CONTEMPORARY CURRENTS Fordham Univ.

After MacIntyre: Natural Law Theory,

Virtue Ethics, and Eudaimonia

Russell Hittinger

S INCE THE PUBLICATION of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981),

ethicists along a broad front have agreed with MacIntyre's assessment that
contemporary ethical theories have reached a series of dead-ends, and that moral
discourse has become paralyzed. Moral debate, argues MacIntyre, has become
"interminable." Those who have read After Virtue are familiar with MacIntyre's
explanation of how moral philosophy reached this impasse. Its origin, he explains,
is the Enlightenment's decisive break with Aristotle, and, with this, a gradual but
steady loss of any teleological conception of moral agency.
MacIntyre has been a pioneer figure in what I have elsewhere referred to as the
"recoverist" movement: those who wish to retrieve, in whole or in part, what
Alan Donagan has called the "common morality" of the West. I If nothing else,
MacIntyre has made this recoverist project professionally respectable. Less than
a decade has passed since its publication, yet many are already prepared to admit
that After Virtue represents something pivotal. MacIntyre's work represents the
post-liberal turn in ethics. The outstanding question is whether it will be, as
MacIntyre and others hope, a constructive post-liberalism-which is to say, an
alternative to modern theories that does not become, when all is said and done, a
siren call to make moral philosophy less rational, and hence more "edifying."
In this essay I wish to examine two different recoverist strategies which have
become prominent in the wake of MacIntyre's book. Then I want to explain why
each of them requires a reconsideration of what is perhaps the most disparaged,
and certainly the most troublesome, aspect of the pre-modern "common
morality" -namely, natural law theory. I wish to suggest that the problem is
today the same as it has been, at least since the advent of modern theories of
practical reason. It is difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of, much less to
justify and sustain, the component parts of the "common morality" without
having recourse to what was once called speculative reason: that is, the relation
of reason to an order that is not of its own making or doing. To put it another
way, I shall argue that we should not be surprised if it turns out that we cannot
have the results of a natural-law theory of morality without avowing a theory of
natural law.
'Russell Hittinger, A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame
Press, 1987). For Alan Donagan's discussion of the "common morality," see his The Theory of
Morality (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 26.

INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY Vol. XXIX, No.4 Issue No. 116 (December 1989)
450 HITTINGER

The first of these theories is the ethics of virtue. It is readily identified with
Alasdair MacIntyre's work. Stanley Hauerwas, however, has written extensively
on the subject, and has developed a distinctive theological version of virtue ethics.
More recently, Edmund Pincoffs has proposed a non-teleological account of
virtue ethics which is quite different from either MacIntyre or Hauerwas. As I
will explain in more detail shortly, each of these ethicians argues that moral
properties or qualities do not just pertain to choices, but more fundamentally to
persons, and especially to the intersubjective world of moral community. Propo-
nents of virtue ethics contend that moral action cannot adequately be understood
on a piecemeal basis, certainly not on the basis of decisional quandries. Modern
moral theorists, they argue, are so preoccupied with the decision-making moment,
under the rubric of an "ought," that they overlook the complex, and indeed more
substantive matrix, of morality. Significantly, each insists that this matrix can be
made sense of without any direct commitment to a theory of nature.
The second approach, developed by John Finnis and Germain Grisez, does not
focus directly on the virtues, but rather upon the other, and more inclusive,
Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia. Grisez and Finnis claim to have isolated seven
universal elements of human flourishing, which they call "basic goods." Because
they are goods intrinsic to human activities, each is capable of grounding chains
of practical reasoning. Indeed, because each of the basic goods can ground a
chain of practical reasoning, each one of these goods functions as a first principle,
or precept, of practical reason. Grisez and Finnis argue that we can derive from
these prima principia of practical reasoning a non-arbitrary and action-guiding
rule of morality: namely, that one ought never to choose or to act directly against
any of the basic goods. They call their system a natural-law ethic. This "new"
natural-law theory, however, is quite different from classical or medieval natural-
law theories, for Grisez and Finnis argue that this theory can be explicated and
defended without relying upon a theory of nature.
We shall now examine, in turn, each of these "recoverist" strategies in order
to see, first, what it is in the tradition of the "common morality" they hope to
recover, and, second, what price is paid by attempting to retrieve this or that
component without a theory of nature. At the outset, it is fair to warn the reader
that we shall not offer a theory of nature that would prove sufficient for an
alternative account of either virtues or of the goods that constitute human
eudaimonia. Such a task would exceed in every respect the confines of this essay.
We can, however, expect to identify with some precision exactly where and how
both virtue-ethics and an ethic of eudaimonia fail in the absence of a theory of
nature.

II

In Quandries and Virtues: Against Reductivism in Ethics, Edmund Pincoffs

gives a provocative, yet accurate, statement of the concern of virtue ethicians:

. . . the structures known as ethical theories are more threats to moral sanity and
balance than instruments for their attainment. They have these malign characteristics
principally because they are, by nature, reductive. They restrict and warp moral
AFTER MACINTYRE 451

reflection by their insistence that moral considerations are related in some hierarchical
order.'

Pincoffs goes on to argue that "standard moral theories" take one or another
aspect of moral experience as absolute and foundational, and in doing so they are
reductive. Hence, deontologism stresses the formal rectitude of the will, while
utilitarianism stresses the distributive maximization of prospective goods. At least
since Thomas Hobbes, modern ethicians are prone to reducing ethics to a single,
overriding problematic.
Pincoffs charges that this manner of doing ethics has at least two shortcomings.
First, in reducing moral concerns to a single, overriding issue, standard theories
overlook our rich experience and language of assessments-of persons, actions,
and practices-which do not neatly fit into a dominant problematic. The assess-
ments that we make, for instance, of our own character, and of the virtues and
vices of others, tend to be demoted to a peripheral place by standard ethical
theories, for such assessments resist being compressed into a dominant problem-
atic. Yet, the assessments and choices made about persons involve something
more than trying to ascertain whether a choice has been made in accord with a
universalizing principle, or with a rule that enjoins us to maximize prospective
goods. Whether oneself, or others, are of a certain character and whether, being
of a certain character, one would allow himself to deliberate over a particular
choice in the first place are concerns which indicate that the moral life cannot be
reduced to a single problematic. We are dealing with what Bernard Williams has
recently called "thick" ethical notions, such as treachery, brutality, and cour-
age.]
Hence, in the second place, standard theories are what Pincoffs calls "quandry
ethics." Moral insight and judgment are found paradigmatically in the moment of
decision, when the agent applies the procedures and principles of the theory to
particular cases. Correctness of decision in accord with a rule is thought ade-
quately to capture morality. No wonder, then, that academic ethicians are
relentlessly in search of quandries, for practical reason is best displayed when an
agent, armed with a rule, faces a quandry. So described, Pincoffs is certainly
right in suspecting that this "warps" moral reflection. The kind of quandary an
agent finds himself in can say as much about his character as it does about
problems, cases, or rules.
An agent who is seriously inclined to, and who actually deliberates about,
marital infidelity might make the "correct" decision according to rules advocated
by one or another theory, yet the correctness of the decision does not alleviate,
and indeed can obscure, the specifically moral dimension of the quandry. We can
imagine, for example, a professor who returns from an academic conference and
confesses to his wife that although he felt strongly urged to commit a marital
infidelity, he deliberated about the moral significance of the action and concluded
that it was a violation of the golden rule (if he is a deontologist), or perhaps that
he came to his senses and saw that such an action would not bring about the
'Edmund L. Pincoffs, Quandries and Virtues: Against Reductivism in Ethics (Lawrence: Univ.
Press of Kansas, 1986), p. 3.
'Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits (!f Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1985),
pp. 140, 143-45.
452 HITTlNGER

greatest good for the greatest number (if he is a utilitarian). None of us would
blame his spouse if she were as much or more concerned with the man's character
than with the fact that he successfully resolved a quandry according to a rule.
Pincoffs suggests that it is necessary to "shift the focus of ethics away from
problematics toward character-away from Hobbes and toward Aristotle. "4 The
prospect of recovering an Aristotelian ethics of virtue, or something very much
like it, is the common thread of contemporary virtue ethics. The problem for
Pincoffs, as well as for Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and other like-
minded theorists, is whether anything positive, or constructive, can be gained by
this shift of perspective. 5
Granted that virtues, as moral qualities or properties, represent a certain ratio
or intelligibility of moral agency, the question naturally arises whether there is an
ordinatio, a non-arbitrary principle of order, which would allow us to assess how
these virtues ought to fit together. Pincoffs firmly insists that an introduction of
such hierarchical principles is to fall back into the distortion of "standard
theories." He advocates a "non-teleological functionalism."

The functionalist perspective is that of the engineer, rather than that of the captain of
the ship. Wherever the captain may want to go, the engine and working parts of the ship
must operate well if he is to get there. We can say things about the optimum performance
of the ship and about what is a necessary condition of optimum performance that
presuppose nothing about the courses it is to follow. h

He argues that the virtues of persons and actions are simply qualities of working
well, and that we need not know some "supervenient common end" to distinguish
good from bad performance. This claim, I shall argue, is not only disputable, but
self-defeating because it involves the very sort ofreductivism that virtue ethics is
supposed to avoid.
Pincoffs concedes that people do not subscribe to mere lists of virtues. "The
list of virtues," he observes, "is lengthy, unordered, and theoretically amor-
phous. "70f themselves, virtues and vices are plural, irreducible, and incommen-
surable, and involve qualities which are of "very different weights." There is
usually a form imposed upon the virtues, and the pattern can differ greatly
depending, for instance, upon whether one is a Christian or a Stoic. This,
however, implies only that specific lists will always turn out to reflect a concrete
way of life, and therefore any particular conception of the virtues is "obviously
relative to time and circumstance or to background beliefs about God, nature,
and human nature." It does not follow from this that "we must search for
universal principles applicable to every situation in which morally anonymous
agents may find themselves." Recognition of the pluralism in virtue ethics should
be "no cause for despair," he says. The moral philosopher can seek to discover:

. . . the reasons for preferring one moral configuration to another and to present
alternative patterns of the moral life, not as alternative modes for the resolution of
'Pincoffs, p. 21.
'See, for instance, Stanley Hauerwas, Character and the Christian L(fe (San Antonio: Trinity Univ.
Press, 1975).
6Pincoffs, p. 7.
'Pincoffs, p. 44.
AFTER MACINTYRE 453

problems, but in the interest of heightening the student's understanding of the nature
and relative defensibility or indefensibility of the large choices that he must make. 8

But the moral philosopher, he concludes, is ill advised to "present these large
alternatives as so many mutually exclusive criteria of what is to count as being of
moral concern."
We might ask whether moral philosophy, on Pincoffs' account, is reduced to a
kind of values clarification. Granted that the material of virtue and character is
better soil for beginning moral reflection than quandries which any anonymous
agent (equipped only with rules) might face, is the office of moral reflection
limited to tracing out a "pattern of the moral life" while merely assuming the
truth of all those other considerations which render that pattern defensible?
Virtues and vices are not, of themselves, morally problematic, or even very
interesting. They must be seen in the concrete pattern or way of life, wherein the
relative weights are attached according to how God, nature, and human nature
are understood. To step back from what Pincoffs refers to as the relative
considerations is to reduce the subject of virtue to a minimal, generic list which
"anyone" can subscribe to regardless of how they actually value things. Rival
conceptions of what the world is like will give rise not only to rival configurations
of the virtues, but in some instances to rival accounts of what is a virtue or a vice
in the first place. Disagreements over the pattern or hierarchy of the virtues is
tantamount to disagreements over morality as such.
Thus, unless one is prepared to rest in a kind of conventionalism, an inquiry
into the principles governing hierarchical ordination of the virtues is absolutely
critical. A return to virtue ethics cannot be an excuse for receding from the
traditional concern with issues of truth and faslity. By truth and falsity here is
meant the status of those claims that Pincoffs says pertain to the nature and
meaning of God, the world, and human nature. Nor should one rule out, in
advance, the possibility that one or more of these is superior in terms of truth and
that, on this basis itself, one may fundamentally reconsider what is of moral
concern. Indeed, if no universal principles can be found, it not only means that
rival patterns of the moral life are fundamentally irresolvable, but also suggests
that nearly all of the significant versions of pre-modern virtue ethics were
essentially mistaken about themselves. For Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and
Islamic patterns all purported not merely to be in some minimal conformity to
nature, or in some general way to include virtues, but to embody and exemplify
what a human being truly ought to be.
Alasdair MacIntyre is aware of this problem. In After Virtue, he takes pains to
say that virtues are neither atomistic nor amorphous values. Virtue ethics, he
argues, is dependent upon at least two principles other than the virtues them-
selves. First, it requires a teleological scheme that links together "man as he is"
with "man as he might become, were his telos fulfilled."9 Without a teleological
scheme, the very point of the virtues withers. It is not merely coincidental that
the virtues were found superfluous to moral discourse and theory, as modern
philosophy and science jettisoned teleological theories of nature, and eventually
'Pincoffs, p. 50.
9Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp.
156,203-25.
454 HITTINGER

of human nature. Second, virtue ethics requires a way to conceive of the self as a
unity, as constituting something more than piecemeal actions, or ad hoc acts of
the will, over time.
Like Pincoffs and the other virtue theorists, MacIntyre wishes to move away
from the moderns and back to Aristotle. Moreover, like Pincoffs, MacIntyre
wishes to retrieve the substance of this virtue theory without having to subscribe
to the speculative component of Aristotle's philosophy; that is to say, without
Aristotle's philosophy of nature, which MacIntyre refers to as "metaphysical
biology." But, whereas Pincoffs is content to handle the virtues according to a
"non-teleological functionalism," the prospect of recovering a virtue ethic with-
out some teleological account is more troublesome for MacIntyre. How are we to
derive the two principles concerning teleology and the unity of the self? In After
Virtue, MacIntyre looks to narrative structures to carry the weight. Along with
his colleague Stanley Hauerwas, MacIntyre proposes that a moral agent has a
unity like that of a narrative, or a story .10 The narratival identity of an agent finds
its place within larger and more pervasive societal narratives. Christian virtues,
for example, make sense within the context of the biblical narrative, in which
man is understood to be a homo viator, or a pilgrim. These narratives give
meaning and direction (what we have termed the ratio and ordinatio) to the
virtues and therefore explain why different cultures or religions have different
hierarchies of the virtues.
This leaves MacIntyre in a situation not altogether different from Pincoffs'. In
the first place, there remains a heavy emphasis upon a functionalist perspective.
The ordinatio of the virtues derives its meaning from those tasks which the
communal narrative envisions as most befitting for members of that community.
In the second place, MacIntyre clearly understands that rival tables of the virtues
are likely to prove incommensurable. Differences between the operative narra-
tives generate rival tables of the virtues, and in effect rival moralities. In other
words, virtue ethics appears unable to escape conventionalism, unless perhaps
speculative philosophy is able to judge the truth or falsity of the narratives, or
(which amounts to the same thing) unless it is able to furnish a philosophically
intelligible and defensible mega-narrative.
Pincoffs and MacIntyre have given us good reason to suspect that virtue ethics
cannot be an autonomous project. And we can identify rather precisely where the
problem arises. Virtue ethics, on their accounts, is so thoroughly immersed in the
functional and narratival perspectives that we are unable to rise to a fully
philosophical explication and justification of one or another morality as a concrete
way of life. We have good reason to suspect that a recovery of virtue ethics
without a recovery of the "metaphysical biology," or at least something like it,
is insufficient. The need of a natural-Jaw framework-an order not of our own
making or doing which is adequate to guide choice and action-for an ethics of
virtue is indicated by the three following problem areas.
First, if virtues are perfections of human powers and capacities, we need to
know of what the virtue is a perfection, and then we need to know the term of the
perfection-that is, the goal. In other words, it is not enough to give a goal of

lOSee Stanley Hauerwas. "From System to Story," in Truthfulness and Tra[?edy (Notre Dame:
Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1977), pp. 15-39.
AFTER MACINTYRE 455

action and then count as virtuous whatever properties or qualities enable one to
meet it. That is half the story. It pertains to the end term, or what MacIntyre
refers to as "man as he might become." We still need an account of "man as he
is." Otherwise, the state of man will be regarded as so much raw, or merely
provisional, "stuff." An account of man as he is, according to nature, is needed
in order to know why the functionalist or teleological terms are truly perfective-
indeed, of what they are perfective in the first place.
Second, as MacIntyre himself insists, we must be able to conceive of man as
something more than the sum of the parts of his powers, decisions, and actions,
and social roles for that matter. That is to say, we need to indicate a good of man
himself, not just the good of man as brave or temperate, or simply what it means
to be a good father, mother, or statesman. The most prominent virtue ethicians
of the pre-modern world-Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and Aquinas, for
example-believed with good reason that an inclusive, and not a merely domi-
nant, end is required for ethics. By a dominant end is meant a good which, in
comparison with other goods, is so preferable that one is justified in subordinating
other goods to it. The Spartans, for example, viewed courage in this fashion, just
as some believers, both Christian and Islamic, have viewed heaven as a dominant
good or end that can require one to jettison other goods. Dominant end schemes
have been regarded as suspect, if not entirely mistaken. Modern theorists reject
them because, as John Rawls has put it, the aims of the human self are "hetero-
geneous." A dominant end, therefore, is not adequate for practical reasons
because it suffocates what is most distinctive about a human self-namely, the
pluralism and heterogeneity of its desires, interests, and goals. But ancient and
medieval theorists rejected the dominant end model for precisely the opposite
reason. For Aristotle, Augustine, or Aquinas, a dominant end fails with regard to
inclusivity, for anything less than a truly inclusive end will not meet the unity of
the human self. The question of the hierarchy of the virtues thus leads irrevocably
to the question of the unity of man, and whether a satisfactory account of that
unity can be provided.
Third, as we said, virtue ethics focuses upon facets of practical reason which
are by their very nature perspectival. Virtue ethicians are certainly correct in
observing that deliberations and judgments are shaped by character and virtue,
or the lack thereof. As Aristotle insisted, the good man is the very embodiment
of the practical syllogism. We can admit that modern paradigms of practical
reason, which conceive of agents as standing outside of experience and traditions,
equipped only with rules, represent a terribly impoverished view of practical
reason. Yet we can admit this and still see that deliberations and judgments not
only flow from character, but also are made in the light of universals. That the
good man is the embodiment of the practical syllogism does not dispense with the
need for a knowledge of universals. And by universals we mean not only
propositions about conduct, but a knowledge of the world and other human
beings. Aristotle argued that the perspective of the well-formed agent not only
enables him to make judgments about himself, but about others as well. Thus,
practical reason extends beyond self-governance and naturally includes politics.
It achieves an authentically communal or political scope in the form of legislation.
Furthermore, such legislation fully realizes itself in light of what is good for man,
and is not limited to judgments concerning the particular good of Athenians as
456 HITTINGER

described under this or that contingent set of circumstances. It is not difficult to

understand why ancient and medieval accounts of virtue and character were
intimately related to a natural law theory of one sort or another.

III

John Finnis' Natural Law and Natural Rights, which appeared one year before
MacIntyre's volume, has done as much as any work since the salad days of neo-
scholasticism to bring the subject of natural law back to the forefront of discus-
sion. Together with his colleague Germain Grisez, Finnis has articulated a "new"
natural law theory. Among the many features that set it apart from classical and
scholastic natural-law theories is the effort to defend both a full theory of
objective human goods as well as action-guiding precepts governing choice of
these goods without any direct reliance upon a theory of nature, much less a
metaphysics. The Finnis-Grisez system is quite different from that of the virtue
ethicists, for Finnis and Grisez are interested in establishing a set of axiological
and moral universals. 11
Whereas virtue ethicians regard the so-called "thick" notions of virtue and
character as what is most distinctive about pre-modern ethics, Finnis and Grisez
are primarily interested in recovering the preceptive dimension. The signal
features of the "common morality," on their view, are 1) intrinsic goods which
can ground chains of practical reasoning, and 2) certain exceptionless moral rules.
The problems with modern moral philosophy are, accordingly, twofold. First,
modern moral theories are guilty either of extrinsicism (i.e., where goods have a
merely instrumental value), or of Rawlsian types of "thin" theories (i.e., a
minimalist list of goods which anyone would value, whatever else they might
desire). Second, modern moral theories are excessively determined by conse-
quentialism or proportionalism. That is to say, they either judge the moral
correctness of a choice directly and exclusively on the basis of prospective
consequences, or they are willing to make exceptions (especially in so-called
"hard cases") to moral rules on the basis of prop ortionalist considerations.
After giving a brief exposition of the Finnis-Grisez system, in this section of
the essay I wish to show that despite the significantly different starting point of
this system it ends in almost exactly the same set of difficulties that we discussed
in connection with the virtue ethicians. Once again, I shall propose that the
reason for the difficulties is readily identifiable, involving a failure to explain how
or why nature is in any sense normative.
Finnis and Grisez argue that prior to any specifically moral issue, that is, prior
to any deliberation about choice or action, practical reason needs some sort of
ordered material to work with. They appeal to Aquinas' formulation of the first
principle of practical reason: "Good ought to be done and pursued, and evil
avoided. "12 Prior to choice, practical reason finds itself already gripped into
"Finnis' position is best summarized in Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
Univ. Press, 1983); Grisez's, in the first volume of his theological summa, Christian Moral Principles
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983).
"See Grisez's "The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae,
Question 94, Article, 2," Natural Law Forum [now the American Journal of Jurisprudence 1 10 (1965),
168-201.
AFTER MACINTYRE 457

goods. These goods are ordered, in the sense that some goods are intrinsic, or
what they call "basic." They are capable of terminating chains of practical
reasoning. Grisez and Finnis' list of such goods includes: self-integration, authen-
ticity, justice or friendship, religion, life, knowledge, and play. Each of these
goods represents a modalization of the first principle of practical reason, and as
such, each is a first principle of practical rationality. Moreover, each of these
goods is per se nota, self-evident. Without any deduction or inference from
speculative philosophy, we understand, according to Finnis, that we are inclined
to these goods as real "possibilities and opportunities rather than dead-ends." 13
If we should ask how we know that one or another of these goods is basic, Finnis
and Grisez would respond by saying that no system can demonstrate its first
principles. They are, in a sense, the condition of the possibility for reasonableness
of practical rationality.
Grisez and Finnis also argue that the basic human goods are intrinsic because
each is intelligible and desirable in itself, and not simply on the basis of its
capacity to produce other desirable states of affairs-although, to be sure, it may
indeed be productive of other good things. Further, each of the basic goods is
incommensurable. Finnis and Grisez insist on this point. Prior to choice, there is
no objective hierarchy among the basic goods. Human eudaimonia, in whatever
form, will include all these goods, and hence practical reason cannot be fully
practical or reasonable without a concern for the full scope of values intrinsic to
human activity.
These goods represent the "pre-moral" facet of natural law. The specifically
"moral" precept of natural-law ethics is: "in voluntarily acting for human goods
and avoiding what is opposed to them, one ought to choose and otherwise will
those and only those possibilities whose willing is compatible with integral human
fulfillment." This moral precept is required precisely because the basic goods are
plural and incommensurable. A fully reasonable moral choice will be one that
respects the entire spectrum of basic goods. Remember, the basic goods are the
first principles of practical reason itself; hence, an action or a choice that
excludes, demotes, or is aimed against any of the goods is by definition contrary
to practical reason. In short, morality is necessary to keep practical reason from
acting suicidally. The key terms for Finnis and Grisez are openness and inclusiv-
ity. But what is the sense of "integral human fulfillment"? They answer that it
must remain an ideal of inclusivity, and it is not to be construed as a determinate
and specifiable finality. There is no such determinate final end that is action
guiding for human choice. In fact, Finnis, and especially Grisez, sharply criticize
Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas for positing a final end, as though there is a
determinate and objective hierarchy of human goods prior to choice. It is precisely
this notion, they argue, that leads to various species of consequentialism and
proportionalism: i.e., that human goods can be subordinated, instrumentalized,
or acted against for the sake of a "greater good."
This theory joins together a traditional concern for goods derived from human
IlFinnis, Fundamentals, p. 51. That an action or an end is good (not a dead end) and that it is
something to pursue are practical judgments for Finnis. The true of the Good is emancipated from the
speculative adequation ad rem. One problem is how the true of the good can be universalized if the
judgment is rooted only in the practical reason.
458 HITTINGER

inclinations with a Kantian-like set of categorical moral imperatives. 14 It is a

moral theory that has real teeth, and, not surprisingly, on a wide array of disputed
moral issues, Finnis and Grisez press their method into the defense of traditional
moral and theological doctrines. Indeed, if one reads their most recent book on
the subject of nuclear deterrence, where they call for unilateral disarmament, it is
clear that they are prepared to employ their method in a way that is stricter than
the so-called "common morality." 15 The Finnis-Grisez method presents itself as
an attractive alternative to utilitarianism, and hence it recommends itself as a way
to defend the "common morality," including the particular tradition of Roman
Catholic ethics. Furthermore, inasmuch as they call their system a "natural-law
method" of moral reasoning, there is an identifiable pedigree to their position, at
least by way of labeling. It is no secret that the "common morality" of the West
has relied for centuries upon various kinds of natural-law reasoning.
Yet this system is seriously flawed in a number of respects, and in each case
the problem is the failure of this method actually to be a natural-law method. In a
recently published book I have provided a much more detailed analysis and
criticism of the Finnis-Grisez position. Here, I shall identify two shortcomings of
their method and then indicate why my charge that it is not a natural-law method
involves something more than a terminological or an historical issue.
In the first place, there is a problem with the list of basic goods, which
constitute the first principles of practical reason. Aquinas held that the first
principle of practical reason- "Good is to be done and pursued, and evil
avoided" -is self-evident. For Aquinas, the force of this first principle is to be
understood in a much larger context of the nature of the human will, which is
predetermined to the good prior to any act of free choice. In other words,
although the principle is self-evident, Aquinas never pretends that it can be
philosophically understood apart from the more general teleological explication
of nature and human nature. Be that as it may, it is one thing to argue that the
first principle is self-evident, and quite another thing to say that the principle is
modalized into seven or eight basic goods, each of which stands in its own right
as a first principle, and thus self-evident. Finnis and Grisez insist that this is the
case, for each of the basic goods is able to ground a chain of practical reasoning,
and therefore each is a first principle; since first principles are self-evident, so is
each basic good. Moreover, since each basic good is self-evident, the principles
of practical reason are not dependent upon speculative philosophy; that is to say,
they are not dependent upon principles derived from metaphysics, a philosophy
of nature, or anthropology.
I have argued elsewhere that this amounts to a kind of intuitionism. Grisez and
Finnis have included within the orbit of self-evidence all of the important
axiological considerations. In other words, on their account it is self-evident not

14Whereas Hauerwas and Macintyre have attempted to construe a natural-law theory of ethics
according to an Aristotelian-like ethic of virtue and character, Finnis and Grisez stress the preceptive
facet of Aquinas, rendering the theory in Kantian-like terms. It is true, of course, that Aquinas' theory
of practical reason contains both virtues and precepts, but what the recoverists are avoiding is
Aquinas' understanding of the relation between speculative reason and nature, which is the backbone
of his natural-law theory.
15Finnis, Grisez, Boyle, Nuclear Deterrence. Morality and Realism (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
1987).
AFTER MACINTYRE 459

only that certain things are good, but also that some goods are basic while others
are not. Surely, some of these goods are disputable on both counts, albeit some
more than others. For example, does it make sense to say that religion is a basic
good, one of the prima principia of practical reason, such that one cannot be
practically reasonable without admitting so, and such that one cannot abide by
the first principle of morality itself without choosing inclusivistically with regard
to this purported good? The problem is obvious, and if natural-law theory is not
designed to address the issue of whether a good is truly so, and not merely
apparently good, then I fail to see the point of a natural-law method. Since the
time of the Greeks, the effort and purpose of natural-law reasoning has been to
reflect philosophically on the value judgments of individuals and communities in
order to determine whether intuitive and conventional accounts of the good are
defensible. The distinctive office of philosophical reasoning in this regard is the
notion that practical rationality of itself is insufficient and that recta ratio, or right
reason, requires insight into how reason is related to principles which are not
merely of its own making or doing. An intuitional account of the basic goods is
tantamount to a denial that there can be a really significant, or reasonable, dispute
over the concrete subject matter with which practical reason must deal. For there
is little to be gained by disputes over specifically moral principles-viz., princi-
ples governing how we ought to choose-if we cannot adequately resolve ques-
tions pertaining to what the world is like, whether there is an order to human
nature and whether some goods are truly good, and under what conditions.
The second problem area concerns the claim that since each of the basic goods
is irreducible and incommensurable, there is no objective hierarchy of the goods
prior to choice. Incommensurable goods cannot be compared and hence cannot
be ranked according to the degree to which they share a common property. The
point that I wish to make is that the rejection of the possibility that there might
be a hierarchical order of goods prior to choice is a scorched-earth policy which
not only renders the utilitarian method impossible, but makes anything resembling
the so-called "common morality" insensible.
In the first place, it leaves practical reason without positive guidance on the
crucial matter of how goods are to be pursued and chosen as clusters. In actual
experience, these goods are not abstract, atomistic values which appear in
isolation from one another. No one, including Grisez and Finnis, would deny that
it is essential to moral deliberation to consider the way goods are clustered
together in hierarchies. Questions of subordination and superordination are
intrinsic to the life of practical reason. Grisez and Finnis can introduce only a
negative principle: namely, that in choosing goods, one should never act against
anyone of them. Their method, however, is not able to guide choice in terms of
one or another hierarchical cluster, for instance, whether it is truly better to give
more value to the good of religion than to the good of play. As Grisez states:
"The fact that they [the goods] may seem more important to an individual or a
group simply reflects the cultural conditioning or psychological leaning of that
individual or group. "16 Elsewhere, he says that hierarchies are simply a "matter
of subjective choice and temperment." 17 Of course, what is not merely subjective

l"Grisez, Beyond the New Morality, rev. ed. (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1980)' p. 73.
17Ibid., p. 74.
460 HITTINGER

is the objectivity of the goods as an irreducible aggregate, and then the moral
principle enjoining one never to act against any of the goods. But the "life plans"
by which individuals adopt one or another hierarchy of the goods lack a corre-
spondingly objective principle. Thus, like the virtue ethicists, Grisez and Finnis
prescind from the issue of what is the best life for man to live.
This is clearly the result of having a theory of certain irreducible goods without
a theory of human nature. That is, it does not provide a philosophical way to
envisage a human being as being something more than the aggregate parts of the
goods he might choose. Indeed, this is a rather diffuse conception of eudaimonia,
or human flourishing, for although it identifies what could be the component parts
of eudaimonia, it remains entirely mute on what what is fulfilled, much less so on
criteria for ascertaining successful as opposed to unsuccessful achievements or
fulfillments. Rather than explaining any recognizably natural-law conception of
the human good, this theory more closely resembles a modern conception of the
human self having such heterogeneous aims that practical reason not only cannot,
but must not, shackle the agent to a specifiable and unified good. It is not likely
to prove any more successful than trying to graft categorical imperatives on to a
Deweyan or Sartrean conception of the human self.

IV

I shall conclude by saying that both virtue ethics and the "new" natural-law
theory pay a heavy price in their respective efforts to recover components of the
"common morality" without a theory of nature. Neither is able to answer
precisely those sorts of questions which traditional natural-law theory is designed
to handle:

l) Whether human goods (described as either values or virtues) are objective, which is
to ask whether human reason can find criteria beyond individual experience and social
conventions that would help to ascertain real from apparent goods.
2) Whether there is. in addition to a ratio of the goods, an ordinario as well, so that we
can make reasonable judgments regarding good and bad (and correlatively, better and
best), orderings of the goods.
3) Whether the human person can be envisaged as a unity that is something more than
the aggregate of values or virtues, so that we can speak in a philosophically intelligent
and persuasive way about the good of man.

The strongest suit of traditional natural-law theory is not necessarily its capacity
to generate a list of precepts, which are then used to generate tables of positive
laws. Such lists and tables can be, and indeed have been, done on the basis of
something other than explicit natural-law theory. The long tradition of scholastic
natural law has recognized that particular rules are ordinarily derived in a rather
remote way from basic natural-law precepts, and that moral deliberation is usually
governed by a complex network of traditions: civil, ecclesiastical, cultural. It is a
mistake to expect natural-law theory to constitute an over-arching table of laws
which can be straightforwardly applied to issues ranging from the use of condoms
to the allocation of public monies. One can agree with Pincoffs that the test of a
moral theory cannot simply be its facility in resolving an indefinite array of
AFTER MACINTYRE 461

quandries. For a moral outlook should, at the outset, be able to delimit the range
of such issues, and the principle of delimitation is not only the perspective implicit
in the individual agent's character, but also the philosophical view of what the
world is like, and how it is ordered.
Natural-law theory is best able to treat the more identifiably philosophical
problem of whether human reason is related to an order that is not merely of its
own making or doing. Can practical reason find guidance in something more than
the order implicit in its own artifacts? To put this another way: can we relieve the
suspicion that deliberation over practical norms simply amounts to deliberation
over values which practical reason itself has introduced? At the very least,
natural-law theory had addressed itself to this question. And, at the very least,
natural-law theory has attempted to reach satisfactory answers to the three
questions outlined above: the objectivity of goods, the objectivity of their order-
ing, and the unity of human nature.
While the virtue ethicians and the proponents of the "new" natural-law theory
are correct in seeing that modern moral philosophy has exhausted itself in a series
of dead-ends, they have not adequately indicated the way out. I hope that this
essay has not been an exercise in extrinsic criticism of these positions, for I wish
to understand them as theories which are in search of a theory of nature that
would enable them to make good on their own insights. Natural law remains a
road that is open, but one still not taken.