The Equal Dignity of All Persons

EUREKA! EXCLAIMED ARCHIMEDES when by sudden insight he solved posed by Hiero the King of Syracuse on how to measure the purity of the golden crown he suspected his goldsmith had degraded by the addition of silver. Another more important eureka moment occurred when the world through Peter exclaimed, "Now I understand that God shows not partiality." (Acts 10:34)

In this eureka moment, St. Peter recognized that all human persons wore the same unadulterated gold crown of human dignity, since they all are "creatures made in [God's] image and likeness." God, St. Peter became suddenly realized, became incarnate to save all mankind. In the matter of redemption, accidental differences between men which seemed to divide them and distinguish them were of no moment in God. The Incarnation and Redemption of Christ paid no heed to nations, races, tribes, castes, classes, or sex.

This is the original declaration of equal dignity of all mankind, a dignity that arises out of our solidarity as humans created and redeemed by God: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3:28) In the one fell swoop when God came down from heaven with the intent to redeem all mankind regardless of accidental differences, "something of the glory of God" shone "on the face of every person." (Compendium, No.144) God dispersed any notion that there were substantive differences between and among men.

Stripped of distinctions by the mystery of Christ's incarnation and his boundless love, in the light of Faith a man can only look at other men as creatures of equal dignity. The advent of the Emanuel is therefore the one and "ultimate foundation of the radical equality and brotherhood among all people, regardless of their race, nation, sex, origin, culture, or class." (Compendium, No. 144)

Naturally, the equal dignity of human beings does not imply that such realities as races, nations, sex, culture, classes, or hierarchies and offices do not exist, or are unimportant. The equal dignity of all persons, however, transcends these categories. Both the personal good of any individual person as well as and the common good require that the equal dignity of every person be recognized. Any State, any religion, any relation, any social institution, any custom, or any law which vitiates such human dignity is therefore to be abhorred.

Human dignity ought to encounter no boundaries as it recognizes only universal brotherhood among all men. There ought therefore to be no disparity or inequality in dignity among men; rather, "conditions of equality and parity" are essential prerequisites for ordered relations among men, including even the international community. Indeed, "the persistence of serious disparity and inequality will make us all poorer." (Compendium, No. 145)

"Together with equality in the recognition of the dignity of each person and of every people there must also be an awareness that it will be possible to safeguard and promote human dignity only if this is done as a community, by the whole of humanity." (Compendium, No. 145)

Creation of Woman by Michelangel0

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church tackles the notion of equal dignity between the sexes.* It embraces the obvious reality that there are differences between man and woman. Yet it maintains the principle that the categories of man or woman are irrelevant in the area of equal dignity. We can say man is in the image of God. We can say woman is in the image of God. Since man and woman are both made in the image of God, they are creatures of equal dignity.

The Church therefore rejects any form of chauvinism between the sexes. Man is not a being superior to woman such as Aristotle or Muhammad conceived. Woman is not a being superior to man such as the feminist Mary Daly and others of her ilk appear to have conceived. It is not a matter of superior and inferior, of better or worse, of more complete or less complete.

While she rejects any form of chauvinism, the Church does not therefore advocate egalitarianism. Man is not woman. Man is different from woman. Woman is different from man. The Church believes it a great error to limit the differences between man and woman to biological apparatus.

The difference between man and woman is basic, fundamental; it affects the very personhood of the man or woman, so we are dealing with an ontological category, not an accidental category. Personhood is not a sexless category. For humans, persons are not androgynous or asexual; they have a sex and always will have a sex since, according to Christian doctrine, their souls will be joined together with their bodies.

Recognizing this, with respect to the relations between the sexes, the Church teaches a middle way between the error of chauvinism and the error of egalitarianism. With respect to the sexes, the Church insists on complementarism between the sexes.

The "equal dignity" of the sexes does mean "a static equality" between the sexes. There is a difference of "specificity"among human persons which gives rise to the duality of male and female. This difference of "specificity" between male and female, this duality of male and female, when tied to the sameness or oneness in "dignity" gives rise to a "difference in equality." This "difference in equality" enriches society and one is "indispensable for the harmony of life in society." (Compendium, No. 146)

At first glance, the formula "difference in equality" seems like a contradiction. How can things that are equal be different? Aren't we forced either to adopt a notion of chauvinism by denying the equality, or a notion of egalitarianism by denying the difference? Do we have either to scrap equality of the sexes or scrap the difference between the sexes?

The Church says no. To understand this concept of "difference in equality" we must go to the notion of complementarity. The notion of complementarity of the sexes is central to understanding the Church's social doctrine as it relates to the relation between male and female. "Woman is the complement of man, as man is the complement of woman: man and woman complete each other mutually, not only from a physical and psychological point of view, but also ontologically." (Compendium, No. 146)

Here the Compendium focuses on the ontological complementarity of being man and being woman. The Church does not look at the different functions of man and woman, of doing, but rather she turns to the different ways of being between them. "It is only because of the duality of 'male' and 'female' that the 'human' being becomes a full reality."

The Compendium struggles with putting this concept into words: "It is the 'unity of the two,' in other words a relational 'uni-duality,' (Italian: unidualità) that allows each person to experience the interpersonal and reciprocal relationship as a gift that at the same time is a mission: 'to this 'unity of the two' God has entrusted not only the work of procreation and family life, but the creation of history itself." (Compendium, No. 147)

The relationship between man and woman is therefore not to be adversarial, whether in family life or society as a whole. It is to a mutually supporting relationship, a relationship of reciprocal and mutual service in solidarity.

Since the dignity of men** is something that is not earned, it follows that persons with disabilities share in human dignity. "It would be radically unworthy of man, and a denial of our common humanity, to admit to the life of the community, and thus admit to work, only those who are fully functional. To do so would be to practice a serious form of discrimination, that of the strong and healthy against the weak and sick." (Compendium, No. 148)

_________________________________
*From this point, I will use the word man not generically (i.e., mensch) as is my custom, but specifically to man as male (mann). The word woman, of course, will refer to man as female (frau).
**I am back to using the word man generically to include both men and women.

Veritatis Splendor: Part 33--Human Equality and Natural Law

MAN DISPLAYS A GREAT DIVERSITY in his cultures and traditions, not to mention the tremendous diversity of natural, physical, intellectual, and psychological gifts in each individual man, woman, or child. Each man, woman, and child is different, and therefore incommensurable, uncomparable. And yet, for all their uniqueness and incommensurability, they are equal. Not only do they share a common human nature, they are equal when it comes to the moral law. Here is an unalterable, absolute, unchanging truth:

When it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the "poorest of the poor" on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal.

VS, 96.

The natural law, then, is a great equalizer. It cuts across the entirety of society, through all hierarchies, all socio-economic strata, all castes, all religions, all ideologies to govern all men in all societies, bar none:

In this way, moral norms, and primarily the negative ones, those prohibiting evil, manifest their meaning and force, both personal and social. By protecting the inviolable personal dignity of every human being they help to preserve the human social fabric and its proper and fruitful development. The commandments of the second table of the Decalogue in particular — those which Jesus quoted to the young man of the Gospel (cf. Mt 19:19) — constitute the indispensable rules of all social life.

VS, 97. By being the great equalizer, the natural moral law--and the human rights that flow from it--is a bulwark against totalitarianism of every kind--whether ideological or as a result of moral relativism. VS, 99.

There is no part of man's life--private or public--that would be outside the pale of the natural moral law. All his activities, from the most mundane to the most transcendent, are governed by moral considerations. "Thus, in every sphere of personal, family, social and political life, morality — founded upon truth and open in truth to authentic freedom — renders a primordial, indispensable and immensely valuable service not only for the individual person and his growth in the good, but also for society and its genuine development." VS, 101.

Democracy is not insulated from totalitarianism. It is an error to think that the democratic process is sufficient to preserve the freedoms and rights of its citizenry. Democracy coupled with moral relativism is a recipe for totalitarianism of a different kind. As the Pope, who haled from Poland and saw first-hand the evils of Marxist communism, warns:

[T]here is no less grave a danger that the fundamental rights of the human person will be denied and that the religious yearnings which arise in the heart of every human being will be absorbed once again into politics. This is the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social life, and on a deeper level make the acknowledgement of truth impossible. Indeed, "if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism."

VS, 101 (quoting Centesimus annus, 46).

The Ten Commandments, both in their general terms and through their more specific demands, are binding upon all men:

These commandments are formulated in general terms. But the very fact that "the origin, the subject and the purpose of all social institutions is and should be the human person" allows for them to be specified and made more explicit in a detailed code of behavior. The fundamental moral rules of social life thus entail specific demands to which both public authorities and citizens are required to pay heed. Even though intentions may sometimes be good, and circumstances frequently difficult, civil authorities and particular individuals never have authority to violate the fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person. In the end, only a morality which acknowledges certain norms as valid always and for everyone, with no exception, can guarantee the ethical foundation of social coexistence, both on the national and international levels.

VS, 97.

Manifestly, the world's "principalities and powers," its princes, ministers, and presidents, its multinational corporations, face and often cause "serious forms of social and economic injustice and political corruption," and these are often the result of violation of fundamental moral norms, particularly involving the violation of fundamental human rights which find their bases in those exceptionless norms of the natural law. Any reform, any "radical personal and social renewal capable of ensuring justice, solidarity, honesty, and openness," must not only be rooted in a "moral sense," but must also be "rooted and fulfilled in the religious sense." VS, 98.

This, of course, means that God must be at the center of all efforts at rectifying social and economic injustice among men.

Only God, the Supreme Good, constitutes the unshakable foundation and essential condition of morality, and thus of the commandments, particularly those negative commandments which always and in every case prohibit behaviour and actions incompatible with the personal dignity of every man. The Supreme Good and the moral good meet in truth: the truth of God, the Creator and Redeemer, and the truth of man, created and redeemed by him. Only upon this truth is it possible to construct a renewed society and to solve the complex and weighty problems affecting it, above all the problem of overcoming the various forms of totalitarianism, so as to make way for the authentic freedom of the person.

VS, 99.

The natural moral law, of which God is the author as he is the author of our nature, will therefore necessarily govern economic and political questions, as these are nothing other than personal questions of morality writ large.

The economic sphere, if governed within the natural moral law, will exhibit certain features:

• There will be a certain temperance, a moderation of attachment to the goods of the world.


• There will be an attachment to the virtue of justice, a desire to give to our neighbor his due.


• There will be a sense of solidarity among the members of the system, which means that the Golden Rule will be followed and kept, and that there will be a sense of shared duty, of the acceptance of burdens, of helping those who are weakest or poorest.


• Some behavior will not be tolerated:




• Theft, deliberate retention of goods lent or objects lost.


• Business fraud.


• Unjust wages.


• Forcing up prices by trading on the ignorance or hardship of the other.


• Misappropriation and private use of corporate property of an enterprise.


• Work badly done.


• Tax fraud.


• Forgery of checks and/or invoices.


• Excessive expenses.


• Waste of resources.


• Any enslavement of human beings, or any system that shows disregard for their personal dignity such as chattel slavery.

Similarly, the political sphere will be influenced by the natural moral law and will exhibit certain features:

• The governing authorities will recognize an obligation to tell the truth to those being governed.


• There will be an openness in public administration.


• There will be impartiality in the service of the body politic.


• There will be respect for the rights of political adversaries.


• There will be safeguards which assure fair trials and which prevent summary trials and convictions.


• Public funds will be justly and honestly used.


• Equivocal or illicit means to gain, preserve, or increase power at any cost will be rejected.
  

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Legislating Morality is Right

IT IS QUITE COMMON TO HEAR folks complain and tag as unjust any effort to embody in legislation a particular vision of human flourishing, any effort an bringing legislation that is ordered toward any sort of "comprehensive view" as Rawls might label it. (Of course, these complainants are either maliciously or simply ignorantly-blind to their own "comprehensive views," generally liberal, that motivate their complaints and their own legislative efforts and agendas.) But it is a mistake to believe, or to advance the view, that the mere advocacy of a particular comprehensive view--though it admittedly results in a preference for those whose conceptions are shared, and a frustration of those whose conceptions are opposed--is unjust. However, Finnis rejects the argument in general. "As an argument warranting opposition to such legislation," Finnis observes, "this argument cannot be justified; it is self-stultifying." Finnis, 221. It is self-stultifying (it would, if applied equally by its advocate to his own legislative agenda, tie his hands). It is for that reason that the argument is always applied one-sidedly, in other words, hypocritically. It is pretty clear to whom Finnis refers when he observes:

Those who put forward the argument [the liberals, who else?] prefer a conception of human good, according to which a person is entitled to equal concern and respect and a community is in bad shape in which that entitlement is denied; moreover, they act on this preference by seeking to repeal the restrictive legislation which those against whom they are arguing may have enacted. Do those who so argue and so act thereby necessarily treat with unequal concern and respect those whose preferences and legislation they oppose? If they do, then their own argument and action is itself equally unjustified [under their standards], and provides no basis for political preferences or action [including their own]. If they do not (and this must be the better view), then neither do those whom they oppose.

NLNR, 221-22. Even if framed in terms of "entitlement," or minimum demands of justice, or equality, of liberty, or framed in terms of anyone labeling its opposite as "paternalistic" or "legislating morality," the argument remains--if applied consistently across all conceptions of the good, including the advocate's own--self-stultifying, paralyzing. Under any political program there will be those whose preferential view will be overridden, so the fact that one particular group's desires may not be encouraged but may be inhibited by legislation is not alone sufficient cause to condemn it as unjust. To prohibit, for example, pedophilia (as advocated by NAMBLA, or to prohibit even consensual sex between a child and his teacher, or even honor killings . . . name your vice: doesn't that by definition frustrate a minority of those who think that their flourishing demands the prohibited activity?

The fact is, if one can legitimately frame an argument based upon the reflection, "I wish someone had stopped me from . . . ," then there is room for legislation that prevents such behavior, even if the government gets accused of paternalism. Finnis believes such an argument (one may call it the rueful argument) is rational, legitimate, and, if so, "it follows necessarily that even the most extensive and excessive programme of paternalism might be institute without denial of equal concern and respect to anybody." NLNR, 223.

There are, however, limits. The limits are those relating to the fundamental goods which cannot be directly frustrated by any comprehensive view.

Some ways of pursuing the common good through legislation do indeed err by forgetting that personal authenticity, self-direction, and privacy for contemplation or play or friendship are aspects and important adjuncts of well-being. Paternalistic programmes guilty of this oversight should be criticized for that--a failure in commutative justice--and not for the quite different vice of discrimination, group bias, denial of equal concern and respect, a kind of refined selfishness, a failure in distributive justice. To judge another man mistaken, and to action that judgment, is not to be equated, in any field of human discourse and judgment, with despising that man or preferring oneself.

NLNR, 223.

In short, not all comprehensive views need to be given equal treatment or equal measure under law. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with promoting one's particular, reasoned view of the good, with the caveat that in such promotion of one's good, the common good be held in view, and the recognition that self-determination, personal authenticity, and the basic values of life, knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, play, friendship, religion, and practical reasonableness must not be acted against.

Finnis's view is, then, decidedly not liberal. And so while it may not please the liberal, it does not suffer from the systemic hypocrisy--one could say even schizophrenia--of the liberal who complains if anyone dare advance a comprehensive vision of the good into law (including any inherited one), all the while he works day and night and dismantling the comprehensive view he inherited (or proposed by his political enemy) for a comprehensive view of his own.

By Nature Equal: Human Equality and the Natural Law, Lapse into Subjectivism

IN MUSHY LONERGANIANISM COONS AND BRENNAN finally find an ally in their quest for a philosophical support of the convention of human equality, a relation that they have defined as the self's capacity to make a commitment to moral self perfection by treating his neighbor in a manner that appears to him correct, keeping in mind the general requirement to seek for the objective lateral order. What frightens one as one proceeds through Coons and Brennan's work is that their supposed "fail safe" reference to the objective lateral moral order may, in fact, not be a reference to the objective lateral moral order at all, at least as traditional understood. In their Gollum-like effort to preserve their "precious" convention of human equality, they are willing to jettison any real objectivism in the objective, so that their insistence on an objective lateral moral order (which would seem to be a nod to traditionalists) is not really a nod to traditionalists at all, but a surreptitious wink to subjectivism, which is what they really seem to court. In the climax of their work By Nature Equal, it appears as if a true objective lateral moral order has been led blindfold to the Guillotine under the cries of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité." It turns out that Coons and Brennan are Kantians (or worse) in objective clothing. They are, in fact, philosophical Jacobins. In good Jacobin form, they avoid any real confrontation with an objective moral reality by lopping off its objective head, and fitting it with a subjective noggin, and then parading out the monstrous result as if they had achieved something revolutionary and unique. But all that's been achieved is a veritable monster. The "natural law" that Coons and Brennan rely upon is like Washington Irving's Headless Horseman, a subjective headless Hessian cavalryman with but an objective pumpkin as its head. This monster terrifies us as much as it terrified Ichabod Crane.

Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horsemen by William J. Wilgus (1819-53)

The incompatibility of the natural moral law to the convention of human equality is avoided "if moral achievement comes not to those whose free choices actually correspond to the external order of correct behaviors, but to those who try to achieve such correspondence," Coons and Brennan remind us. (p. 136) What "trying" really means is anyone's guess, because any effort at achieving it appears to be one fraught with despair, since, as it turns out, Coons and Brennan do not believe in such an objective lateral moral order at all! "The apparent antagonism to human equality might be eliminable, however, given a reinterpretation of the "objectivity" necessary to natural morality."

And how is this to be done? By jettisoning the "correspondence" notion of truth, that is, by getting rid of the objective lateral moral order altogether, and replacing it with a subjectivist moral order, all the while calling it objective. It all appears to be a not-so-clever ruse. Coons and Brennan plan to "re-conceive" objectivity so that is "no longer a 'correspondence' to the external world, but instead as the product of fidelity to an internally given moral order." (p. 137).

Their radical reinterpretation of the tradition is not of their own breeding, but comes from their devotion to the theological method of Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), whose system must be viewed with suspicion as it led him to dissent the Church's teaching on artificial contraception as contained in Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, implying that somewhere, somehow Lonergan got it badly wrong. Lonergan despaired of any ability of the human mind to comprehend objective being or objective good (as traditionally understood as the correspondence of the mind to the external reality, veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus). So he escaped like any good Kantian would from the effort. He withdrew, much like a tortoise into its shell, or perhaps better, imploded, sort of like gravity and light into a black hole, into a subjective objectivity, or objective subjectivity, clearly confusing both dimensions of reality. The objective retracts into or collapses into the subjective, and, in all but name, objectivity becomes subjectivity.

(Criticism of the Lonerganian subjectivity is not to deny the deeply internal nature of the natural law. We have discussed this aspect of it repeatedly in our postings. It is perhaps most beautifully expressed in the Augustinian notion of the internus aeternus. See St. Augustine of Hippos: Confessions and the Eternal Law as the Internus Aeternus and following postings on that subject. But, like everything else, an emphasis of one truth at the exclusion of another is what's at hand here. The natural law, being really nothing but a participation in the Eternal Law, which is God Himself, is both extrinsic and intrinsic, both objective and subjective, transcendent and immanent. The natural law is our participation in the God above us, and the God within us. Lonergan, as apparently his disciples Coons and Brennan, seem to have emphasized the second dimension of reality, and in the process lost track of the first dimension of reality.)

In a feat reminiscent of Descartes, Lonergan tries to find a foundation for thought that is not, as we would traditionally view it, objective. He locks himself up within himself, distrusts the senses, and tries to find some sort of foundation, a "rock" upon which to build." "The rock . . . is the subject." To his credit, perhaps, Lonergan is a bit more gregarious that Descartes. Descartes found only one friend within himself: thought: cogito ergo sum. Lonergan finds more friends within himself. Lonergan found an experiencing friend, an understanding friend, a judging friend, and a deciding friend. Descartes was father of modern rationalism, and rationalism has but one friend to talk to, reason. Lonergan is father of modern feelingism, and feelingism has many friends. According to Lonergan, these four operations--experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding--find their unity. They are, in fact, "the unfolding of a single thrust, the eros of the human spirit." (p. 138, quoting Lonergan's Method in Theology). This unifying desire, this eros, asks questions, so experience asks: "What do I feel?" And understanding asks "What is it?" And judging asks, "Is it so?" And deciding asks "Ought I to do it?" This is a "self-assertive spontaneity that demands sufficient reason for all else but offers not justification for its demanding." (p. 183, quoting Lonergan's Insight.) According to Coons and Brennan: "It is rock." (p. 138)

Really? If this is the rock of human thought, then it sounds more like the rock of the Parable of the Sower (Luke 8:4-8), which soon as it received the divine seed that had sprung up, the divine seed withered away, because the rock lacked any moisture. The Lonerganian rock lacks soil. It is sterile. It is an intellectual desert. No objective plant can or ever will grow on it.

In any event, in our efforts to answer these spontaneous questions welling up within us, we have to adhere to "transcendental precepts." "Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible." (p. 138, quoting Lonergan's Method.) These mantras, apparently, are supposed to take usher us into some objective, normative Nirvana.

With these precepts the dynamic desire of the human spirit "teaches" the subject that the point is not just autonomic experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. If the dynamic desire to know is to be satisfied, the subject must (1) experience attentively, (2) understand intelligently, (3) judge reasonably, and (4) decide responsibly.

(p. 138) (Coons and Brennan emphasize the adverbs, supposing that in so doing they add objectivity and philosophical gravitas to the process.) "Normativity thus emerges from within (!?) the subject." (p. 138) (emphasis added).

[It resides] at root in the native spontaneities and inevitabilities of our consciousness which assembles its own constituent parts and units them in a rounded whole in a manner we cannot set aside without, as it were, amputating our won [4] moral personality, [3] our own reasonableness, [2] our own intelligence, [1] our own sensitivity.

(p. 138-39, quoting Lonergan's Method.) "It is by adhering to the transcendental precepts that we achieve objectivity; that is, 'genuine objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity.'" (quoting Lonergan's Method). Weakly, Coons and Brennan suggest that these "transcendental precepts" are the natural law. (p. 140).

Listen to the enormity: Contemplation of one's navel, so long as one contemplates one's navel in a responsibly and diligently navel-like contemplative way (what would be the adverbial form of contemplating one's navel so as to make sure we comply with the transcendental precepts that govern the contemplation of one's navel?) leads us to understand the Universe as it is out there! God in the omphalos? The Lonerganian method, we suppose, also allows us to understand the God who is immanent in the Universe out there and transcends the Universe out there. Oh, but I almost forgot, we also have to be willing always to change, so we can be fickly follow our fickle spontanaeities and inevitabilities, so long as we follow them followinglively, so that we discover the constantly changing "emergent probabilities." (p. 139) And here is finally Coons and Brennan's grand insight: "Emergent probability is the great equalizer of humankind." (p. 140, quoting Ted Dunne, Lonergan and Spirituality (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985), 62.)

The question of whether people have the equal capacity to achieve objectivity in their moral judgments has been transmuted into the question of whether they have the same capacity to be authentic, and the answer seems to be yes. Moving the basis of ethics in from the external to the internal world dissolves the problem of "equal access." Once objectivity's norms are internal, everyone can know and satisfy them. The principle is not correspondence to the external but fidelity to the internally given transcendental precepts.

(p. 140). Coons and Brennan finally show their Lonerganian credentials:

So we conclude with Lonergan: Yes, there is a genuine order of obligation; yes, we must heeds its commands; no, we never get outside to check whether we have got its terms right. The most we can do is to make the search in the enthusiasm of the dynamic desire for the good that promotes us from one step to the next. Whatever self-perfection is possible lies in making this search; thus, though we cannot be certain, it is plausible that all persons are uniformly prepared to do what is necessary.

(p. 140) "Obtension is man's natural finality. Period." (p. 141). Period? Coons et Brennan locuti sunt, causa finita est?

It is manifest that Coons and Brennan's project to reconcile the natural law with their conventional human equality failed. Having identified the convention of human equality, they were unable to find allies in any recognized theory of the natural law, whether Stoic, Scholastic, neo-Scholastic, or contemporary (or as they called them "Common Sense," "Classic," or "Integration" theories of natural law). Instead, they had recourse to Lonergan's subjective mish mash, which not only shuns, but positively rejects man's ability to perceive the reality, since it defines reality not as correspondence of our minds with what is out there, but the correspondence of our minds with our own minds. This is a recipe for philosophical solipsism, and, ultimately, for sterility (remember the "rock"!)

The Alpenglow on a Real Mountain

It is perhaps this sterility in his intellectual method that led Lonergan to accept sterility in the conjugal act. There is, we may suppose, some relatedness between the two sterilities. In the conjugal act we must correspond to the other that is "out there" in an intimate act of communion. To say that there is no correspondence between self and other in the giving and sharing of each other in in the marital act is to condemn us to Onanism. Analogously, in the intellectual act, we must correspond our mind in an intimate act of communion with the world that exists, and not only the world that is within us, but the world (including persons and Persons) that is without us, that is what is Other than from us. There are, as Gerard Manley Hopkins says, "mountains of the mind," but these are not the only mountains. There are, though Lonergan did not see them, mountains out there. I know. I have climbed them. They have tired me. And I have seen the indescribable Alpenglow.

By Nature Equal: Human Equality and the Natural Law, Last Possible Ally Fails

THERE WAS NO HOOK IN HEAVEN OR ON EARTH upon which moral philosophy could hang, nor any foundation in the world above or the world below upon which it could be built. So was Kant's view of things. The only source of morality for Kant was in the mind, pure reason, a reason distilled of most everything that man, at least while in his body, considers important in this life and, when dead, is sure to consider important in the next. Unguided by the natural desire for happiness (eudaemonism), or the lessons to be learned from a reality which was unknown and unknowable, or the yearnings of man toward heaven or lasting meaning, it was a morality of raw duty.

Kantian ethics took the world by storm, and, in a way, eventually even breached the redoubts of the natural law. Largely based on the work in moral theology of Catholic moral theologian Germain Grisez, the Oxonian (and Catholic) John Finnis promulgated a full and plenary theory of the natural law in his book Natural Law and Natural Rights. What is unusual about the theory of natural law that Finnis advances is that it is not based upon any teleological view of nature. Nor is it based upon a metaphysical realism. Yet despite these fundamental aspects of Thomistic theories of natural law that it lacks, it claims to be Thomistic in inspiration and heritage. (In an earlier posting, we discussed John Courtney Murray's view that a teleological view of nature and a realistic ontology are two fundamental requirements of a natural law theory. See The Four Requirements of a Classical Natural Law Theory.) Rather, it claims to advance a theory of objective morality without these ontological or epistemological suppositions. It accepts as a philosophical fait accompli the Humean critique that has come to be known as the "naturalistic fallacy." That supposed fallacy frequently heaved against the classic or traditional notion of natural law is that such theories are fallacious because one cannot argue from "is" to an "ought," from description to prescription, from fact to law.

John Finnis, Author of Natural Law and Natural Rights

Accepting as a given the Cartesian, Humean, Kantian philosophical presuppositions, these modern theories of natural law "locate[] the moral 'ought' somewhere between heaven and earth--in a reality at once familiar and obscure, the self-evident principles of practical reason." (p. 132) On the American side, the principal proponent of this new theory is the Princeton Professor, Robert P. George. The new natural law theory has been criticized as being Kantian in inspiration. One of the most articulate critics of it from the traditional side of things is Russell Hittinger. (See, e.g., his A Critique of the Natural Law Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987). In any event, Coons and Brennan refer to these new theories of the natural law as "Integration" theories.

It is difficult to explain the Integration theory of natural law in a nutshell. But here it goes. Essentially, the new natural law theory eschews metaphysical or ontological suppositions. It starts with a list of self-evident pre-moral goods, usually numbered as seven: (1) life, (2) knowledge, (3), play, (4) aesthetic experience, (5) sociability (friendship), (6) practical reasonableness, and (7) religion (understood very broadly). These self-evident goods are incommensurable; that is, there is no way to prioritize them or hierarchize them in any normative sense. Practical reasonableness, itself a self-evident good, can only chose to emphasize some over others, but can never work against one in favor of another one. So the possible emphasis and combination of these goods in the effort at human flourishing is virtually infinite and so allows great freedom. These basic human goods are pre-moral. The "first principle of morality" is that in one's action regarding these goods, one must exercise practical reasonableness. (The use of practical reason is both a self-evident, pre-moral good, as well as the first principle of morality.) To act against practical reason in the selection of these self-evident goods is to step into immorality. In an effort to accommodate the proper mix among the fundamental goods, one should also strive for "integral human fulfillment." This assures that all the basis human goods receive at least some hearing. Coons and Brennan do not like this last requirement: they view it as "a theoretically unmotivated and unallowable ghost of moral theories past." They also believe it to "look surprisingly like the human nature of traditional natural law theories," or perhaps even like the "ideal Christian.") (p. 135) The reason Coons and Brennan distrust this last requirement is because it impinges upon their pet convention of human equality.

Integral human fulfillment may not lay down a detailed template of the perfecting human life, but its prescriptive patter of choices that is necessary to moral fulfillment raises doubts of the possibility of equality.

(p. 135). The proponents of the Integration natural law theories accept men as equal in dignity in the sense that they are subjects of human goods and as a result of the rational capacity for self-determination by the exercise of free choices. (p. 135) While Coons and Brennan would not disagree, they state, accurately enough, that this human dignity and so human equality is a single equality. A single equality is one that humans hold in possession and not in degree. The convention of human equality that Coon and Brennan, like a couple of Procrustean professors, seek to impose upon any theory of law, however, requires this fundamental human equality to be based upon a host property that involves a double equality, that is an equality of both possession and degree. (For more of this distinction between single and double equality, see By Nature Equal: How are Men Created Equal? Definitions.)

Persons are equal in dignity, George tells us, "as loci of human goods and of rational capacity for self-determination by free choices." Anyone with rationality enough to be self-determining and to realize the basic goods in his or her moral person is a locus of dignity. But as we have emphasized, rationality, and with it the knowledge necessary to appropriate the basic goods, varies among persons. All rational persons, then, are equal in possession of rationality, in their possession of the capacity to achieve human good, and their possession of human dignity; this, though, is merely a single equality, and George cannot plausibly claim that this meets the condition of a double relation founded on a uniform rational capacity to instantiate basic goods. If dignity hinges on the rational capacity to achieve basic goods, conventional human quality again fails.

(pp. 135-36) (quoting Robert P. George, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 39). So at the end of the day, Coons and Brennan do not find an ally in the Integral theories of natural law.

As Coons and Brennan ostracize themselves from Integration, Classic, and Common Sense theories of the natural law, their friends among the natural law school are getting smaller. Who are their friends? Lonerganians. Are Longerganians advocates of a natural law theory? That may be doubtful. These issues will be addressed in our next blog posting.

By Nature Equal: Human Equality and the Natural Law, Coons and Brennan vs. Suarez

CONTINUING THEIR HOSTILITY to the traditional theories of the natural law caused by the theories incompatibility with their notion of the convention of human equality, Coons and Brennan take on the natural law theory of the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), a giant in the history of the natural law. Although they classify Suarez's theory of the natural law as found in his De Legibus a "Classic" theory to distinguish it from the "Common Sense" theory, they ultimately conflate the two. "If we squint just a little, Suarez's notion of natural law reduces to an academicized form of Common Sense." Its biggest crimes are, apparently, that it refers to nature, to the need to conform to it, and to the divine sanction in nature that such implies. Yet, "[o]pening wide our eyes," they suggest that by the time of Suarez, belief in philosophical realism had been lost, and the world was nominalist and voluntarist. "Where once there were real things, now there is language. Gone is the empiricality of Common Sense, and in its stead looms a labyrinth of propositions." (p. 130) To make up for the lack of substances caused by philosophical nominalism, Coons and Brennan state that the advocates of natural law added the additional component of God's will.

For the sake of analysis of Coons and Brennan's work, we may accept their curious assessment of Suarez's work as "legist," "modernist," nominalist, and voluntarist, and the source, the "modern charter," of "embarassing" Latin "manuals" of moral theology, though much can be against that characterization of Suarez and moral theologians prior to their darling Lonergan. (Both Suarez and Lonergan deserve separate treatment, but this post is not the place for it.)

Francisco Suarez

Coons and Brennan find rather quickly that Suarez's theory of natural law will not lend support to the convention of human equality they have identified. The reason is Suarez's insistence that obedience to the objective component of the natural moral law is a requisite to real advance in the moral life. Put simply, Suarez advances that obvious principle that, supposing two persons have equal good intent, that person is better off whose behavior conforms to the objective moral law than that person whose behavior, as a result of invincible ignorance, does not conform to the objective moral law. "The content of the natural law, correctly perceived, is necessary for the perfection or felicity of human nature." (p. 131) It is this objective aspect of the Suarezian theory that is at odds with the convention of human equality as Coons and Brennan have defined it because it puts a premium on knowledge and places a real disvalue on ignorance. For Coons and Brennan the convention of human equality requires that knowledge of the objective moral law be immaterial to the moral goodness of the actor. This is part of their angelic or "chelidonic" notion of goodness, which have discussed in yesterday's posting. See By Nature Equal: Human Equality and the Natural Law, Coons and Brennan's Chelidonic or Angelic Ethic. "Unless governed by the precepts of the natural law," Suarez maintains to the chagrin of Coons and Brennan, "human conduct lacks 'rectitude.' The subject who fails to do the natural law stands imperfect, his potential unfulfilled." (p. 132)

This Suarezian insistence that, in the real world, among men, within the temporal, sublunary sphere, that a man, regardless of his inner sincerity, is better off, more complete, and living life more in accord with God's will and plan if he acts in accord with the objective content of the natural moral law, and thus is better off with a knowledge of all its details, is anathema to Coons and Brennan. It presents for them an intolerable assault upon the convention of human equality.

More complex that Common Sense natural law, the Classic version is at one with it in rejecting fulfillment by good intention--even by the specific good intention to seek the content of the Suarezian rules of conduct. The wrong choice never produces moral goodness in the actor. Hence the savant with his or her superior grasp of details will have the easier access to self perfection. This is descriptive inequality.

(p. 132) After reaching this conclusion, Coons and Brennan look at the modern theory of natural law advanced by Grisez, Finnis, and George, among others (what they label the "Integration" theories). Although they have more tolerance for this theory, they ultimately will reject its compatibility with the convention of human equality. They insist that the convention of human equality disdains objective knowledge of the content of the natural moral law as a principle of individual perfection, that the individual's sincerity, good will, and active seeking of that objective knowledge is both necessary and sufficient for that individual's moral perfection. Ultimately, they come to the conclusion that even the Integration theories lend no support to the convention of human equality.

By Nature Equal: Human Equality and the Natural Law, Coons and Brennan's Chelidonic or Angelic Ethic

THERE IS NO THEORY OF NATURAL LAW that is relativistic. All varietals of the natural law have espoused the claim that there is a moral order that is outside human convention or independent of human will and which obligates every man without exception. Coons and Brennan agree that the natural law theories seem to satisfy a number of the criteria they have set forth as essential for the convention of human equality. In addressing whether natural law theories can support the convention of human equality, Coons and Brennan divide up the various natural law theories into four categories: (1) the "Common Sense" theories (those loosely based upon Aristotle, and espoused by, for example Henry Veatch or Mortimer Adler), (2) the "Classic" theories (choosing the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez's version as an exemplar of this group), (3) the more contemporary "Integration" theories (e.g., the theories of Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Robert P. George), and (4) the "Authenticity" theories (principally based on the insights of the Canadian Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan).

At the outset, they state their conclusion: the "Common Sense" theories and the "Classic" theories do not support the convention of human equality that they espouse. "In short," in their view, "these two traditional versions of natural law are forms of moral gnosticism . . . ." (p. 124). Thus, they appear to accuse the two traditional forms of the natural law as moral heresies.

Since these two theories require more than mere striving, but require both correct moral judgments and corresponding human action in time, it virtually assures inequality among humans, at least in the manner human equality is advanced by Coons and Brennan, impinging therefore on Coons and Brennan's dear theory. They would rather toss out tradition, and perhaps even truth (that we, in this life, both know and act in time), than part with their convention of human equality. Here Coons and Brennan appear to act like Tolkien's Gollum, focusing unreasonably on their "precious" ring of Kantian equality.

Tolkien's Smeagol or Gollum and his "Precious"

Indeed, they admit that they are in the business to "disparage" the "Common Sense" theory of natural law, presumably for the reason that it does not fit well with their thesis or with the convention regarding human equality they promote. (Their bias is already revealed when they describe the "Common Sense" theory as the "stuff of cocktail parties and Senate hearings," and held by the "uneducated," (p. 124, 125) as if only those drunk on wine or drunk on power, or those steeped in ignorance could entertain such a theory.) Human nature, as understood by the "Common Sense" and "Classic" theories, will not support the convention of human equality, they say, no less than Hobbesian individualism. What this suggests, of course, is that the "Common Sense" and "Classic" theories of the natural law are as equally erroneous as Hobbes's theories. (This is vicious: when Kant is more supportive of your theory of human equality than Cicero or Suarez, or any one in between, it may be time to change your theory of human equality. But Coons and Brennan, like Gollum, see only one thing--a convention--as reality.)

The "Common Sense" theory is Aristotelian in the sense that it is teleological in its view of nature. (Another Coon and Brennan slight to the "Common Sense" theory is to brand these theories as reliant upon the biology and physics of Aristotle, something which is untrue, and which serves to taint these theories as "unscientific" or dated. We have addressed the issue of an end or telos in previous postings. See, e.g., Natural Law: Ectasis and Telos.) The "Common Sense" theory relies on the practical reason and is realistic, at least in part, in its epistemology and teleological in its ontology. (See The Four Requirements of a Natural Law Theory.) The "Common Sense"(and "Classic") theories also presuppose that nature has a purpose, and man's practical reason has the capacity to understand that purpose. With respect to his own purposeful nature, man is under a moral obligation to listen to it, and to live in accordance with it. In a way man's nature (his is) determines what he should do (his ought). As Jacques Maritain put it in his Moral Philosophy:

In Aristotle's dynamic conception all essence is the assignment of an end, a telos--which beings endowed with reason pursue freely, not be necessity. Become in your action what you are in your essence--here is the primordial rule of ethics.

Jacques Maritain, Moral Philosophy (London: Bles, 1964), 58 (quoted in Coons and Brennan, 296 n. 17.) In assessing the rule among various competing natures, the "Common Sense" theory also looks at relations. Coons and Brennan quote Vernon Bourke:

Prior to ethical rules expressive of types of right actions are those objective and real relations between persons, between things, and between various interpersonal dealings. These relations are understandable "ratios" (in a wider sense than in arithmetic) which provide an objective basis for reasoning to moral judgments. Some of these practical judgments are general in form, for example, that children should respect their parents, or that parents should take care of their children. In other words, there is a right ration between parent and child, not simply because I think so, but because of a universal relationship.

(p. 126-27) "The order of nature is a vast complexus of such intelligible relations." (Bourke, History of Ethics, 90.) This way of thinking is what is behind John Paul II's famous utterance: "Family, become what you are!" (Familiaris Consortio, No. 17).

Of course, such manner of thinking raises the typical objection against these theories, the Humean or Moorean naturalistic fallacy. "How does knowing what a thing is show what anyone ought to do?" Coons and Brennan query, obviously having ceded to the generally-prevailing Humean skepticism (p. 125-26) among the Western intelligentsia and scientists. (See Universal Ethic-Theoretical Foundations 3-Nature, Man, God and Ectasis and Telos: David Hume and "Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings . . . ".)

In trying to distill the right action based upon information gleaned from nature and from the complexus of relations within it, man is limited by both his innate abilities and his cultural or educational, and perhaps even genetically informed prejudices. He is also limited by fortune, by the accidental coalition of so many variables which either impede him or facilitate him in his moral life. This implies that men differ, either by talent or by circumstance (or even by God's Grace), in regard to their ability to comprehend the natural moral law. This is bane to Coons and Brennan's conventional human equality. More than that, man is limited by time in the acquisition and incorporation of this law. Become what you are implies becoming which is a process. But Coons and Brennan do not want process, they want instantaneousness. For Coons and Brennan, in the natural order, one does not become good, one must be good (even if one is bad), or there is no human equality.

To be begin, there are no children to be found among the moral heroes of Common Sense and Aristotle. In an ethics formed around finality, perfection is apt to be understood as what is attached "at the end of a long term, after long exercise, at a ripe age when the hair is beginning to turn silver."

(p. 128) (quoting Maritain) "This picture of moral gradualism, of a perfection realizable by survivors, is just what equality forbids." (p. 128)

Barn Swallow by Audubon

Coons and Brennan are aghast at the notion that man must act out his moral choice in time. They view this as tragic, and they disdain tragedy. The Aristotelian commonplace is bothersome to them: "One swallow does not make a summer . . and . . . a short time . . . does not make a man blessed and happy." γὰρ χελιδὼν ἔαρ οὐ ποιεῖ, οὐδὲ μία ἡμέρα: οὕτω δὲ οὐδὲ μακάριον καὶ εὐδαίμονα μία ἡμέρα οὐδ᾽ ὀλίγος χρόνος. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a16) This reality they cannot entertain. They demand an instantaneous ethic, an eternal ethic, an angelic ethic, a chelidonic or chelidomorphic ethic [swallow-like; from Greek, χελιδὼν, chelidon, meaning a swallow. If Coons and Brennan are going to coin the neologism "obtend," then I will coin the neologism "chelidonic" to describe their ethic]. But this is no human ethic at all, it is one which, paradoxically, is outside time and so not natural to mankind, at least not while in via, on pilgrimage. Yet Coons and Brennan insist:

Equality requires plenary moral power for every rational being, including those who are new at the game. It somehow must swallow even the hard case of the child who dies (or who loses rationality) having experienced only the "faint flicker of choice" and only the promising beginnings of natural excellence.

We must swallow the case of the swallow, so that even a brief life has all the equality to it that a long life does. This is Coons and Brennan's chelidonic natural ethic, a natural ethic that is required for them to maintain their "precious," their convention of human equality. It is an ethic of instantaneousness, of a series of short swallow-like choices, where virtue is an unheard of thing, and likens man's moral choice as that of an angel outside of time.

Thus, Coons and Brennan want to take us out of tragedy and time, into beatitude and eternity, at least beatitude and eternity as they see it. But it seems that in doing so we have already traveled out of the natural into supernatural. We may hope in the God whose quality is always to have mercy, who informs us that the last shall be first, and the first shall be last, who forgave a penitent thief at the threshold of death and promised him paradise, who watches the swallows with every bit as much solicitude as he does the hawk, who assures us that no human life, even the briefest, is wasted if it obtends even implicite to God, though by all appearance it is so. When we do so, when we hope in such a God and such a realm, we no longer walk on the road of reason, we walk on the road of faith. And by then, we are outside the natural law. We have ventured into the land of the Gospel. Indeed, we have gone beyond even that to the point that we are outside of time and in the Eschaton, outside the realm of natural law and into the realm of Eternal Law. There will be a time for that. There will be a time when the natural law will say:

That is I, oh, that is I!
By me what sprung, by me shall die:
Back to God’s stretched hand I fly,
To perch there for eternity.

(See "Laus Legis" and Reflections on Thompson's "Laus Legis")

But the time is not now. Now we walk in a valley of tears, in hac lacrimarum valle, where under God's Providence we suffer unequal burdens. And in their zeal, Coons and Brennan have forgotten that. Their equality has become prescriptive or normative, no longer descriptive, without them even knowing it.

By Nature Equal: How Are Men Created Equal? Kant Can't But Cant About Natural Law

KANT IS QUITE AN IMPOSING FELLOW, and he has had remarkable influence in the annals of the Academe around the globe, though he virtually never left his beloved Königsberg. How such a parochial little man, a bachelor with impeccable chronological habits (people set their watches by his daily afternoon walks, so regular was he), became such a universal thinker and ushered in a revolution in thought is a remarkable thing. (We have treated some elements of Kantian thought in prior posts. See Ecstasis and Telos: Immanuel Kant and Selflaw and Golden Rule in Immanuel Kant: The Golden Rule But a Trivial Footnote.) Kant's contribution to the modern notions of equality are significant. As Coons and Brennan summarize it: "The modern literature on human equality--such as it is--is saturated with Kantian concepts." (p. 116) Indeed, one comes to the conclusion after reviewing this part of their work that Coons and Brennan are more Kantian than they are advocates of a traditional natural law.

Kant lived in a time when man was viewed as a machine in a mechanistic universe, a sort of tin man in a tin house with a tin heart. That should have bothered anyone with a heart of flesh, or even anyone with a mind. It's hard to tell whether this mechanistic philosophy bothered Kant's heart, but it certainly troubled this man's impressive mind. A mechanistic cog in a mechanistic cosmos means no morality, as it means everything is determined. A human with a Hobbesian "spring" or coil for a heart is more a robot that a man. This was something that did not settle well with Kant. And he put his mind to do something about it.

Easter Island Moai

Rather than seeing that man's heart was flesh and blood, with pinch of spiritual soul (a theology of the body!), Kant conceded to his contemporaries the mechanistic view of man, but he limited the mechanistic paradigm to the material, the phenomenal world. Then he posited a wholly ideal world, a world insulated from the empiricism of science, a noumenal world. Man was sort of like an Eastern Island statute, a moai, with his body hidden in the phenomenal world, but his mind in the world of the noumena. Man was both determined and free, determined in the phenomenal world, but free in the noumenal world. Man knew one world, the noumenal, but not the other, the phenomenal, since one could never know any thing as it really was (the ding an sich was unknowable), one only knew what one thought the thing really was. Kant therefore advanced a notion that there were, in the phrase of Professor Roger J. Sullivan, "two viewpoints," a material and an ideal, and never would the twain meet. Indeed, we did not really know reality, either moral or speculative, but we should act as if (als ob) we did.

Kant uses these same two viewpoints in his moral writings. On the one hand, he regards the natural world as amoral and any effort to base morality on empirical, contingent grounds as futile. Nature is just what free moral agents must transcend. Yet, on the other hand, he uses what he calls the principle of "physicoteleology" to interpret nature as purposive, with an essential role in helping us make moral judgments about human behavior. "In distributing her aptitudes, Nature has everywhere one to work in a purposive manner." "By a natural purpose [Naturzweck]," Kant explains, "I mean such a connection of the cause with an effect that, without attributing intelligence to the cause, we must yet conceive it by analogy with an intelligent cause and so as if it produced the effect purposefully."

Roger J. Sullivan, Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 182. "Making sense of Kant's moral metaphysics, then, requires keeping clear this strange idea that man must regard himself as a pure other-worldly intelligence and, exactly thus, capable of autonomy." (p. 117). Though there is no proof of it in the world about him, he can find the basis for morality in the mind that is within him, which is what gives him his autonomy.

Marble Bust of an Aging Immanuel Kant

To his credit, Kant did not view this autonomy as completely lawless. For Kant, there was a law, but it was law as the mind understood it, not law per se. And Kant's law was no longer natural, because it made no reference to man's hylomorphic or dual nature. (Indeed, it did not give reference even to God.) Kant wholly ignored the material in man's nature (there was no end, no purpose; the Humean dogma under which he slumbered told him there was no "ought" to be found in an "is"), and based his law entirely on pure reason alone. Kant's law was noumenal, not phenomenal.

Man is capable of morality exactly because his "true self" is not only free but also under a law. That law is pure reason--reason functioning on its own terms, without the influences of man's phenomenal side.

(p. 117) In a way, this all is a bit deceptive, because Kant did not advocate that we were under a law, but that we were under an idea of law. This is because ultimately, in Kant's view, this law is not the law itself, as man cannot know the law as it is. This is only law as man understands that law to be. As Kant wrote in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals:

A law has to carry with it absolute necessity if it is to be valid morally--valid, that is, as a ground of obligation .. . . the ground of obligation must be looked for, not in the nature of man nor in the circumstances of the world in which he is placed, but solely a prior in the concept of pure reason.
. . . .
Everything in nature works in accordance with laws. Only a rational being has the power to act in accordance with his ideas of laws--that is, in accordance with principles--and only so has he a will . . . the will is noting but practical reason.

(quoted in Coons and Brannon, 290 nn. 31, 32) So whatever this law is, it is not natural, and it is not law; it is our idea of the law. In other words, we are following a figmentive law, based upon reason alone, and we ought to act as if it exists, though we have no proof for it. The law that this reason imposes upon us, and under whose discipline we must live to live moral lives, is the categorical imperative.

Coons and Brennan construe Kant's philosophy as a philosophy that meets with the criteria they have established as necessary for building their notion of human equality (indeed they seem to admit later that the convention of human equality they tout stems from Kant). Kant believes that rational human beings have the capacity to choose freely to pursue or reject the details of correct behavior, that there exists a preinstitutional order of morality, that moral self-perfection is obtained through the diligent pursuit of seeking it, and that rational persons possess that capacity to make that effort, and possess that capacity uniformly. Though Kant's emphasis on reason in the moral life of man suggests a lack of uniformity in degree, Coons and Brennan believe that "at curtain time Kant seems to settle on conditions of morality that make virtue possible for every rational person." (p. 118)

Coons and Brennan therefore believe that Kant is preeminently a moral philosopher that advances a morality of good intentions that has a good fit with their notion of human equality. They quote Kant's comment in his Metaphysics of Morals in this regard:

It is a human being's duty to strive for [moral] perfection, but not to reach it (in this life), and his compliance with this duty can, accordingly, consist only in continual progress.

(p. 119) For Coons and Brennan, then, Kant is sufficiently emphatic on the centrality of intention, yet sufficiently attentive to a notion of pre-institutional morality [the categorical imperative] so as to fit with their analysis of what is required by the convention of human equality. Their ultimate conclusion is that Kant meets the criteria for identifying the host property of human equality, importance, goodness, laterality, singularity, and uniformity.

They admit that the only reason there is a fit between Kant and their notion of the convention of human equality is that "Kant broke decidedly with the tradition." (p. 119) It was Kant's emphasis on good will, and good will alone, that constitute this break. They quote extensively from Kant's Groundwork of Morals:

The good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes or because of its adequacy to achieve some proposed end; it is good only because of its willing, i.e., it is good of itself. . . . Even if it should happen that, by a particularly unfortunate fate or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature, this will should be wholly lacking in power to accomplish its purpose, and if even the greatest effort should not avail it to achieve anything of its end, and if there remained only the good will . . . , it would sparkle like a jewel in its own right, as something that had its full worth in itself.

(p. 119) And now begin the Kantian encomia and the colors of Coons and Brennan are revealed. Thus Coons and Brennan conclude: "Kant satisfies the criterion of uniformity by making morality pivot on an act of which everyone is equally capable: committing to duty and then pursuing its terms as best as one can." (p. 119) "Kant's ethics is a thoroughgoing morality of equals, supported by a tailor-made metaphysics." (p. 120) "The Kantian capacity for a 'good will' is believable as a host property for a relation of equality . . . ." (p. 120) "Kant does what no earlier philosopher had managed: he separates the highest form of human achievement, moral goodness or the 'good will,' from every other form of human good. That separation is absolutely critical to human equality. . . . The belief in factual human equality requires a belief in some nonempirical human capacity for a nonempirical form of human goodness. . . This belief is not at all exotic; indeed, this is the element of Kantianism that, we think, has passed into the common mind (or vice versa)." (p. 121) (emphasis added)

This disappoints. One is left with the sinking feeling that Coons and Brennan are more Kantian than traditionalist, and this will become even more apparent when they themselves compare the convention of human equality they have touted with the traditional notions of the natural law. We will explore these in our next few blog postings.

By Nature Equal: How Are Men Created Equal? Hobbes's Hobbling Equality

THOMAS HOBBES WAS A TERATOPHILE, a lover of monsters, perhaps even a teratodule, a worshiper of them. And his creed advanced a monstrous philosophy, a monstrous jurisprudence, and a monstrous government. He loved the creatures Leviathan and Behemoth, far above either God or Man. He was the harbinger, the morning star, of modern liberalism, and advanced a notion of man and his nature that was radically at odds with Western tradition up to that time. He was father to an "insurrection in the Western conception of the moral self." (p. 101). (For other postings relating to Thomas Hobbes, see Ectasis and Telos: Thomas Hobbes and His Monsters and Golden Rule in Thomas Hobbes) In their book By Nature Equal: The Anatomy of a Western Insight, Professors Coon and Brennan analyze whether Hobbes's individualistic moral and political philosophy is reconcilable with their notion of human equality. Their notion of human equality requires a belief in four propositions: (1) rational human beings have the capacity to choose freely to pursue or reject the details of correct behavior; (2) there exists a "preinstitutional order of such correct behaviors" that is extrinsic to the will of each human and that he owes to every other human; (3) moral self-perfection is obtained through the diligent pursuit of seeking that objective content; and (4) rational persons possess that capacity to make that effort, and possess that capacity uniformly.

Although Hobbes's philosophy fails on numerous of these requirements, we will develop the most obvious failure, that being a belief in a "preinstitutional" lateral order of objective (that is moral) norms that define how man should treat his fellow man. For Hobbes there is no such preinstitutional lateral order. In Hobbes's view, before the social contract man has no such moral obligations to his fellows. Hobbes plainly states in his Leviathan that there is "no obligation on any man, which ariseth not from some act of his own; for all men equally, are by Nature free." [chp. 21] For Hobbes, however, freedom is not defined as freedom under law, but freedom from law. There are no constraints upon many prior to the institution of government: "For where no covenant hath preceded, there hath no right been transferred, and every man has right to everything and consequently, no action can be unjust." [chp. 15] It is a remarkable lawless freedom that Hobbes envisions, where "every man has a right to every thing, even to another's body." [chp. 14] Every man has a right to every thing? What sort of monstrous natural law is that?

Thomas Hobbes, Teratophile

In Hobbes's view, therefore, before man instituted government through a social contract, there was no law except self-preservation, and in exercising self-preservation man was "morally unbounded." Fundamentally, therefore, Hobbes advances a "radical autonomy." (p. 103) Hobbes's view of natural law is exceedingly thin: "[A]side from sheer survival, nature tells us nothing in particular concerning the good life." (p. 104) Manifestly, Hobbes advances something untraditional here. Hobbes has performed a "moral lobotomy" upon man, and "reintroduced the ancient possibility of nihilism." (p. 106)

Although Hobbes gives some sort of lip service to human equality, it is not the sort of human equality as conventionally understood in the inherited Western tradition. Recall that Coons and Brennan proposed five criteria to identify the host property for human equality: importance, goodness, laterality, singularity, and uniformity. It is rather apparent that Hobbes's view of human equality is lacking in a number of these. For Hobbes, man is not morally bounded prior to the institution of government, and so he fails most plainly the laterality requirement:

Hobbes's radical autonomy is so different as to be virtually the opposite of that required by the convention; for the latter asserts not that the will of man legislates what is good, but that the good has already been legislated for man whether he chooses or rejects it. . . . The more precise term for this human condition is "bounded autonomy," and we will use that label to distinguish our view from that of Hobbes and company. . . .

The gulf that separates "radical" from "bounded" autonomy is wide. Bounded autonomy, which represents the stronger tradition in the West, claims to be the exclusive form of moral liberty. It rejects the Hobbesian idea of an autonomy that is empty of duty and declares it is a contradiction; for law itself is a condition of freedom . . . .

Hobbes defines freedom negatively, as the absence of constraint. Once can give this a positive form by saying that the individual will is the sole author of whatever rules it chooses to recognize; in any case, Hobbes represents a strong form of "moral subjectivism," but we must pause to clarify this usage. The subjective/objective distinction does not capture the crucial difference between radical and bounded autonomy; the bounded version, too, is subjective insofar as the recognition of and submission to the lateral moral imperative also occur within the self. In bounded autonomy reason interprets its own experience, string to present to the self the specific behavior that would fulfill the lateral imperative regarding fellow humans. But the self's consciousness of its own subordination, its search for correct answers, and the act of choice itself produce no empirical trace. To this extent bounded autonomy is indeed subjective.

It is definitely not subjective, however, in the Hobbesian sense that choices are made in isolation from all authority but the choosing self. In Hobbes's version of natural man . . . there is no external moral order to be sought. Indeed, order exists neither inside nor outside until the self decrees it.

(p. 105) There is simply no laterality recognized in a moral philosophy which "would offer as the host property for human equality . . . the individual capacity for caprice." (p. 106) As Coons and Brennan also point out, Hobbes fails in the area of singularity, importance, and goodness criteria. (pp. 106-07, 288 n. 12)

In fact, that Hobbes failed to meet the requisite terms of the inherited Western convention of human equality with its basis in the natural moral law is by design. As Coons and Brennan observe:

Hobbes had strategic reasons for slaughtering preinstitutional obligation. Principally, he wanted to clear the way for an order of public sovereignty that would be insulated both from ecclesiastical claims and from the constraints of the law of nature, as those claims and constraints had been understood by prior generations.

In short, Hobbes wanted to act as midwife in the birth of the monster of secular government. And he did so by founding obligations on contract, and not on law.

Coons and Brennan wrap up their treatment of Hobbes by suggesting why it might be that the liberal and Western infatuation with "equality" has been difficult for intellectuals modernly to uphold. The very basis for equality was undermined by Hobbesian assumptions of unbounded autonomy and the rejection of a bounded autonomy defined by a reference to preinstitutional and objective order of natural law. "It may be," they conclude, "that the idea of equality became popular in Western history as intellectuals began to abandon the only commitments that could have sustained it." (p. 114)

A Procrustean "Equality" [ΙΣΟΤΗΣ] by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

That suggestion seems probable. If it is so, it would explain why much of the modern cri de coeur for equality sounds so vacuous, so banal, and so lawless. Modernly, the cry for equality may be nothing but another way to say non serviam. Indeed, the discrepancy between the cry for equality and the lack of law may explain why, in some cases, the cry for equality departs from mere banality and libertinism into the realms of positive evil itself. Those that cry for equality sometimes have bloody hands that have sacrificed their fellow men to the devil who has donned the name of Isotes or Aequalitas, and shows himself as an angel of light. When these folks came on the scene, they did not speak Latin or Greek, but a vulgar French and they wore funny red hats (though now they speak in all the tongues of Babel and wear all sorts of regalia, such as ugly pantsuits, bottomless pants, or even nothing at all). If we listen well, we can hear the non serviam in the revolutionary cry for égalité, a cry positively demonic, for the devil keeps no law.