Despite its fundamental importance, the natural law is often neglected, avoided, or misunderstood. We have a certain connaturality with the natural law, such that a person can live by it and benefit from it without having to philosophize.
Nevertheless, it is important to shed light on the natural law, especially for those for whom it could be of great benefit.
All animals, including human beings, have inclinations or tendencies that naturally drive them to seek food, reproduce, and maintain their existence. Human beings are particularly inclined to seek love, truth, meaning, and God. As Aristotle affirms, "All men by nature desire to know." These inclinations represent the first step in understanding the natural law. By realizing these inclinations, man realizes himself.
Man is free to follow or not follow these natural inclinations. The path he takes in following them is coextensive with morality. And morality is nothing other than a person living in a manner harmonious with his nature and the various inclinations that flow from that nature.
Reason plays an essential role in adhering to the natural law, as it judges whether actions conform to it or not. The natural law provides a path that leads to the flourishing of the human person. In other words, it shows the way to his natural end. This end or fulfillment is linked to natural inclinations in such a way that man has a right to it. This concept of natural right is reflected in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The morality that is based on the natural law is distinct from various modalities that are imposed from the outside and, consequently, are foreign to human nature. Because the natural law applies to all human beings, it is universal. It is a means by which all human beings can be both faithful to themselves and faithful to one another.
The natural law is comprehensive in that it harmonizes man's freedom, reason, will, rights, and finality. Furthermore, it includes duty. Each person has the duty to live according to the natural law in order to be truly themselves and to live in harmony and justice with others. The natural law is thus natural, objective, practical, satisfying, and universal.
Throughout history, most contributions to the development of the understanding of the natural law have come from Catholic thinkers, although they owe a significant debt to Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. Saint Albert the Great and Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages, and Jacques Maritain, Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Robert George, and others in the modern era have elaborated a comprehensive notion of the natural law.
The natural law is an unwritten law. It is inscribed in the hearts of human beings.
The author hopes that the preceding words are clear enough so that a sentence taken from Jacques Maritain's work "Man and the State," although somewhat difficult, takes on its full meaning: The natural law is "an order or a disposition which human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act to accord with the necessary ends of the human being."
The natural law should be very appealing to anyone who cherishes freedom, as it begins with the freedom of choice and is oriented toward the freedom of fulfillment.
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Due to its richness, the natural law is inexhaustible. Nevertheless, any light that can be shed on the natural law is greatly beneficial for us.
This article was originally published by Catholic Exchange ( Article Link ).