Practical Reasonableness and Natural Rights Sample Clauses

Practical Reasonableness and Natural Rights. The above goods are all equally basic, that is to say they are equally self-evident and fundamental. Though we have identified these goods, the question remains as to how they should be pursued. One must turn to the good of practical reasonableness in order to guide one’s selection of projects. This is the natural law method of working out the moral requirements of the aforementioned descriptive principles.25 While the myriad imperatives prescribed by practical reasonableness in seeking basic goods seems to challenge the idea of natural law as one orderly whole, Xxxxxxx Xxxxxx offers a reading of Aquinas that resolves the issue: The precepts are many because the different inclinations’ objects, viewed by reason as ends for rationally guided efforts, lead to distinct norms of action. The natural law, nevertheless, is one because each object of inclination obtains its role in practical reason’s legislation only insofar as it is subject to practical reason’s way of determining action – by prescribing how ends are to be attained.26 24 Finnis, Natural Law, 89. 25 Finnis, Natural Law, 101. In other words, practical reasonableness effectively bestows moral significance to the pursuit of basic goods, for it deliberates on a course of action that must negotiate the projects of others, addressing the central moral question “how ought we to live.” 26 Xxxxxx, “The First Principle,” 200. The idea of practical reasonableness is what Xxxx Xxxxx calls a “rational plan of life.”27 This plan is only rational if it is directed by the pursuit of some combination of basic goods and curtails harmful inclinations. Practical reasonableness requires an individual to acknowledge that these goods can be pursued and realized by any human being. While self-preference is reasonable insofar as one’s own well being is understandably their primary interest, it does not make the pursuit objectively more valuable than that of any other. Another requirement of practical reasonableness is respect for every basic value in every action. Of course, a commitment to a particular project will necessarily favor particular basic goods (for they cannot all be pursued simultaneously), but in order for the commitment to be rational, it must be based on an evaluation of one’s capacities and circumstances. Therefore an action that does nothing but impede or devalue the pursuit of a basic good is always immoral.28 The final requirement of practical reasonableness is that of fostering the common good.29 Thi...