The Natural Law Approach to Ethics

The Natural Law Approach to Ethics

In the modern world people within society that have some ability or

knowledge of reason know that there are certain laws which govern the

way in which the world works. An example of this in the world can be

observed in the form of the laws of Gravity or that the angles of a

triangle will always add up to 180 degrees. We know these things

because as soon as we are able to think for ourselves we accept that

there are certain rules which are just part of our universe. We can

also know that these rules are certain as we can observe them working

in the world in our day to day lives and see for instance how objects

react when dropped. We work out these answers or observations with our

reason and also compound our beliefs by talking to others who have

also reached the same conclusions. The origins of these rules does not

matter as some might believe they just exist without reason or some

might believe that God put these rules into place but whatever their

origins we believe these rules we expect them to continue to apply to

objects in the world in the future as they have done in the past.

Some people believe that the same can be applied to morality. They

believe that good and evil, right and wrong, all follow a Natural Law

which we can discover through our observations and our reason, they

also believe that morality works in the same way for every nationality

and at every time in history. Natural Law can be seen as an invisible

measure, which never changes therefore everyone in the world could

believe that a certain action is right but it could still be deemed

wrong as Natural Law is independent of public...

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... as it is

sometimes better than following Natural Laws precepts unconditionally.

But Natural Law theory can also be seen as appealing to many peoples

instinctive conviction that right and wrong depends on more than just

personal opinion and social convention. By looking at the ways in

which societies come to the same conclusions about the existence of a

natural law of morality support the idea that it is part of human

nature to recognise this law through both reason and intuition and

that it is self-evident. From the moment of childhood children seem to

have a strong sense of justice and will know when something wrong has

been done by someone else or themselves indicating a strong intuitive

belief that the same rules should apply to everyone and that

exceptions should not be made no matter who the person involved is.