Chapter 2 Natural Law as Science
It is indeed puzzling that so many modern philosophers should sniff at the very term
nature as an injection of mysticism and the supernatural.
An apple, let fall, will drop to the ground.
This we all observe and acknowledge to be in the nature of the apple, as well as the world in general.
Two atoms of hydrogen combined with one of oxygen will yield one molecule of water, behavior
that is uniquely in the nature of hydrogen, oxygen and water.
There is nothing arcane or mystical about such observations.
Why then cavil at the concept of nature?
The world, in fact, consists of a myriad number of observable things or entities.
This is surely an observable fact.
Since the world does not consist of one homogeneous thing or entity alone, it follows that each
one of these different things possesses differing attributes, otherwise they would all be the
same thing.
But if A, B, C, etc. have different attributes, it follows immediately that they have different
natures.
It also follows that when these various things meet and interact, a specifically delimitable
The observable and definable result will occur.
In short, specific delimitable causes will have specific delimitable effects.
The observable behavior of each of these entities is the law of their natures, and this law
includes what happens as a result of the interactions.
The complex that we may build up of these laws may be termed the structure of natural
law.
What is mystical about that?
In the field of purely physical laws, this concept will usually differ from modern positivistic
terminology only on high philosophical levels.
Applied to man, however, the concept is far more controversial.
And yet, if apples and stones and roses each have their specific natures, is man the only
entity, the only being that cannot have one?
And if man does have a nature, why cannot it too be open to rational observation and
reflection?
If all things have natures, then surely man's nature is open to inspection.
The current brusque rejection of the concept of the nature of man is therefore arbitrary
and a priori.
One common flip criticism by opponents of natural law is, who is to establish the alleged
Truths About Man.
The answer is not who, but what, man's reason.
Man's reason is objective, that is, it can be employed by all men to yield truths about
the world.
To ask what is man's nature is to invite the answer.
Go thou and study and find out.
It is as if one man were to assert that the nature of copper were open to rational investigation,
and a critic were to challenge him to prove this immediately by setting forth on the spot
all the laws that have been discovered about copper.
Another common charge is that natural law theorists differ among themselves and that
therefore all natural law theories must be discarded.
This charge comes with peculiar ill grace when it comes, as it often does, from utilitarian
and Economists.
For economics has been a notoriously contentious science, and yet few people advocate tossing
all economics, therefore, into the discard.
Furthermore, difference of opinion is no excuse for discarding all sides to a dispute.
The responsible person is the one who uses his reason to examine the various contentions
and make up his own mind.
He does not simply say, a priori, a plague on all your houses.
The fact of man's reason does not mean that error is impossible.
Even such hard sciences as physics and chemistry have had their errors and their fervent disputes.
No man is omniscient or infallible.
A law, by the way, of man's nature.
The natural law ethic decrees that for all living things, goodness is the fulfillment
of what is best for that type of creature.
Goodness is therefore relative to the nature of the creature concerned.
Thus, Professor Cropsey writes, The classical natural law doctrine is that each thing is
excellent in the degree to which it can do the things for which its species is naturally
equipped.
Why is the natural good?
Because there is neither a way nor a reason to prevent ourselves from distinguishing between
and useless and serviceable beasts, for example, and the most empirical and rational standard
of the serviceable, or the limit of the thing's activity, is set by its nature.
We do not judge elephants to be good because they are natural, or because nature is morally
good, whatever that would mean.
We judge a particular elephant to be good by the light of what elephant nature makes
In the case of man, the natural law ethics states that goodness or badness can be determined
by what fulfills or thwarts what is best for man's nature.
The natural law then elucidates what is best for man, what ends man should pursue that
are most harmonious with, and best tend to fulfill, his nature.
In a significant sense, then, natural law provides man with a science of happiness, with the
paths which will lead to his real happiness.
In contrast, praxeology or economics, as well as the utilitarian philosophy with which this
science has been closely allied, treat happiness in the purely formal sense as the fulfillment
of those ends which people happen, for whatever reason, to place high on their scales of value.
Satisfaction of those ends yields to man his utility or satisfaction or happiness.
Value in the sense of valuation or utility is purely subjective and decided by each individual.
This procedure is perfectly proper for the formal science of praxeology or economic theory, but not necessarily elsewhere.
For in natural law ethics, ends are demonstrated to be good or bad for man in varying degrees.
Value here is objective, determined by the natural law of man's being.
And here, happiness for man is considered in the commonsensical, contentual sense.
As Father Keneally put it, this philosophy maintains that there is in fact an objective
of Moral Order within the Range of Human Intelligence, to which human societies are bound in conscience
to conform, and upon which the peace and happiness of personal, national and international life
depend.
And the eminent English jurist, Sir William Blackstone, summed up the natural law and
its relation to human happiness as follows.
This is the foundation of what we call ethics or natural law, demonstrating that this or
that action tends to man's real happiness, and therefore very justly concluding that
the performance of it is a part of the law of nature, or, on the other hand, that this
or that action is destruction of man's real happiness, and therefore that the law of nature
forbids it.
But using the terminology of natural law, psychologist Leonard Carmichael has indicated
how an objective, absolute ethic can be established for man on scientific methods, based upon
biological and psychological inquiry.
Because man has an unchanging and an age-old genetically determined anatomical, physiological
and Psychological Makeup.
There is reason to believe that at least some of the values that he recognized as good or
bad have been discovered or have emerged as human individuals have lived together for
thousands of years in many societies.
Is there any reason to suggest that these values, once identified and tested, may not
be thought of as essentially fixed and unchanging?
For example, the wanton murder of one adult by another for the purely personal amusement
of the person committing the murder, once it is recognized as a general wrong, is likely
always to be so recognized.
Such a murder has disadvantageous individual and social effects.
Or to take a milder example from aesthetics, man is always likely to recognize in a special
One common philosophic objection to natural law ethics is that it confuses or identifies
the realism of fact and value.
For purposes of our brief discussion, John Wilde's reply will suffice.
In answer we may point out that their natural law of view identifies value not with existence,
but rather with the fulfillment of tendencies determined by the structure of the existent
entity.
Furthermore, it identifies evil not with non-existence, but rather with a mode of existence in which
natural tendencies are thwarted and deprived of realization.
The young plant, whose leaves are withering for lack of light, is not non-existent.
It exists, but in an unhealthy or privative mode.
The lame man is not non-existent.
He exists, but with a natural power partially unrealized.
This metaphysical objection is based upon the common assumption that existence is fully
finished or complete.
But what is good is the fulfillment of being.
After stating that ethics, for man as for any other entity, are determined by investigating
verifiable existing tendencies of that entity, Wilde asks a question crucial to all non-theological
ethics.
Why are such principles felt to be binding on me?
How do such universal tendencies of human nature become incorporated into a person's
Subjective Value Scale
Because the factual needs which underlie the whole procedure are common to man, the values
founded on them are universal.
Hence, if I made no mistake in my tendential analysis of human nature, and if I understand
myself, I must exemplify the tendency, and must feel it subjectively as an imperative
urge to action.
David Hume is the philosopher supposed by modern philosophers to have effectively demolished
the theory of natural law.
Hume's demolition was two-pronged, the raising of the alleged fact-value dichotomy thus debarring
the inference of value from fact, and his view that reason is and can only be a slave
to the passions.
In short, in contrast to the natural law view that man's reason can discover the proper
ends for man to follow, Hume held that only the emotions can ultimately set man's ends,
and that reason's place is as the technician and handmaiden to the emotions.
Here Hume has been followed by modern social scientists since Max Weber.
According to this view, people's emotions are assumed to be primary and unanalyzable
givens.
Professor Heselberg has shown, however, that Hume, in the course of his own discussions,
was compelled to reintroduce a natural law conception into his social philosophy, and
particularly into his theory of justice, thus illustrating the jibe of Étienne Gilson.
The natural law always buries its undertakers.
For Hume, in Hesselberg's words, recognized and accepted that the social order is an indispensable
prerequisite to man's well-being and happiness, and that this is a statement of fact.
The social order, therefore, must be maintained by man.
Hesselberg continues, But a social order is not possible unless man is able to conceive
conceive what it is and what its advantages are, and also conceive those norms of conduct
which are necessary to its establishment and preservation, namely respect for another's
person and for his rightful possessions, which is the substance of justice.
But justice is the product of reason, not the passions.
And justice is the necessary support of the social order, and the social order is necessary
to Man's Well-Being and Happiness. If this is so, the norms of justice must control and
regulate the passions, and not vice versa. Heselberg concludes that thus Hume's original
primacy of the passions thesis is seen to be utterly untenable for his social and political
theory, and he is compelled to reintroduce reason as a cognitive normative factor in
and Human Social Relations.
Indeed in discussing justice and the importance of the rights of private property, Hume was
compelled to write that reason can establish such a social ethic.
Nature provides a remedy in the judgment and understanding for what is irregular and uncommodious
in the affections.
In short, reason can be superior to the passions.
We have seen from our discussion that the doctrine of natural law, the view that an
objective ethics can be established through reason, has had to face two powerful groups
of enemies in the modern world, both anxious to denigrate the power of man's reason to
decide upon his destiny.
These are the Fidaists who believe that ethics can only be given to man by supernatural revelation,
and the skeptics who believe that man must take his ethics from arbitrary whim or emotion.
We may sum up with Professor Grant's harsh but penetrating view of the strange contemporary
alliance between those who doubt the capacity of human reason in the name of skepticism,
probably scientific in origin, and those who denigrate its capacity in the name of revealed
religion.
It is only necessary to study the thought of Ockham to see how ancient this strange alliance
is.
For in Ockham can be seen how philosophic nominalism, unable to face the question of
practical certainty, solves it by the arbitrary hypothesis of revelation.
The will detached from the intellect, as it must be in a nominalism, can seek certainty
only through such arbitrary hypotheses.
The interesting fact, historically, is that these two anti-rationalist traditions, that
of the liberal skeptic and the Protestant revelationist, should originally have come
from two opposite views of man.
The Protestant dependence upon revelation arose from a great pessimism about human nature.
The immediately apprehended values of the liberal originate in a great optimism.
Yet, after all, is not the dominating tradition in North America a Protestantism which has
been transformed by pragmatic technology and liberal aspirations?