Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: The Common Good and Friendship

MAN IS A SOCIAL ANIMAL, a ζῷον πολιτικόν or homo politicus. It follows that the requirements of practical reasonableness will take this reality into consideration. Practical reasonableness is not solely focused on self-constitution, self-realization, self-fulfillment to the point of self-centeredness or selfishness. Practical reasonableness recognizes that there must be a balance between self-regard and regard for others. (This part of the natural law is entrenched in Scripture: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Luke 6:31) or "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18; Mark 12:31 )).

Indeed, regard for others sometimes leads to significant self-sacrifice, even the sacrifice of oneself. Greater love no man has than to give his life for his friends. (John 15:13) We hold those who give their lives for others--e.g., the firemen, policemen, caregivers, and even the priest at 9/11 who gave their lives helping others, St. Maximilian Kolbe at Auschwitz who trade his life for the life of a married man, the soldier receiving the Medal of Honor posthumously in defending his fellows and his country--in such high honor surely not irrationally?

Finnis finds humans always aggregated in communities. He looks at communities as the product of relationships between human beings, and identifies four irreducible "orders" of such communities or sets of unifying relationships: a physical or biological order (relationships in the physical realm), an intellectual order (relationships of common thinking), a cultural order (community of shared language, technology, techniques, etc.), and a voluntary or psychological order (relationships of corroboration, co-ordination, cooperation arising from common action or a common pursuit or interest). It is this last order with which Finnis is most concerned and with which the requirements of practical reasonableness have most to do.

"Friendship" by Picasso

This relationships of corroboration, co-ordination, and cooperation give rise to common enterprises and therefore bring forth the concepts of common good. This order of community may be further subdivided (using largely Aristotelian insights) into communities that relate to utility ("business" communities), communities that relate to pleasure ("play" communities). Also to be distinguished are those communities that go beyond mere utility or pleasure, those that deal with amity, with friendship. In these kinds of relationships, the good of the other is, at least in part, defining of the relationship or community. In this sort of relationship of corroboration, "there is a community . . . not only in that there is a common interest in the condition [of that corroboration], and common pursuit of the means, whereby each will get what he wants for himself [as there is in those relationships of utility and/or pleasure], but also in that what A wants for himself he wants (at least in part) under the description 'that-which-B-wants-for-himself', and vice versa." NLNR, 141. One is clearly outside the ideas of self-fulfillment, self-constitution, self-realization--that self-fulfillment, self-constitution, self-realization includes the self-fulfillment, self-constitution, self-realization of another or of others. A father is miserable if he cannot provide for the needs of his wife and his children. His self-fulfillment comes, in great part, from the self-fulfillment of those under his care. More generically, a friend regards the good of his friend as part of his well-being. He relishes in the successes of his friend, and grieves at his friend's suffering.

So we leave the area of relationships of utility and of pleasure into the area of relationships of friendship (with the concept of friendship broadly understood). The notion of friendship is essential to the classical understanding of natural law which is not the individualistic self-regarding state of nature envisioned by Hobbes or Rousseau.

[C]ertainly there is no possibility of understanding the classical tradition of 'natural law' theorizing . . . without first appropriating the analysis of friendship in its full sense.

NLNR, 141. The "dialectic" of the core of friendship is a requirement of practical reasonableness because it participates in the basic value, the self-evident value of friendship: A has B's interest and not his own in view; reciprocally, B has A's interest and not his own in view; such "reciprocity of love does not come to rest at either pole." NLNR, 142-43.

Thus self-love (the desire to participate fully, oneself, in the basic aspects of human flourishing) requires that one go beyond self-love (self-interest, self-preference, the imperfect rationality of egoism . . . ). This requirement is not only in its content a component of the requirement of practical reasonableness; in its form, too, it is a parallel or analogue, for the requirement in both cases is that one's inclinations to self-preference be subject to a critique in thought and a subordination in deed.

NLNR, 143.

Friendship, then, is a sort of governor or a sort of counter to self-interest, and, in an almost paradoxical way, it is one's self interest which requires one to disregard one's self-interest as a fundamental sine qua non for participating in the good of friendship. If we focus on self-interest to the exclusion of friendship, we harm our self-interest. Our self-interest, then, requires us to have due regard for others. Friendship allows us to step outside ourselves.

Strict friendship is "the most communal though not the most extended or elaborated form of human community." NLNR, 143. There are friendships, attenuating in character, that extend and elaborate further out, rippling out of friendship in the strict sense and family to one's greater community, including one's neighborhood, city, state, country, nation, and even the global community.* But even in its greatest expanse, some sense, however attenuated, of the common good exists. That is why, when we see the plight of the Japanese after the tragic earthquake we have the felt need to provide them with help though we are "friends" with them in only the most weak of ways. There is a certain "friendship" that we have with the entirety of the human race.

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*However, "communism in friendship," one that seeks "the widest sharing in friendship" to the detriment of intermediate familial and other communities, frequently seen in Utopian schemes, such as those suggested by Plato in his Republic are to be disdained as a travesty of friendship. It is fatal to real friendship which must be other-regarding and personal, since it requires commitment to the other and an ability to give of one's self or one's own to the other. NLNR, 144-46. If one does not have something of one's own to give, it follows that there can be no friendship. The more an individual has (and the less the state or the commonality has), the more he can give in friendship. Friendship cannot exist if one is nothing more "than a cog in big wheels turned by others." NLNR, 147. Subsidiarity must exist in friendship as in the allocation of other aspects of community (power, decisions to allocate resources, etc.).

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Conscience

THE EIGHTH REQUIREMENT OF PRACTICAL reasonableness is the result of the fact that man is a social animal. The eight requirement, which will be discussed in detail later, is the requirement of favoring and fostering the common good of the communities of which one is part. In an age of overemphasized individualism, the role of the common good is often neglected.

The ninth requirement takes us into the internal forum of man.

[The ninth requirement of practical reasonableness] is the requirement that one should not do what one judges or thinks or 'feels'-all-in-all should not be done. That is to say one must act 'in accordance with one's conscience.'

NLNR, 125.*

Conscience is--for better or worse--malleable. It can be formed, but it can also be deformed. One's natural inclinations, education, training, culture, one's experiences, one's prior moral decisions, one's prior acts or omissions . . . all serve to have an effect upon the tender faculty of conscience.

If one were by inclination generous, open, fair, and steady in one's love of the human good, or if one's milieu happened to have settled on reasonable mores, then one would be able, without solemnity, rigmarole, abstract reasoning, or casuistry, to make the particular practical judgments (i.e. judgment of conscience) that reason requires. If one is not so fortunate in one's inclinations or upbringing, then one's conscience will mislead one, unless one strives to be reasonable and is blessed with a pertinacious intelligence alert to the forms of human good yet undeflected by the sophistries which intelligence so readily generates to rationalize indulgence, time-serving, and self-love.

NLNR, 125.

On the Threshold of Eternity by Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh referred to conscience in a letter to his brother Theo dated April 3, 1878, which merits quotation:

One must never let the fire in one's soul die, for the time will inevitably come when it will be needed. And he who chooses poverty for himself and loves it possesses a great treasure and will hear the voice of his conscience address him every more clearly. He who hears that voice, which is God's greatest gift, in his innermost being and follows it, finds in it a friend at last, and he is never alone! . . . That is what all great men have acknowledged in their works, all those who have thought a little more deeply and searched and worked and loved a little more than the rest, who have plumbed the depths of the sea of life.

Ronald de Leeuw, ed., The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Pomerans, Arnold, trans.) (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 54.

The faculty of human conscience is subjectively infallible in the sense that its promptings (which should be distinguished from the promptings of feelings, something entirely different) are mandatory upon us. This is true even if the conscience's promptings as a result of deformation or error are objectively wrong. To follow the promptings of one's conscience--even if those are objectively wrong--makes one faultless so long as the deformation or error is not one of our own making (i.e., so long as we are invincibly ignorant of the deformation or error).

[I]f one chooses to do what one judges to be in the last analysis unreasonable, or if one chooses not to do what one judges to be in the last analysis required by reason, then one's choice is unreasonable (wrongful), however erroneous one's judgments of conscience may happen to be. (A logically necessary feature of such a situation, is, of course, that one is ignorant of one's mistake.)

NLNR, 125-26. Most of us, of course, would phrase the choice not as one involving reasonable/unreasonable (although it is not inaccurate if reason is understood broadly enough) but the choice as involving what is right and what is wrong (which includes reason in all its breadth, including the inclinations--that intellectual feltness--which is part of our reasoning nature).

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*One should observe the scare quotes around the words "feel" and the words in "accordance with one's conscience. The word "feel" makes it clear that what is involved with conscience is not some sort of emotional feeling, but an intellectual feltness, a faculty of reason, not a faculty of emotion or primeval urge, a faculty that is wed or linked to objective moral truth. Additionally, as Finnis clarifies in his notes: "It scarcely needs to be added that (i) if my conscience is erroneous, what I do will be unreasonable [thought it may be faultless], and (ii) if my conscience is erroneous because of my negligence and indifference in forming it, in doing what I do I will be acting culpably (notwithstanding that I am required by the ninth requirement of reasonableness to do it) . . . and (iii) that if I am aware that I have formed my practical judgment inadequately it will be reasonable of me to bow to contrary advice or instructions or norms." NLNR, 133. Importantly, "it by no means follows . . . that if . . . . I have an obligation to φ, others have no liberty to prevent me from doing φ, or to punish me from doing φ [or for doing φ]; indeed, often enough they have not only the liberty but also the obligation to do so." NLNR, 133. Others cannot force you to act against your conscience, but they can, under certain limited circumstances, prevent you, or discourage you, from acting in accordance with it. There is a distinction, not always noted or observed, between forcing someone to act against his conscience and forcing someone not to act in accordance with conscience. This seems obvious in extreme situations: I should not be able to force a man to kill another if he objects to it in conscience; however, I should be able to prevent a man from killing another man even though his (erroneous) conscience prompts him to kill the other man. It follows that I may also punish the latter for having killed a man even if he does it in invincible ignorance. A Muslim terrorist, regardless of his sincerity and invincible ignorance, may be convinced in conscience that he needs to blow up a public building. He may forcibly be stopped from acting in accordance with his conscience, even, if the circumstances require it, with deadly force.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Respect for Basic Values

THE SEVENTH REQUIREMENT OF PRACTICAL reasonableness, according to the Finnisian presentation of the natural law in Natural Law and Natural Rights, relates to practical reasonableness's relationship to the basic goods (including itself since practical reasonableness is itself one of the basic human goods). The principle may be cast in negatively or positively:

• One should not choose to do any act "which of itself does nothing but damage or impede a realization or participation of any one or more of the basic forms of human good."
• One should always choose to do any act "as a means of promoting or protecting, directly or indirectly, one or more of the basic goods, in one or more of their aspects."
  

Framed in both negative and positive language, this principle leads us into the realm of moral absolutes and distinguishes any ontological ethic from a teleological ethic,* an ethic based upon being and good versus one based upon consequences and utility. This seventh requirement of practical reasonableness is of great importance: it is, in fact, the basis for moral absolutes and the basis for fundamental human rights. This is "the principle on which alone rests . . . the strict inviolability of human rights." NLNR, 121. This is the principle that stands guard, as it were, over the entire moral enterprise, forbidding that self-interest, feelings, emotions, and impulse, or some sort of ends-justifies-the-means irrationality govern a moral choice in lieu of reason. Dismantle or ignore this requirement and you have brought down the entire moral enterprise into a bundle of unworkable relativism and the eventual tyranny that will flow from it. "There is no human right that will not be overridden if feelings (whether generous and unselfish, or mean and self-centered) [or consequences, real, imagined, or speculative] are allowed to govern choice, or if cost-benefit considerations are taken outside their appropriate technical sphere and allowed to govern one's direct engagement . . . with basic goods."** NLNR, 121-22.

It also brings us to the need to discuss the principle of unintended consequences or the principle of double effect.***

La Brea Tar Pits

The requirements of practical reasonableness demand that no chosen act directly damage or impede a basic human good. Any justification for damaging or impeding a basic human good (other than just irrational whim or urge, which cannot be a reason) can only arguendo be justified by an act's consequences, specifically that the good consequences outweigh the act against the basic human good. This, of course, throws us into the morass of consequentialism, which is as difficult to get out of as the La Brea tar pits were for those unfortunate mastodons that found themselves trapped in its black sticky morass. Consequentialist "reasoning" allows such moral enormities to be excused such as the killing of an innocent human (which attacks the basic value of life) so long as the supposed consequences yield a greater good. There is virtually nothing than cannot be justified using consequences, whether it be concentration camps, the death of fetuses and infants and the aged, and the bombing of civilian populations with the atom bomb and with napalm. Consequentialism naturally results in viewing man as an instrument, a tool, a means instead of an end. "[A] man who thinks that his rational responsibility is to be always doing and pursuing good is satisfied by a commitment to act always for the best consequences is a man who treats every aspect of human personality (and, indeed, therefore, treats himself) as a utensil." NLNR, 121. Moreover, it also places upon humans the unreasonable responsibility for consequences they do not even intend, thereby ushering them into a moral neurosis. As an exclusive determinant of right and wrong, the focus on consequences is wrong. The doctrine that the end justifies the means is unreasonable. Evil may not be done so that good may come. The "naïvely arbitrary limitation of focus to the purported calculus" of consequentialism must be rejected as unreasonable, and indeed ultimately inhumane, and dangerously so. NLNR, 119.

Accordingly, acts may only be chosen that--directly or indirectly--(affirmatively) advance, promote, or participate in, or (negatively) protect the basic human values (life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, friendship, religion, practical reasonableness). The problem of choice, however, brings us to the principle of double effect, a principle which is manifestly different from consequentialism:

The basic values, and the practical principles expressing them, are the only guides we have. Each is objectively basis, primary, incommensurable with the others in point of objective importance. If one is to act intelligently at all one must choose to realize and participate in some basic value or values rather than others, and this inevitable concentration of effort will indirectly impoverish, inhibit, or interfere with the realization of those other values. . . . These unsought but unavoidable side-effects accompany every human choice, and their consequences are incalculable. But is is always reasonable to leave some of them, and often reasonable to leave all of them, out of account.

NLNR, 119-20. Examples prove the necessary point. If I elect to become a doctor (so as to save lives), I exclude the opportunity, at least for a time, to become a professor of music history (and so advance aesthetic appreciation). Selecting one human value necessarily impedes the promotion of the other. If I, as a doctor confronting some catastrophe, have to select between patient X and patient Y, and triage suggests that patient X would be better served, operating on patient X necessarily means patient Y will be unattended and likely die while attending patient X.

Triage during WW I

However, this indirect and unintended damage to a basic value is something drastically different from the consequentialist ethic of the ends justifies the means:

[T]o indirectly damage any basic good (by choosing an act that directly and immediately promotes either that basic good in some other aspect or participation, or some other basic good or goods) is obviously quite different, rationally and thus morally, from directly and immediately damaging a basic good in some aspect or participation by choosing an acct which in and of itself simply (or, we should now add, primarily) damages that good in some aspect or participation but which indirectly via the mediation of expected consequences, is to promote either that good in some other aspect or participation, or some other basic good(s).

NLNR, 120. The problem with doing something that directly acts against a basic human good or directly impedes it is that it measures what is unmeasurable. It seeks to weigh the harm caused a basic human good with the promotion of another basic human good. But the basic human goods cannot be adequately weighed one against the other. They are incommensurable.

To chose and act which in itself simply (or primarily) damages a basic good is thereby to engage oneself willy-nilly (but directly) in an act of opposition to an incommensurable value (and aspect of human personality) which one treats as if it were an object of measurable worth that could be outweighed by commensurable objects of greater (or cumulatively greater) worth.

NLNR, 120. True, such end-justifies-the-means decisions against a human value are frequently urged by feelings, perhaps even feelings of generosity, sympathy, or even altruism (though they may be equally supported by less benign sentiments). But morality cannot be predicated on feelings. "We must choose rationally . . . . [and] [r]eason requires that every basic value be at least respected in each and every action." NLNR, 120. (As Finnis observes, often the application of reason helps shift the wrongful clues provided by misguided albeit generally benevolent feelings; reason "can often promote a shift in our perspective and consequently a realignment of initial feelings." So someone who "feels" that euthanasia is merciful will, if he applies reason, realize that this feeling is misguided, and so will understand that his feelings of sympathy at the suffering of one of his fellows should elicit from him the desire to reduce the sufferings through morally legitimate means. The one-time misguided feelings of a Dr. Bernard Nathanson† for example may be guided into appropriate channels and in fact then feel the opposite of what they originally felt.)

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*The natural law (in its classical, not necessarily in its Finnisian construct) has, as part of its metaphysical foundations, a concept of nature that is teleological. Nature, in particular the nature of man, has an end toward which it tends. The ontology behind natural law, therefore, is teleological in this manner of speaking. However, the teleological ontology of the natural law should be distinguished from the teleological ethic which measures good and bad not from the teleological ontology (the teleology of human nature), but from the teleology of the human act. A teleological ethic based exclusively upon the consequences of the human act is, as we have seen, unreasonable and, in fact, a cover for evil under the guise of reasonable good. A short summary of the Finnisian critique of consequentialism may be found in the prior post Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Consequences Matter. A more in depth criticism of consequentialism based upon the word of Professor David Oderberg may be accessed under the titles Contra Consequentialismum.
**For the "technical" use of consequences, utility, or efficiency withing the greater requirements of practical reasoning, see Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Consequences Matter.
***The principle of double effect has been extensively treated in the prior posts. See, e.g., The Principle of Double Effect: Introduction, The Principle of Double Effect: The Conditions of Bringing About Evil, and Contra Consequentialismum: Answering Critics of PDE.
†Dr. Bernard Nathanson was an advocate of abortion who later changed his perception. His feelings with respect to abortion were markedly affected by realization that an abortion was an assault upon the fundamental human value of life.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Consequences Matter

CONSEQUENTIALISM IN ITS PURE FORM, that is, as an ethical theory where consequences are absolutely defining of the good, is unreasonable. Yet to hold the opposite--that consequences are absolutely irrelevant--is also error. The requirements of practical reasonableness straddle both extremes of irrationality and provide for a limited relevance of consequences, of efficiency within reason, of utility within the constraints of moral absolutes.

When one makes moral choices, one operates under a certain incumbency that the choices be efficient. In other words, our choices ought efficiently to implement the coherent plan of life or the particular value or end one has chosen. "One must not waste one's opportunities by using inefficient methods." NLNR, 111. In this limited sense, utility, efficiency, consequences are reasonably regarded as important and part and parcel of the requirements of practical reasonableness.

One would be blind to suggest that reason cannot weigh and recognize the following:

There is a wide range of contexts in which it is possible and only reasonable to calculate, measure, compare, weigh, and assess the consequences of alternative decisions. Where a choice must be made it is reasonable to prefer human good to the good of animals. where a choice must be made it is reasonable to prefer basic human goods (such as life) to merely instrumental goods such as property). Where damage is inevitable, it is reasonable to prefer stunning to wounding, wounding to maiming, maiming to death: i.e. lesser rather than greater damage to one-and-the same basic good in one-and-the-same instantiation. Where one way of participating in a human good includes both all the aspects and effects of its alternative, and more, it is reasonable to prefer that way: a remedy that both relieves pain and heals is to be preferred to the one that merely relieves pain.

NLNR, 111.

However, the requirement of efficiency is only one of other requirements of practical reasonableness. That is why it cannot be absolutized over the others. Just like all the other basic human values must be held of equal account, so also all the requirements of practical reasonableness must be held of equal account. It is for this reason that "[a]s a general strategy of moral reasoning, utilitarianism or consequentialism is irrational."* "[E]very attempt to make it [consequences] the exclusive or supreme or even the central principle of practical thinking is irrational and hence immoral." NLNR, 118.

Solon Before Croesus by Gerrit van Honthorst (1590 - 1656)

Unfortunately, most modern systems of ethics are infected by consequentialistic thought, and it follows from the fact that these theories absolutize consequences as the means for determining the good that these ethical systems are irrational. The "fundamental problem" with modern consequentialistic ethics, "is that the methodological injunction to maximize good(s) is irrational." NLNR, 113. Not only is such a program unworkable from a practical perspective (which itself ought to give one pause in adopting it), but it is fundamentally senseless, senseless, as Finnis puts it, as trying to "sum together the size of this page, the number six, and the mass of this book." NLNR, 113. The consequentialist puts himself in a situation where he is trying to measure and weigh things that cannot be measured and properly weighed and sum things that cannot be summed. In adopting consequentialism, we walk into a realm of morality as equally senseless as the realm of reality into which Alice falls into in Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland.

How so?

The calculative logic demanded by consequentialism requires either (i) a single dominant temporal end or goal for man the efficiency toward which may be measured,** or, if there is no such single, dominant temporal end, (ii) a common factor of measurement of differing goals (e.g., satisfaction of desire, minimization of pain, maximization of pleasure). "But neither of these conditions obtains." NLNR, 113.

If we adopt a single temporal end for all men, if good is to be univocally understood, it is as foolish a suggestion as trying to fit men to the same Proscrustean bed. And what shall that end be? "Only an inhumane fanatic thinks that man is made to flourish in only one way or for only one purpose." NLNR, 113. When it comes to temporal ends, are we all really obliged to wear the same Mao suit? On the other hand, if any end will do, then good becomes something equivocal. Calling good "satisfaction of desire," for example, subjectivizes the notion of good to the point of irrelevancy. For example, if "satisfaction of desire" is selected as the end of man, we have no plausible means of dividing out and distinguishing the pleasure of the Marquis de Sade in his bedroom from the pleasure of St. Jerome in his study. Are these ends really alike? It is unreasonable to suggest that the pursuit of knowledge is equivalent to the pursuit of lust. In the absence of a single temporal end for all men, and in the absence of a workable solution without out a single temporal end for all men other than some subjective end, it would seem that consequentialism must look toward some sort of common measure.

If, in view of the lack of a single temporal end, we adopt some common measurement factor, we find ourselves having lost any sort of reasonable compass. Any such measure--the "greatest net good," or the "best consequences," or the "lesser evil," or the "smallest net harm," or the "greater balance of good over bad"--is fraught with problems. An ethic that builds itself on pleasure--and that would allow for pleasure's increase as reasonable even if it calls for arbitrary acts and a rejection of a comprehensive plan of life--is an ethic that is "only worthy of swine." (Mill) The substitution of minimization of pain for the maximization of pleasure or any other adaptation is equally unavailing as a standard. To measure "pleasure" and "pain" is already an impossible task, and making these measures more sophisticated or nuanced only exacerbates the calculative problem.

The most apparent problem is that there is no balance between good (however it be defined, pleasure or anything else) and evil (which would be the negative of the good). In other words, can it be said that one measure of good overcomes one measure of evil? If so, then why does evil have equal voting rights with the good? If not, what is the ratio between good and evil, and why?

There are also problems in measuring between pleasures (or between pains). If to clamber out of the "swine" factor requires distinguishing between high pleasures and low pleasures, whose values are going to make this decision? And what factor is to be used to distinguish the degrees of pleasure of the drunk with his Mogen David wine and the pleasure of the dilettante with his Domaine Romanée-Conti?

Even more problematic, how do we measure the pleasures that differ in kind, and not only in degree? How, for example, do we compare the desire for an orgasm with the desire for God? How do we compare the desire for eating caviar with the desire for progeny?

Then there is the problem of whether the vantage point ought to be individual or aggregate. Is the moral question one where I measure what is best for me, or is it rather that someone else measures what is best for all?*** Is the all to include only those that are alive when the calculus is performed? Or is it to include those that come after us?

And if we decide to select an aggregate vantage point our problems still are not over. Is our final measure the maximum amount of good (or the minimal amount of evil) regardless of distribution (overall utility)? If so, then so long as the total amount of good is maximized (or evil minimized), we can justify the enslavement of a proportion of all so long as the misery associated with the enslaved is exceeded by the pleasure of those who benefit from the enslavement. If we try to fix the problems associated with distribution (maximum average utility, or maximum amounts of good for those worst off, or, most ominously, maximum equal amounts of good for everyone), the consequentialist runs into a conundrum: "[T]here is no consequentialist reason for preferring any particular one of the eligible specifications. The ambition to maximize goods logically cannot be a sufficient principle of practical reasoning."****

Moreover, whether minimization of some factor or maximization of another factor is selected, the calculus to be performed is--short of some sort of divine intellect--impossible to cipher for even the smallest individual act. The alternative options to any particular choice are potentially innumerable. How is one to measure each of these and weigh them against each other? Where are we to begin? And where are we to end? "A genuine consequentialist assessment of alternative possiblities could never end, and could begin anywhere. So it should never begin anywhere." NLNR, 117.

Who, for example, can predict what the consequences are, under any measure of good, for using artificial contraception which prevents a certain child from having been born? What would that child (or that child's child or that child's child's child) have contributed to the happiness or pleasure of the mother when a mother (or a grandmother, or a great grandmother) or to the world at large is impossible to say. We are sort of like Croesus before Solon: we cannot know whether one is happy until one is dead, and one cannot know whether what one has done is right until all consequences of a choice have rippled through the course of history until the end of time, which will happen long after the actor confronted with the choice has made his decision.

Thus, it appears that in both practice and theory, consequentialism as a moral theory is found wanting. "In short, no determinate meaning can be found for the term 'good' that would allow any commensurating and calculus of good to be made in order to settle those basic questions of practical reason which we call 'moral' questions." NLNR, 115. The basic human goods--life, knowledge, play, aesthetic pleasure, friendship, religion, and practical reasonableness--are objectively incommensurable, and so any ethical theory must operate with this obvious impediment. Consequentialism's continuing efforts to measure and weigh what is unmeasurable and unweighable are in vain. The theory is fundamentally senseless.

The Finnisian proposal does not require commensurating the incommensurable. Adopting a plan of life in light of the multiple human values or goods is not measuring the immeasurable:

[O]ne can adopt a set of commitments that will bring the basic values into a relation with each other sufficient to enable one to choose projects and, in some cases, to undertake a cost-benefit analysis (or preference-maximizing or other like analysis) with some prospect of a determinate 'best solution'. But the adoption of a set of commitments, by and individual or a society, is nothing like carrying out a calculus of commensurable goods, though it should be controlled by all the rational requirements . . . and so is far from being blind, arbitrary, directionless, or indiscriminate.

NLNR, 115.

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*The issue of consequentialism has been treated at some depth replying in particular on the work of Professor Oderberg. See Consequentialism and Natural Law.
**I say "temporal" because if God is said to be the single, well-defined end of man, it is not sufficient to answer the moral question in regard to the temporal unless the glory of God or the end of friendship with God can only be manifested in one way. But since the glory or love of God may be expressed in countless ways, through "inexhaustibly man life-plans," it follows that God as man's last end is not an adequate common goal sufficient to build a consequentialist ethic. Besides, there is no consequentialist ethicist that would hold God to be man's final end. If there were, then the he would also recognize the relative nature of consequential thought and would recognize the existence of moral absolutes.
***"Jeremy Bentham oscillated and equivocated for sixty years about whether his utilitarianism was to maximize his own happiness or the happiness of 'everbody'." NLNR, 116. Maybe his mummified head is still oscillating and equivocating about it.
****Which is to say that it is necessary, but not sufficient. The other elements of practical reasonableness need to be part of the application of practical reasonableness. Efficiency (utility) is only one necessary but not sufficient prong of a multi-pronged approach, each of which other prongs are necessary but not sufficient alone or in partial aggregation. All prongs must act together to yield practical reasonableness in its fullness which, in its fullness, is both necessary and sufficient.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Detachment and Commitment Both

THE FOURTH AND THE FIFTH of the requirements of practical reasonableness identified by John Finnis in his book Natural Law and Natural Rights may be discussed together since they are complementary--indeed, they work in somewhat in dynamic tension. They are also intricately associated with the first requirement of practical reasonableness: that we adopt a coherent plan of life, a coherent plan which requires a reasonable order of priorities and a reasonable set of basic commitments.* We must walk the thin path of practical reasonableness by walking between detachment on our right and commitment on our left. Like a tightrope walker, we must achieve the right balance between detachment and commitment so that we do not lose hold of the center and fall into the unreasoning chasm of apathetic detachment or into the equally unreasoning chasm of the excessive commitment of fanaticism.

Detachment is required as part and parcel of a life marked by contingency of time and place which requires the ability to adapt, to evolve, to re-assess. Plans that had reasonable meaning under a certain set of conditions may no longer be viable. Things that were fitting at a time when one is single become unreasonable when one is married with children. Things that were fitting in a time of peace, are unfitting in times of war. Things available in times of plenty may not be reasonably indulged in times of want. When a child, one may do things as a child; when a man, it is time to put them aside. (1 Cor. 13:11)

For this reason, practical reasonableness demands a "certain detachment from all the specific and limited projects which one undertakes." NLNR, 110. The investment in specific and limited projects must be sufficiently solid and staying so as to see things through when faced with adversity, yet it must be sufficiently detached so when a project fails or a goal proves elusive, one does not "consider one's life drained of meaning." A law school professor of mind (Tom Mayo) told me a story in Civil Procedure of a professor whose life work was devoted to a treatise on the substantive federal common law based upon the regime of Swift v. Tyson, and, when confronted with the Supreme Court case of Erie v. Tomkins, which held that there was no substantive federal common law, but that the federal courts had to apply the substantive common law of the State in which they were situated, so despaired of his life's work that he committed suicide. This unfortunate professor (if the story be true, and not just a pedagogical stunt or an apocryphal tale) was not sufficiently detached from his specific project.

Such an attitude irrationally devalues and treats as meaningless the basic human good of authentic and reasonable self-determination, a good in which one meaningfully participates simply by trying to do something sensible and wroth while, whether or not that sensible and worthwhile project comes to nothing.

NLNR, 110. The value of detachment is not only a necessity for dealing with adversity and for recognizing the nature of our human limitations and conditions: it is not only a negative governor that steps in to assuage us in the times of disappointment and of failure. It has an affirmative role in restraining us from falling headlong into a fanaticism.

[T]here are often straightforward and evil consequences of succumbing to the temptation to give one's particular project the overriding and unconditional significance which only a basic value and a general commitment can claim: they were evil consequences that we can call to mind when we think of fanaticism.

NLNR, 110. The fanatic loses himself in the trees and forgets the forest.

The opposite evil is also to be avoided. There must be sufficient commitment so as to avoid the sloughs of apathy. There must be some level of commitment with sufficient staying power so that it outlasts those temporary setbacks, the virtually incessant vicissitudes of everyday life. We must not turn back at the first unfavorable wind. There must be some strong threat of fidelity to purpose, to principle, to end. "No one who puts his hand to the plow," says the Lord, "and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:62). So there is a balance to be had between excessive commitment and excessive detachment. Even in setbacks, such fidelity to essential purpose allows creative adaptation to changed circumstances. We are, in short, required to have the "creative fidelity" that was so dear to the heart of Gabriel Marcel. This creative fidelity to principle, to value allows us to cull out the inessential, the accidental from the essential, the substantial. It assures that we will never be wed to convention, to rules of thumb, to substitute or ersatz values, to methodology and procedure, "whose real appeal is not to reason (which would show up their inadequacies) but to the sub-rational complacency of habit, mere urge to conformity, etc." NLNR, 110.

Walk then in the path of detachment cum commitment, eschewing both fanatical commitment and irresponsible apathy, and like the children of Israel, who walked between two walls of trembling water on either side of them, follow the path of practical reasonableness like they followed Moses to the path from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land. The law of the spirit follows the law of reason, just like the law of reason follows the law of the spirit, for God is the author of both. How can that be? How can both lead? How can both follow? Because they walk hand-in-hand in mutual guidance and in mutual following. That is to say, faith and reason walk in communion.

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*See Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Be Coherent.