Dear Dr. Adler,

I am confused by the use of the term "natural law." I understand what the laws of nature are -- we learn these when we study the natural sciences. But some writers use the term "natural law" in the singular as if it had something to do with matters of right and wrong, almost as if it were the voice of conscience. It is hard for me to understand how a natural law has anything to do with moral matters. Will you please clarify this for me?

Terry Quenton

Let us first be clear that by "natural law" we mean principles of human conduct, not the laws of nature discovered by the physical sciences. Many thinkers who espouse natural law see it at work in both the human and nonhuman realms, but their main interest is in its special application to man. According to these thinkers, the natural law as applied to physical things or animals is inviolable; stars and atoms never disobey the laws of their nature. But man often violates the moral rules which constitute the law of his specifically human nature.

The idea of a natural right order to which all things, including human beings, should conform is one of the most ancient and universal notions. It is a major principle in the religious and philosophic systems of ancient India and China, as well as in classical Greek philosophy. Plato calls it "justice" and applies it to the human soul and human conduct.

In Western society, especially from the Roman jurists and the theologians of the Middle Age on, we find the doctrine of the natural moral law for man. It is the source of moral standards, the basis of moral judgments, and the measure of justice in the man-made laws of the state. If the law of the state runs counter to the precepts of the natural law, it is held to be unjust.

The first precept of natural law is to seek the good and avoid evil. It is often put as follows: "Do good unto others, injure no one, render to every man his own." Now, of course, such a general principle is useless for organized society unless we can use it to specify various types of rights and wrongs. That is precisely what man-made, or positive, law tries to do.

Thus, the natural law tells us only that stealing is wrong because it inflicts injury, but the positive law of larceny defines the various kinds and degrees of theft and prescribes the punishments therefor.

Such particular determinations may differ in various times and places without affecting the principles of natural law. Neither Aquinas nor Aristotle thinks that particular rules of laws should be the same in different times, places, and conditions.

You may ask how the natural law is known. Through human reason and conscience, answer the natural-law thinkers. The natural-law doctrine usually assumes that man has a specific nature which involves certain natural needs, and the power of reason to recognize what is really good for man in terms of these needs.

Christian thinkers, such as Aquinas and John Locke, think the natural law is of divine origin. God, in creating each thing, implanted in it the law of its nature. The phrase about "the laws of nature and of nature's God" in our Declaration of Independence derives from this type of natural-law doctrine. However, this particular theological viewpoint is not always found in writers who uphold the natural law, for these include such pre-Christian thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, and such modern secular philosophers as Kant and Hegel.

There has been much opposition to natural-law philosophy from the very beginning. Indeed, one might say the opposition came first, for the idea of natural right or justice was developed in ancient Greece to counter the views of the Sophists, who were "conventionalists." These men believe that law and justice are simply man-made conventions. No action is right or wrong unless a particular community, through its positive laws or customs, decrees that it is right or wrong. Then it is right or wrong in that particular place and time -- not universally. By nature, the Sophists say, fire burns in Greece as it does in Persia, but the laws of Persia and of Greece, being matters of convention, are not the same. The "conventionalist" or "positivist" doctrine of law has come down all the way from the ancient Sophists to many of our modern law-school professors.

You ask whether natural law is relevant to modern conditions. My answer is that if justice is still relevant, then natural law is. Indeed, interest in natural law has increased especially during the past half century, with its experience of the kind of positive laws which have been imposed by totalitarian regimes. On what grounds could a decent German citizen in Nazi times justify his opposition to the laws of the land? On private sentiments or merely personal opinion? Even purely inner resistance to iniquity must be rooted in firmer grounds. "A law which is not just is a law in name only," says Augustine. And Aquinas adds: "Every human law has just so much of the nature of law as it is derived from the law of nature. But if in any point it departs from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of the law."

The naturalists, as that name indicates, affirm the existence of natural justice, of natural and unalienable rights, of the natural moral law, and of valid prescriptive oughts that elicit our assent, both independently of and prior to the existence of positive law. The positivists deny all this and affirm the opposite. For them, the positive law -- the man-made law of the state -- provides the only prescriptive oughts that human beings are compelled to obey. According to them, nothing is just or unjust until it has been declared so by a command or prohibition of positive law.

If this is a fundamentally erroneous view, as I think it is, its ultimate roots lie very deep. They rise from the most profound mistake that can be made in our thinking about good and evil. It is the mistake made by those who embrace an unattenuated subjectivism and relativism with respect to what is good and bad, right and wrong.

Neglecting or rejecting the distinction between real and apparent goods, together with that between natural needs and acquired wants, the positivists can find no basis for the distinction between what "ought" to be desired or done and what is desired or done. From that flows the further consequence that there is no natural moral law, no natural rights, no natural justice, ending up with the conclusion that man-made law alone determines what is just and unjust, right and wrong.

This positivist view is as ancient as the despotisms that existed in antiquity. It was first eloquently expressed in the opening book of Plato's "Republic" where Thrasymachus, responding to Socrates' mention of the view that justice consists in rendering what is due, declared and defended the opposite view -- that justice is the interest of the stronger. Spelled out, this means that what is just or unjust is determined solely by whoever has the power to lay down the law of the land.

The positivist view is recurrent in later centuries with the recurrence of later despotisms. It was expressed by the Roman jurisconsult, Ulpian, who, defending the absolutism of the Caesars, declared that whatever pleases the prince has the force of law. Still later, in the sixteenth century, the same view was set forth by another defender of absolute government, Thomas Hobbes, in "The Leviathan"; and later, in the nineteenth century, by John Austin, in his "Analytical Jurisprudence."

Neither Austin nor the twentieth-century legal positivists who follow him regard themselves as defenders of absolute government or despotism. That is what they are, however -- perhaps not as explicitly as their predecessors, but by implication at least. The denial of natural rights, the natural moral law, and natural justice leads not only to the positivist conclusion that man made law alone determines what is just and unjust. It also leads to a corollary which inexorably attaches itself to that conclusion -- *that might makes right* -- this is the very essence of absolute or despotic government.

Dear Max,

As we begin the new year I would like to start by expressing my deep gratitude and appreciation for Dr. Adler and the work you have been doing with the "Center for the Study of The Great Ideas." Last night (Dec. 31) I glanced up at the clock and realized that I had begun the new year by finishing my second reading of the "Apology & Crito."

Finding the "Center" and the work of Dr.Adler was one of the best discoveries of my life. I'm thankful that "The Great Books" with the "Syntopicon" were published in the year I was born (1952) even though it took me forty six years to find them. With your help and recommendations I have been able to begin long and enlightening journey through reading and discussing the best books in print. All of the books that you have suggested along with the video and audio tapes are by far the best I have experienced. I hope that all of your members will be able to view videos you offer especially The Great Ideas series produced in 1952-53.

If any of your members want to start discussion group they should consider the videos, they are excellent for introducing Dr.Adler and his work. In a time when revisionists are busy covering the trail of western tradition and blurring the distinction between right and wrong organizations the Yours are vital to America.

Keep up the good work and Thank You!

Don Kennedy

P.S. Please wish Dr. Adler a happy birthday as his is truly a cause for celebration.

MATHEMATICS AND ETHICS?

Dear Dr. Adler,

Mathematics and philosophy are twins born of logic; and mathematics is the elder for this reason, "as mathematics is the description of true universal possibilities, philosophy is man's true relation to those possibilities described." Inevitably, philosophy, as a guide to human conduct, will fall back on mathematical modeling of the "universal scheme of things."

The reason current moral philosophies are in such disarray is because mathematics is also in disarray and rudderless. Why should the man-on-the-street follow an obscurely substantiated "Golden Rule" when the physical world around him is described as essentially chaotic and competitive a la "survival of the fittest"? The ethical path has no imperative other than, "it is not a crime until you are caught."

The question begs an answer; "How can that which is logically derived, be so consistently wrong -- is logic, itself, wrong?"

James D. Watt

The philosophers of the seventeenth century, misled by their addiction to episteme, looked upon mathematics as the perfect achievement of knowledge, and tried to "perfect" philosophy by mathematicizing it.

The effect upon philosophy was the frustration of trying to achieve a precision of terminology and a rigor of demonstration that are appropriate in mathematics, but inappropriate in philosophy as an attempt to answer questions about reality -- about that which is and happens in the world or about what ought to be done and sought.

Mathematical method can play no role in ethics.

Dear Max,

The Adler videos are tremendous. I've watched about a dozen lectures so far and I've used several of them in my classes with great success. They really stimulate good discussion. I'm showing the videos to members of my department with the hope that I can pursuade them to purchase a set for the library. You should market these videos to philosophy departments all around the country. They are far better than anything else I have seen.

Professor Rick Stichler
Department of Philosophy, Alvernia College

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