CaseEthics
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Frameworks

Core framework

Natural Law

Reason discerns goods proper to human nature.

Guiding principle

Practical reason grasps basic human goods (life, knowledge, sociability, etc.); morality forbids acting directly against them.

Key thinkers

Aristotle · Thomas Aquinas · John Finnis

Strengths

  • Explains widely shared intuitions about murder, deception, and cruelty.
  • Grounds inviolable protections without appeal to revelation.
  • Structures debates about medicine, war, and law.

Common objections

  • 'Human nature' is contested and historically variable.
  • The naturalistic fallacy: what is natural need not be good.
  • Doctrines like double-effect are notoriously slippery.

Mini-example

Natural law argues that intentionally deceiving a patient about a diagnosis attacks the good of knowledge, even when the outcome would be reassuring.