinguish volitional acts—the practical principle is necessarily motivational with respect to a simplex vountas, but not necessarily motivational with respect to a choice.
[4] H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., “Moral Knowledge: Some Reflections on Moral Controversies,
Incompatible Moral Epistemologies, and the Culture Wars,” Christian Bioethics 10 (2004), 79-103, at 81.