If modern psychology now claims that same-sex attraction is a positive variation of human sexuality, then who are we to deny it?

The forgotten meaning of human nature

by Zac Alstin
Contemporary debates have lost the vision of our ethical heritage

The term “natural law” often emerges within the inescapable debates over same-sex marriage, where it is just as often criticised, rejected, and even ridiculed. Natural law is important to many critics and opponents of same-sex marriage, yet it is poorly understood and often misrepresented in the public debate, in part because the natural law tradition – once the mainstay of Western ethical debate – is now deeply foreign to our contemporary way of thinking. Yet quite apart from issues like same-sex marriage, the natural law theory or set of theories are viewed by many as a neglected treasure of the Western ethical tradition with insights that circumvent a number of the challenges and pitfalls of other ethical systems.

Natural law theory is an approach to ethics that focuses not solely on consequences of actions or on abstract absolute rules, but on the study of human nature and the practical investigation of which actions, pursuits, and ends are most appropriate to the elusive and mysterious goal of “happiness”.

While natural law is historically associated most closely with the Stoics of Ancient Greece, its formative principles are also derived from the work of Aristotle, and – from the collective influence of the Platonist, Stoic, and Peripatetic schools – were taken up and further developed and elaborated by Christian philosophers, most notably of the Scholastic method.

Academic ethics eventually diverged from the natural law perspective, but the theory has undergone something of a resurgence in recent decades, with new interpretations and approaches emphasising natural law as a viable alternative to popular utilitarian systems. Like utilitarianism, natural law has developed a number of interpretations and theories, albeit with common underlying themes.

What is natural law?

The word ‘nature’ has been abused and misconstrued to the point where most of us define it immediately as:

“the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.”

But in this case we are interested in another definition of nature as:

“the basic or inherent features, character, or qualities of something.”

If we observe, for example, that nearly every human in our acquaintance has two arms and two legs, we might be inclined to conclude that this is an inherent or essential quality of being human.

But when we meet someone who has less than two arms and two legs, does this not prove that “two arms, two legs” is not an inherent quality of being human at all? Doesn’t it imply that human beings can have any number of arms and legs, or even none at all?

This example is, after all, reminiscent of a famous anecdote in philosophy of science: not so long ago there was a common expression “as white as a swan”. In 82CE the Roman satirist Juvenal described something as rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno "a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan"; that is to say, non-existent.

In the Northern hemisphere swans are indeed white. But on their arrival in Australia, European explorers discovered the existence of black swans. Thus, the phrase “as white as a swan” disappeared from common use.

What is the difference between a black swan and a person who is missing a limb? From a certain philosophical perspective there is no difference – both indicate that we cannot make presumptions about the nature of things; in fact it would be better not to talk about “nature” at all, not to impose value judgments on things that do not meet our narrow expectations.

Natural law does not accept such a conclusion, and neither, for that matter, does modern science. In the classification and ordering of species, science is more than happy to make distinctions between the black swan and the person missing a limb, determining that the former is a distinct species, the latter an abnormality within a species.

On the same basis, natural law would utilise observation and reason to arrive at the tentative conclusion that having more or less than two arms and two legs is not inherent to human nature. This suspicion could be borne out by further examination – finding that many individuals missing a limb have arrived at this state through accident, illness, or injury.

But what of those who are born without a limb? Here our observational powers reach a limit until more precise and intricate investigation can reveal pre-natal injury, illness, or genetic abnormality. Even without knowing the cause, an observer would still likely conclude on the basis of rarity and non-heredity that the absence of limbs is not an inherent quality of human nature.

What about same-sex attraction?

How does this apply to same-sex attraction? Would natural law categorise same-sex attraction as an inherent quality of being human, as an anomaly, or – like the black swan – as indicative of a distinct species or sub-species in its own right?


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