Natural Law is the most reliable approach when making decisions about pre-marital sex. Discuss.

I found this essay very interesting because it shows how students fundamentally misunderstand – and so mishandle- natural law theory, imputing things to it which should never be imputed.  A straw man in logic is one you set up in order to knock down. The first half of this essay is a classic straw man argument.

Source: click here

Natural Law, the basis for many of the teachings of the Catholic Church, is often considered a very conservative approach to sexual ethics, particularly to pre-marital sex. This allows for many interesting points for discussion in a modern society like our own. In this essay I will outline the Natural Law approach to pre-marital sex and evaluate its reliability. I will also outline and evaluate other ethical approaches to the topic in an attempt to determine if a more reliable approach is available. Very clear and succinct opening – good.

The Natural Law approach to pre-marital sex is relatively simple let the reader decide how simple it is – we need an argument here: sex is strictly for married couples only. This is because Natural Law is deontological and states that everything has a purpose surely that’s teleological, if everything has a purpose, so making this sentence unclear, better to say” has deontological outcomes from a teleological worldview”, and that something is morally sound, or good, when it is fulfilling this purpose. The purpose of sex is to procreate; as that is what genitalia are designed for. The purpose of marriage is, traditionally, to bring two people together to raise a family The point is surely not that it is traditional, but that Aquinas argues that the sanctity of marriage is necessary for personal and social flourishing – the telos or goal is eudaimonia in Aristotelean natural law, or felicitas (Latin for happiness in Aquinas’  theory – Aquinas actually sees perfect happiness as something only achievable in heaven). Therefore, the act with the purpose of making children should only take place in the union with the purpose of creating a family. Furthermore, as two of Aquinas’ primary precepts are to reproduce and live in society, it only makes sense from a Natural Law perspective to say that sex should only take place inside of marriage. If the precept is to reproduce surely there is nothing to stop you reproducing outside marriage – there’s a missing link to your argument hereThis is because living in society involves structure, much of which is still formed around the institution of marriage. Aha! At last something relevant.  Why not use technical language – eudaimonia is the goal in natural law theory, although Aquinas uses a different Latin word f(felicitas) or happiness. Producing children outside of the union would undermine this structure and therefore society. Thus, pre-marital sex is always seen as wrong in the eyes of Natural Law. This approach is most likely to be taken by traditional Christians. No!  1. Traditional Christian view is highly ambiguous and 2. Evangelical traditional Christians reject totally Natural law because of the synderesis assumption – that we by nature “do good and avoid evil”.  They argue we by nature “do evil” – we are sinners who need Christ to redeem us – there’s no other way – solo Christo!

Having outlined the Natural Law approach to pre-marital sex, not very clearly I’m afraid! we can now evaluate it to determine its reliability.

There are many flaws with this approach, most of which are generated by a more modern, liberal idea of sex. Firstly is the issue with homosexuality. As homosexuals cannot marry, it would be morally wrong for them to have sex according to this approach. In fact, a supporter of Natural Law may argue that, even if homosexuals could marry, it would still be immoral for them to have sex as they cannot produce children. In a society where homosexuality is being accepted more often as morally ok, this raises many complaints.  But surely this is the point at issue – you’re arguing as a cultural relativist here – is this position defensible?? Secondly, it could be argued using Natural Law that infertile couples should not have sex even inside of marriage as they cannot have children. Misunderstanding here – the primary purpose of sex is procreative, the secondary purpose is unitive – ie bonding.  There’s nothing wrong therefore in having sex to bond as long as, in principle, a baby might pop out one day! Arguably, this would mean they shouldn’t even marry, let alone have sex, as they are incapable of fulfilling their ‘natural purpose’.  No – they should marry – marriage is the place where commitment love is realised (by definition) and without commitment love none of us will flourish, says Aquinas. Thirdly, we can raise the question that, if the purpose of sex is reproduction, why is it also naturally pleasurable? What if the purpose of sex is indeed pleasure instead of just reproduction? How can we be certain of this? Good point.  Which comes first? And who says? Marriage is also becoming seen as increasingly outdated tradition this is cultural relativism again – an indefensible position philosophically because it evacuates all debate of values and gives us nothing to disagree about “well, you can have your opinion and I’ll have mine”. What many philosophers say is this – we may change over time on what the core value is, but that doesn’t stop there being a core value.  Only existentialists and nihilists say there’s no core value! as women are no longer reliant on men for financial security, with growing numbers of cohabiting couples or single parents raising children just as well as married couples. Finally, the overall reliability of Natural Law can be questioned due to how old it is. That’s not a wise argument as one of the oldest philosophers, Aristotle, is going through a big revival at the moment (360 BC)! The primary precepts have also been criticised for being outdated and arbitrarily decided by Aquinas without good reason. More red ink!  The whole point of natural law theory is that it’s reasonable – more reasonable than you postmodern relativists think! Back to eudaimonia (Aristotle) or felicitas (Aquinas) as the basis for reasonableness (please note, psychologists would agree!  There is something you need to be and do in order to be fulfilled.

I will now outline another ethical approach to the topic and compare its reliability to that of Natural Law.

An alternative Christian approach to Natural Law when looking at pre-marital sex is situation ethics. Proposed by Joseph Fletcher, situations ethics is teleological and very relative in its approach. It is based on the principle of agape which is an absolute and so you need to explain wh SE is still called relativist by some and states that one should always do the most loving thing in a moral situation, basically doing what is best for other people first. This applies to pre-marital sex in a straightforward manner: people must act out of love rather than lust when considering sex. This approach does not condemn pre-marital sex in the same way that Natural Law does as it says that sex should only take place between two people who are loving and committed to one another, but not necessarily married. Therefore, situation ethics only condemns acts such as casual sex and promiscuity due to its basis in lust rather than love. This approach is one most likely to be taken by liberal Christians.  Much better argument – and correct, I think!

I’ll now evaluate the reliability of the situation ethics approach and compare it to Natural Law.

The main concern with situation ethics is that it appears to remove any need for marriage at all. If being loving and committed to someone is enough to justify a sexual relationship outside marriage, then why should anyone go through the process of marriage itself? We can also argue that, for a Christian approach, situation ethics undermines most of the Catholic Church teachings and, by extension, Natural Law. With situation ethics, for example, it is possible to also justify the use of contraception to prevent pregnancy, and abortions to terminate unwanted pregnancies, if it is decided that this is the most loving thing to do as with all theories this assumes we’ve decided on the question of personhood first such as instances where a child will be disabled or have a poor quality of life due to financial/social pressures), as well as pre-marital sex. This would make it wholly unacceptable to most Christians. Despite its positive liberal approach, situation ethics has the danger of making all sorts of things morally acceptable due it relativism; this is at the detriment of its reliability when making decisions related to pre-marital sex.

Now we can look at a third ethical approach to pre-marital sex, this time from a more secular perspective and determine how reliable it is.

A further and much broader approach to the issue of pre-marital sex is that of Utilitarianism. The central principle of this approach is ‘the greatest pleasure for the greatest number’ only hedonic utilitarianism – Mill backs off from overemphasising pleasure (see my handout) and Singer rejects pleasure in his preference  utilitar ianism (see handout) but rehabilitates pleasure for lower order “entities” (his word, I hate that word!) like disabled infants and chickens – an immoral view in my opinion and one that should be properly understood in all its horribleness.  Incidentally – don’t read the textbooks on Singer – they clearly haven’t read Singer, read the handout on this site instead, therefore maximising pleasure and minimising pain. This allows for a very liberal approach to sex, that is to say that there is no need to be married to have sex, as this will bring pleasure to the two people participating in the act immediately and poses no genuine risk of pain or sadness to others suppose my mum strongly disapproves – is that relevant?. Conversely, two people may find greater happiness if they wait until marriage for sex, along with bringing happiness to all the friends and family who attend the wedding or approve of their union. From the view of Bentham and the Hedonic Calculus, it is also important to look at the other factors affecting the pleasure, such as how soon it will be, how long it will last, how much negative emotion might be felt afterwards and so on. Nonetheless, it is still easy to justify all types of sexual relationships under Bentham’s Utilitarianism, pre-marital or not. Under Mill’s Utilitarianism, however, the pleasure becomes more focused on its quality rather than its quantity. For example, Mill distinguished between higher-order mental pleasures (preferable) and lower-order physical pleasures (not preferable). So the lower-order sexual gratification of a one-night stand would be less moral to Mill than the high-order pleasure of a long-term, satisfying relationship with someone you love, such as marriage. Still, Mill would also find other types of sexual expression morally sound if they reflect liberty and freedom of expression. Again, this paragraph is much better.

Having outlined this approach, I’ll now move on to discuss the reliability of Utilitarianism as an ethical approach to this topic.

A similar complaint about situation ethics can also be made about Utilitarianism: it’s a very relative theory it has one intrinsic absolute at its heart, pleasure or happiness = good, so it can’t be completely relative which allows for the justification of all sorts of actions careful here – one of the most annoying implications in ethics is the one that says “this theory implies anything goes”.  Utilitarians are very clear about what is ruled in or out. If we take the case of a man, for example, who sleeps with lots of consenting women would be acceptable under Bentham’s Utilitarianism as it brings pleasure to both participants and pain to no one else. However, this could be said to be naive as it is quite possible that the man could unintentionally be spreading a dangerous STI to the women completely against this knowledge; this is to say that the difficulty with Utilitarianism is that it is not possible to predict the future reliably, and so, whilst thinking there is no pain or sadness caused by his promiscuity, the man foolishly spreads the disease completely unaware. It could be argued that such a mistake would be avoided had he not contracted the disease and spread it, but instead waiting for sex until after marriage in the Natural Law tradition. Nonetheless, Utilitarianism provides a useful way around the strictly conservative approach used by Natural Law, allowing to be a lot more reliable in a significantly more liberal and tolerant society as we do today.

To conclude, I feel that Natural Law is not the most reliable approach when making decision about pre-marital sex unfortunately this is because you misunderstand natural law.  This is the straw man fallcy – set up a straw man and knock him down – but what you’re knocking isn’t natural law. It may protect traditional family values, Christian beliefs and sustain a structured society, but it makes no sense to assert that two people in a loving and committed relationship cannot have sex purely because they are not married. Natural Law seems to be more of a reflection of a time in which there was no such thing as contraception or proper medical care for pregnant women. Was this bygone age actually less happy than our age of freer love? the natural alw theorist argues not – and cites the numebr of anti-depressnat pills being taken, marriages broken etc In today’s society, not only can we prevent pregnancy, but there is less chance of pregnancy being fatal to a mother, and so marriage and sex need no longer be considered essentially combined. I feel the most reliable approach is situation ethics, as this allows for all sorts of scenarios and focuses on love, a key aspect which seems to be missing from both Natural Law and Utilitarianism. Furthermore, situation ethics avoids the level of naivety why naivety? associated with Utilitarianism, providing a strong principle, not just for sex, but for life: do the most loving thing.

This essay becomes stronger as it goes along although you do write like a postmodern relativist!  You misrepresent natural law in quite  a serious way – hence the volumes of red ink on part one of the essay.  For this reason it can only really achieve a B grade 24/35.