ABSTRACT
The riddle posed by Riddell in his review of Finnis – ‘if we reject [or, we could add, even question] any notion of an entity beyond human existence, we are left on our own to decide whether any such thing as moral obligation exists and, if we think it does, where it comes from’ – is a key question, perhaps the key question dominating not just the jurisprudence of Finnis, but jurisprudence in its entirety. The contrasting viewpoints offered by natural law and positivist theories each in their way reflect this question. But intimately, reflexively tied to the enquiry concerning the origin of the moral life, the origin of moral obligation, is that concerning the meaning(s) we ascribe to ‘human nature’. For every hypothesis concerning the origin of the moral life predicates a conception of the key ingredients comprising human nature; conversely, each vision of human nature will participate in the production of a conception of the moral life and of moral obligation.
