John Mitchell Finnis

1. Introduction
John Mitchell Finnis (born 28 July 1940), is an Australian legal scholar and philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of law. He is Professor of Law at University College, Oxford and at the University of Notre Dame, teaching jurisprudence, political theory, and constitutional law. He is admitted to the English Bar as a member of Grays Inn.

2. Education
Finnis was educated at St. Peter's College, Adelaide and the University of Adelaide, where he was a member of St. Mark's College. He obtained his LL.B. there, winning a Rhodes scholarship to University College, Oxford, in 1962, where he obtained his D.Phil. for a thesis on the concept of judicial power, with reference to Australian federal constitutional law.

3. Career and works

Finnis is one of the most prominent living legal philosophers. His work, Natural Law and Natural Rights, is regarded as one of the definitive works of natural law philosophy, drawing both on Oxonian and Catholic Thomistic philosophical traditions to challenge the dominant Anglo-positivist approach to legal philosophy taken by John Austin and H. L. A. Hart. Stephen Buckle writes that Natural Law and Natural Rights defends the following basic human goods: life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability (friendship), practical reasonableness, and religion, the last being defined as "all those beliefs that can be called matters of ultimate concern; questions about the point of human existence." Buckle sees Finnis's list of proposed basic goods as plausible, but notes that "Finnis's account becomes more controversial when he goes on to specify the basic requirements of practical reasonableness." He sees Finnis's requirement that practical reason requires "respect for every basic value in every act" as intended both to rule out consequentialism in ethics and also to support the moral viewpoint of the Catholic Church on a range of contentious issues, including contraception and masturbation, which in his view undermines its plausibility. 4. FINNNIS NATURAL LAW THEORY Natural Law Theory is a mode of thinking systematically about the connections between the cosmic order, morality, and law, which, in one form or another, has been around for thousands of years. However, it is difficult to understand the origin and direction of the modern works within the tradition without having a strong sense of the tradition's history.

Natural law in the context of ethics politics law and jurisprudence simply means the set of true proposition identifying basic human goods general requirement of right choosing and the specific moral norm deducible form those requirements as they bear particular basic goods . According to John Finnis, natural law is the set of principles of practical reasonableness in ordering human life and human community. For those unfamiliar with the term natural law Finnis is referring to what has been described as moral standards that can justify and guide not only political authority, but also make legal rules rationally binding and shape concept-formation in descriptive social theory. While this is by no means a new endeavor, natural law theory has seen a resurgence of interests after a long period of dominance and a relegation to disfavor. Unlike fullers concept of procedural natural law the theory of natural rights advanced by john Finnis falls unequivocally into the category of natural law theory. In this regard Finnis states that the principles of natural law are traced out not only in moral philosophy or ethics and individual conduct, but also in political philosophy and jurisprudence, in political action, adjudication, and the life of the citizen. He further asserts that the principles of natural law can explain the obligatory force of positive laws even when such laws cannot be deduced from the principles of natural law. The theory that Finnis describes in Natural Law and Natural Rights has come to be considered the most authoritative modern statement on natural law and with the Supreme Court of the United States directly addressing the issue of morality in cases such as Lawrence v. Texas. The purportedly most authoritative theory on the interaction between law and morality thus deserves some attention. Finniss theory of natural law is divided into three distinct parts each with its own purpose. Finnis argues that there are first a set of notions that indicate the basic forms of human flourishing as goods to be pursued and realized that are known to everyone who thinks about how they should act. These principles are buttressed by a set of methodological requirements of practical reasonableness that distinguish between sound and unsound practical thinking and provide the criteria for distinguishing reasonable and unreasonable acts.

4.1 Modern Natural Law Theory

What may be most distinctive in the recent work done under the name "natural law theory" are those writers who have offered not a general ethical theory (with implications for law and policy), but instead a narrowly focused theory of the nature of (positive) law. Modern natural law theorists have offered the following responses to legal positivism: (1) Law is best understood, at least in part, as a teleological concept: a concept or an institution which can be properly understood only when the ultimate objective is kept in mind here, the

ultimate objective being a just society. This is in sharp contrast to the generally descriptive, largely empirical, morally-neutral approach one finds among the legal positivists. (2) Though the legal positivists might be able to offer a simpler model of law, a model that bears a better-than-passing resemblance to law in practice, a view of law that included more about the moral claims and moral aspirations of law would be a more complete, and therefore better, theory of law. In both cases, the basic claim is that a (natural law) theory of law that incorporates moral evaluation or other aspects of morality, will be superior to a legal positivist theory, because the fuller, richer natural law theory includes or reflects aspects of our practice and experience of law that a (legal positivist) theory, avoiding such elements, cannot.

4.1.1 Moral Theory

a. Overview Finnis builds his moral theory from a foundation of "basic goods," goods we value for their own sake, "aspects of authentic human flourishing, real (intelligent) reasons for action." In Natural Law and Natural Rights, Finnis lists seven: life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability (friendship), practical reasonableness, and "religion." a) Life meaning not merely existence but also the capacity of development of potential within the category of life and its preservation Finnis includes procreation. b) Knowledge not only as means to an end but as good in its own right, which improves life quality. Reference to the pursuit of knowledge makes intelligible any particular instance of human activity and commitment involving such pursuit play. c) Play in essence the capacity for recreational experience and enjoyment. d) Aesthetic experience in some ways related to play but not necessarily so this is broadly a capacity to experience and relate to some perception of beauty. e) Sociability or friendship, occurring at various levels but commonly accepted as good aspect of social life. One might add that this good would seem to be an essential aspect of human conduct as social creatures politico as Aristotle put it f) Practical reasonableness essentially the capacity to shape ones conduct and attitudes according to some intelligent and reasonable thought process. g) Religion which is not limited to although it clearly includes religion in the formal sense of faith and practices centered upon some sense of the divine. The reference here is to a sense of the responsibility of human beings to some greater order than that of their own individuality.

There are then nine intermediate principles for the treatment of these basic goods (principles which Finnis labels "the basic requirements of practical reasonableness"): - adopting a coherent plan of life - having no arbitrary preferences among values - having no arbitrary preferences among persons - maintaining a certain detachment from the specific and limited projects one undertakes - Not abandoning one's commitments lightly - Not wasting one's opportunities by using inefficient methods - not choosing to do something which of itself does nothing but damage or impede the realization of or participation in one or more of the basic goods - fostering the common good of one's community - Act in accordance with one's conscience Finnis's approach is thus teleological, but not in the way in which some natural theories are - there is no single human (or superhuman) ideal towards which everyone must aspire. The prescription is rather more general: "In voluntarily acting for human goods and avoiding what is opposed to them, one ought to choose and otherwise will those and only those possibilities whose willing is compatible with integral human fulfillment." Finnis holds the list of basic goods and the principles of practical reasonableness to be "self-evident," but by that he does not mean that they are obvious or intuitive or that all reasonable people will immediately assent. "Self-evidence" means primarily that the truths in question are not derived from any more fundamental truth; they are "grasped by intelligent reflection on data presented by experience," supported indirectly by speculative and dialectical arguments. b. Criticism Finnis's moral theory has been subject to a number of criticisms, representing a variety of alternative views One line of criticism, or at least questioning, is whether the combination of "basic human goods" and "basic requirements of practical reasonableness" are sufficient to come up with answers (and to come up with the right answers) to the important moral questions we face. From critics who offer alternative readings to the natural law tradition generally, or Aquinas's views in particular, the challenge regarding the adequacy of Finnis's approach is often connected with claims about its exegetical accuracy. In terms discussed earlier, the exegetical question is whether Aquinas is
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best understood as constructing a teleological view based directly on a view of human nature, or is best understood as offering a kind of "virtue ethics" - that there are certain goods basic to human flourishing, that we know or discover by using reason, and whose connection to human nature is (more) indirect. The sufficiency criticism is that we can find the answers to the difficult moral questions only once we have a full-fledged teleology with an ordered hierarchy of goods, rather than Finnis's list of equally-basic goods. Steven Smith has suggested that Finnis's approach to "the basic goods" reflect a too-great divide between the idea of "the good" and actual persons' desires and experiences. Smith notes not only the absence of "pleasure" as a "basic good," a good sought for its own sake, but also the strangely non-empirical status of claims like the following: "homosexual conduct (and indeed all extra-marital sexual gratification) is radically incapable of participating in, actualizing, the common good of friendship." By non-empirical status, Smith means that, in the context of Finnis's writings, it seems clear that Finnis would not consider the claim about homosexual conduct to be rebutted by testimony from homosexual couples claiming that their intimate conduct is a way of maintaining, expressing, and strengthening friendship. However, Smith argues, as the gap grows between "being a good" and "being experienced as a good," the potential for disconnection grows between academic morality and our actual moral concerns.

4.1.2. Legal Theory

Law plays a role within Finnis's moral theory, in that there are certain common goods that are best obtained through the specific kind of social coordination that law offers, and there is a sense in which participation in the community and in the common good of building a (political) community is an integral part of living a good life. Finnis also discusses legal theory in the narrower sense of the term. In analyzing the concept of law, he agrees with the general approach of H.L.A. Hart: that one should look at "law" (or "legal system") in its fullest or highest form, rather than in some lowest common denominator of all systems we might consider "legal"; and that such an approach must incorporate the perspective of participants. However, Finnis narrows and strengthens Hart's "internal perspective": it is "the viewpoint of those who not only appeal to practical reasonableness but also are practically reasonable." According to Finnis, one must select the "internal viewpoint" according to the idea of "central case" (the concept in its fullest sense), and that this will direct one away from a morallyneutral perspective: "If there is a point of view in which legal obligation is treated as at least presumptively a moral obligation ..., a viewpoint in which the establishment and maintenance of legal as distinct from discretionary or statically customary order is regarded as a moral ideal if not a compelling demand of justice, then such viewpoint will constitute the central case of the legal viewpoint." This may seem a minor modification, but it is one sufficient to move a theorist across the border, from legal positivism (law conceptually separated from morality) to natural law theory (moral evaluation central to understanding law).

5. FINNIS ON INJUSTICE Finnis identifies four types of injustice in law. First, according to Finnis, the main responsibility of the ruler is to further the common good. A ruler's exercise of power is radically defective if a ruler exploits his opportunities by making stipulations intended by him not for the common good but for his own or his friends' advantage, or out of malice against some person or group. Secondly, except in "emergency" circumstances in which the law (even the constitution) should be bypassed, an office-holder who acts beyond his authority is an abuse of power and an injustice to those treated as subject to it. Thirdly, the exercise of authority in conformity with the Rule of Law is for the common good. Therefore, the exercise of power otherwise than according to manner and form is an abuse and an injustice unless those involved consent, or ought to consent, to an accelerated procedure. Fourthly, the stipulated may be distributive unjust by appropriating some benefit to a class not reasonably entitled to it, while denying it to other persons; or by imposing on some a burden from which others are, on no just criterion, exempt. 6. CONCLUSION In my conclusion part I want to say Finnis idea of natural law is really interesting. His idea about general good where he says a general good may be derived from particular experience or appreciations of good which is not say that what people in fact want they always ought to have is such an pro society and in people welfare idea. But on the matter of selection of basic goods I am also somewhat disagree that it not possible to select any basic goods without given priority to any other goods, although he has given some test of practice reasonable in order to selection of basic goods.

7. Bibliography
Finnis, John M., Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) Stephen Buckle, "Natural Law", in Peter Singer (ed.), a Companion to Ethics. Blackwell Publishers, 1997, chapter 13, p. 171. Finnis, John, ed., Natural Law, two volumes (New York: New York University Pres, 1991) Penner.J.e, Maccoubrey and whites textbook on jurisprudence Clevaland state law review Finnis, John M., Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
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