A more serious objection is that our understanding of human goods and functions might just be cultural artifacts. After all, we do see nontrivial differences in mores and ethical beliefs between cultures. The response to this objection must be more subtle, because it does point to an important aspect of social life. Our recognition of human nature is mediated by our culture. It’s not simply that some parts of morality (the natural law part) are given directly by nature while some other unrelated parts (“mere” custom) are set by the culture. If it were that simple, natural lawyers wouldn’t have to care about the culture. Nor can we settle for the cultural relativism of many anthropologists, according to which there are certain universal tasks that any collection of humans must perform to survive multiple generations (this being the “natural” part) but that how these tasks are fulfilled (e.g. children raised by parents or by the tribe as a whole) are cultural/historical fabrications about which nothing else can be said, at least on the level of universal human nature. An advocate of natural law reads a thick account of human flourishing from the data of human nature, and not every arrangement that enables social survival will also be found to promote integral personal excellence.
I wish to avoid the error, common among natural law ethicists, of trying to prove too much at an overly abstract level. There’s no need to claim that my culture has a complete list of human goods or that it has a fully adequate understanding of any of them. In fact, I will be arguing later (in the final part of this series) we usually don’t understand the natural meanings of our acts in their full depth, and that this is an important part of the natural law understanding of the human condition. Nor is it true that humanity has never posited false goods. Liberalism itself could be said to be positing a new fundamental human good, one unrecognized as such by all past civilizations, namely personal autonomy–a sort of super-good that overrides all others. Since I reject this elevation of autonomy, I cannot argue in general that anything ever believed to be a human good must really be one.
How does one tell true goods from false ones. I believe that children are a true good and autonomy a false good, but how can I be sure of this? There are several clear indicators. First, there is the consensus of all mankind; every people except our own has always regarded descendants as a blessing, and everyone but the perverse West has regarded individualism as a social disease. Second, there is consistency with the great commandments. True human goods give us ways of loving God, self, and neighbor, and while it is always possible to pursue a genuine good illicitly, i.e. in a way incompatible with these loves, no genuine good involves rejecting the commandment by its very nature. Having children with one’s spouse is an expression of and opportunity for love of neighbor. Autonomy, on the other hand, involves by its very nature a rejection of God’s rightful sovereignty. Third, there is the consistency between goods. Since human nature is presumed to be intelligible, no true good should intrinsically contradict another one, although, again, accidents of circumstance may force us to choose between them. So, for example, a man must in practice often sacrifice many true goods for his children, but having children doesn’t intrinsically preclude any other good. Autonomy, on the other hand, intrinsically requires an at least partial rejection of the good of knowing the truth and the good of living in community. Both truth and community limit one’s ability to posit one’s own conception of the Good in complete independence of an objective order of being and of other people. Fourth, there is objectivity; as we have said, the point of natural goods is that they emancipate us from our own point of view. The claim of autonomous man to dictate all value from his own will makes it impossible for him to escape from himself, just as an emperor who conquered the whole world would have no way to visit a foreign country. Finally, there is the consideration of function: a true good involves the perfect activity of some natural human function. Begetting and raising children is the execution of many natural functions (functions that would otherwise have no natural meaning at all). Here the defender of autonomy might seem to have a leg to stand on. Surely the autonomous positing of meaning is the highest execution of our faculty of choice? In fact it is not. Conversion and martyrdom are the highest examples of free choice, and these are authentic but not autonomous. In them, a person freely affirms what is recognized as an objective supreme Good. All other rational choices do this same thing, if to a lesser degree. Positing a meaning of life as a naked act of will would be something much different–a perverse form of choice detached from the larger context of human goods. (In fact, most such attempts to define the good for oneself just involve delivering oneself over to subrational impulses. It could hardly be any other way. Man cannot really posit goods; he can only recognize them. If he discards these preexisting goods and looks inside himself for another principle of action, he will find nothing but his pre-rational cravings.)
From the above, one can see that there are rational criteria for distinguishing true from false natural goods. One can easily convince oneself that the traditionally recognized ones show all the marks of being genuine.
Throne and Altar 
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