Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Reasonable Myth and Revelation, Part 2

CONTINUING FROM OUR LAST POST that left off with the Platonic reason-based "myth" of the puppeteer and the puppet, we now post our last posting on John Finnis and his work Natural Law and Natural Rights.

Perhaps, reason speculates as does Plato through the Athenian character in his dialogue Laws, man is like a puppet played on by strings of pain/fear and pleasure/hope with a golden chord that ought to govern, a golden chord of reason. Is there perhaps there is a God behind it all?

Athenian
What I assert is this,—that a man ought to be in serious earnest about serious things (σπουδαῖον σπουδάζειν), and not about trifles; and that the object really worthy of all serious and blessed effort is God (φύσει δὲ εἶναι θεὸν μὲν πάσης μακαρίου σπουδῆς ἄξιον), while man is contrived, as we said above, to be a plaything of God (θεοῦ τι παίγνιον), and the best part of him is really just that; and thus I say that every man and woman ought to pass through life in accordance with this character, playing at the noblest of pastimes, being otherwise minded than they now are. . . . .

Now they imagine that serious work (τὰς σπουδὰς) should be done for the sake of play (τῶν παιδιῶν γίγνεσθαι); for they think that it is for the sake of peace that the serious work of war needs to be well conducted. But as a matter of fact we, it would seem, do not find in war, either as existing or likely to exist, either real play (παιδιὰ) or education (παιδεία) worthy of the name, which is what we assert to be in our eyes the most serious thing.

It is the life of peace that everyone should live as much and as well as he can. What then is the right way? We should live out our lives playing at certain pastimes—sacrificing, singing and dancing—so as to be able to win Heaven's favor and to repel our foes and vanquish them in fight. . . . .

It behooves our nurslings also to be of this same mind, and to believe that what we have said is sufficient, and that the heavenly powers will suggest to them all else that concerns sacrifice and the dance,— in honor of what gods and at what seasons respectively they are to play and win their favor, and thus mold their lives according to the shape of their nature (τῆς φύσεως), inasmuch as they are puppets for the most part (θαύματα ὄντες τὸ πολύ), yet share occasionally in truth.

Megillus
You have a very mean opinion, Stranger, of the human race.

Athenian
Marvel not, Megillus, but forgive me. For when I spoke thus, I had my mind set on God (πρὸς γὰρ τὸν θεὸν ἀπιδὼν καὶ παθὼν), and was feeling the emotion to which I gave utterance. . . .

Laws, VII, 803c-804b.

Man is not a puppet of the gods

Man as a plaything of the gods, as a marionette fingered by a divine puppeteer, is, of course, a pagan sentiment. There is a certain offensiveness in the image which bothered Megillus, and ought to bother us. There is, no doubt, a great divide between the pagan view of man as a puppet and Christian vision of man: man as a "fellow player in the divine drama of history and eternity, who might be redeemed for friendship with God by God become man." NLNR, 409.

And yet Plato is on to something. His basic insight is that obligation and the moral life may be more than mere something we feel or sense as inherent or self-evident. It may be, reason strains to believe, that there is a point behind it, a reason behind the self-evidency, a raison d'être of the moral thing. And in a manner of speaking, it may be thought of speculated to be, as a play, a drama, a cosmic game:

That point [of moral obligation] is the game of co-operating with God. Being play, this co-operation has no point beyond itself, unless we wish to say that God is such a further 'point'. By analogy with human friendship, we may be able to say that, but only in a special restricted sense. For if we simply said that we act for the sake of God, we would suggest that God somehow needs us, needs creation, the success of creation, the achieving of the creative purpose. But [the Uncaused Cause, God] lacks nothing. And has God revealed as needing or lacking anything? So if we ask why God creates, no answer is available other than the one implicitly given by Plato: play--a free but patterned expression of life and activity, meaningful but with no further point. Hence, even one who goes beyond Plato to accept that man is called to a friendship of devotion to God will grant that such friendship takes the form of sharing, in a limited way, in the divine play.

NLNR, 409.

The point of moral obligation then, may not be viewed as the means to acquire self-perfection (virtue), nor the means to fulfill a naked "categorical imperative," nor simply something that self-evidently is: it may be--reason hopes--it is--faith seizes--that moral obligation has a greater point. Reasons says that it may be that fulfillment of the moral obligations, of the natural moral law, of the obligations inherent in our nature and revealed or disclosed or discovered through our reason, is "what is needed to participate in the game of God."

Is it chance
or dance moves
the world?

Is the world
blind and dumb
or bloom, festal?
A vain jest,
or holy feast?

Eugene Warren, "Christographia XIV," Christographia 1-32 (St. Louis: Cauldron Press, 1977)

Reason asks whether we might want to dance, and faith answers yes. In faith, then we dance, jest, play, in the "holy puppet show," the "holy drama," the "holy feast" or perhaps better, the "holy liturgy" or public service that is life in in the service of God. And in playing, dancing, singing, and sacrificing along with the Divine player, we are engaged in life most seriously, most realistically. The game is the game. For the game--that for which our very being hunts for--is God, ἐν αὐτῷ γὰρ ζῶμεν καὶ κινούμεθα καὶ ἐσμέν, in ipso enim vivimus et movemur et sumus, for in him we live, and move, and have our being.* (Acts 17:28)

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*We might post a caveat for any would-be fanatics using the final words of Finnis in his work Natural Law and Natural Rights. Accepting by faith the fact that a personal God is the absolute end of all things, including moral obligation, does not allow us to neglect the fact that He is also the source of all other human basic values, and so does not allow us to scrap the latter basic values (life, knowledge, play, aesthetic appreciation, society or friendship, practical reasonableness) in pursuit of God. The existence of God and his status as last end or finis ultimus, does not "entitle us to say that religion is a more basic value than any of the other basic human values, so that 'for the sake of religion' one might rightly choose directly against any of those other values or ignore any of the other requirements of practical reasonableness. There is nothing to justify treating God as an objective to be attained by the skillful disposition of concrete means. (The fanatic acts as if God were such an objective). . . . [t]he human person's way of realizing the proposed friendship with God builds on all the requirements of practical reasonableness in the pursuit of, and the respect for, all the basic forms of human God." NLNR, 410. Our radical Muslims brothers (or any religious fanatic or zealot of whatever brand or ilk or confession) err grievously if they think that the basic human values are preempted by submission to God. Any proper, authentic submission to God (and any true prophet or true God) would oblige us to keep, to respect, to venerate the basic human values post submission even more since not only would those obligations be self-evident and an inclination of our nature placed there by that creator God, they would be the very fundamental law, the Shari'a behind any real shari'a, of the God to whom we submit or whom we claim to love.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Reasonable Myth and Revelation, Part 1

REASON IS A FOUNDATIONAL BULWARK of any theory of natural law, and it is self-evident that the life of reason is a basic value which ought to be promoted, and in which no way should be disdained. Who could argue that man ought to be unreasonable in governing his actions? It is absurd as saying that man ought not be man, that man ought to fight against his very nature. An unreasonable man is (though we see it often enough) living an oxymoronic existence, not a moral, flourishing existence. It is a man who dulls his edge, who foolishly cuts with the broad end of the knife, who takes what is sharp, acidic, acute (ὀξύς)--his reason--, and abuses it or ignores it and thus makes himself dull (μωρός), blunt, a moron. A man who argues thus is a man who cannot be argued against, as he has made himself into a fool.

But might there nevertheless be an explanation for the obligation to be reasonable, to practice practical reasonableness, albeit that the obligation to do so is self-evident? Can we find some other reason that one ought to be reasonable because it just is so and it cannot not be so? It is impossible for man to be satisfied with such an answer, and so man has sought to go beyond: to the reason behind self-evidency.

Some have predicated the obligation to be reasonable upon some form of voluntarism, using the express will of God in some sort of foundational anchor or base. But such answers suffer from some fundamental problems, most significantly they suffer from the unknowability of God's will through reason. Invariably, the arguments fail or they must ultimately grasp (even if unacknowledged) at some sort of revelation or assumption about God. The existence of God as the Uncaused Cause can be established by the use of reason, but beyond that reason cannot seem to go:

[T]hose who [philosophically] claim to know what God [as the Uncaused Cause] wills in some human context, and that that will should be obeyed are . . . going beyond what can be affirmed about [God as Uncaused Cause] on the basis of philosophical argumentation.

NLNR, 404.

As St. Thomas Aquinas states, "the will of God cannot be investigated by reasoning, except for those items that it is absolutely necessary for God to will. Now, as we have said before, such items do not include what God wills in regard to creatures." S.T. Ia, q. 46, art. 2, c. God's will is naked, or perhaps better, invisible to reason. It becomes visible only if it is clothed with revelation. Thus, those who build an argument that we ought to be reasonable because it is God's will ultimately are saying (though they may not admit it) that we ought to be reasonable because it is revealed (or presupposed or assumed):

They are claiming . . . relying . . . upon some definite revelation . . . that God positively favours both the basic goods and human adherence to the principles and requirements of practical reasonableness in pursuit of those goods; that the evils and disorders of this world are not favoured so, but are merely tolerated by God for the sake of some positive good (what, and how attained, we do not know); and that friendship with God, some sharing in God's life and knowledge and love-of-goods, is available to those who positively favour what God positively favours.

NLNR, 405. It is these beliefs* that are the ground for any argument that it is God's will we follow reason and the good toward which it points, and the evil that it commands we shun. But then the explanation presupposes these beliefs in order to make sense, so it is no longer reason that answers, but belief. In terms of reason, it is an answer that is no answer.

So if neither reason (i.e., the existence of an Uncaused Cause) nor voluntarism (God's will) yields a ready answer as an explanation of the foundation of morality, what then? Where else do we go? Must we have recourse to positive revelation, a raw naked fideism?

Man a Marionette?
Then Who's the Puppeteer?

Ultimately, it seems, we have to go to faith, but not to naked fideism. For reason has one last precursory, mythic role.** Before it decreases, it must increase in a last bloom of speculation, hope, anticipation even if it goes beyond itself in doing so. Reason prepares the way, as St. John prepared the way for Christ, by a reasoned speculation, a reasoned hope, a reasoned desire that the Uncaused Cause may be more than just Uncaused Cause. Perhaps--reason might speculate, hope, desire--perhaps this Uncaused Cause is personal, intentional in its acts and reasonable, perhaps it is desirous of communicating with us, perhaps it is a person that is concerned with our good and, ultimately, ought to be loved because the Uncaused Cause is lovable. It is this speculation that proposes the plausible explanation of the "why" of all things: of why we ought to be reasonable, of why one friend ought to yield to another, of why it is reasonable for a man to sacrifice himself for his family or his country (against the inclination toward self-preservation), of why there is a point of living at all (since our lives are clearly so limited as, in the long run, to be patently in vain).

[I]f these speculations and hopes [of reason] were confirmed [by some sort of revelation], a more basic account of obligation would become possible. For if the uncaused cause were revealed to favour the well-being of everyman, for no other reason than [God's] own goodness . . . the common good could be pursued by us for a new reason, viz. out of love or friendship for the personal being ('God') who not only makes possible whatever well-being of persons there can be and actually is, but also positively favours (though in ways often unintelligible to us) that common good. . . . And this would not only explain, in principle, how self-sacrifice in friendship can make sense; it also would account for our obligation to the common good. . . . So if God could be recognized to be our friend . . . and to be one who favours the common good of human persons, we would have a new and pertinent reason for loving that common good . . . .

NLNR, 406-07.

This reasonable speculation, hope, anticipation or yearning, if confirmed to be true by some revelation, would likewise yield deeper answers to the reason why the basic human values ought to be promoted and never attacked beyond their self-evidency. It is, as we have noted in earlier postings,*** self-evident that life, knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, play, friendship, practical reasonableness, religion. But if our reasonable speculation, hope, or anticipation of the Uncaused Cause is one who personal, reasonable, lovable is true, then we have attained a reason behind the self-evidency. If true, the reasoned speculation, the reasoned myth, would go beyond the self-evident nature of the basic values. And because this reasoned myth--if true--offers a better explanation of these things than if it were not true, it is reasonable to accept it. Reason hands us off in one elegant gesture to Faith, very much like Virgil handed Dante off to Beatrice in the poet's journey in the Divine Comedy.

Plato, indeed, went through such an exercise in his last work, the Laws in what Finnis characterizes as "one of the foundation texts in the tradition of theorizing about natural law." NLNR, 408. The characters are talking about law, and the Athenian speculates, through a parable or myth, through imaginings, that man may be modeled to be a sort of puppet, a plaything of the gods, or perhaps not a plaything, but something with a more serious purpose. Man is pulled by opposite chords, chords of pleasure (ἡδονή) and chords of pain (λύπη). These antagonistic chords when cognizant of the future feed states based upon their anticipation, fear (φόβος) or confidence or courage (θάρρος). There is, however, beyond these two antagonistic chords, a faculty of reckoning or judgment (λογισμός) which distinguishes which, under any circumstance, is better or worse. When this judgment (λογισμός) is predicated not of man and his psyche, but of the city as a whole, as a public decree (δόγμα) it is known as law (νόμος).

Let us conceive of the matter in this way. Let us suppose that each of us living creatures is an ingenious puppet of the gods, whether contrived by way of a toy of theirs or for some serious purpose—for as to that we know nothing; [644e] but this we do know, that these inward affections of ours, like sinews or cords, drag us along and, being opposed to each other, pull one against the other to opposite actions; and herein lies the dividing line between goodness and badness.

Plato, Laws, I, 644d-e.

In addition to the chord of pleasure/confidence and pain/fear, man in his psyche has yet a third chord, a subtle, soft, and golden chord, a chord of practical reasonableness (λογισμός χρύσεος). In the life of the city, this golden chord of reason is known as the common law (κοινός νόμος). Plato, Laws, I, 645a. There is, then, an analogue between the moral life of man, the golden chord of reason, and the common life of man, the golden chord of reasoned law. The reason this is so is because man is a puppet, perhaps a puppet-plaything-of-the-gods, but perhaps, perhaps a puppet-with-a-serious-purpose, a puppet-beloved-of-God?
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*And while these beliefs may be true, they are beliefs, not reasons. They are ultimately based upon a view of God that is more-than-philosophical. They are based upon a view of God which is either assumed or a view of God that is strangely alike that of the God of revelation, namely the God as revealed in the Christian revelation.
**We use myth in the manner that C. S. Lewis used the term, as a sort of precursor or weak prophet of revelation, a reasonable though speculative longing that is put into story, and which, ultimately became fact in the reality of God-becoming-Man. Christ is therefore the speculative longing of every man, every culture, every society confirmed as real and made Flesh: "If ever a myth had become a fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this [Christ presented in the Gospels]. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it . . . Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, man. This is not "a religion," nor "a philosophy." It is the summing up and actuality of them all." C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy. We might also borrow the definition of Carol Hamilton, who defines myths, as "unformed forecasts of God's ultimate plan." Carol J. Hamilton, "Christian Myth and Modern Man," 29 Encounter 251 Summer (1968).
***See, e.g., Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: The Seven Basic Values.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: St. Thomas and Eternal Law

FINNIS'S PENULTIMATE CHAPTER in his Natural Law and Natural Rights purports to "provide summary elucidation of that famous phrase" of St. Thomas in his Summa Theologiae, which defined the natural law as the participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura, the participation by the rational creature in the eternal law. (S.T. IaIIae, q. 91, art. 2, c.)

Perhaps the operative word in St. Thomas's conceptual formula is the term "participation" or (in Latin) participatio. The term participatio is a Latin word that incorporates several Greek concepts used by Plato and Aristotle, namely (and especially) methexis (μέθεξις), but also metalepsis (μετάληψις).* But Aquinas did not particularly focused on the Platonic or Aristotelian usage when he uses the term participatio. For Aquinas (according to Finnis), "the word participatio focally signifies two conjoined concepts, causality and similarity (or imitation)." NLNR, 399. The causal sense and similarity are related since the Thomistic notion of participation means that the quality of one entity or state of affairs was caused by a similar quality which some other entity or state of affairs has or includes (relative to the first entity or state of affairs) in a more central, intrinsic, and perhaps independent way. NLNR, 399.

St. Thomas Aquinas

The notion of participation is, as we have seen, particularly important to Aristotle's notion of nous.* It does not take much reflection to come to the conclusion that human rational thought seems to exceed its material "substratum," that mind is something that seems to be beyond and above the brain. "The power of human understanding far exceeds (or rather is incommensurable with) what we would expect to be the intrinsic capacity of the brain-material, however complex . . . ." NLNR, 399. In regard to mind, Aristotle could easily conceive as a postulate or speculative possibility "an intelligence that would far exceed human intelligence," one that was not as encumbered as ours is with the material accouterments and their weight--images, figures, symbols, concepts, abstractions, loss of memory, slowness in learning, etc. To the extent our mind seems to exceed the capacity of our material brains, the Greeks and St. Thomas postulated a "'separate intellect' which has the power of understanding without imperfection, and which causes in us our individual intelligences--somewhat as a source of light activates in us our power of sight." NLNR, 400. Our mind (nous) therefore participated (metalepsis) in the divine Nous. St. Thomas--with the benefit of Revelation--identified that divine Nous as God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of Moses, of Jesus Christ. St. Thomas concludes, therefore, that "it is from God that the human mind shares in [participat] intellectual light: as Psalm 4 verse 7 puts it, 'The light of they countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us.'"** NLNR, 400. This is the Christianized version of the Aristotelian insight.

The same Psalm that St. Thomas used to tie human nous or intellect to the divine Nous or intellect is referred to by St. Thomas in the area of law and the participation of the natural law in the eternal law. For the light of the Lord's countenance shines on man not only in the speculative intellect, but also in the practical intellect. So the Lord's intellect shines on man in the areas of truth as well as the area of good. Man participates in the Lord's light in both mind and law. Therefore a human being's grasp of the natural law, and his participation thereby in the Eternal Law, is nothing miraculous or supernatural; rather, "there is noting extraordinary about man's grasp of the natural law" and participation in the Eternal Law, as this grasp is something that is within man's ordinary, natural abilities. NLNR, 400. Though ordinary in this sense, however, it is a reflection of man's dignity, a dignity which is shown in his ability to reason, and this reason that gives man his dignity relative to the animals includes both the speculative and the practical intellect, leading him to the true and to the good.

Although the entirety of the creation participates in the Eternal Law, man's participation through reason is the basis of his nobility. The brute creation participate in the Eternal Law aliqualiter, "somehow," in only a metaphorical way since they do not participate knowingly and freely, but by a sort of instinctual compulsion.

Human beings . . . provide for themselves (and for others); so we can say that man is not only subject to God's providence, but is actually a participant (particeps) in it. In brief, animals (and the rest of 'lower creation') are not subject to natural [moral] law. And their nature is not a basis for inference about the principles of human reasonableness.

NLNR, 401.

St. Thomas specifies that the eternal reason is participated in us "through our 'natural inclination to the due [debitum] act and due end.'" NLNR, 401.† This natural inclination includes, most significantly, the inclination to act reasonably, that is secundum rationem, according to reason.†† However, it also incorporates the inclination we have towards our last end, our finnis ultimus, which, in our natural faculties, is a desire for happiness which results when we obtain an understanding of something, in this particular instance the causes of all causes, God. In its fullness, however, as a result of unmerited gift, the participation in the finis ultimus goes beyond nature, as God has conditionally promised man a supernatural beatitude arising from participation by grace in God's very own life. (It is conditioned because it requires man to exercise his freedom: it requires him to exercise his freedom in embracing, even if only implicitly, Christ and His Church.) But this perfection of nature by grace is beyond the competency of the natural law, though without the natural law that nature could never be perfected by that grace.

In St. Thomas's view, human participation in the divine practical reason is what allows us to grasp the basic forms of good and therefore allows us to grasps the basic precept and principles of natural law.

[T]he data for this act of understanding include the desires and inclinations which we experience, but like all understanding, this act of understanding goes beyond the data as experience, to concepts accessible or available not to experience but only to understanding. . . . [this] 'light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is bad (which is hat natural law concerns), is simply the impress in us of the divine light.'"

NLNR, 402 (quoting S. T. IaIIae, 91, art. 2, c.)

This participation through the natural law in the eternal law is not however something supernatural or mystical. It incorporates only the ideas of causality and similarity in that causality, and the divine role is simply unfelt as something extraordinary. NLNR, 402. In short, this participation is something directly related to the Uncaused Cause, a "theorem in the general explanation of all states of affairs by reference, ultimately, to creative uncaused causality." NLNR, 402.

St. Thomas, therefore, shares with both Plato and Aristotle a sort of bottom-up notion of God in the moral life of man:

The account of the source of natural law [in St. Thomas] focuses first on the experienced dynamisms of our nature, and then on intelligible principles which outline the aspects of human flourishing, the basic values grasped by human understanding. A few pages later Aquinas formulates one of the fundamental theoretical principles of his account of the content of natural law: 'all those things to which man has a natural inclination, one's reason naturally understands as good (and thus "to be pursued") and their contraries as bad (as as "to be avoided").

NLNR, 403.

The clear "parallelism, this fit, this convenientia of felt inclinations with valuable aspects of human well-being" can only be there for one reason and one reason alone: a creative and providential God, who through his act of creation and his providential governance, is intimately concerned with our well-being.
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*Metalepsis is a term meaning participation, and it is used to express the reality in Platonic philosophy of divine/human participation. Methexis also meaning participation is used to describe the manner in which something's "form" participates in matter so as to make a thing (and things like it) what it is (what they are).
**See Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Seeds of Eternal Law in Aristotle.
***S. T. I, q. 79, art. 4, c. (Unde ab ipso anima humana lumen intellectuale participat, secundum illud Psalmi IV, signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, domine.)
S.T. IaIIae, q. 91, art. 2, c. "[I]t is evident that all things partake somewhat of the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its being imprinted on them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends. Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to Divine providence in the most excellent way, in so far as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Wherefore it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. Hence the Psalmist after saying (Psalm 4:6): "Offer up the sacrifice of justice," as though someone asked what the works of justice are, adds: "Many say, Who showeth us good things?" in answer to which question he says: "The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us": thus implying that the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine light [N.B. this is a reference to Psalm 4:7]. It is therefore evident that the natural law is nothing else than the rational creature's participation of the eternal law. (manifestum est quod omnia participant aliqualiter legem aeternam, inquantum scilicet ex impressione eius habent inclinationes in proprios actus et fines. Inter cetera autem rationalis creatura excellentiori quodam modo divinae providentiae subiacet, inquantum et ipsa fit providentiae particeps, sibi ipsi et aliis providens. Unde et in ipsa participatur ratio aeterna, per quam habet naturalem inclinationem ad debitum actum et finem. Et talis participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura lex naturalis dicitur. Unde cum Psalmista dixisset, sacrificate sacrificium iustitiae, quasi quibusdam quaerentibus quae sunt iustitiae opera, subiungit, multi dicunt, quis ostendit nobis bona? Cui quaestioni respondens, dicit, signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, domine, quasi lumen rationis naturalis, quo discernimus quid sit bonum et malum, quod pertinet ad naturalem legem, nihil aliud sit quam impressio divini luminis in nobis. Unde patet quod lex naturalis nihil aliud est quam participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura.)
†S. T. IaIIae, q. 93, art. 1 c. (ita ratio divinae sapientiae moventis omnia ad debitum finem, obtinet rationem legis); q. 93, art. 5, c., art. 6, c.
††S. T. IaIIae, q. 94, art. 3, c.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Seeds of Eternal Law in Plato

NEITHER PLATO NOR ARISTOTLE BUILD THEIR ethics on the existence of God top-down according to John Finnis. It is not to God that they look to as the source of objective norms of human flourishing (happiness). The flow of argument is not God→Norm→Man, but rather Man→Norm→God. They build their ethics on the existence of God bottom-up. They both start from nature, to objective norms of right and of wrong, and, in reflecting upon the nature of these norms, come to see "that there is a transcendent source of being (i.e., of entities and states of affairs, and of their existing) and in particular of our capacity and desire to understanding being (or nature) and its many forms of good." NLNR, 395. This is a very beautiful thought to which we in the West are heir, although it is prevalent enough in the Eastern notion of dharma and the Tao:

[I]n realizing one's nature, in flourishing (eudamonia), and (what is the same thing from another aspect) in recognizing the authoritativeness of practical reasonableness, its principles, and its requirements, one is responding to the divine pull and recognizing the mastery of God.

NLNR, 395-96. Plato comes very close indeed to an understanding of God's law as an Eternal Law in which natural law, with its foundation in man's reasonable nature, participates. If we did not know their source, it would be hard to distinguish these words of Plato from the words of a Christian theologian:

Let us, then, speak to them thus:—“O men, that God who, as old tradition tells, holds the beginning, the end, and the center of all things that exist, completes his circuit by nature's ordinance in straight, unswerving course. With him follows Justice, as avenger of them that fall short of the divine law; and she, again, is followed by every man who would fain be happy, cleaving to her with lowly and orderly behavior . . . Every man ought so to devise as to be of the number of those who follow in the steps of the God. . . . What conduct, then, is dear to God and in his steps? One kind of conduct, expressed in one ancient phrase, namely, that “like is dear to like” when it is moderate, whereas immoderate things are dear neither to one another nor to things moderate. In our eyes God will be “the measure of all things” in the highest degree—a degree much higher than is any “man” they talk of. He, then, that is to become dear to such an one must needs become, so far as he possibly can, of a like character; and, according to the present argument, he amongst us that is temperate is dear to God, since he is like him.

Plato, Laws.* Patently, Plato had no benefit of the Christian revelation. The "revelation" of the Greek gods was one he, by an large a student of Socrates (who was condemned for atheism and the corruption of youth), rejected. It is therefore to be expected that he had no conception of a distinction between divinely promulgated law (such as that found in the Old Testament or the New Testament) and the naturally promulgated law. Plato had formed a concept of the latter, but not the former.

For Plato, while he would affirm that God can be apprehended by us in the act and experience of human understanding, has no conception of a revelation accessible to men without the effort of rational dialectic and contemplation--of the sort of empirical revelation, for instance that would be 'folly to the Greeks' (but would be offered to them non the less).

NLNR, 396. But the reason and dialectic of both Plato and Aristotle was something markedly different from the reason and dialectic of the Enlightenment. For both Aristotle and Plato, reason did not mean that man was the measure of all things, but reason meant that God was the measure of all things. Practical reason was--for them--theologically ordered and centered. It was not anthropologically-centered. Unlike the reason unleashed by the Enlightenment thinkers, reason was not a vehicle toward an autonomy, but rather reason was a vehicle toward a theonomy.

[Plato and Aristotle] were encouraged to treat reason as more than a skill, knack, or characteristic that men, unlike animals, happen to have; and to treat the nature or reality that both includes and is illuminated by man's understanding as more than a fortuitous agglomeration of entities and states of affairs devoid of any significance that could attract human admiration and allegiance. Practical reasonableness gains for them the significance of a partial imitation of God; the basic values grasped by practical reason gain an objectivity; and practical reason's methodological requirements of constancy and impartiality are reinforced by the worth of adopting the viewpoint of the God who 'contemplates all time and all existence.'

NLNR, 398 (quoting Plato, Republic, VI, 486a).

Christos Basileus (Christ the King)

For all their yearning, and for all their leanings toward the right and the true, there is both in Plato and Aristotle a certain diffidence, an "uncertainty," which comes from reason's limits. They have reached the boundaries of reason's gift, and there they await, panting as a deer for living waters, the living waters that only Christ and His Church could impart, and which, they, at best, smelled, sort of like one feels the approaching of a rain storm. This living water was not something that could be found through the exercise of Greek reason. It required the coming to God to earth: his self-communication by the assumption of human nature by the Person of the Son of God. All Plato and Aristotle yearned for and had but an inkling at best, was to find fulfillment in Christos Basileus and the Theopolis of the Church.

Without some revelation more revealing than any that Plato or Aristotle may have experienced, it is impossible to have sufficient assurance that the uncaused cause of all the good things of this world (including our ability to understand them) is itself a good that one could love, personal in a way that one might imitate, a guide that one should follow, or a guarantor of anyone's practical reasonableness.

NLNR, 398.

Aristotle and Plato, like all men bar none, needed the "foolishness" of the revelation of God in Christ. Cf. 1 Cor. 1:23. The revelation of God in Christ is the capstone of any theory of natural law. Without the revelation, a theory of natural law will get close, but not even as close as Moses got to the Promised Land when he viewed the terrain from the top of Mount Pisgah. And close counts only in horseshoes and hand grenades as the saying goes. Close is not good enough in the formation of one's moral life. Nor is it good enough in the formation of the life of the community.

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*Plato, Laws, IV, 715e-716d (“ἄνδρες” τοίνυν φῶμεν πρὸς αὐτούς, “ὁ μὲν δὴ θεός, ὥσπερ καὶ ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος, ἀρχήν τε καὶ τελευτὴν καὶ μέσα τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντων ἔχων, εὐθείᾳ περαίνει κατὰ φύσιν περιπορευόμενος: τῷ δὲ ἀεὶ συνέπεται δίκη τῶν ἀπολειπομένων τοῦ θείου νόμου τιμωρός, ἧς ὁ μὲν εὐδαιμονήσειν μέλλων ἐχόμενος συνέπεται ταπεινὸς καὶ κεκοσμημένος . . . . “τίς οὖν δὴ πρᾶξις φίλη καὶ ἀκόλουθος θεῷ; μία, καὶ ἕνα λόγον ἔχουσα ἀρχαῖον, ὅτι τῷ μὲν ὁμοίῳ τὸ ὅμοιον ὄντι μετρίῳ φίλον ἂν εἴη, τὰ δ᾽ ἄμετρα οὔτε ἀλλήλοις οὔτε τοῖς ἐμμέτροις. ὁ δὴ θεὸς ἡμῖν πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἂν εἴη μάλιστα, καὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἤ πού τις, ὥς φασιν, ἄνθρωπος: τὸν οὖν τῷ τοιούτῳ προσφιλῆ γενησόμενον, εἰς δύναμιν ὅτι μάλιστα καὶ αὐτὸν τοιοῦτον ἀναγκαῖον γίγνεσθαι, καὶ κατὰ τοῦτον δὴ τὸν λόγον ὁ μὲν σώφρων ἡμῶν θεῷ φίλος, ὅμοιος γάρ, ὁ δὲ μὴ σώφρων ἀνόμοιός τε καὶ διάφορος καὶ [ὁ] ἄδικος, καὶ τὰ ἄλλ᾽ οὕτως κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον ἔχει. νοήσωμεν δὴ τούτοις ἑπόμενον εἶναι τὸν τοιόνδε λόγον, ἁπάντων κάλλιστον καὶ ἀληθέστατον οἶμαι λόγων, ὡς τῷ μὲν ἀγαθῷ θύειν καὶ προσομιλεῖν ἀεὶ τοῖς θεοῖς εὐχαῖς καὶ ἀναθήμασιν καὶ συμπάσῃ θεραπείᾳ θεῶν κάλλιστον καὶ ἄριστον καὶ ἀνυσιμώτατον πρὸς τὸν εὐδαίμονα βίον καὶ δὴ καὶ διαφερόντως πρέπον, τῷ δὲ κακῷ τούτων τἀναντία πέφυκεν.)

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Eternal Law, Part 2

REASON CAN ESTABLISH THE EXISTENCE OF GOD as Uncaused Cause with certainty. Chance alone is unable to explain the reality of the state of affairs as we know it. In his Natural Law and Natural Rights, John Finnis, however, ascribes a lower level of certainty in the use of analogy from the existence of an Uncaused Cause to the existence of there being an Eternal Law. In his view, the argument of analogy from our experience that an act of choice is always preceded by a prior intention and plan so as to infer an Eternal Law in the Uncaused Cause is "cannot . . . be rigorously established by philosophical argumentation." NLNR, 392. Reason, Finnis appears to believe, cannot establish that the Uncaused Cause is personal and therefore governed by a ratio ordinis in its (his) creation and governance of the cosmos, and yet it certainly can suggest, hypothesize, posit, speculate the existence of such a reality. "Verification," that is, confirmation of the truth that there is a personal God and an Eternal Law, and "clarification of the meaning of the concepts employed" in such an Eternal Law, will have to come from somewhere other than the tentative suggestions of reason. However, reason's suggestion that the Uncaused Cause may be personal raises the question as to whether there may not be some sort of communication or self-revelation by the Uncaused Cause. Can the divine Nous* or intelligence communicate with the human nous or intelligence?

But here we depart from the realm of Reason into the realm of fact, of experience, of history, where Faith will govern. Reason has established certainly that there is an Uncaused Cause, and has, moreover, suggested that such an Uncaused Cause may be both personal and, in its (his) creation of the state of affairs as we find them, have a ratio ordinis, a plan, an ordinance of reason which we call the Eternal Law. So in the area of God and of Law there is an overlap of Reason and Faith. What the former suggests as possible, the latter confirms as real.

It must never be overlooked that, for nearly two millennia, the theories of natural law have been expounded by men who, with few exceptions, believed that the uncaused cause has in fact revealed itself to be all that the foregoing analogue model of creative causality hypothesized, to be indeed supremely personal, and to be a lawgiver whose law for man should be obeyed out of gratitude, hope, fear, and/or love. . . . But it must also not be overlooked that the originators of natural law theorizing, who did not suppose [or know] that God had revealed himself by any such act of informative communication , believed none the less that through philosophical meditation one can gain access to the transcendent source of being, goodness, and knowledge.

NLNR, 392. In the latter category, of course, we would put perhaps Heraclitus, but certainly Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, including Cicero. These representatives of human thought, though not graced with revelation, nevertheless argued against the relativists, the skeptics, the positivists of their day (the Sophists, the Cynics). They had, as it were, a natural faith in reason. They were convinced, based upon the resources of reason alone (the only resources they had since the Gospel had not been preached, and faith comes through hearing), that an objective moral order was both intelligible and discoverable. They were confident in reason; at the "foundation of such teachings [of practical reasonableness, ethics, or natural right] is their faith in the power and objectivity of reason, intelligence, nous." NLNR, 392. But even here, where reason was given great weight and revelation was unknown, there was a notion that human reason participated in the eternal reason or mind of God. The human nous was never apart from the divine Nous, but participated in the divine Nous. Here, reason did not oppose itself to Reason, but worked within Reason, as it were.

[T]here is much reason to believe that their confidence in human nous is itself founded upon their belief that the activity of human understanding, at its most intense, is a kind of sharing in the activity of the divine nous.

NLNR, 392-93.** The overlap and fit between reason's project in Plato and Aristotle and the schools they founded and faith's project in both the Mosaic and Christian revelation and the Church was so amicable and complementary that many were convinced that perhaps there had been some sort of communication between the Jewish prophet and the Greek philosopher. Thus in St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei we have the tentative hypothesis that perhaps Plato had some communication or access to the prophetic traditions of Israel:

Certain partakers with us in the grace of Christ, wonder when they hear and read that Plato had conceptions concerning God, in which they recognize considerable agreement with the truth of our religion. . . . Then, as to Plato's saying that the philosopher is a lover of God, nothing shines forth more conspicuously in those sacred writings. But the most striking thing in this connection, and that which most of all inclines me almost to assent to the opinion that Plato was not ignorant of those writings, is the answer which was given to the question elicited from the holy Moses when the words of God were conveyed to him by the angel; for, when he asked what was the name of that God who was commanding him to go and deliver the Hebrew people out of Egypt, this answer was given: "I am who am; and you shall say to the children of Israel, He who is sent me unto you;" Exodus 3:14 as though compared with Him that truly is, because He is unchangeable, those things which have been created mutable are not—a truth which Plato zealously held, and most diligently commended. And I know not whether this sentiment is anywhere to be found in the books of those who were before Plato, unless in that book where it is said, "I am who am; and you shall say to the children of Israel, who is sent me unto you."

St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, VIII, c. 11.***

The interconnectedness between reason's project and faith's project ought not to be dismissed. The fact that philosophy and theology, reason and faith, more or less traveled parallel paths until joined in Judaeo/Hellenistic and Christian/Hellenistic philosophical/theological blends (e.g., Philo the Jew or Justin Martyr) ought not to suggest that they should not be joined. Nor should the fact that reason and faith and their separate contributions can be distinguished one from each other imply that they ought to be separately pursued. What God has so felicitously joined, let no man put asunder. Faith and reason must be used jointly and severally, not each severally, else we land in some sort of "muddle."

[T]he distinctions later drawn by Christian theologians between natural law and divine law, and between natural reason and revelation, have given some encouragement to the supposition that 'natural la' or 'natural reason(ableness)' signify properties of a purely immanent world ('nature') or an intelligence which has no knowledge of, or concern for, the existence of any transcendent ('supernatural') uncaused cause. But this supposition is mere muddle and is not, and was not intended to be, entailed by the aforementioned distinctions.

NLNR, 394.

Finnis, of course, is referring here to those natural law theories that were advanced at the time of the Enlightenment and beyond. We must not confuse those theories of natural law and natural right which were based upon the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius's tentative suggestion that a moral law could be built upon the temerarious suggestion that we ought to think as if God did not exist.† The Deistic and later even agnostic and atheistic presuppositions entertained by some Enlightenment natural law thinkers ought not to deter us from the project as originally conceived. In our question for a reason-based morality, that is in our search for the natural moral law, reason does not require us to disclaim the existence of a personal God, a personal Eternal Law, or a personal Providence.
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*Nous, of course, meaning intelligence or intellect, mind, reason, thought, etc. is a transliteration of the Greek word νοῦς.
**Finnis cites to Plato, Republic, VI, 508a-509b; VII, 514a-518e and Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII, 7:1072b13-25 and Nicomachean Ethics, X, 7:1177b26-1178a1.
***"Mirantur autem quidam nobis in Christi gratia sociati, cum audiunt vel legunt Platonem de Deo ista sensisse, quae multum congruere veritati nostrae religionis agnoscunt. . . . Deinde quod Plato dicit amatorem Dei esse philosophum, nihil sic illis sacris Litteris flagrat 38; et maxime illud (quod et me plurimum adducit, ut paene assentiar Platonem illorum librorum expertem non fuisse), quod, cum ad sanctum Moysen ita verba Dei per angelum perferantur, ut quaerenti quod sit nomen eius, qui eum pergere praecipiebat ad populum Hebraeum ex Aegypto liberandum, respondeatur: Ego sum qui sum, et dices filiis Israel: qui est, misit me ad vos 39, tamquam in eius comparatione, qui vere est quia incommutabilis est, ea quae mutabilia facta sunt non sint, vehementer hoc Plato tenuit et diligentissime commendavit 40. Et nescio utrum hoc uspiam reperiatur in libris eorum, qui ante Platonem fuerunt, nisi ubi dictum est: Ego sum qui sum, et dices eis: qui est, misit me ad vos."
†The suggestion of Hugo Grotius that natural law would persist even if one dared to suggest that there was not a God (etiamsi daremus . . . non esse deum) has been treated in the prior posting Natural Law: Ecstasis and Telos.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Eternal Law, Part 1

THE FACULTY OF REASON IS AT ITS WEAKEST when confronted by the Uncaused Cause (which we now capitalize in recognition of His divinity) of the state of affairs that exists and when asking questions about that Uncaused Cause is, what is the essence of the Uncaused Cause. The senses and intellect both are at their stretching point, thin like the skin of a stretched balloon, and yet they can provide us--through analogical reasoning--a little more light on the nature or the essence of this Uncaused Cause.

[I]t is philosophically possible to speculate that [the uncaused cause's] causing of all caused state of affairs, being an uncaused causing which determines between contingent possibilities, is in some respects analogous to the free choices of human persons. . . . [T]he analogy may be justified in as much as human persons, by free acts of thinking, choosing, and using or making, bring into being entities (e.g. arguments, friendships, poems, and constitutions) that simply would not exist but for these not-wholly-determined human acts.

NLNR, 389.

Granted, the analogy, though justified, must needs be imperfect. Yet we experience the freedom of acts in our creation of things virtually brought forth as if from nothing.

Giotto Last Judgment (Detail)

The studied and haunting cadence of the ostinato of the Second Movement of Beethoven's Second Symphony. The budding three-dimensionality of a Giotto fresco. The rose window of Notredame Cathedral which captures the eye with its ebullience of color. The Cantos of Dantesque genius:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita. . . .

The intellectual synthesis of St. Thomas's Summa Theologiae:

Quia Catholicae veritatis doctor non solum provectos debet instruere, sed ad eum pertinet etiam incipientes erudire, secundum illud apostoli I ad Corinth. III, tanquam parvulis in Christo, lac vobis potum dedi, non escam; propositum nostrae intentionis in hoc opere est . . . .

The Magna Carta:

Sciatis nos intuitu Dei et pro salute anime nostre et omnium antecessorum et heredum nostrorum ad honorem Dei et exaltacionem sancte Ecclesie . . . .

These humanly-created acts (whether of art, or poetry, or philosophy, or government) presuppose a prior knowledge, a plan, on the part of its human creator. Every work of art has a ratio ordinis behind its act. The artist knew what he was up to in doing what he did. These works of art did not fall together by sheer happenstance. "We only act freely when we know what the possibilities were, and when we know what we are doing." NLNR, 389. That seems self-evident. That analogy--applied to the Uncaused Cause--is the origin of the Augustinian and Thomistic concept of the eternal law (a concept, it ought to be noted, that was found in germ among the Greeks and in full flower of development in the Stoics, in the neo-Platonists, in Plotinus, and in Cicero).

The . . . Eternal Law is a development of the analogy in this respect: what we do is guided, shaped, directed by the formally (and often chronologically) prior plan we have in mind; if we are trying to get the members of a community themselves to act in the way we have it in mind for them to act, our plan of action can be presented as a law of their actions. So too the ensemble of caused states of affairs which exist in intelligible orders in accordance with physical and other laws of nature (both 'classical' and statistical), with principles of logic and theoretical rationality, with requirements of practical reasonableness for human flourishing, and with the flexible norms of arts and technologies. Thus the theory of Eternal Law proposes that the laws, principles, requirements, and norms of the four orders [physical, logical, moral, and artistico-technical] be regarded as holing for their respective orders precisely because they express aspects, intelligible to us, of the creative intention which guides [the uncaused cause's] causing of the categorically variegated 'community' of all entities and all states of affairs in all orders.

NLNR, 389. By "eternal" is meant that this law is not incomplete, that it cannot be subject to change or changing, and yet neither is it static or unchanging as we understand it. It is a manner of acknowledging that this law "neither develops nor declines," that the uncaused cause is "outside the range of application of the concepts of change and changelessness, and hence of time." NLNR, 390. That such an Eternal Law exists--a necessary corollary to the existence of the Uncaused Cause--is known, but what it is reason cannot say. "Yet every state of affairs , however 'fortuitous' [it may seem to us], requires [the Uncaused Cause's] creative causality if it is to exist. So the speculation on the 'plan' of that causality, i.e. on Eternal Law, suggests that much of that Law is quite unknown to us." NLNR, 390-91.

This ignorance of the "plan" behind the Eternal Law of the Uncaused Cause shields us from ever knowing the mystery of evil. Evil, as Finnis notes, "strictly speaking, is a defect, a lack, the non-existing of what ought (in terms of the norms of the relevant order) to have existed but in fact does not exist." NLNR, 391. The fact that evil is privity of the good, however, does not suggest that evil is not a reality, though in itself it does not exist and never can exist without an attendant good that is host to the privity which is evil. Absolute evil (sheer non-existence, an absolute absence of any good) is an impossibility. In light of our ignorance of the Uncaused Cause's "plan," that is, the Eternal Law, it is impossible to judge or assess the role of evil, for "we could only judge [the Uncaused Cause's] causality to be evil or imperfect or defective if we knew what the norms applicable to creative causality are," which, of course, we don't.

While we can speculate that the norms known to us do reflect the plan 'underlying' creative causality, such an assumption does not warrant an inference that that plan is 'capture' by the norms which we known (or could come to know by any means imaginable to us). The norms in terms of which we judge states of affairs to be evil, in any of the four orders, are not applicable to [the Uncaused Cause] as creator. Thus we have no ground to judge that [the Uncaused Cause's] creative causality is defective. In short . . . we do not know enough of [the Eternal Law] to be able to judge [the Uncaused Cause's] creative performance defective in terms of it.

NLNR, 391.

We can know that Homer nods. So when, in the Iliad, Menelaos kills Pylaimenes [V.576-79], and yet the latter re-appears in the epic poem to witness the death of his son [XIII.643-59], we recognize the poetic evil. Or when Homer describes the tri-partite embassy to Achilles (Phoenix, Odysseus, and Aias) as composed of two members instead of three [Cf. IX.165-93 with IX.182, 192], we comprehend the error. But what we know of Homer we do not know of the Uncaused Cause. We cannot know if and when or whether the Uncaused Cause--whom all call God--has nodded or nods. We would need to know the entire plan of history, of the design of Creation, or the intendment of Providence, and all these are outside our ken and therefore outside the human logos, the human reason, the human word.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. "That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence."*


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*Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, No. 7.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Nature, Reason, God, Part 2

WE FINISHED OUR LAST POSTING WITH THE QUESTION "Why do things exist? In addressing this question Finnis asks whether the principle of sufficient reason* compels the conclusion that there must be an answer to the question of the fact of "sheer existence," of "Why things are?"

Finnis admits that the proponents of natural law which in his Natural Law and Natural Rights he has not "reproduced or defended,"** thought, based upon the principle of sufficient reason, that there was such an answer, whereas the likes of Hume and Kant did not. NLNR, 384. From a philosophical standpoint, he rejects the principle of sufficient reason, but wonders if--despite the absence of such a principle--the question as to "why the whole state of affairs causing the first-mentioned state of affairs to exist itself exists?" may persist and be answerable. NLNR, 385. Finnis believes that the contingency of the world is at the heart of the answer to the question of whether there is a God (defined as an uncaused cause or uncaused causing). In other words, in assessing the contingency of the world, that all things must have an explicating cause, is there an infinity of causes (which necessarily is the skeptic's answer) or is there reasonably a first cause, an uncaused cause (which, if the question is not ignored, is the only other answer other than that of the skeptics)?

While Finnis rejects finding the answer to such a question in the principle of sufficient reason, Finnis suggests that self-evident principles of theoretical rationality (as distinguished from practical rationality) hold the clue to answering that question. One of those self-evident principles is the following:

If a question of a certain form has been asked and answered, one can except another question of the same general form to be answerable, and: If a theoretical question can be partially answered by positing a theoretical entity [that is, an entity of which we have no experience via the senses], and to do so allows the raising of further questions which, if answered, might well provide a more satisfying answer to the initial question, the one ought to posit such a theoretical entity--unless there are good reasons for not doing so.

NLNR, 385.***

We ask and are able to answer questions of the form, "Why does X exist?" as a matter of course. Why does the oxidization of iron exist? Why does George have blue eyes (why do his blue eyes exist) when both his parents had brown eyes? Why do solar eclipses exist? It follows that if the question, "Why does X exist?" may be asked of a particular state of affairs (say, iron, a person's eyes, the sun, or any subject of our myriad sciences), then it may be asked of the "whole set of states of affairs which initially explain why the particular state of affairs first under consideration itself exists." NLNR, 385. The answer to the question, "Why does X exist?" when said of the X that is defined as the "entire state of affairs" can be answered by positing a theoretical entity (an "uncaused cause" "uncaused causing," namely God). Further, positing that entity (the "uncaused cause," an "uncaused causing," or God) allows for the raising of further questions the answers of which allow for more satisfactory answers to the question as to why the entire state of affairs exists rather than something else or nothing. There is, therefore, good reason for positing that God as uncaused cause or uncaused causing exists. And there are no good reasons for positing that notion that God as uncaused cause does not exist. That, in a nutshell is Finnis's rendition of the argument of the existence of God based upon contingency which he appears to have borrowed from Germain Grisez (who adapted it from St. Thomas).

Five Eskimos (by Matisse)

The question, "why does X exist?" when "X" is the "state of the whole set of state of affairs" is more than the "empty project"of answering a question that is just an aggregate sum of the particular questions "why does X exist?" when that question is said of the individual Xs of a group or set. Thus Finnis rejects Paul Edwards's "Five Eskimos" argument that the question of "why does X exist?" is absurd when posited of the "the whole set of state of affairs" since if the question "why does X exist" when said of each individual of the set is answerable, there is no need to ask the question of the whole set of state of affairs: the answers to the question for each "X" answer the question for the aggregate of Xs. Here is Paul Edwards's argument:

Suppose I see a group of five Eskimos standing on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 50th St. and I wish to explain why the group came to New York. Investigation reveals the following stories: Eskimo No. 1 did not enjoy the extreme cold in the polar region and decided to move to a warmer climate. No. 2 is the husband of No. 1; he loves her dearly and did not wish to live without her. No. 3 is the son of Eskimos 1 and 2; he is too small and too weak to oppose his parents. No. 4 saw and advertisement in the New York Times for an Eskimo to appear on television. No. 5 is a private detective engaged by the Pinkerton Agency to keep an eye on Eskimo No. 4.

Let us assume that we have now explained in the case of each of the five Eskimos why he or she is in New York. Somebody then asks: "All right, but what about the group as a whole, why is it in New York? This would plainly be an absurd question. There is no group over and above the give members and if we have explained why each of the five members is in New York, we have ipso facto explained why the group is there. A critic of the cosmological argument would claim that it is just as absurd to ask for the cause of the series as a whole, as distinct from asking for the causes of the individual members.†

As Finnis argues, the question that asks for explanation for the whole state of affairs is different from a mere aggregation of the individual questions that ask for an explanation as to the existence of each member of a group or set. What is involved is "a matter of explaining more fully the existing of one particular state of affairs." In other words, the question seeks to go deeper than the individual sum of explanations aggregated. "The existing of that (first mentioned) state of affairs [in Edwards's example the explanation of the presence of five Eskimos in New York] is partially explained by the already postulated causing state of affairs, but only on the assumption that the whole causing state of affairs exists." NLNR, 386. The question is not why it is that five Eskimos find themselves in a corner in New York, but the question is why is it that the five Eskimos and New York exist and not some other entire contingent situation (such as four Eskimos in the corner of Krasnopesnenskaya and Barrikadnaya streets in Moscow)? So Edwards begs the question by assuming the answer (or by ignoring the deeper question). There is but one explanation for "the whole causing state of affairs."

[T]here is some state of affairs causing that whole causing set of prerequisites or conditions of the first-mentioned state of affairs, but which is not itself included in that causing set of conditions precisely because, unlike all members of that set, its existing does not require some prerequisite condition (not included in itself) to be satisfied.

NLNR, 386. In short, "[t]his newly postulated state of affairs can (and should, given the sense we are giving to 'cause') be called an uncaused causing." NLNR, 386. "Where the uncaused causing must differ, if it is to explain what needs to be explained, is in this: that to exist, it requires nothing not included in itself (That is the fact about it that we signify by 'uncaused')." NLNR, 386.

Does the "uncaused causing" exist?

The explanation of its existing can only be this: that the uncaused causing state of affairs includes, as a prerequisite to its existing, a state of affairs that exists because of what it is, i.e. because it is what it is.

NLNR, 387.

From this, Finnis seems to latch onto an ontological argument of sorts. In contrast to all other contingent state of affairs (which do not necessarily exist, and so what it is is different from the question of that it is), this uncaused causing must exist necessarily. For the uncaused causing, what it is is equivalent to that it is. The only thing we know, then of the uncaused causing is that what it is is the same as that it is. But that is enough to compel the conclusion that the necessary existence of an uncaused causing is the only adequate explanation for any contingent state of affairs to exist. "[W]ithout it [a necessary uncaused cause], no state of affairs that might not exist could exist." NLNR, 387. Since we know that there is a contingent state of affairs that exists which might not exist, then it follows that a necessary uncaused cause must exist. This "uncaused cause," this "uncaused causing" is what we call the God of philosophy, the God of reason. We are at preambula fidei, we are walking at the long edge of reason and the short edge of faith. We are the divide between faith and reason: windward is reason, leeward is faith.

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*The "principle of sufficient reason" is a philosophical principle that everything must have an explanatory reason or cause. It rejects the argument that there are brute or unexplainable facts: that there are some facts that "just are." It is aligned with the common expression, perhaps Parmenidian in origin: ex nihilo, nihil fit, nothing comes from nothing. It is the principle behind King Lear's insistence, in his conversation with his daughter Cordelia, that there must be a reason.

KING LEAR: ..what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA: Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR: Nothing?!
CORDELIA: Nothing.
KING LEAR: Nothing will come of nothing, speak again.

Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1, sc. 1, 88-92.

Finnis quotes Leibniz's formulation of the principle: "No fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise, although these reasons usually cannot be known to us." Et celui de la Raison suffisante, en vertu duquel nous considérons qu'aucun fait ne saurait se trouver vrai ou existant, aucune Enonciation véritable, sans qu'il y ait une raison suffisante, pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement, quoique ces raisons le plus souvent ne puissent point nous être connues. La Monadologie, section 32. Finnis rejects the principle as philosophically compelling: "But, in fact, this principle should not be conceded." NLNR, 384.
**It is unclear whom Finnis includes in this cryptic reference. He certainly includes Leibniz and Wolfe and most of the natural law theorists of the Enlightenment ilk who were inclined to predicate the existence of God on an argument based upon order (God the divine "watchmaker") and not contingency or causality.
***I'm not sure what self-evident principle this is. Most have been given a name (e.g., principle of non-contradiction). John Finnis cites to no source, either in his text or in his notes, as to this principle.
†Paul Edwards, "The Cosmological Argument," in Donald R. Burrill (ed.), The Cosmological Arguments: A Spectrum of Opinion (New York: 1967).

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Nature, Reason, God, Part 1

WE ARE NEARING THE END OF our review of John Finnis's magisterial presentation of the natural law in his book Natural Law and Natural Rights. This theory is not strictly speaking classical or traditional; it departs from the classical or traditional Thomist theory by minimizing the role of "nature," by bracketing ontological (metaphysical) questions, by accepting the Humean is/ought critique, and by stressing a "pure reason" more akin to Kant than "nature in reason" akin to Aristotle or St. Thomas. Finnis's theory of natural law is within that species of theories of natural law generally called "new" or "integration" theories of natural law. It is, however, to be regarded as allied with the classical theories, and some of its insights are very valuable.

The last chapter of John Finnis's book Natural Law and Natural Rights, entitled "Nature, Reason, God," addresses the issue of whether reason is all there is, or whether there is a faculty beyond reason which we must acknowledge. Granted, reason affords us the notion of basic self-evident human values, which, in Finnis's taxonomy, are life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability, practical reasonableness, and religion.* The application of practical reasonableness in the pursuit of these basic goods in one's individual life is the basis of morality. And, when practical reasonableness reaches forth in the ordering of the life of a community, it is the basis of moral, right, just law. Practical reasonableness is explanatory of both the scope and limits of authority, of positive law, of rights, justice, and obligation. Reason obviously yields us much, albeit only with as much detail as the subject matter allows. For a large part of our questions, there will not be ready black-and-white, binary answers, but a sort of range of possibilities of right ways to instantiate the basic human goods, all of which consider the historical, cultural, and other practical contingencies under which man operates hinc et nunc, here and now.

But does reason provide us all answers? What does reason say to the necessary limits of the basic human values? What does reason say about the fact that life, for any individual, ends sometimes after long bouts with difficult neurological diseases, painful cancers, or the tragedy of accidents or war? How does reason respond to the fact that knowledge fades, that the most erudite genius sometimes lapses into the babbling nonsense of senility? All the knowledge in that brain of Pasteur, Einstein, Beethoven, Da Vinci, vanished with their death. Does reason have a response of why both play and art, as satisfying as they are, do not fully satisfy, but leave a wistful yearning that there must be something else? Friendships among men--even the most paradigmatic--are ended by death. Empires, nations, ideas, families, ruling cadres all come and go: there is a rise and a fall to all things. Nothing lasts. The reality of decay abounds. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Vanitas vanitatum dixit Ecclesiastes vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. (Eccl. 1:2) All these basic goods are like the beauty that Gerard Manley Hopkins speaks of in his poem, "The Leaden Echo":

How to keep — is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away?
. . . .
No there’s none, there’s none, O no there’s none,
. . . .
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there’s none; no no no there’s none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.

Reason leads us to the Finis Gloriae Mundi and the In Ictu Oculi of Juan de Valdés Leal. But there it hesitates. Reason is stopped, checked, flummoxed by the awareness that all things are subject to corruption, to decay, to death. Reason is stayed by the memento mori. "Remember, man, that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return," we hear at the beginning of the Lenten season. "Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris." Reason may rationalize (which is not really reason, but an escape from reason, an ersatz reason) seek to ignore the question, and then it is not unlike the woman in her boudoir in C. Allan Gilbert's All is Vanity (1892). Looking into the mirror, reason sees itself as fully alive: it explains the here-and-now, but if it looks at the greater picture, does not the ephemerality of youth, of life, of beauty, of all things temporal held so dear show everything to be vanity? Is not the specter of death, and its radical limitation upon all our projects, everywhere, in everything? How does reason take us out all-is-vanity despair? How does reason answer the question, "What, in the long run, is the point of it all?" Does the vanity not lead one to "despair, despair, despair, despair"?

C. Allan Gilbert's "All is Vanity"

In view of these questions, can morality--and by extension--law rest content through a studied, calculated disregard, by simply wearing blinders or remaining oblivious to, and in feigned ignorance of, the great questions of life's meaning, and remain, like Gilbert's woman in her boudoir? Can we bracket law from these questions? No. Decay, corruption, death are realities that demand an answer.

Reasoning about law, like reasoning about anything, ultimately leads us to the fundamental question about the basis of reality itself. The entire construct of law begins with the awareness that man has a certain ensemble of inclinations, essential to his makeup, to his nature. And from this we must recognize a sort of design, an ordering, one which is a "given." And so we must as a given, but by whom?

The fact that human beings have a certain range of urges, drives, or inclinations; and the fact that these have a certain correspondence, parallelism, or 'fit' with the states of affairs that anyone intelligent would consider [to] constitute human flourishing; and the fact that without reasonable direction the inclinations will bring about individual and communal ruin ('natural sanctions'); and the fact that certain psychological, biological, climatic, physical, mechanical, and other like principles, laws, states of affairs, or conditions affect the realization of human well-being in discoverable ways--all these are facts in an order, external to our own understanding, which our understanding can only discover [not make]. This order is often called the order of nature. . . . . The remarkable fact that there is an order of nature which . . . is amenable to human understanding calls for some explanation.

NLNR, 380-81. And yet amongst this undeniable order, there is another reality which must also be acknowledged, a reality which is the opposite of order.

But, as there is order, so there is lack of order in the world, in terms of all four orders: waste in physical nature, error in reasonings, breakdown in culture, unreasonableness in human attitudes and actions.

NLNR, 381. There is, then, an order and disorder, good and evil, yin and yang, an ambiguity in the world. How explain both the order and the disorder, the good and evil, the ambiguity in both man and in the cosmos? So it would seem that "direct speculative questions about the significance, implications, or source of the orderliness of things yield, by themselves, no clear or certain answers." NLNR, 382. The moment that the orderliness of the world would lead you to infer God, in from stage left comes disorderliness, a disorderliness which seems to contradict the inference of a Providential God. What things are raises questions, but perhaps not definitive answers.

And yet if what things are does not provide the basis for any clear conclusions, what of the fact that things are? What of the fact of being, of "sheer existence"? Is there an answer to the question, "Why things are?"

We will address Finnis's view of the matter in the next post.
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*The basic good of knowledge is treated in the blog posting Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: To Know is Good. The other basic values are generally treated in the posting Natural Law's Modern Cousin German: The Seven Basic Values.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Lex Iniusta

WHAT IS THE CENTRAL THEOREM of authority which forms the foundation of the apologia in support of the the proposition that an unjust law is no law at all? For Finnis, that central theorem is defined thus:

[T]he ruler has, very strictly speaking, no right to be obeyed; but he has the authority to give directions and make laws that are morally obligatory and that he has the responsibility of enforcing. He has this authority for the sake of the common good . . . . Therefore, if he uses his authority to make stipulations [laws, orders, judgments, etc.] against the common good, or against any of the basic principles of practical reasonableness, those stipulations altogether lack the authority they would otherwise have by virtue of being his.

NLNR, 359-60. What this means is that laws, or orders, or judgments, or other "stipulations," if made for partisan, private reasons or if made in clear excess of legal authority, or if they direct that things be done that are violative of fundamental human rights, or impose inequitable burdens on his subjects, these sorts of "stipulations . . . fail, of themselves, to create any oral obligation whatever." NLNR, 360.*

Finnis then sides with the "classical position." An unjust law does not bind in any fashion in the moral sense. "Such laws lack the moral authority that in other cases comes imply from their origin, 'pedigree', or formal source." NLNR, 360. So he joins the chorus led by St. Thomas who himself relies on St. Augustine: lex iniusta non est lex: virtutem obligandi non habet, an unjust law is not law: it has no power to obligate.** This is so even if the law comes from a legally authorized source, is enforceable by courts, and is spoken of by all as law.

This, however, takes us to another issue. When a law is perceived by the greater majority of the citizenry as not unjust, what is the person who believes the law grossly unjust to do? If he disobeys the law the injustice of which his fellows have difficulty seeing, will he not cause scandal? Will not that act of disobedience against an unjust law have the consequence of minimizing respect for law generally? "It may be," as Finnis notes, "that if I am seen by fellow citizens to be disobeying or disregarding this 'law', the effectiveness of other laws, and/or the general respect of citizens for the authority of a generally desirable ruler or constitution, will probably be weakened, with probable bad consequences for the common good." NLNR, 361.

If that is the situation, is there a collateral reason relating to the common good--apart from the unjust law that does not bind--which may bind us nevertheless not to disregard an unjust law but to mind it? Another way of looking at the situation is does one unjust law impugn the entire system? And if not, then does our obligation to the entirety of the system demand compliance with the law that--taken by itself--is unjust and therefore not morally binding? The answer is that it depends upon the circumstances which must be prudentially assessed:

This degree of compliance will vary according to time, place, and circumstance; in some limiting cases (e.g., of judges or other officials administering the law) the morally required degree of compliance may amount to fully or virtually full compliance, just as if the law in question had been a just enactment.

NLNR, 361. It is foreseeable that, in some circumstances, the conscientious (and rightly thinking) citizen and (a fortiori since the scandal is greater) the public official may be called not to act on his conscientious objection to one law in order to heed to what ought to be his conscientious attachment to the legal system as a whole:

So, if an unjust stipulation is, in fact homogeneous with other laws in its formal source, in its reception by courts and officials, and in its common acceptance, the good citizen may (not always) be morally required to conform to that stipulation to the extent necessary to avoid weakening 'the law', the legal system (of rules, institutions, and dispositions) as a whole. . . . [T]he citizen, or official, may . . . have the diminished, collateral, and in an important sense extra-legal, obligation to obey it.

NLNR, 362. In short, there are (possibly) moral reasons for obeying immoral laws.

Unless the law involves a direct offense against a basic human good (or a direct violation of the natural law or divine law), the problem of obeying (or disobeying) and unjust law under these circumstances is an exercise in prudence, and there are many factors to consider:

• The difficulty in identifying the injustice, the actual distribution of burdens, and the actual motivation of the authority passing the unjust law, and so determining the extent of injustice in the law in any particular circumstance (when are we informed enough of the law, the circumstances, and the costs and benefits?).
  
• The difficulty of the lawmaker and his need to compromise in the prudent exercise of his authority (when are we allowed to second-guess the legislature?).
• The difficult of assessing when the common good's requirement that one be obedient to the legal system "as a whole" is compromised by the unjust law, singly, or in common with other unjust laws (when is revolution, or less radically, civil disobedience against an unjust regime (or law) conscientiously permitted?)
• The difficulty of determining when it is proper to exercise conscientious civil disobedience for the purpose of spurring legal reform (when should I break a law for the purpose of raising the public awareness of a wrong?)
• The practical availability of intra-systemic channels for challenging the unjust law. (When should the courts or petition to the legislature be used as a an avenue for attacking an unjust law, and when is recourse to the courts excused?)
• The other obligations (institutional, familial) that may limit my freedom of action. (Does a man who has no obligation to wife and children have a different threshold for civil disobedience than a man who has no such obligations?)
  

The entire issue is "highly contingent upon social, political, and cultural variables." One should not "expect generally usable but precise guides for action in circumstances where the normally authoritative sources of precise guidance have partially broken down." NLNR, 362. One may quote here a text referred to be Finnis in his notes, a text by P. T. Geach (The Virtues) which supports the classical formulation but expresses it in a "vigorous modern formulation."

University people argue mightily about whether laws that violate these principles are laws or (as Aquinas called them) mere violence. Of course it doesn't matter whether you call them laws or not: the question is what consequences follow. An unjust piece of legislation exists de facto, as an institution: but it is no debt of justice to observe it, through it may be imprudent to ignore it. And though a private person should not lightly judge a law to be unjust, its contrariety to the Law of Nature and the peace and justice of society may be so manifest that such a judgment is assured. A sufficient mass of unjust legislation may justify a man in deciding that the civil authority is a mere Syndicate. I think Old John Brown rightly so judged about the slave-owning U. S. commonwealths of his time. Rebellion, however, is another matter, because the evils it may bring about are so great: whether Old John Brown judged rightly about this is a matter we must leave between Old John Brown and his Maker . . . .

NLNR, 367.

Old John Brown

And the most issues of obedience to an unjust law and lie within the discretion of prudence, yet there are situations where obedience to an unjust law is simply not allowed a man under any circumstances. There are some situations where exceptionlessly an unjust law must be disobeyed regardless of the cost to oneself. Put in secular terms, there are instances where "[i]t is universally true that one has an absolute (liberty-)right not to perform acts which anyone has an absolute (claim-)right that one should not perform." NLNR, 362. Put in religious terms, there are times when must obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29) This is what the statement an unjust law is not law at all is supposed to encapsulate.

The statement an unjust law is not equivalent to law would seem to be one of two things. Either it is pure nonsense (being self-contradictory) or it is the "dramatization of the point" that an unjust law is not law in the focal or central sense, but law, at best, in a non-focal, "in a manner of speaking" sense. An unjust law is not law simpliciter, it is only law secundum quid.

It is interesting to observe that the classical formulation has been carelessly re-written by modern enemies of natural law so as to confuse categories. So citing largely H. L. A. Hart, Finnis summarizes the modern re-characterization as follows:

[M]odern critics [of the lex iniusta doctrine express the traditional doctrine in terms such as] 'what is utterly immoral cannot be law,' or that 'certain rules' cannot be law because of their moral iniquity', or that 'these evil things are not law, or that 'nothing iniquitous can anywhere have the status of law', or that morally iniquitous demands [are] in no sense law, or that 'there cannot be and unjust law.'

NLNR, 364 (quoting Hart passim) (emphasis in Finnis).

Note the re-characterization by Hart. As Finnis notes, the "tradition, even in its most blunt formulations, has affirmed unjust LAWS are not law." NLNR, 364. The classical tradition clearly recognized that the unjust law is law in one sense. But they also recognized that the unjust law is not law in another, more plenary sense.*** The tradition therefore recognized that unjust laws may be laws in a purely positive sense or they may be laws which of their own do not justify obedience, but as part of a greater legal system may demand conscientious obedience for collateral reasons (to avoid scandal, etc.). It is not unusual to "shift" senses of a term "within the space of a single sentence." The term "law" may be used to refer to its "intra-systemic expository viewpoint," or its "historical/sociological viewpoint," or its "viewpoint of unrestricted practical reasonableness." So the sentence's seeming contradictory nature disappears if one considers the subtility of the advocates' thought: A law from the viewpoint of unrestricted expository viewpoint is not a law from the viewpoint of unrestricted practical reasonableness.

With a little bit of good faith and a little bit of intellectual effort an understanding of the classical position is easily gained, and it is impossible to say that it is nonsense. The positivist's accusation against the exponent of the classical doctrine of natural law of falling headlong into a contradiction is clearly meritless. The argument is one born of ideology; it is a cheap shot; it is the result of intellectual torpor, carelessness, or just plain intellectual dishonesty. In a word, nonsense. Indeed, nonsense on stilts.
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*Finnis excludes motive from the formulation. Thus, a ruler can pass a law or make a judgment for improper motive which yet conforms with the interests of the common good. Also, those people unaffected by the distributive injustice of a law are not exempt from the moral obligation of that law. NLNR, 360.
**S.T. IaIIae, q. 96, art. 6, c.
***The traditional analysis is replete with words that made it clear that they used words in non-univocal senses; that is, that terms were frequently analogical or ambiguous and allowed for a wide sense of meanings, some precise some less so precise. So they distinguished between a term or concept simpliciter or vere or propie or in senso stricto (respectively, simply, true, proper, in a strict sense) and a term or concept in senso lato or secundum quid or secundum aliquem modum or secundum similutidnem or cum aliqua adjectione (respectively, in a loose sense, in a manner of speaking, in a certain mode, in a similar sense, with certain limitations).