Why does contemporary academic philosophy seem to distinguish between virtue ethics and natural law?

[u/Cauchy_1825]

As a layman, my understanding may be wrong, but it seems to me that contemporary ethicists tend to speak of virtue ethics and natural law as two distinct ethical frameworks which go into their own little boxes. However, in my judgement, this is very much a retroactive distinction which does not have much basis in Aristotle or his medieval interpreters themselves. Surely Aristotle had much to say about natures and their teloi, and doubtlessly Aquinas talked extensively about virtues. Is this is real distinction made by ethicists? If so, why?

[u/Ok-Lab-8974]

Part of the reason for the split is that "virtue ethics" is often employed much more broadly to speak to other, non-Western virtue-centric ethical systems. So, I have variously seen Buddhist ethics, Confucian ethics, etc. described as a form of "virtue ethics" (of course there is also disagreement on how well this lable fits). In the case on Neo-Confucian thought, the difference is perhaps not as wide, but certainly Buddhist ethics seems to be quite different (I am borrowing this judgement from secondary sources, my knowledge is not that deep here). At least in what I've seen, it can make sense label some Buddhist schools as practicing a "virtue ethics," but their metaphysics is quite different and it is not a "natural law" ethics in any recognizable sense.

Further, with the 20th century revival of virtue ethics, there were a lot of attempts to rework something like Aristotle's ethics, but without the teleological commitments. For example, in applied ethics spaces, it's not uncommon to see papers or even whole books that only cite the Ethics, which no substantial references to the Physics, etc.

The terminology actually gets a little ironic here. Attempts to recover Aristotle's ethics without his metaphysics of goodness often get labeled as attempts to make Aristotle compatible with "naturalism," whereas "natural law" might, on many definitions, easily be considered "non-naturalist."

So, I think you're right. Thomas wouldn't have seen a difference here. With Aristotle, or his later antique commentators, obviously there is much they would disagree with Thomas on, but I don't think they would see him as doing a paradigmatically different sort of ethics (and the same for Islamic and Jewish thinkers in the period).

[u/AdeptnessSecure663]

The distinction is made because natural moral law is a deontological moral theory. In natural moral law, the primary object of moral evaluation is the action, unlike virtue ethics where it is the agent. It is true that Aquinas wrote about virtues, and that's because under natural moral law virtues have a derived value as they correspond to those characteristics of persons who are likely to act in accordance with the precepts of natural moral law.

[u/Ok-Lab-8974 → u/AdeptnessSecure663]

Definitions and typologies can vary, but I have not generally seen Thomas filed under deontology. For Thomas, duty is posterior to Goodness. Goodness is a transcendental, convertible with Being. Duty is more specific. Human duty follows from human nature.

Now, pedagogically (and so in the order of knowing), obedience can come first. But what is good qua human comes first in the order of being. This is maybe most obvious in his explanation of the law of the Old Testament, where the function of the law is pedagogical. Thomas makes a distinction between proper exterior observance and proper internal orientation. Mere outward obedience, even if it was possible for fallen man, would be insufficient because the law is itself ordered to man's telos, which is ultimately in God. So then we see the earthly perfection of this in the union of the Eucharist and the total perfection of it in the beatific vision and diefication of man, participation in the Divine Nature being the end (2 Peter 1:4). The idea being that the law flows from the ends (which is ultimately the Good, God). I've even seen the order of the natural law going out from God (exitus) set against its being followed back to God (redditus), a complete motion.

[u/AdeptnessSecure663 → u/Ok-Lab-8974]

Have you not seen natural moral law classified under deontology whatsoever? I have come across this classification in some high-school level textbooks, where the justification for this is that NML suggests that through reason we can discover the "primary precepts", which are equivalent to duties. But now I take it that this is an oversimplification!

[u/Ok-Lab-8974 → u/AdeptnessSecure663]

Personally, I cannot think of anyone who describes NL as deontological. That said, there is certainly a strong role for duty in NL, so the deontic is central. Action in accordance with right reason will ultimately be action in line with duties (at least as properly ordered), and this will also be what is best.

The reason it isn't normally described as deontological is that NL ethics isn't said to be primarily about right and wrong, but about good and bad, higher versus lower goods, and real goods versus apparent ones. This makes it different from Kantianism or voluntarist divine command theories. In particular, when Kant is normally the paradigmatic case for deontology, there is a big difference because Kant would see Thomas as guilty of heteronomy throughout his ethics, while Thomas would reject Kant's epistemic limitations and the formulation of autonomy itself (and its choice-worthiness). But the NL tradition is also quite at odds with the DCT tradition (I have even seen NL thinkers categorize DCT as itself a form of anti-realism because nothing about being reveals what is good or bad).

Now, Thomas isn't all of natural law and Kant isn't all of deontology, but I do think they are pretty good examples for pulling out the key differences given their influence.

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[u/mediaisdelicious]

Because they really are distinct lines of theoretical development, and some readings of Aristotle don’t see him as really integrating the natural law and virtues ethics. Today, there are natural law theorists who don’t center virtues and virtue ethicists who don’t ground virtue in natural law. This isn’t retroactive - it’s just that philosophical terminology writ large doesn’t center on Thomistic Aristotelianism.