The death of metaphysics; the death of culture

Abstract

knowledge of things like life, play and knowledge. My interest is rather in determining whether in making ethical decisions we should focus on basic goods like life as abstract or as really instantiated. I think Finnis’s stance is fairly clear: in practical and moral reasoning we are related to the basic goods primarily as abstract, generic values. This can be seen both in his general discussion of basic goods and in his analysis of the goods at stake in real moral decisions. First, consider his general discussion of basic goods: The pursuit or realization of any of the basic values is effected partly through physical routines ... and partly through programmes ... But one’s self- determination and self-realization is never consummated, never successfully and finally completed. And none of the basic aspects of one’s well-being is ever fully realized ... it is convenient to say that one participates in the basic values (1980, p. 96). This view is consistent with his claim that sterilization acts against the basic good of life (Finnis, 1991, pp. 85ff.). This not only considers “life” in the abstract, but in a very broad abstract manner such that the good of life is instantiated not only by my own life but also by the capacity to play a role in generating new lives. In contrast, the real good or capacity that is at stake in sterilization is simply one’s own fertility. It is not life in the abstract—a scholastic pure perfection—but a real capacity to co-generate life. Approaching basic goods in the abstract when making ethical decisions has at least two problems. First, it is insulting to real beings—it denigrates them by treating them as mere instances of a type. When I fall in love and marry, I am not responding to an abstract value but to the real value of the woman I love. When a child dies, our loss is not the loss of “life” in general but the loss of an irreplaceable and absolutely unique child. No theory of natural law should count as adequate unless it understands the nature of human persons: their value is not merely the borrowed value of instantiating a type, but a real and unique value. Moral decisions made vis-a-vis other persons must take into account their real capacities and modes of flourishing, which are related to abstract types or kinds but not reducible to them. Second, such an approach fails to appreciate the potential discrepancies that exist between abstract entities and real instantiations. For example, natural law ethics is premised on a specific notion of human nature: to be human is to be a free and rational being. However, small children or people with severe mental retardation are human yet limited in their rationality and freedom; in some cases these traits may be wholly lacking, and this fact is relevant to how we treat them (e.g., denying to them certain rights that others have, such as, the right to vote or marry—for their own protection).