[10] Finnis is a friend of Aung San Suu Kyi, also an Oxford graduate, and, in 1989, nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize.
For Finnis there are eight basic goods; life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability of friendship, practical reasonableness, religion and marriage.
A unifying theme running through Finnis' writings is the importance he attributes to human freedom, as the ability to make decisions about the kind of life one wants to live.
According to Finnis, Ludwig Wittgenstein "wavers on one of the central matters in issue in his meditations", since propositions of empirical fact are not necessarily true.
Ends are the basic goods and prudence is concerned with deliberation both about them and about the means of achieving them, in both cases guided by practical reasoning.
[32] Against Leo Strauss and others, Finnis argues that it is wrongful to intentionally take innocent life even in extreme situations in which the very existence of society is at stake.
[33] Following Aristotle, Finnis gives great importance to the basic good of friendship in his own deliberation because it involves disinterested love, which goes beyond a mere sense of obligation towards others, and is thus an ideal foundation for morality (contra Philippa Foot); however, this ideal remains imperfect unless it extends to friendship with God as a universalising principle.
[34] Finnis argues that eudamonia in Aquinas is the outcome of the harmonious development of all basic goods but that it cannot be achieved in this life (imperfect beautitude).
Any attempt to justify Socrates's choice through looking at foreseeable consequences (consequentialism), or by commensurating good with bad (utilitarianism), or by comparing values with 'disvalues' (proportionalism), fail, as they would all conclude that two murders is worse than one.
[36] Finnis notes that Aquinas never sought to resolve moral problems on proportionalist arguments such as the notion of "choosing the lesser evil";[37] yet, Kant in his 'casuistical questions' falls into both intuitinism and consequentialism "like nothing so much as late twentieth-century academic ethics".
[38] Fairness does not involve rational commensuration of goods vs bads; rather it is guided by the Golden Rule through commensuration of alternative options based on "one's own differentiated feelings toward various goods and bads as concretely remembered, experienced, or imagined" in view of integral human fulfilment (cf, the Aristotelian mature person of reasonable character).
[36] Rival interpretations of the Law can be compared on two dimensions: the fit with the legal materials (e.g., precedent) and moral soundness.
Friedrich Nietzsche's rejection of truth ‘by way of experiment’ speaks against the seriousness of his tenets, whilst Karl Marx's refusal to countenance questions about ultimate origins led to “the fantasy of self-creation”.
In ideal epistemic conditions (absent self-interest and passions), there would be broad consensus on matters of right and wrong, which supports the appeal to a higher ordering principle (God).
John Dewey's conflation of knowledge with practical control undermines “human rights which had to be insisted on in the aftermath of Nazism and the like”.
[42] Religion deserves constitutional protection and should be critically analysed by the courts for its soundness with general principles of natural reason.
[42] Rawls’ thesis could not stand against certain versions of Islam that would remove religious freedom (NB in n. 21 Finnis argues that Aquinas’ support for coercion against heretics was inherently unsound).
notions of rights and analogical reasoning), and in Part Four he addresses the legal challenges posed by revolutions and the possibility of voting for unjust laws.
Finnis rejects the following as valid accounts of legal practical reasoning: the Economic Analysis of the Law, Game Theory, the Co-ordination problem, Kant's rationality, and John Rawls' original position.
[52] Against H. L. A. Hart, Finnis rejects "survival" as a central feature of the Law: "human rationality can also reflect that the arbitrariness involved in unrestricted self-preference is itself a deviation from 'rationality'...".
[56] Hart's internal point of view only makes sense as a method in social science if it presupposes the understanding of the basic goods.
[57] Patrick Devlin's "positive morality" cannot serve as a foundation for the Law because it is simply a set of opinions held by a group of people, lacking critical reflexivity.
[58] Max Weber dismissed natural law because he refused to accept the objectivity of values, that is, their accessibility to the intellect[59] (as did Hart[57]).
Finnis provides an account of positive law according to Aristotle and Aquinas,[60] and engages in a sharp critique of postmodernism[61] and critical legal studies[62] as failing on their own terms.
Finnis argues that the state should deter public approval of homosexual behaviour while refusing to persecute individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation, basing this position not on the claim that homosexual sex is unnatural but on the idea that it cannot involve the union of procreation and emotional commitment that heterosexual sex can, and is therefore an assault on heterosexual union.
...The plain fact is that those who propound 'gay' ideology have no principled moral case to offer against (prudent and moderate) promiscuity, indeed the getting of orgasmic sexual pleasure in whatever friendly touch or welcoming orifice (human or otherwise) one may opportunely find it.
Sullivan believes that such a conservative position is vulnerable to criticism on its own terms, since the stability of existing families is better served by the acceptance of those homosexuals who are part of them.