Is Society-Centered Moral Theory a Contemporary Version of Natural Law Theory?

摘要

David Braybrooke argues that the core of the natural law theory of Thomas nAquinas survived in the work of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Rousseau. Much to my nsurprise, Braybrooke argues as well that David Copp’s society-centered moral theory is na secular version of this same natural law theory. Braybrooke makes a good case that nthere is an important idea about morality that is shared by the great philosophers in his ngroup and that this idea is also found in Copp’s work. The idea is captured by the Func-ntionalist Thesis, the thesis that moral propositions are made true by facts about what, ngiven the nature of human beings and their circumstances, enables people to live to-ngether in thriving communities. I argue that Copp can accept Braybrooke’s suggestion nand use it to improve his formulation of the basic idea of the society-centered theory.