Does the New Natural Law Presuppose a Platonic Concept of the Good?

New natural law (NNL) is an approach in contemporary normative and applied ethics, legal and political philosophy and moral theology that is closely associated with the work of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen. NNL arose in the second half of the 20th century as a result of a critical revision of the neo-scholastic natural law, as well as an attempt to reconcile Thomism with contemporary analytical philosophy. NNL is based on the idea that there are a number of basic goods that are valuable to all people, such as life, friendship, knowledge, beauty, love, practical reason, etc. NNL theorists further argue that all people have natural rights to have these goods in their lives free from targeted harm. Some more orthodox Thomists criticize NNL on the grounds that such a commitment to respect the goods in the lives of all people implicitly relies on a Platonic concept of the good, which gives these goods an ontological status independent of their actualization in a particular life. While some NNL theorists do accept Platonic conceptions of the good, there are alternative ways of justifying such a duty by appeal to more “subjective” notions. In this case, the duty of respect for the goods in someone else’s life will be included in the conditions for the actualization of goods in one’s own life. Four arguments of this kind can be proposed, referring to four different goods: friendship, justice, harmony with oneself and practical reason.