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Natural Law and Virtue |
| Section: MODERN THOUGHT / ON VIRTUE |
| Author: Ralph McInerny |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/1988 |
| Size: 5,735 Words, 32,248 Characters |
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If virtue is making a comeback in contemporary moral philosophy, the same cannot be said for natural law.
I think this is unfortunate. Indeed, it seems to be that out understanding of virtue will suffer fatally it we seek to separate virtue from those objective conditions in human nature that support it.
Much continues to be written on the subject of natural law, some of it excellent, but the very ascendancy of virtue carries with it the suggestion that to speak of human action in terms of law is to adopt an exiguous point of view. More seriously, there may seem to be a conflict between the approaches that natural law and virtue take to moral philosophy.
Iris Murdoch, in The Sovereignty of the Good, was one of the first to draw attention to the fact that actors cast in th...
. . .
...n action reposes ultimately on general principles whose enunciation is occasionally a matter of great practical importance.
If virtue is the personal appropriation of the good sketched in the precepts of natural law, then natural law provides the ultimate basis for seeing our common humanity in a way that celebrates the inexhaustible, legitimate differences exemplified in virtuous acts.
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