It would be much easier to agree upon the answers if only people would take the questions seriously.

Not long ago, at the reception following a talk I had attended about the revival of classical architecture, I met a friendly and intelligent fellow who described himself as liberal, recognized that he was in largely conservative company, and said he was glad to chat because didn’t understand why all his liberal friends were such relativists.  I thought that was promising.

You won’t be surprised that the conversation turned to abortion.   You won’t be surprise that he was pro.  But he was intrigued to hear that once upon a time I had been pro-abortion too.  What had changed my mind? he asked.

I told him there had been a lot of reasons, but the first was the arbitrariness of claiming that the child is one kind of thing one minute after leaving the womb and another kind of thing one minute before.  We have rights because of the sort of being that we are.  So at what point did a human individual come into being?  Pushing the threshold back, I told him that I hadn’t been able to find a truly fundamental change until I hit conception.  Before that there isn’t a human individual, only an egg and a sperm.  After that, there is.

He made it rather difficult to get the argument out.  The first objection came right at the beginning, when I said we have rights because of what we are.  He said he didn’t want to discuss such metaphysical questions as what we are.  I suggested that indecision is a form of decision – that by trying not to think about metaphysics we merely trap ourselves in bad metaphysics that we don’t know we believe.  This point made no impression on him.  He was a relativist, like his friends, but didn’t realize it.

I asked, “But don’t you find it arbitrary to say the child has rights a minute after birth but not a minute before?”  He answered, “You have to draw the line somewhere.”

Tomorrow:  Make It Have Consequences

You saying playing fair is a natural law.  But some people don't play fair.

I haven't argued that people always obey these precepts.  I've only argued that they know them.

If they don't always obey them, then how do you know that they know them?

Because even when they don't obey them, they betray the telltale signs of guilty knowledge.  For example, they make excuses.  They try to convince everyone that they are playing fair and the others aren't.

But if there are things we "can't not know," then how is it even possible to make excuses?

People make excuses by using what they can't not know.  All folk know that you ought to return a favor, so to rationalize not returning one they pretend either that they did return it or that it wasn't a favor.  All folk know the wrong of deliberately taking innocent human life, so in order to rationalize murder they play games with the meaning of "deliberate," "innocent," "human," or "life."  Excuses are not evidence that people don't know the natural law, but that they do.

What about people who really don't know what they "can't not know?"

How do you know they don't know it?

Because they say they don't.

Like relativists, thieves, and abortionists?

Well, yes.

I don't believe them.

So when someone denies that he knows the natural law, your only answer is "That just proves you're in denial."

Not at all.  Everyone knows that it's wrong to cheat.  If someone tells me that he has no such knowledge, it's true that I don't believe him.  But I don't confuse denying it with "being in denial."  For evidence that he really is in denial, I look elsewhere.  For example, see how quickly he complains of injustice when someone tries to cheat him.

Here's someone who doesn't know what he "can't not know":  The cannibal.  He doesn't know that he shouldn't murder.

It is most unlikely that he doesn't know the wrong of deliberately taking innocent human life.  What is much more likely is that he doesn't think the people in the other tribe are human.

What good is it to honor human life if you don't know who is human?

I didn't say he doesn't know that the people in the other tribe are human.  I said he doesn't think that they are.  Deep down, even the cannibal knows better.  Otherwise, why does he perform elaborate expiatory rituals before he takes their lives?

Suppose you're right, and people do know the moral basics.  Then why is it necessary to remind them?

Are you asking why moral education is necessary?  All the forms of training from parental discipline on up?

Yes.  If we already know what moral education has to tell us, then what purpose does it serve?

Moral education serves at least five purposes.  It reinforces what we know, because the mere fact that we know something is wrong is not enough to keep us from doing it.  It elicits what we know, because we know many things without noticing that we know them.  It guards what we know, because although deep conscience cannot err, surface conscience can err in all too many ways.  It builds upon what we know, because only the most general and basic matters of right and wrong are known to us immediately, and second knowledge must be added to first.  Finally, it confronts us about what we know, because sometimes we need to be told "You know better."

 A  Dialogue on Natural Law, Part 4 

In one of the chapters of his fine book The First Grace, Russell Hittinger points out that although the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court are badly divided about the meaning of the First Amendment religion clauses, they strongly agree about what sort of thing religion is, and they share the same general attitude toward it.  Religion, in their view, is a social phenomenon which is divisive, coercive, and non-rational, and which can mean whatever an individual wants it to mean.  Their attitude toward this terrible thing is just what you would expect:  Extremely skeptical, and often outright hostile.  Wouldn’t you be hostile toward it if you thought that is what it is?

So much for the unity of faith and reason.

Hittinger doesn’t say so, but the majority of the Court uses the term “morality” in the same way.  For example, the notion that there might be reasons behind the ancient civilizational consensus about the nature of marriage is ignored out of existence.  Any attempt to make rational distinctions in such an area is declared to be a baseless prejudice, an irrational “animus,” a project of hatred.

So much for centuries of ethical philosophy.

The irony of the Court’s hostility toward “morality” is that the Court does, in fact, have moral views, and relies on them constantly.  It gives voice to them every time it uses ethically charged words like “ought” and “good” and “should,” without which no case could be decided.  The libel about morality being baseless prejudice is hurled only against those who do have rational grounds for moral judgments.

Tomorrow:  A Dialogue on Natural Law, Part 3 of 10

Why do you call anything the natural purpose of anything?

Why do we call steering the purpose of your car's steering wheel?  Because in the first place it does steer the car, and in the second place that fact is necessary to the explanation of why the car has one.

Yes, but you're talking about human nature, not a car.

Yes, but we can identify purpose in the same way in human nature.  New life is the chief purpose of our sexual powers, because in the first place they do cause new life, and in the second place that fact is necessary to the explanation of why we have them.

But you're assuming that our nature has a design just like a car has a design.

I'm not assuming anything.  A forensic pathologist concludes that the wounds on the victim's body were intended.  An archaeologist concludes that the object he has dug up is an artifact.  An intelligence analyst concludes that the radio blips he is picking up express a coded message.  Watson concludes that the symbols cut into the bark of the tree were made by Holmes to point out the trail.  In each case, the investigator finds that an intelligent cause is the most reasonable inference from the pattern of the evidence.

Well, I'm not a forensic pathologist.  But that leads me to another problem.  You say that natural law expresses the common moral sense of plain people, but plain people don't even understand these theories.

Saying that plain people don't know the natural law because they don't understand natural law theory is like saying that they don't know bodies fall because they don't understand the relativistic theory of gravitation.  The phenomenon is one thing; the theory which describes and explains it is another.

So when you say plain people know the natural law, what exactly do you mean?

That there are moral basics they can't not know, like "Play fair," "Don't murder," and "Take care of your family."  I don't mean that they know theoretical propositions like "There are moral basics we can't not know" or that they could explain to you about deep conscience and design inferences.

What good are the theoretical propositions, then?

They guard us from certain confusions, help out in a few difficult cases, and guide moral educators.  And they help to answer people like you, who don't think folk do have real knowledge of the basics of right and wrong.

But they don't.  There aren't any moral basics that everyone knows.

Of course there are.  I just mentioned three of them:  "Play fair," "Don't murder," and "Take care of your family."

Those are just platitudes.  Everyone has his own idea of "playing fair."

Does he?  Try making up your own idea of what's fair -- say, "giving the greatest rewards to the laziest workers" -- and see how seriously people take you.  I mean outside of government.

A Dialogue on Natural Law, Part 3

At a conference several weeks ago, a federal judge told me that some of the defendants in his court weep -- not when they hear their sentence, which would not be surprising, but when they hear the pre-sentence report.

You may be tempted to sneer.  Some of these men would be considered sociopaths.  Some of their records are very long.  Most will return to their crimes.  They were not shedding tears when they did evil.  Doubtless they deserve their punishments.

Yet hearing the tale of their lives and deeds overcomes them with grief.

They are closer to the kingdom of heaven than the dry-eyed promoters and beneficiaries of the culture of death – the judges, educators, lawmakers, bureaucrats, pill-makers, physicians, insurance company executives, and all the rest.

It was a true saying that many who are first shall be last, and the last first.

Tomorrow:  A Dialogue on Natural Law, Part 2 of 10