Two explanatory stories in Natural Law

One of the most fundamental claims of classical Natural Law (NL), as I understand it, is that:

1. The right exercise of our wills is precisely that which fullfills the proper functions of the will.

This claim is, I think, close to trivial. What is much less trivial is the further NL claim that the “fulfills the proper functions” explains the “right”. There are two (at least) ways of running this explanatory story:

A. To fulfill the proper function of the will is good for us, and it’s right to pursue what’s good for us.

B. It is directly true that the right is what fulfills the will’s proper function. Exercising the proper function of the will, like exercising any other natural faculty, of course good for us, but that isn’t what makes it right.

Story A makes the theory a form of eudaimonism, since it implies that what is good for us is generally to be pursued.

Story B does not claim that what is good for us is generally to be pursued, though it is compatible with that claim. Story B claims that one of the things that are good for us—the proper exercise of the will—is to be done, but it does not claim that other things good for us are to be pursued, and does not even claim that that one thing is to be pursued (for it is a different thing to do what is right and to pursue doing what is right). As far as it goes,

Story B is compatible with, say, total selflessness, the theory that the one thing to be pursued is the good of everybody else. To get total selflessness, all one needs is to supplement Story B with the theory that the proper function of our will is fulfilled precisely in the pursuit of the good of everybody else. Likewise, Story B is compatible with eudaimonism—one just needs to add that the pursuit of our good is what in fact fulfills our will. But it is also compatible with kakodaimonism, the theory that the one thing to be pursued is one’s own languishing. (One might think that it would be self-defeating to pursue one’s own harm if pursuit of one’s harm were the proper function of our wills, since the pursuit would fulfill one’s will and hence be good for one. But that would be to confuse the good pursued with the good of pursuit.)

In other words, Story B has much less in the way of normative ethics implications: it is very strictly a story about the meta-level.

There is reason to prefer Story A: it leads to a helpful normative ethics by itself.

There is reason to prefer Story B: the normative ethics that Story A leads to is a form of rational egoism.

I like Story B. But Story B must be supplemented with an account of what fulfills the will.

The answer to that is love.