The Value of Life: A Natural Law Account

The value of human life has a central importance in bioethics and in the Thomistic natural law tradition, but its meaning is often ambiguous. It can refer to the value of human life itself, the value of a person’s life, or the value of the person whose life it is. These are different kinds of value, but they are often overlooked or conflated in the literature. This article aims to clarify and develop natural law ethics by analyzing two goods associated with the value of life: well-being and dignity. It critiques the mainstream welfarist axiology that makes well-being the sole fundamental good, and it proposes an alternative axiology consisting of two intrinsic goods: well-being and dignity. It argues that this dual value theory is a better account of the value of life, the value of persons, the moral equality of human beings, and the metaphysics of goodness.