Practical Natural Law
Natural law is the alternative to the broken ideologies of our age. Our woke friends divide everyone into competing camps and pit those camps against each other in interminable struggles for power. Natural law enables us to see the essential human nature that we share with all other human beings. It reveals what we all share in common. The woke insist that we must affirm the subjective experiences of the marginalized, including their false and misleading beliefs. Natural law gives us the principles to understand what is true. It reveals to us what is real.
Natural law also enables us to know what is good to do. Some human actions are truly good. They fulfil us. They make us flourish. Natural law identifies the good ends of human action that make our lives go well. It holds before us the principles that direct a reasonable person to make reasonable choices, principles such as knowledge of truth, friendship, marriage, and beauty.
It is good to pursue knowledge of truth, say by reading a book or listening to an interesting lecture or podcast. It is good to make friends and to perform acts of friendship. It is good to get married and have children (if you are able). It is good to seek wisdom and to become virtuous. It is good to create beautiful art, music, and literature. All of those actions are worth doing because they are aimed at good ends. A life full of those actions becomes a life full of those basic goods. And that is a life worth living.
For the same reasons, some human actions are inherently bad. Some are even evil. Natural law enables us to identify those actins, too. For example, knowledge of truth is inherently better than ignorance, confusion, and falsehood. Therefore, indulging skepticism of obvious truths for the purpose of appearing intellectually sophisticated is bad. Lying--intentionally communicating known falsehoods for the purpose of deceiving others--is evil.
The point of natural law is to achieve a life of flourishing. The objective is that, when I get to the end of my life, I can look back with satisfaction that I spent my time, talents, and resources on things that have lasting value. This means that I will have spent my life pursuing intrinsic human goods, such as knowledge, friendship, and beauty, rather than merely instrumental goods, such as wealth, and false goods, such as pleasure.
There's nothing inherently wrong with pleasure and wealth. But their value is fleeting and contingent. Furthermore, someone who pursues pleasure and wealth for their own sake shapes himself--forms his character--around the pursuit of lesser goods, and becomes less able to pursue the more lasting, basic goods. Indeed, many people who spend their lives pursuing pleasure and wealth end up unable even to desire the lasting goods of knowledge, friendship, marriage, and the rest, because they have spent their lives sacrificing those basic goods for the pursuit of the fleeting, contingent goods. That is not a life of flourishing. That is a life of vice, a life to regret.
Natural law theorists teach that the principles of practical natural law are self-evident. That does not mean that everyone knows them. Not everyone stops to consider what is truly worthwhile. But to those who reflect on what makes a good life, and especially to those who pursue knowledge of the good life, it will become apparent what pursuits and actions make a life worth living. Natural law provides the vocabulary and concepts that help us understand the differences between a life of flourishing and a life of regret.