By Eric Corson
Within the group of ethical theories mentioned above, the most reasonable is Natural Law theory. Natural Law theory, the idea that God has created everything in the universe with a purpose defined in a "universal law" from which the "natural laws" descend, describing the behavior of the universe and the objects therein. Man's share in this law, argues St. Thomas Aquinas, as related by James Rachels in The Elements of Moral Philosophy, is the ability to reason, by which we should find the natural laws, and extend these natural laws to include our own ethical and moral laws. The end result is that the ethical principles by which we should live are determined by reason as a reflection of the objective moral law God has set upon the universe. However, Natural Law theory does suffer from the problem that it makes a logical leap from what is, in the form of the natural or universal law or laws within the universe, to what should be, in the form of man's moral and ethical codes, as an unsupported act of reason, without providing for a value judgement or an additional premise indicating why this is an acceptable conclusion.
The other theories mentioned are all less believeable. Subjectivism is the idea that and individual's opinion on the rightness or wrongness of an action originates with how an individual feels about the action. However, this theory provides no means for ascertaining whether that individual is reasonably correct in their feelings, and it makes conflicts irresolveable unless there is a means of deciding whether one individual's feelings are better than anotherss, or more 'valid' than another's. This would seem to renderthe theory relatively unacceptable.
Divine command theory, which holds that ethical acts coincide with God's commands relating to the issue, is at first blush and extremely simple and attractive theory. However, when the question is posed, as it was by Socrates, of whether an action is right because God commanded it or if God commanded it because it is right, the theory begins to have problems. Socrates' dilemma has a difficult conclusion on either choice, either making God arbitrary and not worthy of praise, or making Him irrelevant. (1)
Finally, there is the theory of Ethical Egoism. This theory proposes that the moral value of an action depends solely on the potential of the action to act in the long-term benefit of the actor. There are several arguments raised against the theory, but James Rachels proposes one as the key reason that Ethical Egoism is unacceptable. His rationale (2) is that if a moral theory treats any group differently than another group solely based on an arbitrary characterization, then that theory is an unreasonable theory, violating the rule that an ethical theory should be founded on an onbjective basis.
There is, however, a defense that can be put up against this argument, by drawing a premise from Natural Law theory. In addition, the primary argument against Natural Law theory, the lack of a suitable value judgement to allow the derivation of what is in the universe to what ought to be in man's moral behaviors can be attacked in turn by using Ethical Egoism to provide for that value claim. As will be demonstrated, the two theories would seem to complement each other.
In the case of Ethical Egoism, the argument offered against it is that there is an injustice, and non-objective or discriminatory application of the theory. This seems an inherently reasonable claim about the theory, because it invariably divides any group of people into oneself, and all others for the purposes of determining ethical actions. However, when applied to the limiting case where all people are practicing ethical egoism, then everyone will base their actions on what will be to their greatest long-term benefit. Now, the greatest potential benefit to oneself will result not from exclusively selfish action, but from a balance of selfish and selfless acts. These selfless acts will be needed because it would seem that from observing behaviors of others practicing Ethical Egoism there is unlikely to be any benefit gained from those who do not benefit from you in return. Here, Aquinas' premise in Natural Law that we can determine the rightness of an action from it's relationship to the observable natural laws in life comes in. The use of reason allows the Ethical Egoist to determine the way in which their fellow Egoists behave, and allows them to determine that a limited selfless act, something that could perhaps be judged wrong previously, is morally acceptable because Natural Law theory states that an action in accordance with reasoned derivation from observed natural laws is right. In the limiting case, where there is a perfect balance between selfish and selfless action by every individual in an ideal Ethical Egoist society, something of a Golden Rule pattern develops from reasoning action from observable personal behaviors. This treatment of others as one wishes to be treated is an inherently non- discrimanatory and universal ethic. There is no remaining trace of the divided ethical view that the argument against Ethical Egoism attacked because each individual is treated by every other individual in a comparable way, due to a selfish desire to have all others treat one equally well.
In the other case, that of Natural Law, the primary argument made for the invalidity of the theory is that there is no appropriate value claim argument made to support the logical leap from 'is' attributes of the universe to 'ought' attributes of human society. There is no reason that we should follow the morality indicated by the natural laws of the universe. However, this argument too can be countered by an application of the principle of one theory to the other. In Natural Law Theory, the natural laws of the universe derive from a universal law dictated by God. Now, if accepts this premise of Natural Law theory as stated, then one accepts the existence of God implicitly. Now the universe, which according to this premise was created by God, appears to work relatively well- as evidenced by the possibilities of Unified Field Theory, and the fact that there is no apparent contradiction in any of the hard sciences in the way things work- scientific laws don't have exceptions to prove the rule as do others. It would then seem reasonable to assume that if the world works by God's universal law in a good manner, then an individual life ordered by precepts derived from such laws would have similar value. Then, if one applies the Ethical Egoist view that an individual should do what coincides with that individual's best long term interests, and to follow the moral codes derived from the universal law would result in a good life, then one should most certainly follow those precepts, thereby providing the needed value claim to bridge 'is' and 'ought'.
It would seem that although based on wildly different premises, a case can be made that Ethical Egoism and Natural Law theory can complement each other to a limited degree, indicating that perhaps there might be a closer approximation of moral truth found by looking in the middle somewhere.
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