„Kritisches Naturrecht“ for Moral Theology? On Robert Deinhammer’s Moral Philosophy

Abstract

Despite years of lively international debate, natural law theory is considered to be ideologically suspect and outdated in German-speaking academia. Given this assumption, Robert Deinhammer’s proposal of a “kritisches Naturrecht” seems very interesting: he takes up the international debate on natural law and places the idea of criticism and fallibilism at the centre of a new and innovative approach to natural law theory. This article outlines and discusses the main features of Deinhammer’s moral philosophy. The idea of a new type of “fallibilistic essentialism” is evaluated positively. However, Deinhammer’s normative core principle of “non-contra-productivity” is critically examined. “Kritisches Naturrecht” ultimately represents a hybrid of consequentialism and natural law thinking. The consequentialist core principle should be abandoned in favour of a genuine theory of natural law ethics. The discussion of ‘critical’ variants of natural law thinking is highly recommended for moral theology.