The natural law tradition in ethics and jurisprudence has undergone a revival in recent years, sparked by the work of John Finnis and the 'new natural law theorists' in the early 1980s. The ensuing decades have seen the emergence of an increasingly rich body of natural law scholarship, but this diversification has gone unnoticed by many outside the field. This article seeks to clarify the relationship between the core claims of the new natural law outlook and the more specific views (...) of individual authors. It begins by discussing the place of the new natural law theory within contemporary natural law scholarship. It then offers an account of the core elements of the new natural law framework that emphasises their compatibility with a range of ethical and philosophical viewpoints. (shrink)

Natural law ethics holds that practical rationality consists in engaging in non-defective ways with a range of fundamental goods. These basic goods are characteristically presented as reflecting the natural properties of humans, but the details of this picture vary widely. This article argues that natural law ethics can usefully be understood as a type of dispositional theory of value, which identifies the basic goods with those objectives that humans are characteristically disposed to pursue and value for their own sake. Natural (...) law theories of practical rationality can then be understood as attempts to capture the principles that would govern engagement with the basic goods under ideal conditions. The article begins by offering an account of normative inclinations as human dispositions both to act in certain ways and to believe that the actions are worthwhile or required. It then explores the implications of this account for natural law ethics, discussing the role of the basic goods in practical rationality, whether the goods may change over time and the connection between the goods and human nature. (shrink)

New natural lawyers--notably Grisez, Finnis, and George--have written much on civil marriage's moral boundaries and grounds, but with slight influence. The peripheral place of the new natural law theory (NNLT) results from the marital grounds they suggest and the exclusionary moral conclusions they draw from them. However, I argue a more authentic and attractive NNLT account of marriage is recoverable through overlooked resources within the theory itself: friendship and moral self-constitution. This reconstructed account allows us to identify the relation between (...) marriage and human flourishing and the morality of same-sex marriage without making marriage infinitely plastic. (shrink)