Can Nature Serve as a Moral Guide?
by Leon R. Kass , Bryan G. Norton , Strachan Donnelley However declasse, I have never quite given up the hope that nature might put in a reappearance in ethics. Unfortunately, it is hard to think of a once-robust tradition – that of natural law or naturalism – that is much more down at the heel. Even pragmatism and stoicism, also long pronounced dead, have staged a recent comeback. Is there any hope that nature can once again serve as a moral guide? The principal modern obstacle has been, most broadly, the belief that given the human capacity to intervene in and often set aside what was once taken to be fixed and “natural,” nature is much too malleable a concept in practice and too opaque in theory to tell us much of any value. The narrower obstacle, much like a hex, has been the intimidating force of the “naturalistic fallacy,” the argument that it is impossible to deduce an “ought” from an “is.” Thus the standard argument: the fact that murder leaves people dead does not justify conc
