“Some today argue that respect for freedom of the individual makes it wrong to seek truth, including the truth about what is good.  In some circles to speak of truth is seen as controversial or divisive, and consequently best kept in the private sphere.  And in truth’s place -- or better said its absence -- an idea has spread which, in giving value to everything indiscriminately, claims to assure freedom and to liberate conscience.  This we call relativism. …

“Dear friends, truth is not an imposition. Nor is it simply a set of rules.  It is a discovery of the One who never fails us; the One whom we can always trust.  In seeking truth we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ.  That is why authentic freedom is not an opting out.  It is an opting in; nothing less than letting go of self and allowing oneself to be drawn into Christ’s very being for others.”

-- Benedict XVI, 2008

There is no such thing as liberty in general; there are only specific liberties.  Fine-sounding principles like “The greatest possible liberty compatible with equal liberty for others” settle nothing, because there is more than one possible arrangement of equal so-called liberties.  So one must bite the bullet and decide which liberties are real liberties in the sense of belonging to our true good.  Every claim of liberty P entails denial of liberty Q.

If the slaveholder has a right to own slaves, then his slaves have no right to be free; if they have a right to be free; then he has no right to own slaves.

If a mother has a right to an abortion, then her baby has no right to live; if her baby has a right to live, then his mother has no right to an abortion.

If the registrar of marriages has a right to uphold natural law, then two persons in an unnatural association do not have a right to be called married; if they have the right to be called married, then he does not have to right to uphold natural law.

So those who try to protect themselves by appealing to liberty without appealing to natural law will find their appeal to liberty empty.  It is terribly easy to establish tyranny (by the standards of natural law) in the very name of liberty (by the standards of revolt against natural law).  And that is how it is happening.

This concludes the Monday correspondence which began on August 31 and continued on September 7.

Question:

Thanks again for your response - this has been a remarkably helpful explanation of the content of natural law.  I have been reading several treatments of natural law over the past few months and not quite “got it,” I think largely because I was unclear about what exactly the content of natural law is.  If natural law is simply identical to Scripture, why is it necessary?  If it is not, how can we know whether a purported law is genuinely part of the natural law? There seems to me a remarkable lack of clarity in the literature on these questions.  Your explanation deals with these considerations, and it does not even fall foul of my delicate protestant sensibilities about laying down moral obligations outside Scripture!

However, several of the natural law treatments I have read have included things as part of natural law which to my mind do not fit easily within the subject matter of the Ten Commandments.  For example, Samuel Pufendorf in The Whole Duty of Man wrote that we have a natural duty to “regulate the dispositions of our minds, in reducing and conforming them to the dictates of right reason,” and held that "widely accepted maxims of political morality" are part of the natural law, for example that those who exercise public power should be held accountable for the way they exercise that power, although the detail will vary depending on circumstances.

While all this seems valid, useful, and wise, it's not easy to see how it fits with the Ten Commandments, even on a wide reading of them.  Other examples could be given.  Do you consider maxims like Pufendorf's to be a part of the natural law?

Reply:

Before answering your question let me clear up another point.  Although the Decalogue is a good summary of the natural law, considering what the Decalogue commands is not the method of natural law.  The method of natural law in itself is not to reflect on revelation, but simply to reflect on the natural goods in the light of natural reason.

Our natural goods are those things which pertain to our well-being, those things which are necessary to the fulfillment of beings of our kind, to the proper unfolding of our potentialities.  These have three dimensions.  Some things are good for us simply because they fulfill the inbuilt purposes we share with all organized beings or “substances,” for example our inclinations toward preservation.  Other things are good for us because they fulfill the inbuilt purposes we share with other animals.  These go beyond preservation; for example, they include our inclinations toward procreation and the raising of young.  Still other things are good for us because they fulfill the inbuilt purposes we have as rational creatures.  These have to do with seeking and knowing the truth in partnership with others, especially the truth about God.

Of course, if the natural law thinker is a Christian, he will reflect on both the natural goods and revelation, because he believes that natural law and divine law come from the same God and co-illuminate each other.  So I think you would like me to explain two different things.  One is how a principle like the responsibility of rulers to those whom they rule can be known even apart from revelation, by natural reason alone; the other is how the same principle is implied by revelation itself.  So let me try to do so.

As to the natural goods:  Classical natural law thinkers would begin by observing that by nature we humans are social and political beings.  To say that we are social beings is not to say that we have a mere instinct to get together, like cows.  Rather it means we cannot flourish except in society; we are beings of such a kind that the good life is not good unless we can share it with others.  To say that we are political beings is not to say that we are born into subjection or anything like that.  Rather it means that we cannot flourish except under institutions of public justice, such as law and adjudication.  These too are a matter of shared pursuit, for we cooperate is in seeking the common good.  To put it another way, it is not good for humans to be ruled like slaves; when they have the moral capacity to take part in the organization of the community, they should be allowed to do so.  That cannot always be accomplished, because it requires a certain level of virtue and public responsibility on the part of the citizens.  But when it can be done, it ought to.

As to revelation:  Theologians would begin by observing that Scripture embraces the same view of human beings, for God does not jerk us around; he invites us into His own wisdom.  Even in the midst of his indictment of Israel for its sins in the book of the prophet Isaiah, He says “Come, let us reason together.”  Similarly, the book of Wisdom -- which is not part of the Protestant Bible but which Protestants such as yourself have often held in high regard -- declares that God left man in the hands of his own counsel, not meaning that man should defy God’s laws, but that he should understand them and participate in them voluntarily.  Thomas Aquinas observes that the form of government established under Moses included a monarchical element, in that one person presided, but also an aristocratic element, in that men of wisdom assisted, and a democratic element, in that these men of wisdom were chosen both by and from the people.  If you want to connect all this with the Decalogue, one place to start is the prohibition of bearing false witness, which clearly presupposes institutions of public justice.  The rest can be worked out by the exercise of prudence.  (I don’t say that’s easy!)

One more thing:  I think you are right that Pufendorf’s account is rather puzzling, but Pufendorf isn’t a representative of the classical natural law tradition.  Actually he represents the early modern revisionists who broke off from that tradition.  Although they tried to hold onto some of its elements, they rejected or distorted others, and they tried to hold everything together with nonsense about a so-called state of nature and a so-called social contract.  This is a long story.  It’s enough to say here that not everyone who says “natural law” holds the same view of how natural law works.

Three vices may be observed concerning difficult things:  Making them too easy, making them unnecessarily obscure -- and making them both at once.

Things that really are easy should be easily presented.  However, those who are in a hurry, or who do not want to think much, want everything to be easy, and so they turn to oversimplifications.  In the appendix to his 1987 book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, E.D. Hirsch listed 5,000 things which he said educated people ought to be able to should be converse about.  I don’t think it was the poor man’s intention – he criticized rote learning -- but the book inspired a movement to cram the 5,000 names and ideas down the throats of schoolchildren as though they would then be well-educated.

Things that really are obscure should be presented in a way which acknowledges their difficulty.  However, those who are proud of their knowledge and accomplishments puff themselves up by making the arcana of their disciplines seem more difficult than they have to be.  Often they use deliberately obscure language either to disguise what they mean, or to make it seem as though they are saying something when they are saying nothing.  They are simultaneously contemptuous and envious of those who do write clearly.

You would think these two vices would be mutually exclusive, but a peculiarity of our own intellectual culture is the development of ways to obfuscate and to oversimplify all at the same time.  A prime example is the application of quantitative techniques such as cost-benefit analysis to matters to which they are not applicable.  Methods like this baffle and impress the uninitiated because they take a long time to learn.  However, they enable the adepts to reach spurious conclusions about all sorts of things without having to do any real thinking.

Conversion

If conversations like those I reported last time are part of the teaching of philosophy, why shouldn’t they be part of philosophy?  Socrates, the ancestor of all philosophers, thought they were.  If we strip out the dialogue from his dialogues, boiling away the spiritual combat and leaving only a dusty residue of syllogisms, then we miss much of their point.  Figuring out what their point is requires a philosophical analysis of something we might have preferred not to consider a philosophical problem at all.  We find this to be true of some of the conversations in the New Testament as well, such as the dialogue between Christ and the woman at the well in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John.  On the surface it seems like a series of non sequiturs, but really it is a duel of feints, thrusts, and ripostes.

Such conversations are likely to be full of paradoxes.  For example, getting through to the denier will sometimes require a great deal more than presenting a sound argument to him.  But on the other hand, sometimes it may require presenting less.  The mere tender of arguments to someone who is determined to remain self-deceived is more likely to provoke him to cleverness than to stir him to wisdom.  Just because he is still talking, we may think we are getting somewhere, but he is merely generating objections for their own sake.  For him, the conversation is not so much a means of attaining truth as a sophisticated means of avoiding it.

One thing this suggests is that what might be called the purely professional way of doing philosophy is a mistake.  By the professional way, I mean the attitude which separates the intellectual from the moral virtues, which separates what I am doing from what kind of person I am.  Philosophy is only accidentally a profession.  It is essentially a vocation.  Characteristic of any vocation is that in order to pursue it I must do more than acquire a certain set of abilities; I must try to become a certain kind of person.  If I do not practice the moral virtues, then I acquire an interest in justifying myself without being just.  This is a disincentive to discovering the truth.  So I must either try to be a better man, or stop pretending that I want to know the truth.

The hypothesis of moral denial also underscores the importance to both sides -- both deniers and anti-deniers -- of reaching the young first.  Virtue has a reason for reaching them first because if they develop vicious dispositions, they will probably become deniers themselves.  But vice has a reason for reaching them first because it cannot have them thinking straight.  For the denier has an interest in converting others into deniers.  If he allowed the new generation to think straight, they might join his unmaskers.  His troubled conscience therefore defends itself against exposure by surrounding itself with a ring of recruits.

And what of my own conscience?  It is one thing to have such a conversation with a self-deceived student.  It is harder to have it with a self-deceived colleague.  More difficult still is to have it with a self-deceived public, where one must carry it out in sound bites.  The most difficult thing of all -- ah, that it were not -- is to have such a conversation with myself.

To know truth, I must be converted into truth.  I think this is what Socrates had in mind.  But alas, I resist.

Link to the beginning of this 14-part series