Background
FINNIS, John was born on July 28, 1940 in Adelaide. Son of Maurice M. S. Finnis and Margaret McKellar Stewart.
university teacher and barrister
FINNIS, John was born on July 28, 1940 in Adelaide. Son of Maurice M. S. Finnis and Margaret McKellar Stewart.
St. Peter’s College, Adelaide, University of Adelaide, Oxford University.
Teacher and barrister. Lecturer in Law, Oxford University 1966-1972, Rhodes Reader in the Laws of the British Commonwealth and the United States 1972-1989, Professor, of Law and legal Philosophy since 1989. Chairman Board of Faculty of Law 1987-1989.
Professor, and Head of Department, of Law, University of Malawi 1976-1978. Chairman since 1987).
Finnis is a major natural law theorist according to whom there is an ideal higher than positive law in terms of which the legal structure of a society can be appraised. After a survey of anthropological research, he concludes that diverse human societies share common concerns. On the basis of this he posits seven basic goods in terms of which morality, justice and law are understood.
These basic goods are life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability or friendship, practical reasonableness and religion understood as ‘recognition of, and concern about an order of things "beyond" each and every man'. These goods are objective, basic, fundamental, premoral and self evident.
They are objective since all human societies exhibit a concern for these goods. They are basic since all other values, such as courage, gentleness and moderation, are means of pursuing the basic goods and hence subordinate to them.
They are fundamental in that all goods have equal status: there is no priority of value amongst the goods since each acquires a priority when viewed from a certain perspective.
The goods are premoral since they are not moral obligations or recommendations or prescriptions, even though they provoke the 'evaluative substratum for all moral judgements’. They are self evident since they are obvious to the questioning mind. The premoral basic goods are transformed into a theory of morality by a set of principles consisting of basic requirements of practical reasonableness.
These principles are: a coherent life plan, no arbitrary preferences among the seven basic goods, no arbitrary preferences among persons, detachment, commitment, efficiency within reason, respect for every basic value in every act, fostering the common good of the community, following one’s conscience, and to choose real goods to apparent goods.
Finnis regards law as an aspect of practical reasonableness, that works for the common good of the community. The moral authority of the law, for him, ‘depends.. on its justice or at least its ability to secure justice’.
What status do unjust laws have in Finnis's theory? Are these laws invalid because they are unjust? Is there any obligation on the part of citizens to obey unjust laws?
Finnis is aware that law can, at times, work against the common good. According to him, the laws that are unjust lack moral authority and therefore an unjust law.
None the less there may be a moral obligation on the part of the citizens to obey them for practical reasons since disobedience of the law may weaken the authority of the ruler and result in harm to the common good.
A problem with Finnis’s natural law theory is that it commits the fallacy of deriving an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’: normative statements are derived from statements of fact lacking value content. However, according to Finnis, this is not true of his theory, since what is offered is not based purely on the observance of human nature but is also based on being a human being. The primary grasp of what is good for us is a practical grasp.
Although Finnis provides impressively comprehensive lists of basic goods and basic requirements of practical reasonableness it is questionable whether these are sufficient to provide clear guidance in moral dilemmas.
Is it not the case that there are situations where, for instance, it may not be possible to respect each basic value in every act, or to follow one's conscience?.
Philosophy Sub-Faculty since 1984. Catholic Bishops' Jt. Committee on Bio-ethical Issues 1981-1989, Institute Theological Commission (Vatican) since 1986.
Married Marie Carmel McNally in 1964.