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41 Am. J. Juris. 47 (1996)
A Defense of the New Natural Law Theory

handle is hein.journals/ajj41 and id is 51 raw text is: A DEFENSE OF THE NEW NATURAL LAW THEORY ROBERT P. GEORGE In Fact and Value in the New Natural Law Theory,' Jeffrey Goldsworthy offers a vigorous critique of the natural law theory of practical reason and morality advanced by Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph M. Boyle, Jr. (GFB). Goldsworthy argues that GFB's putatively cognitivist account of the objective prescriptivity of moral principles and the motivational force of noninstrumental reasons for action fails either because it is (1) ultimately indistinguishable from Humean non-cognitivism, according to which morality is subjective and practical reasoning is purely instrumental, or (2) vulnerable to decisive objections based on John Mackie's argument from queerness as reinforced by the argument from the best explanation. As Goldsworthy points out, GFB disavow the claim of neo-scholastic natural law theorists that practical principles, including moral norms, can be deduced from purely theoretical truths (facts) about (human) nature.2 In this respect, they share common ground with non- cognitivists. GFB reject, however, the non-cognitivist claim that since norms cannot be deduced from facts they must be projections of our feelings and desires rather than objects of our reason (p. 2). GFB maintain that moral norms and other basic practical principles are rational principles whose directiveness and prescriptivity are independent of people's feelings or desires. The most basic practical principles, according to GFB, prescribe actions which people have reasons to perform because they constitute opportunities to realize for themselves and/or others benefits whose intelligible value is not merely instrumental. As grasped in intellective acts, these and more proximate practical principles, including moral principles, are, or 1. 41 Am. J. Juris. (1996), pp. 2. Thus, according to Goldsworthy, GFB affirm-the Humean principle that one cannot logically deduce ... an 'ought' from an 'is' (p. 1). GFB, however, would not concede that the logical distinction between what is the case and what ought to be done, which Goldsworthy refers to as the Humean dichotomy (p. 2), is properly labeled Humean. Finnis, for example, argues that the distinction is one that Hume himself muddled and sometimes ignored, and the great classical philosophers for the most part strictly respected. See Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980), esp. p. 37, n. 43.

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