The Moral Law

This third tradition is characterized best of all by the quest for order and for law.

It finds "an all-pervading reason, or reasonable order that both explains all that is in the universe and sets the norm and standard for all things". Law itself is practically "absolute and inherent in nature" (p. 37, 2). Taking this approach does not require or exclude the belief in a God:

1. Thomas Aquinas believed that the law we discover is "identical to the Mind of God"

2. Hobbes and Locke find their principal in human nature

3. Kant and Rawls "deduce theirs from the concepts of duty, law and justice already in the language"

      (Newton, L. H. (1986). Ethics in America. New Jersey: Prentice Hall)

      (Image from http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/earth/)

Home Page | Western History | Western Approaches | Eastern | African | Aestethics