THEME 2A – JOHN FINNIS’ DEVELOPMENT OF NATURAL LAW
Theme 2A – John Finnis’ Development of Natural Law (A01)
Examine John Finnis’ development of Natural Law [30]
John Finnis during the 20 th century in his work 'Natural Law and Natural Rights' (1980) created his
development of Natural Law, which is a is a deontological ethic based on Aquinas’ claims that
humans have an intrinsic rationality that leads them to do good and re-establish a right relationship
with God. Whilst Finnis agrees with Aquinas’ view that there is a natural law applicable to all
humanity, he does however argue that Natural Law’s purpose is rather to allow a person to ‘flourish’
and establish what is good for humankind.
Finnis first starts his theory by rejecting Aquinas’ five primary precepts as they are based on the
belief that God created purpose for humanity, replacing them with what he terms as ‘the 7 basic
goods’ which he believed were self-evident and participated in rather than followed like a set of
rules. These basic goods included: life, which covers bodily health and procreation; knowledge and
being well-informed; friendship and sociability; play; aesthetic experience to appreciate art; practical
reasonableness to solve moral problems; and religion, which concerns answering ultimate questions.
Finnis views the basic goods as universally and intrinsically good and from this, argues they offer a
framework in which a moral agent can choose their own actions.
Building on this, Finnis makes the distinction between practical reasoning (reasoning a right action
and how to act) and theoretical reasoning (reasoning the truth with knowledge) to demonstrate that
the basic goods are self-evident as we know them to be true practically in Natural Law, opposing
Aquinas’ view that Natural Law is derived from God. He further states that ‘Any sane person is
capable of seeing that …. basic aspects of human existence are, as such, good’ which reinforces this
view of the basic goods as self-evident, however he also makes the distinction that we are not
automatically aware of the need for ‘Practical Reasonableness’ and that these principles are only
known to the mature and well-educated.
This led to Finnis’ development of the ‘nine requirements of practical reason’ which he believed are
likewise self-evident and based on practical reasoning, helping to create the optimum conditions to
pursue the seven basic goods. These nine requirements are: view life as a whole and not live “merely
from moment to moment, following immediate cravings”; have no arbitrary preference or discount
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