A Shared Morality
Book Reviews
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed.” Francis Bacon (d. 1626)
A Shared Morality
Craig A. Boyd, Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007. $27.
Reviewed by Monty M. Self, Little Rock, AR
Today many ethicist and moral theologians feel that they are land lovers trapped on a voyage around the world, with no hope of ever developing sea legs. Aboard ship they stumble around holding on to ropes and rails for dear life, but when the ship ports it is not any better. For on land, they stumble around unable to gain stability and equilibrium. The contemporary moral sea is no different. Many of her sailors feel lost in the endless waves of postmodernism longing for a return to the solid ground of the enlightenment. Unfortunately, the return to modernity only reminds us of the failed projects that drove us to the sea in the first place. Craig Boyd in his new book A Shared Morality attempts to transcend the failed absolutist projects of modernity without beings swept away in the squalls of moral relativism. Boyd embarks on a journey to revive the old natural law tradition by replacing its Aristotelian ontology, webbing it with virtue ethics, and responding to the contemporary critics of natural law.
The most novel approach of Boyd is to strengthen natural law by replacing the out of date ontology of Aquinas’ theory with a contemporary reading of sociobiology. In sociobiology, one finds a powerful mechanism for defining human nature. Our drive to survive and propagate gives a clue as to human nature. In an ironic twist, Boyd uses the evolutionary position that washed away the old natural law tradition as the foundation of his vision for natural law’s future.
In addition to revising the ontology of natural law, Boyd shores up the gaps on the hull of natural law by webbing it with virtue ethics. Like many ethicists for the last 100 years, Boyd acknowledges that natural law is not a sufficient ethical system because it lacks a theory of the value of the moral agent. Therefore, natural law needs a theory of virtue in order to complete the moral system. On the other hand, virtue ethics has always been in need of a theory of human nature. A theory of value cannot stand without an explanation of how it is connected to human beings psychologically. Therefore, Boyd sees his combination of virtue ethics and natural law theory as a natural fit.
While Boyd’s vision for Natural Law is cause enough to purchase the book, he goes a step further and responds to many of the classic criticisms of natural law theory. Unlike other natural law apologists, Boyd takes the criticism of postmodernism and the divine command theorist seriously. Boyd attempts to use a narrative approach similar to Alasdair MacIntyre to incorporate the ideas of natural law’s critics into his mission of revising the natural law tradition. Thus, Boyd finds ideas form evolutionary theory, post-modernism, and analytical philosophy useful in his reconstruction of natural law.
The most ambitious section of the book is Boyd’s rejection of the naturalistic fallacy. Boyd openly rejects both Hume’s criticism of naturalistic ethics and the naturalistic fallacy of G. E. Moore. His rejection is based on a revival of the idea of teleos and Aristotle’s final cause. Hume rejected naturalistic ethics because one can not derive “ought” from “is” and Moore argued that naturalistic ethics cannot come up with a definition of “the good.” Boyd rejects both approaches as misguided. For natural law “the good” is defined in terms of the fulfillment of an object or person`s purpose. The idea of “the good” is not an innate concept, but a teleological concept. The term “good” is about the fulfillment of purpose. Thus, one says a watch is “good’ when it fulfills its purpose and tells time accurately. Hume and Moore’s criticism only works if one abandons the idea of a final cause or the fulfillment of purpose as a desirable “good.”
Boyd’s book is a must read for the ethicist or student of Christian ethics for three main reasons. First he provides new life to a school of moral thought that many have written of as a dead end. Second, Boyd provides a series of skilled responses to the critics of natural law theory. These responses serve as both a defense of natural law and a counter critic of her critics. Last, this book is a wealth of information about the long history of natural law. The book spends time with the pre-Christian heritage of natural law as well as the modern political and legal manifestations.
While there is a lot to get excited about in A Shared Morality, it leaves the reader hungry for more. Boyd makes it obvious that Natural Law is not a sunken ship off the coast of a deserted Greek island, but he has not fully demonstrated that the ship can stay afloat in the contemporary seas of change. Boyd’s webbing of natural law and virtue ethics is compelling, but he needs to spend more time illustrating how this marriage looks in the realm of applied ethics. A boat always looks sea worthy in the harbor. The test is the journey out past the reef. With that said, I look forward to watching Boyd’s vision for natural law battle the waves of today’s moral seas.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
