On not saying more than we know: New Natural Law Theory and anti-theoretical ethics

Abstract

I say something about the relationship of Finnis’s work in ethics to my own, then summarise and criticise Finnis’s new natural law theory. My own view is an anti-theoretical view: there is no reason to expect any neatly systematic ethical theory to be true just because it is neatly systematic. The doubts that naturally arise about new natural law theory are mostly of this nature: they are based on suspicion of schematisms. I close with some positive suggestions about resources for ethics, in particular «the common understanding of humanity».