Natural Law

Natural Law

1. Primary precepts

   • Worship God
   • Organise society
   • Reproduce
     • Sex is only for procreation!
   • Educate children
   • Protect the innocent
     • Do not murder!
   • Everyone naturally pursues them order to achieve a relationship with God
   • Secondary precepts
     • rules developed from primary precepts via the use human reason to tell us about how to behave morally
     • for example:

2. Interior and exterior goods

   • For an act to be moral that it must not only be intrinsically good and work towards this fellowship with God but also must have good intentions
     • Unless there is interior and exterior good, then an act can’t be permissible
       • Interior Good
         • Good intentions.
       • Exterior Good
         • A good act.
           • Both together constitute a morally good action!

3. The apparent good

   • despite everyone having the natural tendency to pursue perfection, often people get this wrong
     • this is not because they are pursuing evil, but because they are following what they believed to be perfection
   • when something seems to lead to the best outcome, but yet is morally wrong and actually works against it
   • if someone cheated on their partner, this would be seen as apparent good, as they would believe that this is the best action to make, despite it being unmoral and unfaithful to their partner and breaking their vow made in front of God.

4. Double Effect

5. (other map)