Natural Law and Practical Reasoning by Mark C. Murphy (review)

310 thing, BOOK REVIEWS ''"'n''"'~;c-, he articulates a H1oldle~;ge:n:an of care, one that reveals lo,re as a "mode of kn.O,iV!!1>r----a£:am. """"''m" of finite creatures out for but never thinking v11ith ri<:Wegger, wants to turn our attention back to the self as "the horizon vvhere God is " the finite space where this God who This God can be named in prayer c f ' • tor (sOCL MICPIAEL L RAPOSA Natural Law and Practical 1was1mi1nf!. lVlARK C. MURl'iHY. Cambridge Studies in University 2001. 284. $54.95. ISBN 0-521-80229-6. Recent moral seen a great interest m 'rn""'"'"'· There is a sense among many that the basic 1.m""''"""'~·"'Y have led to interminable disagreement, formulations of and Put another way, the achievements of have tended to show vvith the snortc•Jrr11r1gs ethics (I but also the various forms of whHe better models. This has led many trained in methods to reexamine ancient and medieval accounts, among them the tradition of natural law most but not associated with the Much of this work has been more suggestive than but there are several large-scale constructive the most prominent The recovery of natural. law in analytical terms is dms an obvious and necessary of contemporary moral There are, obstacles. The best-known obstacle is the thesis associated with Hume and Moore that one cannot derive morally statements. There is also the first most modem moral associated with premodern But natural law has often aimed to BOOK REVIEWS 311 do precisely that. There are also well-known problems concerning the role in natural law theory ofthe sort ofteleology largely rejected by modern science. All of this suggests that perhaps there is simply too much disagreement at too basic a level between anything like traditional natural law and modern analytical philosophy. Finnis's work has aimed to meet these challenges, but has remained controversial among more traditional Thomists on account of its own peculiarities. Mark C. Murphy'sNaturalLawandPracticalReasoningthus enters a controversy already in progress. The book aims to do what others have either merely gestured at or attempted to do without garnering great acceptance, that is, to present a natural law theory that is expounded largely in the language and techniques of analytical philosophy, but that is grounded in the main theoretical commitments of the tradition. Murphy offers a natural law account that aims to be a theory of practical reason, that is, one that explains the intelligibility and reasonableness of action. He begins by specifying the necessary elements in any plausible natural law theory: it must offer a catalogue of basic goods grounded in human nature and it must offer standards of practical rationality justified by reference to those goods (1-3). Accordingly, Murphy first offers an account of the basic goods that constitute reasons for action connected to human nature and then proposes standards of practical reasonableness. In approaching the first task Murphy confronts a disagreement internal to recent natural law theory: namely, the disagreement between those who see the principles of practical reason as derived from an account of human nature ("derivationists") and those who see them as indemonstrable and not derived from speculative judgments ("indinationists"). The first view, common among more traditional Thomists and Aristotelians, is represented by Anthony Lisska in his 1996 book, Aquinas's Theory ofNatural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction; the latter mainly by John Finnis. Murphy argues for what one might call a modified inclinationism. He quickly rejects derivationism for, first, violating Hume's law and, second, for making it difficult to see how ordinary persons could have access to basic moral knowledge. He criticizes Finnis's inclinationism, however, for failing to reconcile the claim that basic moral principles are self-evident with the claim that the goodness of such goods is explained by human nature (14-17). Murphy's own inclinationism aims to solve this problem by defending an account of practical reasoning that relates moral principles to human nature without committing the naturalistic fallacy. He pursues this task by proposing two large arguments upon which the rest of the account-which mainly consists of defensive arguments for his own approach and a more detailedspelling out ofactual principles ofpractical reasoning-rests. The first of these two arguments is called the "real identity thesis" and is intended to provide the epistemic basis of a natural law theory that does not run afoul of Hume's law. The thesis proposes an understanding of the relationship between speculative and practical judgments based on an analogy between different types of indexical statements. Just as one cannot derive statements like "Murphy is in his office" from statements (made by Murphy) like "I am in my office" or vice versa, so one cannot derive judgments about how one should act 312 BOOK REVIEWS from statements about the human as such. Nevertheless, there can be a "tight correspondence" between the content of the two statements. So the content of judgments of what one should do is logically independent and underivable from speculative judgments about the human good, but also identical. working dialectically between the t\1\lo, one can recognize their logical difference, but stiU find them mutually illuminating The second argument, called the "functional composition thesis," concerns daims about the human good itself. Murphy defends the notion that there is a (CC)mpou111a or inclusive) function that can be ascribed to human beings as such and that such a function can be related to goodness. The thesis itself is explained by way of an interpretation of Aristotle's function argument in Nicomachean Ethics L 7, the function of parts in a whole to the notion that the whole itself has a function. Function is then related to flourishing with the help of Mark Bedau's defense of a teleological account of functioning and his classification of teleology into three groups, one of which is the sort of fullblooded teleology advocated Aristotle. This describes human flourishing; a lesser grade of teleology describes other nonhuman parts of nature. Having proposed these two theses, sets about formulating and defending an account like Finnis's theory, is grounded in a set of basic goods that constitute reasons for action. Murphy's list is, however, somewhat different from Finnis's. He proposes the following basic goods: life, knowledge, aesthetic experience, excellence in play and work, exceUence in agency, inner peace, friendship and community, religion, and happiness. This last concerns the formation agents of rational Hfe through which to realize the good. The goods are analyzed dialectically by means of both speculative judgments about flourishing and practical With respect to practical reason, however, the goods are, as the real thesis states, fundamental reasons for action. From them derives principles of practical reason that govern both plans of action and agems. The of these preclude dismissing or devaluing basic goods or persons the context of a2~~m:-rn~m:rai goods). Like Finnis, also holds that the basic goods are incommensurable, unlike Finnis, he thinks it may be possible to order them hierarchically. A defensible hierarchy among goods, however, would not add much to the formulation of practical principles (198). Murphy's theory then is one based on the notion that the human good is objective, concerned with human welfare, and anti-consequentialist. Finally, Murphy argues that specifically morni imperative force is added to the principles of reason when it is impossible to decide on some opposed course of action without a practical error. Generalizing from this leads to specifically moral principles that preclude inter alia discrimination, lying, and callousness. There is a great deal to chew overr· in Murphy's account and no one can accuse him of being too stingy with arguments. He responds in great detail to a dizzying number and variety of to his various proposals and formulations relating to his claims about the objectivity of well-being and alternative BOOK REVIEWS 313 contemporary views. This book should and will be a focus of debate among those who advocate various versions of natural right in moral, political, and legal philosophy. What I want to offer is not so much criticism as observations and questions of the sort that seem to me natural from an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective. They all are related to what seem to me the distinctly modern elements in Murphy's natural law theory. First, Murphy's dismissal of what he calls "derivationism" is based on what seems a rather casual acceptance of Hume's and Moore's views about the naturalistic fallacy. There have been a number of proposals advanced, even within analytical philosophy, to explain away the so-called fallacy of deriving values from facts: one thinks of Geach, Searle, and Prior, not to mention Macintyre. So why does Murphy adopt Lisska as the only representative of derivationism worth refuting? One reason is perhaps that Lisska, unlike most of those mentioned above, argues against Hume's law as an explicit proponent of natural law theory, but the question is broader than just natural law and Murphy chooses his opponents more broadly elsewhere in the book. Moreover, it does not seem to me that Lisska makes the strongest case. From a more explicitly Thomistic perspective there are questions about the "functional composition thesis" and about the catalogue of and relationship between the basic goods. On the first point, Murphy is clearly concerned that a defense ofa naturalistic account of flourishing looks too teleological for modern natural science. His adoption of Bedau's grades of teleology manages only to put this question off by proposing a kind of modified dualism: human flourishing manifests full teleology, while other parts of nature manifest lower grades of it. Perhaps that is the best we can do, but it seems unlikely that many proponents of anti-teleological science will be persuaded by it. On the second point, Murphy, like Finnis, holds that the basic goods are incommensurable. He does allow that there may be room for the notion of hierarchy among the goods (19098 ); however, he evinces considerably more caution about this than either Aristotle or Aquinas, both of whom clearly defend the superiority of contemplation. There are two other issues concerning the character of Murphy's account visa -vis traditional natural law theory that bear a somewhat paradoxical relationship to one another. Murphy criticizes derivationism for making it unclear how plain persons have access to basic moral knowledge. On finishing Natural Law and Practical Rationality, however, one wonders just how much easier plain persons have it on the basis of Murphy's account. At the same time, the actual cache of specific moral knowledge one carries away from the book may appear rather small. Murphy writes that he arrives at "thinner conclusions than those reached by a number of writers in the natural law tradition" on the basis of the principles of practical reason his theory generates (216), and a bit later confesses that those principles are "highly abstract," but that this is not so worrisome since working through the "more interesting moral requirementsthat can be generated from these fundamental principles would be extremely tedious," adding that his study is not primarily concerned with "the more 314 BOOK REVIEWS casuistical questions that arise within natural law theory" (230). It is fair enough that one cannot do everything in one book; however, a very large part of the controversy over natural lawtheorysurelyconcerns the specific moral judgments about controversial questions that the tradition has proposed and the modern rejection of them. Murphy confines himself to brief discussions of discrimination, lying, and callousness. In the first of these discussions he actually mentions the controversy over discrimination against homosexuals by the military (231). The question of same-sex marriage, however, is of far greater moment and involves (in part, at least) the same principle. One may wonder if the thinness of these conclusions is related to Murphy's acceptance of Hume's law at the start. These questions notwithstanding, Natural Lawand Practical Rationality is an important book and one that should be studied by all contemporary students of the issues it treats. The book succeeds in advancing the project of an analytical natural law theory where others have failed, and contains many illuminating discussions of various related and subsidiary questions. The writing is clear and the quality of philosophical argument is very high. There has been a virtual rebirth of interest in and contribution to moral, political, and legal philosophy in the natural law tradition in recent years. Murphy's contribution to this increasingly lively and important conversation is among the most noteworthy and valuable. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. V. BRADLEY LEWIS An Essay on Divine Authority. By MARK C. MURPHY. Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp. x +198. $39.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8014-4030-0. In this book, Mark C. Murphy explores the question of God's rule over created beings. He challenges the view-widely held by theists and non-theists alike-that, if G