The concept of telos in natural law provides the strongest basis for ethical decision making. Discuss.

Telos is normative only through an account of flourishing

Aquinas does not simply infer that whatever occurs in nature is morally required. Telos concerns the fulfilment proper to a rational creature: practical reason apprehends goods such as life, knowledge and sociability, then orders action towards beatitude. This is stronger than preference-based decision-making because it can criticise desires that damage the agent or community. It also unifies choices that otherwise look unrelated; truth-telling, education and just institutions can all serve shared human goods. However, the move from inclination to obligation remains contestable. Evolutionary accounts can explain why humans seek survival and reproduction without proving that every expression of those tendencies is morally binding. Moreover, people disagree about whether flourishing requires a fixed natural function or permits diverse life projects. Finnis strengthens natural law by presenting basic goods as irreducible reasons for action rather than conclusions drawn mechanically from biology, but this also shows that reason's recognition of goods, not telos by itself, supplies the normativity. Telos is therefore a strong basis in the sense of an organising vision of flourishing; it is not the strongest stand-alone decision procedure, because identifying and proportionately ordering goods requires further rational judgement.