Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 02:2 (Fall 2020)
Article: An Interview With Robert P. George And Andrew T. Walker On The Natural Law
Author: Anonymous

Eikon 2.2 (Fall 2020) p. 12

An Interview With Robert P. George
And Andrew T. Walker On The Natural Law

Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

Andrew T. Walker is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Executive Editor of Eikon.

ATW: First, what is your definition of natural law and natural law theory?

RPG: Natural law is the body of reasons (including moral reasons) for action and restraint accessible in principle to human reason even apart from special revelation. The first principles of practical reason and basic precepts of natural law direct our choosing and acting towards ends that are intelligibly choiceworthy not merely as means to other ends but as ends-in-themselves. Natural law theorists call these ends “basic human goods.” They are the constitutive aspects of human well-being and fulfillment. Moral norms, from the most general to the most specific, are identified by reflection on the integral directiveness of the first principles of practical reason.

Eikon 2.2 (Fall 2020) p. 13

ATW: To what extent is natural law learned versus innate and intuitive?

Reasons for action (like reasons for belief) are neither innate nor intuitive. They are grasped in intellective acts. They are the fruit of insights which, like all insights, are insights into data supplied by experience. It is, for example, in the experience of true friendship, where friends genuinely will the good of the other for the sake of the other, that we grasp the intelligible point of friendship, making possible the sound judgment that the activity of friendship is inherently fulfilling of ourselves as human persons, that friendship is indeed intrinsically and not merely instrumentally valuable.

RPG: If there is a natural law, why do even natural lawyers disagree on its content?

For the same reasons people disagree about matters in other fields of philosophy or, more generally, in other domains of inquiry. There is nothing special in this respect about moral philosophy as opposed to logic, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, etc.; or about natural law theory as opposed to utilitarianism, Kantian (or “deontological”) ethics, virtue ethics, or even moral skepticism; or about philosophy generally as opposed to history, sociology, literary studies, and even the natural sciences.

ATW: What’s the distinction between that which comes natural versus natural law? Are you saying we should follow and obey what comes natural to us?

RPG: The word “natural” has va...