So over the last two weeks, I’ve explained two schools of thought: natural law and ordinary language. One is ancient, the other fairly modern; one is generally theological (taking for granted God’s hand in creation), the other usually secular (disinterested in questions of the supernatural); one is concerned with moral rules, the other with grammar and ways of speaking. And yet, despite their differences, I take these two different ways of thinking to, in some ways, be one way of thinking and, moreover, to have something common to say about the world, human nature, and the ways we ought to conduct ourselves.
But before we get into those commonalities, I want to make sure we fully grasp the differences between them and, therefore, appreciate how truly unlikely their similarities are.
Perhaps the most substantial gap between my treatment of natural law theology and ordinary language philosophy is in their approach to the metaphysical. For those who haven’t been cursed with years of grad school in the humanities, when we speak of the metaphysical, we are speaking of that which is beyond the physical or ungirds the physical, that which cannot be measured or described in scientific terms. Other words we might substitute for metaphysical are transcendent, spiritual, supernatural, or ethereal—the really real, for some. For natural law theology, metaphysical claims are a must. It makes claims about God and the divine role in creation, and teleology, which I explained as being at the core of natural law, is likewise a metaphysical idea, that all things, living or otherwise, are imbued with purpose and an ultimate end. Ordinary language, on the other hand, actively resists the metaphysical. As a principle, it does not deny the metaphysical, that God or teleology exist, but rather insists that to speak of those things as the really real misses the truth of our ordinary lives and what is plainly before us.
These schools of thought differ also in their relation to ethics. Natural law is articulated by Aquinas for the clear purpose of setting-up his ideas about virtue. The natural law is meant to help us understand where our ideas about ethics come from and why they work. Wittgenstein, however, seems to position ethics among those philosophical word puzzles that need dissolving. He even says that if we were to “read the description of a murder with all its details physical and psychological,” then “the mere description of these facts will contain nothing which we could call an ethical proposition. …there will simply be facts, facts and facts but no ethics.”
Despite such claims from Wittgenstein, there have been a number of theologians who actually see his work as conducive for Christian thought. Among these are some who deliberately trace the parallels between ordinary language and scholastic thought, claiming to equally inherit from both Aquinas and Wittgenstein, and are labeled accordingly, the “Grammatical Thomists.” A predominantly Catholic group influenced by the English Dominican tradition, they find themselves focusing on the grammar of God-talk and an emphasis on the limits of our language regarding God. For the Grammatical Thomists, Wittgenstein helps us see what Aquinas is actually up to, namely recognizing our speech about God as a type of nonsense—meaningful and analogical for us, but necessarily pointing toward the need for an apophatic theology (in which we can only really say what God is not).
Additionally, many thinkers have insisted that ordinary language philosophy does have ethical implications. Interpreters of Wittgenstein have argued that the traditional philosophic distinction between fact and value—that is, the desire to draw a hard line between descriptive statements about what “is” and prescriptive statements about what one “ought” to do—that such a distinction is ultimately wrongheaded and represents conceptual confusion. Instead, Wittgenstein’s legacy suggests that a recognition of what is entails a recognition of what one ought to do, that there are moral demands made on a person by the facts in front of them.
And if this is the case, that ordinary language philosophy lends itself to moral reflection, then the ways that a Wittgensteinian philosophy of language overlaps with a Thomistic natural law finally begin to come into view. When Wittgenstein argues that conventions (including our language, cultural practices, and ethical norms) are not arbitrary, that they emerge from and aim toward something natural and reflect the form of the communities that embody them, he helps us see life in a way much like Aquinas, in which life and ethics can only rightly be understood in light of human nature, and human nature is necessarily revealed through our life and practices in the world.
Taken together, these two schools of thought provide a robust ethic from nature that takes its cue from the Lord’s Prayer—on earth as it is in heaven. Such an ethic sees clearly the ways in which our human nature, our material circumstances, and our lives in society tell us something about the heavenly good and how we ought to conduct ourselves. It directs us to examine carefully how moral concepts are woven into—and emerge from—the natural fabric of human interactions. When we attend to the detailed texture of our practices, to forms of life, we can come to real insights about the good life. This ethical reasoning succeeds because of creation’s teleological directionality—that logic of creation points us to what is good and our human inclinations recognize what brings flourishing. A natural ethic can guide in almost every aspect of life, helping us see why you shouldn’t lie to your friends, the point of thanking people when they do something nice for you, the reason you ought not eat ice cream before dinner, and why you should be sure to send your mother a card on Mother’s Day.
Of course, natural law (even supplemented by the philosophy of language) does not give us a strict framework for ethical evaluation—that is, it does not provide a ready-at-hand set of tools or sequence of steps to apply in any given situation by which we might arrive at the moral response. However, what the natural law does offer us is a way of conceiving of and reflecting on ethical questions, one that takes seriously the moral weight of creation. This mode of moral exploration emphasizes careful analysis. Moral reasoning proceeds through practical wisdom, weighing intentions, desires, and consequences within concrete human contexts; it shines a light on our ordinary forms of life through attentive scrutiny of our words and actions. And, more relevant to our overall topic, when we face technological innovation, a natural ethic asks us to consider how such technologies reshape human capacities and relationships, prompting us to discern whether they enhance or frustrate our genuine inclinations toward the good. It invites us to interrogate technologies by carefully asking what sorts of desires or anxieties drive their development and adoption, and how our language either masks or clarifies these underlying motivations. It recognizes the fluidity of our ethical vocabulary, acknowledging how concepts like “improvement,” “health,” or “flourishing” shift in meaning as our communal forms of life evolve, yet it affirms that the normative content of these terms, deeply rooted in our shared lives, is not arbitrary but continuously tested and clarified through ordinary human engagement and dialogue. This is what it means for nature to be our guide.
Contrast all of this with how many Christians normally think about ethics. For many, morality derives entirely from divine command—from fiat. We do what’s right because God tells us to, or if we want to avoid sound legalistic, because it’s pleasing to God. But if I asked someone, Why do you love your spouse? And they replied, Because it’s pleasing to God—would that not strike you as odd? And how often during a given day do you consult your internal sense of divine command when making a decision? Even the most pious among us would struggle to give a number higher than six or seven. This is because we don’t live our life in that way—and we shouldn’t either. God put us in a world where ethics make sense, and we are not dependent on arbitrary command, even from God, for it is already in the Father above that we live and move and have our being. Thus, an ethic from nature importantly resists the persistent temptation to appeal to the transcendent, as supernatural and intervening, and rather helps us acknowledge the imperatives of our creaturely lives.
This is all still pretty vague. So next week, we’ll explore how this might relate to specific emerging technologies, asking what does reflection on nature and our ordinary conventions tell us about how we ought to live in unnatural and unprecedented times.