Natural Law without Metaphysics: The Case of John Finnis

Finnis, in Natural Law and Natural Right, sidesteps certain problems by taking a largely internalist view of natural law. First, for Finnis there is no problem of moving from facts to values, because within his starting-point-the "internal" reflective analysis of action-values are already there to be found. Second, Finnis suggests that what is today often cited as "the" statement of a fact/value problem, Hume's analysis, is in fact better understood as directed towards a different problem: one of the relation between truth and motivation. Here Finnis also offers a solution, suggesting that "one is motivated according to one's understanding of the goodness and desirability of [certain] human opportunities." From all this, however, there emerge two issues which I will pursue in a little more depth: Finnis's specific account of an internalist realism (on which I must be extremely cursory); and some problems of internalist realism itself (and of Finnis's use of the cosmological argument).

I will conclude by taking up a point that Finnis develops in his paper in this collection. I will, broadly, endorse his argument against Dworkin and agree that judicial decisions are not fully determinate. I will suggest, however, that this opens up an important practical issue in public policy; one which may demand a radical solution.