John Finnis: Thomism and the Philosophy of Natural Law

Abstract

In common with Fuller, Oakeshott, Hayek and Dworkin, Finnis argued for an internally sanctioned connection between law and morality, while also firmly rejecting the utilitarian justification of the modern legal order assumed by jurists belonging to the tradition of legal positivism. In contrast to these other theorists, however, Finnis did not examine the idea of natural law exclusively in terms of formal or procedural principles of legal justice. Instead, he insisted that the justification of the modern rule of law required the exposition of a substantive theory of human nature and the moral goods and values necessary to its perfection. Thus in Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980), the Carroll Lectures of 1982 published subsequently as Fundamentals of Ethics (1983),¹ and Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (1987),² Finnis formulated a fully naturalistic theory of human morality and moral reasoning — a theory in which he set aside the methodological procedures that structured the Kantian and utilitarian traditions in ethics in favour of the procedures central to the classical Thomist philosophy of natural law. In formulating his ethical theory, Finnis was led to ground the moral authority of the rule of law in certain fundamental requirements of practical reason, which he believed to be essential to the realization of all human goods and values within organized political society.