The natural law theory
Various theories have come up to try and explain the existence of humankind and the behaviour of human beings. The divine command theory explains that an action can be decided to be good if God commanded it. People from ancient times have often agreed to the importance of Gods commands in deciding the status of a task. Whatever action that was commanded by God was considered right and clean. With the divine theory, one asks himself what God would command to be right or wrong and proceed to make a decision. It is crucial in solving many day to day puzzles of life. The theory is pretty much critical in reaffirming what is right and wrong. The belief that everything that God does and commands is good makes everyone that believes in the divine theory right. In case of any challenge, the final decision will always be right as God would have made the same decision. It gives people a clear direction to morality, opening their eyes to judge correctly. The theory gives hope to the derailed. The belief that death is not the end helps people deal with suffering. It can also be termed as theological voluntarism. A person becomes moral by following the commands of The Almighty. A good thing is a good thing because God commanded it. That is the basic approach of the theory towards judging situations. The theory, however, faced challenges. The theory drove an argument that atheists and agnostics were without morals due to the lack of knowledge of God. The theory has been challenged on moral grounds, and many weaknesses have since been identified in the essay. The incompatibility of the theory with the unlimited goodness of God saw the theory receive various criticism. The theory, however, has massive importance to law enforcement during moral dilemmas. It is a tool they use when they are stuck to make a critical decision. They are often faced with situations that leave them in a dilemma, and believing in God eases their decision-making. This essay explains the beliefs behind the divine command theory and natural law theory as we see the essential theory.
Natural law theory explains that human beings possess inherent values that control the behaviour of an individual—the theory dominated for hundreds of year overpowering the western legal theory. The first principle of natural law theory is to do good and avoid evil. The theory is based on the fact that everybody is born with the rules of right and wrong, that the authority does not create them. The morality of an individual explains the reason for their actions. The theory explains the connectivity between the inborn behaviour of an individual and their daily decision-making skills terming them as deeply connected. It states that their morals define humans. Natural law theorist believes that human nature is what guides people to make decisions every day. They believe that morals come from nature, and everything in nature has a purpose. Anything that worked against the rule of nature was considered ‘unnatural’. Humans are supposed to live a happy and peaceful life. The role of laws is solely to provide judgment, and if a law is flawed, it was not considered a law at all. The definition of what’s wrong and right is equal and the same for everyone. It was considered subjective. The theory had a fundamental approach to solving issues which were that everyone should leave their own life. The theory, however, allows for the practice of unnatural deeds in case the task proved to have a reason.
I find the natural law theory more useful than the divine theory because of its generalization. It applies to everyone and people should live good and happy lives even though it has setbacks that arise from the belief that everyone is equal and should live an equal life. In the divine theory, everyone is not a firm believer. It’s harder for a non-believer in the divine theory to accept the outcome of individual beliefs. Even though it has vast importance due to its effects on the firm believers of God. The fact that natural law theory applies to everyone makes it essential to practice. It is easy to dictate the decisions of people if they behave in a like-minded manner; therefore, this theory could be critical in altering the beliefs of people and how they partake their day to day activities.
Natural law theory explains that evil is to be avoided and good is done. Natural ethicists explain that humans learn and discover natural law by themselves by learning the difference between good and evil. Natural law is learned through consistently choosing right over evil. The almighty God gives out the law by nature to human beings, and it’s authoritative to everyone. What is evil is considered unnatural and was not to be done. The theme of the theory was always to do what’s right and live a happy life. Evil is created but is termed as unnatural by the natural law theory ethicists.
Good and evil are both universal. With the notion that God cannot do evil, then anything given to humans naturally by God has to be clean and pure like God himself. Natural law theory does not believe in evil but term it as unnatural and immoral to society and should not be practised by anyone. It isn’t accessible to, however, judge the decisions of many people with the simple fact that everyone is the same. The theory clearly shows the struggles between good and evil. The fact that you have believed in God to make sense of the theory is wrong and is a setback to the theory itself.
When we observe how someone behaves and compare with how they are supposed to behave, it proves challenging to prove the natural law theory. It is quite clear the most humans don’t just leave a happy and good life. Human beings make mistakes regularly with contrasts with the beliefs of the theory that evil cannot be done. It gets easy to go from ‘is’ to ought in a situation where natural law theory is involved. Human beings make decisions as per their instincts and influence from their surroundings. Most people do well and do not perform evil, so everyone else got to do the same. Ought to seek to explain what should be done. In natural law theory, what should be done has some premise in the background.
An example of an ‘is to ought’ situation in the natural law theory is the fact that most people cheat in their exams. Since most students do cheat in their exams, the other students ought to do the same. The theories of the law try and explain the existence of law and the knowledge of what’s right and wrong. Natural law theory came first and directed people to clear conclusions on what to and not do. Even though several theories have come up to explain human nature, they all have setbacks due to questions they leave unanswered. The natural theory has, however, impressed many and has been dominating the legal sector for years due to its efficiency in decision-making.
References
Quinn, Philip L. “Divine command theory.” The Blackwell guide to ethical theory (2013): 81-102.
Austin, Michael W. “Divine command theory.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www. iep. utm. edu/divine-c (2006).
Moore, Michael S. “A natural law theory of interpretation.” S. Cal. L. Rev. 58 (1985): 277.