The Underground Thomist
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So-Called AutonomyFriday, 08-15-2014Query: In a recent post you emphasized the slipperiness of the term “autonomy” and the duplicitous ways the state uses it. Do we have to use the language of personal autonomy in order to make the case for natural rights? Reply: I don’t think we have to use the language of autonomy in order to make rights claims, and I don’t think we should. Let me patch in some observations about natural rights from something else I wrote recently. Discussions of natural rights sometimes distinguish between objective and subjective rights. Even before we get to the term “autonomy,” that terminology is already somewhat misleading, because in a certain sense, every genuine right has both objective and subjective dimensions. My rights are objective in the sense that it is objectively right for me to have them, but they are subjective in the sense that they are mine, something that I, the subject, “have.” Usually, those who speak of objective and subjective natural rights are not really distinguishing between different kinds of rights, but between different theories of rights that may, respectively, be called classical and revisionist. Classical and revisionist theories disagree about where rights come from, about what rights one really has, and about how an individual's rights should be interpreted. The classical view holds that natural rights exist to safeguard the ability of all persons to do their duties and to have the liberty to direct their lives in such a way as to develop their human gifts. This theory understands the various gifts to exist not only for an individual's own good but also for the good of others, hence it sees the need to codify these natural rights as civil rights with appropriate legal sanctions to protect these rights against the potential tyranny of individuals, social groups, and the state. The human power to make free and responsible decisions within the limits of the natural law is thus cherished as a gift of God. But according to this view, not everything that one chooses is good just because one chooses it. There is no moral right to do evil. Classical thinkers view natural rights, natural duties, and the common good as strongly connected. Even the right to acquire private property exists for the sake of doing one's duties, with due respect for the common good, and can be limited by these considerations. Moreover, according to this theory, not only individuals but also certain forms of association, such as families and religious communites, have rights. Children have a natural right to parental care precisely because their natural well-being requires it; parents have a natural right to direct their children's education because otherwise they cannot fulfill their duty of care. In the revisionist view, however, the only real rights are individual rights. Rather than being correlative with duties that one has under the natural moral law, these rights are regarded as morally fundamental. Duties are envisioned as flowing from voluntary agreements, often including a social contract; individual rights, in turn, are viewed as arising from personal autonomy – there is that word again – in this case understood as self-ownership or self-rulership. In extreme cases, autonomy in this sense is identified with the sheer power to exercise one's own will. Revisionists commonly argue, for example, that because I own myself, I own my labor; because I own my labor, I own whatever property I have invested my labor in; and because I own my property, I may do whatever I wish with it. Many of the proponents of the revisionist view permit, or tend to permit, certain acts that the classical view regards as intrinsically evil. For example, some revisionists argue that because I own myself, I own my body; because I own my body, I may do whatever I want with it; because I may do whatever I want with it, I may abort an unborn child that is developing inside it. Thus, in the revisionist view it can be difficult to limit the claims made on the basis of natural rights, and it is unclear in some systems how, if at all, they are connected with duties. As all this shows, I think discussion of rights is clearer and more consistent if we don’t use the language of so-called autonomy than if we do.
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Desire of the Everlasting HillsThursday, 08-14-2014 If you haven’t viewed the one-hour movie Desire of the Everlasting Hills, click on the link and do it. I have never endorsed a film before; it isn’t the sort of thing I do. But if you do watch, you will know why I am doing so now. It awes me to contemplate the courage of Dan, Rilene, and Paul, the three people whose lives are portrayed, in telling their stories of longing, seeking, confusion, bewilderment, and grace in connection with same-sex desire. I know one of these good people, and am privileged to call him my friend. But I find myself wanting to give all three of them epithets, like “the lionhearted.” The film takes for its epigraph the remark of Benedict XVI, “Look at the face of the other .… Discover that he has a soul, a history, and a life, that he is a person, and that God loves this person.” If ever you were in doubt of that, let these three remove it.
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Real and Imaginary GoodWednesday, 08-13-2014“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied, full of charm; imaginary good is tiresome and flat. Real evil, however, is dreary, monotonous, barren. Real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” -- Simone Weil, Notebooks Consider how Melanie fades next to Scarlett in Gone with the Wind. In real life, Melanie would have been a spring of cool water, but Scarlett would have been intolerable after five minutes. In the great war now so many ages underway, one of the permanent advantages of evil is its imaginary glamour, but one of the permanent advantages of good is that it is better in reality. Isn’t being better in reality what it means to be good? Strange that it is so easy to forget. |
Answering a Question with a QuestionTuesday, 08-12-2014“If God indeed does exist, what is the source of evil? But if He does not exist, what is the source of good?” -- Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book 1, Chapter 4 Some people consider the former question more telling, others the latter. But the latter question ought to have priority over the former, just because good has priority over evil. This proposition is called the privation theory of evil. To have a lapse of sanity, which is bad, one must already have a mind, which is good; to have a disease, which is bad, one must already have a body, which is good. In general, the only way to get any evil whatsoever is to take something good and ruin it. So Boethius has not just answered a question with a question, which might be dismissed as a mere debater’s trick. He has answered a good question with a better one. |
Presumptive Liberty of ConscienceMonday, 08-11-2014Query: Some people challenge liberty of conscience on grounds that some claims of conscience are faulty. But shouldn’t the state bear the burden of proof if it seeks to interfere? Reply: It would be difficult to defend the absolute claim that the state may never, under any circumstances, compel a person to do what he considers wrong. Some nut may say he considers it wrong to stop at red lights. But I think you are exactly right to emphasize that if the state does seek to compel a person to do something he considers wrong, the burden of the argument should lie on the state. The presumption should lie strongly with the individual. This forces the state to make a moral argument in terms of precepts that are right and true for everyone and accessible to reason, something the state is loath to do because it pretends not to have a moral position. Its pretense is aided by the way the term “autonomy” is now used. Though the term has no single, precise meaning, it functions in two chief ways. First, it functions to obscure the distinctions among a variety of radically different moral ideas, some of them defensible, some of them not. For example, sometimes the term “autonomy” is used for the idea that people should have the broadest possible liberty to do what is good and right -- a liberty which Sean Murphy of the Protection of Conscience Project more adequately and accurately calls “perfective” liberty of conscience. But others use the term "autonomy" for the idea that individual behavior should be exempt from judgments of good and evil. Obviously these ideas are antithetical. The solution here is to disentangle the ideas. In each case of entanglement, instead of speaking vaguely of autonomy, we should identify the specific moral idea that the term “autonomy” is being used to promote. Second, the term functions to conceal the moral grounds on which the state seeks to coerce someone to do something. In such cases the term is used as a synonym for moral neutrality, which of course does not exist. For example: The state guarantees the freedom to have an abortion, but denies the freedom to refuse to participate in an abortion. In defense of the first action, the state says of itself that it is not making a moral judgment, but merely protecting autonomy. In defense of the second action, the state says of those who refuse to participate that they are enforcing their personal moral judgments, and denying the autonomy of others. Nonsense. The state’s actual moral judgment – unargued, because the state pretends that it isn’t a moral judgment -- is that it is morally permissible for private individuals to employ lethal violence against a certain category of unprotected persons, and that it is morally impermissible for other private individuals to refuse to help them do it. The solution to this problem is similar to the solution of the other one. In each case of mendacity, instead of letting the state get away with pretending to have no moral stance, we should translate the obfuscatory language that it uses into clear language that says what it means. |
Obviously Written Before Student SurveysSunday, 08-10-2014“Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.” -- Avicenna, Metaphysics |
Biotechnology as ReligionSaturday, 08-09-2014“God made man in his own image. We are going to become one with God. We are going to have almost as much knowledge and almost as much power as God. Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God.” This remark was made by physicist and biotech entrepreneur Richard Seed, quoted on NPR Morning Edition on January 7, 1998. See, transhumanism has been around longer than you thought. |