Should we follow nature?
On the axis: Humanity's place in nature · the natural order
Is nature a wise order to imitate and respect, or a blind power that crushes and starves with no regard for the good? Does calling something natural tell us anything at all about its worth?
Justification
Stoic morality is universalist: there is a natural law, the expression of the single , binding on all rational beings everywhere. Good and evil depend neither on convention nor on cities: to live according to nature is to live according to this reason common to all humankind.
Cicero, On the Republic, book III · Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 4
Justification
The principle of utility serves as a universal criterion of the good, the same for all men and all ages: Mill does not relativise morality to cultures. The good is an objective fact, happiness, measurable by its effects, which ranks him on the side of a naturalistic rather than relativism.
Utilitarianism, ch. 2 and 4 (the greatest happiness principle as a universal criterion)
Anchors: the Stoics · Mill
leads to: Status of norms (metaethics) (Found, imposed, or made?)