Ethics, Politics, and Natural Law: Principles for Human Flourishing
/Reviewed by Dr. Arielle Harms, Augustine Institute
Melissa Moschella, Ethics, Politics, and Natural Law: Principles for Human Flourishing. University of Notre Dame, 2025. 232 pages. ISBN 9780268209261.
In contemporary treatments, natural law is certainly a misunderstood aspect of moral theology and ethics, and in Ethics, Politics, and Natural Law: Principles for Human Flourishing, Melissa Moschella sets out to explain natural law, offering to a smart audience what she proposes as a common sense approach to moral reasoning. She presents the framework and details of the New Natural Law theory (NNLT) in a way that is approachable, systematic, and thorough. Her presentation seeks to connect “goods, norms, and virtues” which she says are isolated in contemporary moral theories.
I will admit that it was Dr. Moschella’s desire for this exposition of NNLT to bridge the gap between New Natural Law theorists and “traditional Thomists” that led me to pick up this book. In her introduction she states, “I see one of the purposes of this book as articulating NNLT in a way that can help to clarify some of the misconceptions that I believe underlie many if not most of the criticisms raised by those who consider themselves traditional Thomists.” (pp. 5-6) While Dr. Moschella does an excellent job explaining NNLT to a new audience, contributing some very helpful additions to the way NNLT has been presented by other authors, the place of virtue in this presentation is minimal, and this Thomist is not convinced.
Predictably, Chapter 1 delineates the incommensurable basic human goods as the first principles of practical reason responding to objections about what is not included in this list.
Chapter 2, considers the principles that guide moral reasoning. Here, her presentation of the “vocation principle” is a novel way to help moral agents determine how best to order human goods, by prioritizing commitments that have already been made.
Chapters 3-4 turn to applying the NNLT to life in society, looking at various levels of community from the family to the political community, and those that fall in between. In Chapter 3 Dr. Moschella uses the hypothetical “Life of Susie” to show her reader the communities Susie will be involved in throughout her life and how these assist her in pursuing the basic human goods—as well as how she interacts with others in their pursuits.
Though NNLT is usually meant to ground moral reasoning without adverting to God, in Chapter 5, Moschella presents how belief in God, whether known through natural reason or through revelation, has relevance for NNLT, and in particular moral motivation.
Though it would be impossible to address all the difficulties for a Thomist when it comes to Moschella’s presentation, I think it helpful to address one that may not get as much attention. On the claim that this work in particular and NNLT in general helps to connect norms, goods, and virtues, in a way that supplements Aquinas’ account, the book unsurprisingly fails to deliver. In discussing the knowability of the basic human goods, Dr. Moschella is careful to say that “natural law does not derive moral norms from speculative knowledge of human nature.” (pp. 40-41) She wants to keep a clear distinction between “first order knowledge” like metaphysics and “third order knowledge” like ethics.
However, for Aquinas, good is a metaphysical category, that is meaningless without reference to the nature referenced. Norms for human action are necessarily derived with reference to human nature and the good of human nature. In the relation of virtue to these terms, Moschella acknowledges that the use of “virtue” to sometimes refer to one of the basic human goods is not helpful and even confusing. (p. 21) Yet, because the norms for human action have already been detached from goodness in human nature, virtue must be described as the embodiment of moral principles (see pages 73-85), rather than the perfection of human action according to the good of human nature. While it is understandable that this short presentation of virtue is incomplete, what is missing is glaring: without the connection to goodness as a metaphysical reality, there is no clear way to account for the purpose of virtue, or to determine what the virtues are. Virtue, as presented here, bears little resemblance to Aquinas’ account—or that of Aristotle, to whom Moschella makes specific reference. For this reason, among others, I think she will fail to convince most “traditional Thomists.”
Even though she fails to accomplish the purpose of convincing the Thomists, Dr. Moschella’s presentation is extremely clear, and very readable. She systematically introduces and explains each part of NNLT, taking up some common-sense objections in the main text, and addresses the more scholarly objections in the footnotes. This book would make an excellent text for introducing students to NNLT. The annotated resource bibliography included at the end is also helpful for students or researchers who have not done much of reading in the NNLT school of thought, and includes general resources on NNLT, as well as works that approach specific questions of morality using a NNL framework.