Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Introduction
- 1 Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Brief Overview
- 2 The International Law Concerning Weapons of Mass Destruction
- PART ONE THE ORIGINAL DEBATE
- 3 Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 4 Realism and Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Consequentialist Analysis
- 5 Natural Law and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 6 War and Indeterminacy in Natural Law Thinking
- 7 Liberalism: The Impossibility of Justifying Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 8 A Liberal Perspective on Deterrence and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 9 Christianity and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 10 Christian Apocalypticism and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- PART TWO EXPANDING THE CONVERSATION
- PART THREE CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
- Contributors
- Index
5 - Natural Law and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Introduction
- 1 Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Brief Overview
- 2 The International Law Concerning Weapons of Mass Destruction
- PART ONE THE ORIGINAL DEBATE
- 3 Realist Perspectives on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 4 Realism and Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Consequentialist Analysis
- 5 Natural Law and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 6 War and Indeterminacy in Natural Law Thinking
- 7 Liberalism: The Impossibility of Justifying Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 8 A Liberal Perspective on Deterrence and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 9 Christianity and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- 10 Christian Apocalypticism and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- PART TWO EXPANDING THE CONVERSATION
- PART THREE CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES
- Contributors
- Index
Summary
The ethical tradition of natural law is often viewed rather narrowly as that part of Roman Catholic moral teaching not reliant on revelation. But this sort of proprietary identification casts too sectarian a light on its value. I shall treat the tradition as a much broader church. It will thus encompass some theorists whose inclusion might surprise, but I do not propose a treatment that is so generous as to remove any sense that there is something distinctive covered by the heading “natural law.” The recognition that natural law is, like all traditions, a family of theories, insights, and ideas need not drive us into thinking of it as too extended a family. We should not, for instance, see it as equivalent to all theories that reject relativism, conventionalism, and positivism in law or ethics. These really have too little in common to form even a loose tradition.
Perhaps the best way forward is to specify some traits that have been common to a number of theories historically associated with the idea that understanding morality is a matter of grasping something about the underlying rationality of the universe with respect to the place of human beings (or rational agents) in it. This “something” is discovered in reality rather than constructed by human will, but it reveals that the good for agents is a matter of acting well in accord with nature.
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- Ethics and Weapons of Mass DestructionReligious and Secular Perspectives, pp. 111 - 131Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004