Ship of Fools: Natural law - calling experts

Thread: Natural law - calling experts Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

I've just finished reading a book by an atheist former Christian. he charts well why he changed his beliefs.

When he is criticising natural law, he states:

quote:
nature is conceived as having such a rigid structure that a tree should never be made into a chair; and a chair should never be used as a table

That seems to me to be a travesty of what Aquinas and co believed but I can't put my finger on the exact reason - I don't know enough about it.

There must be several people who explain to me why my hunch is right.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

If the tree itself could be asked, it indeed would insist that it should never be turned into a chair. It clearly is against the natural flourishing of that tree to be felled, cut into pieces and worked into a chair. However, man finds it good to not sit on the ground, and he walks all over the natural flourishing of trees in his pursuit of that good, without a second thought. Such conflicts of good are nothing special though in the natural world (at least in the fallen natural world). It belong to the good of the lion to brutally end the good of a gazelle.

As for the idea that we cannot use a chair as a table, that combines two confusions. First, natural moral law does not say that one should not use a thing in an "other" manner, but rather not in a manner that thwarts the primary purpose. I can swat a fly with a book, since that is a different use which does not hinder reading it, but I should not use it as cutting board in the kitchen, because that will render it unreadable quickly. Second, human artefacts tend to have a somewhat loose identification with their purposes, due to the general fickleness and imprecision of the human mind. The difference between a stool and mini-table is to some degree in the current mood of the human beholder. That does not mean that the same looseness applies elsewhere.

So the natural moral law would not speak principally against using a chair as a makeshift table. But it would raise exactly the sort of common sense question that should be asked: Isn't there an actual table around, to free the chair up for its primary purpose? Did someone actually want to use this as a chair, and I'm now blocking it as table substitute? Is my using it as table ruining it for a future use as chair? Etc.

Posted by Bostonman (# 17108) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
If the tree itself could be asked, it indeed would insist that it should never be turned into a chair. It clearly is against the natural flourishing of that tree to be felled, cut into pieces and worked into a chair. However, man finds it good to not sit on the ground, and he walks all over the natural flourishing of trees in his pursuit of that good, without a second thought. Such conflicts of good are nothing special though in the natural world (at least in the fallen natural world). It belong to the good of the lion to brutally end the good of a gazelle.

I'm not particularly familiar with natural law, but it also doesn't seem unreasonable that God could possibly create trees, stones, metal, and so on such that one path forward for their flourishing could consist in being used as tools.

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