John Mitchell Finnis (born 28 July 1940) is an Australian legal philosopher and jurist specializing in jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. He is an original interpreter of Aristotle and Aquinas, and counts Germain Grisez as a major influence and collaborator.Among others, Objectivity and Content in Ethics, in Reason in Action. He has made contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy.
Finnis was Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1989 to 2010, where he is now Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy Emeritus. He is also the Biolchini Family Professor of Law, emeritus, at Notre Dame Law School and a permanent senior distinguished research fellow at Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. He acted as adviser to several Australian State governments, especially Queensland and Western Australia, mostly on the States' relations with the federal Government and with the United Kingdom.
His practice at the English Bar saw him in cases in the High Court and in the Court of Appeal. He is a member of Gray's Inn. He was appointed an honorary Queen's Counsel in 2017. In the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours for Australia, Finnis was appointed a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia, the country's highest civilian honour, for his eminent service as a jurist and legal scholar. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to legal scholarship.
He has supervised several doctoral students including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Susan Kenny of the Federal Court of Australia, Robert P. George of Princeton University, and John Keown of Georgetown University. In 2013 George and Keown summarised some of Finnis's media work as "He has, for example, debated embryo research with Mary Warnock on BBC's Newsnight and with Jonathan Glover in the Channel 4 Debate; discussed euthanasia with a leading Dutch euthanasiast on the same channel's After Dark, and written on eugenic abortion in The Sunday Telegraph".
Early life and education
Finnis was educated at St Peter's College, Adelaide, and the University of Adelaide, where he was a member of St Mark's College. He obtained his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree there in 1961. In 1962, Finnis won a Rhodes scholarship to University College, Oxford, in where he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1965 with a thesis on the concept of judicial power, with reference to Australian federal constitutional law. Also in 1962, Finnis converted to Roman Catholicism.
Finnis is a friend of Aung San Suu Kyi, also an Oxford graduate, and, in 1989, nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize. Aung San Suu Kyi won the prize but did not receive it until June 2012, when she recalled how her late husband, Michael Aris, had visited her under house arrest and brought her the news "that a friend, John Finnis" had nominated her for the prize.
Publications
Finnis is an author of several philosophical works. His best known work is Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980, 2011), a seminal contribution to the philosophy of law and a restatement of natural law doctrine. For Finnis there are eight basic goods; life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability of friendship, practical reasonableness, religion and marriage. His Fundamentals of Ethics collect six Carroll Lectures Finnis delivered at Georgetown University in 1982. He has published five collections of essays: Reason in Action, Intention and Identity, Human Rights and Common Good, Philosophy of Law, Religion and Public Reasons. Below is a complete list of his publications.
Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980; 2nd ed., 2011. . Fundamentals of Ethics, Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1983. . Nuclear Deterrence, Morality, and Realism, with J. M. Boyle Jr. and Germain Grisez, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. . Natural Law, 2 vols (as editor), New York: New York University Press, 1991. and . Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision and Truth, Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1991. . Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. . The Collected Essays of John Finnis, 5 vols, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. .
Selected contributions
Introduction
A unifying theme running through Finnis' writings is the importance he attributes to human freedom, as the ability to make decisions about the kind of life one wants to live. Such decisions involve choices among incommensurable basic goods, which practical reason must order to achieve desired ends. A mature exercise of freedom would avoid intentionally infringing any of the basic goods, and would in different ways and to different extents, foster their realization. At the collective level, we find a similar logic guiding the making of Laws (Natural Law and Natural Rights) and political decisions. In view of this, the discussion has been largely structured around notions of intentionality, prudence, moral choices, and notions of fairness. The discussion on Religion appeals to wider considerations. This is followed by a brief discussion of Finnis's Philosophy of Law. The last section summarises the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of Finnis' philosophy, as captured in his Fundamentals of Ethics.
Morality
On the basis of experience of facts, possibilities and outcomes, one easily understands basic forms of human good as good for oneself and other human beings, and one's will is fundamentally one's response to this understanding. "Ought" does not follow from "is", since the first principles of practical reasoning are not deduced logically but are understood immediately by the intellect. Morality is a consequence of reflecting on the basic goods as a whole and their implications for human flourishing.Essay 1987a Finnis dismisses David Hume's identification of morality as a sentiment of sympathy leading to approbation or disapprobation, by noting that Hume also expected such sentiments to be recognised and agreed to by others. Thus, Hume's morality is based on reasonableness rather than sympathy, notwithstanding "Hume's formal and vigorous protestations to the contrary".Reason, Universality and Moral Thought in Reason in Action Finnis identifies reasonableness with the disinterested and impartial perspective which seeks to understand what is best for everyone at a certain point in time. According to Finnis, Ludwig Wittgenstein "wavers on one of the central matters in issue in his meditations", since propositions of empirical fact are not necessarily true.Reason, Universality and Moral Thought, in Reason in Action Yet, Finnis defends the self-evidence of truth using formal logic by appealing to "retorsive arguments".Essays 1977a; 2005b)
Intention
Finnis' writings evidence a keen concern to protect the individual from abuse by the institution, by highlighting the preeminence of the individual's subjectivity.essay 2000a Thus, using Plato's dialogue of the Gorgias, Finnis argues (against Jürgen Habermas' discourse ethics) that silence is ethical and meaningful since it is a locus of reflection and inner deliberation.Essay 1999a He further argues (against extant UK Law) that the courts must distinguish direct intention from unintended side-effects, and cannot impute an intention based simply on foreseeability.Essay 1995a "Of course, causing death as an unintended side effect is often an injustice, but that wrong is relative to the circumstances whereas the commandment protecting at least innocent human beings is not"Address to an international conference held at Queens' College, Cambridge in the Summer of 2000, in Religion and Public Reasons, p. 340 The person who blows up a plane to receive the insurance money thereby killing the pilot, may not have intended to kill the pilot even if the pilot's death was foreseeable. On the other hand, Finnis charges with moral and legal responsibility anyone who consents to doing something conditionally on something else happening (preparatory intention) as in the UK policy on nuclear deterrence, which includes the possibility of targeting civil populations in the event of a nuclear attack on UK cities.Essay 1994a
Finnis argues that Veritatis Splendor requires the adoption by the moralist of the perspective of the acting person. The implication is that no act is intrinsically sinful, rather its sinfulness is a function of the acting person's intention, will or purposeEssay 2001a, with Germain Grisez and Joseph Boyle (in line with Aquinas' distinction between in genere naturae vs in genere moris). The traditional notion that means are intended in view of the end is thus rejected in favour of the distinction between intended ends (direct effect) and unintended side-effects (indirect effects). This explains, for example, why shooting out of a desire to kill the enemy is wrong whilst simply shooting to defend oneself is not. He further distinguishes between formal (intended) and material cooperation (side effects) in evil; voting for an amendment permitting abortion that has the effect of reducing the availability of abortion is not formal cooperation in the procurement of abortion, but may be material cooperation involving, for example, scandal to third parties.Essay 1999d Finnis departs in several ways from Anscombe's understanding of intention.essay 2009a
Prudence
Finnis notes that Aristotle's discussion of prudence (Phronesis) fails to offer ethical guidance because it is concerned with the selection of means and fails to specify what the ends are;Fundamentals of Ethics, p. 68 yet, Aquinas' solution of this problem has often been misinterpreted. Ends are the basic goods and prudence is concerned with deliberation both about them and about the means of achieving them, in both cases guided by practical reasoning.Sent. III d.33 q.2 a.3c Virtue is not simply the outcome of synderesis but it also requires an attraction towards the end and the selection of means. The choice of some basic goods may result in the detriment or even the suppression of others, provided that the latter is not intended.Prudence about Ends, in Reason in Action Contraception, abortion and euthanasia are wrong insofar as they involve direct choices against the basic good of life, which they ordinarily do.Essay 1993b
Against Leo Strauss and others, Finnis argues that it is wrongful to intentionally take innocent life even in extreme situations in which the very existence of society is at stake.essay 1990a Following Aristotle, Finnis gives great importance to the basic good of friendship in his own deliberation because it involves disinterested love, which goes beyond a mere sense of obligation towards others, and is thus an ideal foundation for morality (contra Philippa Foot); however, this ideal remains imperfect unless it extends to friendship with God as a universalising principle.Essay 1970a Finnis argues that eudamonia in Aquinas is the outcome of the harmonious development of all basic goods but that it cannot be achieved in this life (imperfect beautitude).essay 1984a
Moral choices