Natural Right and History Notes

Introduction

• A passage from the Declaration of Independence is quoted: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
• The United States, founded on this proposition, has become powerful and prosperous.
• A generation ago, an American diplomat stated that the natural and divine foundation of human rights was self-evident to all Americans.
• Around the same time, a German scholar contrasted German thought with that of Western Europe and the United States, noting the West's emphasis on natural right, while Germany found terms like "natural right" and "humanity" incomprehensible and devoid of their original meaning, leading to unqualified relativism.
• The attitude towards natural right that once characterized German thought is now prevalent in Western thought in general, including American social science.
• Many scholars interpret the principles of the Declaration of Independence not as expressions of natural right but as ideals, ideologies, or myths.
• Contemporary American social science asserts that individuals possess urges and aspirations through evolution or fate, but not natural rights.
• The need for natural right remains evident.
• Rejecting natural right equates to embracing positive right, where right is determined solely by legislators and courts.
• The ability to speak of "unjust" laws or decisions implies a standard of right and wrong independent of and higher than positive right.
• Some believe this standard is merely the ideal of a society or civilization.
• If societal acceptance justifies principles, then cannibalism is as defensible as civilized life.
• Since societal ideals change, only habit prevents the acceptance of cannibalism.
• Without a higher standard, critical evaluation of societal ideals is impossible.
• The capacity to question societal ideals demonstrates that humans aren't entirely enslaved by society, necessitating the search for an external standard.
• This standard cannot be based on societal needs, as they conflict; prioritizing requires distinguishing between genuine and fancied needs and discerning their hierarchy.
• Knowledge of natural right is essential for rationally solving the problem of conflicting societal needs.
• Rejecting natural right can lead to disastrous consequences.
• Social science can provide means to achieve objectives but cannot discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate objectives.
• Such science is merely instrumental, serving any powers or interests.
• Social science can offer advice to both tyrants and free peoples.
• We can become wise in secondary matters but remain ignorant of ultimate principles, which are based on arbitrary preferences.
• This places us in a position of retail sanity and wholesale madness.
• If principles lack support beyond blind preferences, anything one dares is permissible.
• The rejection of natural right leads to nihilism.
• Generous liberals view the abandonment of natural right with placidity, believing that our inability to acquire genuine knowledge of what is intrinsically good or right compels us to be tolerant of every opinion about good or right or to recognize all preferences or all “civilizations” as equally respectable.
• Unlimited tolerance is in accordance with reason.
• This leads to the admission of a rational or natural right of every preference that is tolerant of other preferences or, negatively expressed, of a rational or natural right to reject or condemn all intolerant or all “absolutist” positions.
• The latter must be condemned because they are based on a demonstrably false premise, namely, that men can know what is good.
• At the bottom of the passionate rejection of all "absolutes," we discern the recognition of a natural right or, more precisely, of that particular interpretation of natural right according to which the one thing needful is respect for diversity or individuality.
• But there is a tension between the respect for diversity or individuality and the recognition of natural right.
• When liberals became impatient of the absolute limits to diversity or individuality that are imposed even by the most liberal version of natural right, they had to make a choice between natural right and the uninhibited cultivation of individuality.
• They chose the latter.
• Once this step was taken, tolerance appeared as one value or ideal among many, and not intrinsically superior to its opposite.
• In other words, intolerance appeared as a value equal in dignity to tolerance.
• But it is practically impossible to leave it at the equality of all preferences or choices.
• If the unequal rank of choices cannot be traced to the unequal rank of their objectives, it must be traced to the unequal rank of the acts of choosing; and this means eventually that genuine choice, as distinguished from spurious or despicable choice, is nothing but resolute or deadly serious decision.
• Such a decision, however, is akin to intolerance rather than to tolerance.
• Liberal relativism has its roots in the natural right tradition of tolerance or in the notion that everyone has a natural right to the pursuit of happiness as he understands happiness; but in itself it is a seminary of intolerance.
• Once we realize that the principles of our actions have no other support than our blind choice, we really do not believe in them any more.
• We cannot wholeheartedly act upon them any more.
• We cannot live any more as responsible beings.
• In order to live, we have to silence the easily silenced voice of reason, which tells us that our principles are in themselves as good or as bad as any other principles.
• The more we cultivate reason, the more we cultivate nihilism: the less are we able to be loyal members of society.
• The inescapable practical consequence of nihilism is fanatical obscurantism.
• The harsh experience of this consequence has led to a renewed general interest in natural right.
• But this very fact must make us particularly cautious.
• Indignation is a bad counselor.
• Our indignation proves at best that we are well meaning.
• It does not prove that we are right.
• Our aversion to fanatical obscurantism must not lead us to embrace natural right in a spirit of fanatical obscurantism.
• Let us beware of the danger of pursuing a Socratic goal with the means, and the temper, of Thrasymachus.
• Certainly, the seriousness of the need of natural right does not prove that the need can be satisfied.
• A wish is not a fact.
• Even by proving that a certain view is indispensable for living well, one proves merely that the view in question is a salutary myth: one does not prove it to be true.
• Utility and truth are two entirely different things.
• The fact that reason compels us to go beyond the ideal of our society does not yet guarantee that in taking this step we shall not be confronted with a void or with a multiplicity of incompatible and equally justifiable principles of "natural right."
• The gravity of the issue imposes upon us the duty of a detached, theoretical, impartial discussion.
• The problem of natural right is today a matter of recollection rather than of actual knowledge.
• We are therefore in need of historical studies in order to familiarize ourselves with the whole complexity of the issue.
• We have for some time to become students of what is called the "history of ideas."
• Contrary to a popular notion, this will aggravate rather than remove the difficulty of impartial treatment.
• To quote Lord Acton: "Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas.
• Sharp definitions and unsparing analysis would displace the veil beneath which society dissembles its divisions, would make political disputes too violent for compromise and political alliances too precarious for use, and would embitter politics with all the passions of social and religious strife."
• We can overcome this danger only by leaving the dimension in which politic restraint is the only protection against the hot and blind zeal of partisanship.
• The issue of natural right presents itself today as a matter of party allegiance.
• Looking around us, we see two hostile camps, heavily fortified and strictly guarded.
• One is occupied by the liberals of various descriptions, the other by the Catholic and non-Catholic disciples of Thomas Aquinas.
• But both armies and, in addition, those who prefer to sit on the fences or hide their heads in the sand are, to heap metaphor on metaphor, in the same boat.
• They all are modern men.
• We all are in the grip of the same difficulty.
• Natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe.
• All natural beings have a natural end, a natural destiny, which determines what kind of operation is good for them.
• In the case of man, reason is required for discerning these operations: reason determines what is by nature right with ultimate regard to man's natural end.
• The teleological view of the universe, of which the teleological view of man forms a part, would seem to have been destroyed by modern natural science.
• From the point of view of Aristotle-and who could dare to claim to be a better judge in this matter than Aristotle?-the issue between the mechanical and the teleological conception of the universe is decided by the manner in which the problem of the heavens, the heavenly bodies, and their motion is solved.
• Now in this respect, which from Aristotle's own point of view was the decisive one, the issue seems to have been decided in favor of the nonteleological conception of the universe.
• Two opposite conclusions could be drawn from this momentous decision.
• According to one, the nonteleological conception of the universe must be followed up by a nonteleological conception of human life.
• But this "naturalistic" solution is exposed to grave difficulties: it seems to be impossible to give an adequate account of human ends by conceiving of them merely as posited by desires or impulses.
• Therefore, the alternative solution has prevailed.
• This means that people were forced to accept a fundamental, typically modern, dualism of a nonteleological natural science and a teleological science of man.
• This is the position which the modern followers of Thomas Aquinas, among others, are forced to take, a position which presupposes a break with the comprehensive view of Aristotle as well as that of Thomas Aquinas himself.
• The fundamental dilemma, in whose grip we are, is caused by the victory of modern natural science.
• An adequate solution to the problem of natural right cannot be found before this basic problem has been solved.
• Needless to say, the present lectures cannot deal with this problem.
• They will have to be limited to that aspect of the problem of natural right which can be clarified within the confines of the social sciences.
• Present-day social science rejects natural right on two different, although mostly combined, grounds; it rejects it in the name of History and in the name of the distinction between Facts and Values.

Natural Right and the Historical Approach

• The attack on natural right in the name of history takes the following form: there may be a right that is discernible by human reason and is universally acknowledged; but history (including anthropology) teaches us that no such right exists; instead of the supposed uniformity, we find an indefinite variety of notions of right or justice.
• Or, in other words, there cannot be natural right if there are no immutable principles of justice, but history shows us that all principles of justice are mutable.
• One cannot understand the meaning of the attack on natural right in the name of history before one has realized the utter irrelevance of this argument.
• In the first place, “consent of all mankind" is by no means a necessary condition of the existence of natural right.
• Some of the greatest natural right teachers have argued that, precisely if natural right is rational, its discovery presupposes the cultivation of reason, and therefore natural right will not be known universally: one ought not even to expect any real knowledge of natural right among savages.
• In other words, by proving that there is no principle of justice that has not been denied somewhere or at some time, one has not yet proved that any given denial was justified or reasonable.
• Furthermore, it has always been known that different notions of justice