[MD] Natural Law

[Steven Peterson]

Hi All,

In moral deliberations, people generally consider the generalizability
of our actions (Kant), the consequences of our actions (Mill), and our
contributions to human flourishing (Aristotle). We try to balance
various concerns and consult those whose views we have come to
respect. Expecting some ready-made rules for settling all possible
moral disputes is part of the desire to pass the buck--to shirk the
responsiblity for one's own moral actions. It is a great responsiblity
indeed--everything we do is part of defining what humanity can be--but
it is not a responsiblity that can not in any way be avoided.

Immanuel Kant wanted morality to be subject to Reason rather than the
passions. He thought that Reason demands of us that we treat others as
ends in themselves and never as a means to an end--that human beings
have intrinsic value that ought to always trump any perceived
instrumental value. John Dewey saw Kant's categorical imperative as no
more than a commending of our practice of considering generalizability
in our moral deliberation. Such is a good practice, but the desire for
ready-made formulae for solving every moral conundrum isn't a very
mature view of ethics. Dewey saw this as the desire of the timid and
the lovers of authoritative prestige, and more, it demonstrates a
tendency toward sadomasochism. It is for people who want to be
punished by some powerful authority for their misdeeds. It is a view
that sees the self as a cold, calculating, and self-interested
psychopath where moral obligation can only come from something
external to this self. It is this very pessimistic view of humanity
that makes the question "why be moral?" impossible to answer without
appeal to a Supreme Punisher to keep these psychopaths in line. In
this view we are to think of serving our own needs as "natural" while
taking care of others as "unnatural."

On the contrary, the question "why be moral?" can be met while denying
the existence of such a cosmic Enforcer once we also deny the view of
humanity as a bunch of psychopaths needing to be restained. Unlike
psychopaths, we do feel connected to others and love at least some
others as we love ourselves. Given that our conceptions of selfhood
are made in relation to others, serving others is no more "unnatural"
than looking after our own interests.

Pragmatists deny the notion of a static essence called Human Nature in
favor of a view of humanity as an ongoing project that has shown a lot
of progress, is more than it ever was, and can, we hope, be much more
that it is even now. Our moral progress so far has been the process of
self-enlargement as we have become more and more sensitive to the
neeeds and suffering of others and have expanded our circles of moral
concern. We should continue to expand the community of those deserving
of our moral consideration and become better able to empathize with
and serve the needs of others. It is such self-enlargment in an
on-going process of self-creation rather than an adherence of isolated
beings with fixed Human Natures to a static pre-ordained Moral Law
that the pragmatist understands moral progress.


Natural Law

Related to the notion of Human Nature is the concept of Natural Law.
The idea of a law that is not merely the set of conventions of a given
society but is actually written into the very nature of all things is
thought to go back at least to Aristotle. Many Christians such as
Catholics subscribe to the notion that moral standards can be derived
from understanding the intrinsic nature of the world and the nature of
human beings. Human laws are thought to be legitimate only insofar as
they conform to Natural Law. This idea is strongly rooted in the
Scholastic movement beginning late in the first millennium as a
rejection of the mysticism of Plato in favor of the
intellectualization of Aristotle in an attempt to reconcile reason and
revelation, science and faith, Aristotelian philosophy and Catholic
theology. Catholic thought to this day is deeply Aristotelean, for
example, in its use of forms, substances, essences, and accidents to
explain what happens to the wafer during the ritual of Communion.
Faith and reason are thought to be two ways of approaching the same
Truth and are immune from the possibility of contradiction.

One positive consequence of this view is that its subscribers
acknowledge the ability for atheists to be moral since it is believed
that the Moral Law can be understood through reason alone without any
special revelation. Revelation is still thought to be an advantage in
discerning what is good and what is evil under the Moral Law, and the
belief that acceptance of Divine Grace is required for forgiveness
when one does not follow the Law makes salvation extremely difficult
for the nonbeliever; however, it is still important to emphasize the
one upside of Natural Law theory for atheists in that it is one way
that I have known Christians to chastise one another for bigotry
towards atheists as amoral or inherently immoral.

Unfortunately, Natural Law also has a long history as a tool of
oppression. It is a way of claiming an eternal mandate for existing
practices of discrimination and subjugation. In fact, one of its first
uses was for Aristotle to justify slavery as "natural" rather than
"conventional." Some people, he said, are naturally slaves and others
are naturally masters.

"There is no difficulty in answering this question [of the basis for
slavery], on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should
rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient;
from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection,
others for rule."

It is of course now argued by Natural Law moralists that slavery is
against Natural Law. It seems to be so easy to justify one's current
practices and prejudices, whatever they may be, by dressing them up in
the fancy clothes of Natural Law. At least the plasticity of the
concept of Natural Law can be of some benefit since the very same
concept is now used to defend human rights as "natural." The problem
with the whole notion though is that Natural Law just seems to be able
to be applied to justify anything you want. It is not a method for
finding out new information about the good but for trying to claim the
authority of Nature and bolstering false certainty in one's
prejudices. One argument based on Natural Law against homosexual sex
goes like this. Different body parts were designed for specific
puposes, and to use them for purposes not consistent with their design
is inherently disordered. By such reasoning couldn't we also say that
it is unnatural for a clown to walk on his hands? It seems the clowns
of the world need to repent of this terrible offense to Natural Law.

Nietzche pointed out in Beyond Good and Evil that the injunction to
live according to nature is as tautological and empty of intellectual
content as to say we must live according to life. The situation seems
very similar to that of the question of design in nature. James might
agree that Natural Law like the notion of design in nature is likewise
a "blank cartridge" that "carries no consequences, does no execution."
It only seems of issue when Is and Ought are conflated so that it can
be used to justify the way things are, no matter how someone says they
are, as the way things simply must be. It is then no wonder then that
this empty concept can be molded to serve whatever moral view you
already have. In her book, Moral Clarity, Susan Neiman describes use
of Natural Law as a sort of magic. Step 1: "Project your worldview
onto the state of nature." Step 2: "Use the state of nature to justify
your worldview."

Though recent generations were likely to hear how Natural Law
justifies the traditional household role of women, where we are most
likely to face appeals to Natural Law today is in the Catholic
condemnation of homosexuality as unnatural and therefore immoral.
Ironically, I think the second most common appeal to what is "natural"
as a method of condemning a practice must be that of the critics of
Catholicism on the issue of celibacy in the Catholic priesthood as an
unnatural condition that serves as an explanation for the
international sex abuse scandal. But saying that celibacy is unnatural
is to say no more than to point out that celibacy or monogamy or
altruism does not come easily to many or even most homo sapiens. It
doesn't mean in itself that we ought not try to do it. Likewise, a
biologist who notes that rape and murder are natural and have some
evolutionary benefits would not argue on that basis that we ought to
rape and murder. A description of the way things are now or have been
in the past can't tell us how things ought to be in the future.

Natural Law was used to say say that it is only natural for some
people to live their lives as slaves. It was used to say that it is
only natural for woman to be subjugated to men, and it was used to say
that it is only natural that certain races are inferior to others.
Given the history of Natural Law, it should be no surprise that it is
now being used to rationalize bigotry toward homosexuals and lies
behind the Catholic Church's formal condemnation of homosexual
relations. The Catholic Catechism regards all homosexual practices as
"acts of grave depravity" and "intrinsically disordered." "They are
contrary to the natural law," because "They close the sexual act to
the gift of life." You might think to point out that many heterosexual
couples are infertile for various reasons and therefore heterosexual
sex is often not open to life. The Catholic response here is that
sexual relations between opposite sex partners is still "unitive" and
"ordered toward procreation" even though procreation will not happen.
The arguments used here are unconvincing to me and probably to anyone
who does not speak Aristotelian. They are the same arguments as those
used against contraceptives. Every action to done to render
procreation impossible is "intrinsically evil." Polls indicate that
the vast majority of American Catholics oppose the notion that using
contraceptives is a sin. Many Catholics were as concerned as I was
about Pope John Paul II's specifically denouncing use of contraceptive
on visits to impoverished nations where people struggle to feed the
children they already have. When Benedict made his first visit to
Africa as pope, he spoke out against condom use saying that they
"aggravate the problem" rather than help stem the AIDS epidemic in
sub-Saharan Africa. Though many saw such remarks as an indicator that
the pope is out of touch with and cares more about dogma that human
lives, it is clear that the Catholic Church does take contraceptive
use seriously as a grave violation of Natural Law even if its American
members generally do not.

The problem with appeals to Natural Law, is that saying that something
is unnatural is to say nothing more than that you object to it, since
these sorts of arguments can be made to condemn lots of things that
you may hold dear and to justify things that you think people ought
not do. It is so easily used to confirm whatever you already think and
so useless for discerning what is right when what is right is actually
in question. It is obvious to me that we ought to dispense with this
notion of "the Natural" as what is moral and cease to be impressed by
people's arguments about what is and is not "natural."

In defense of of the utility and authenticity of Natural Law, it is
common for defenders to point to acts that we all probably agree are
immoral or at least unhealthy such as sex with animals. But as usual
in discussions about morality in terms of Natural Law, the cart is put
before the horse. The question at hand is not to decide whether the
notion of Natural Law can be used to justify one's existing
prejudices. We should agree that it can. In fact, opponents of Natural
Law think that that is all it ever does. The question is whether
Natural Law can aid in moral deliberation where one does not already
presume to know what is and is not good. As far as I can tell based on
many conversations with supporters of Natural Law, it is never used to
aid one's personal moral decision making and only ever used to condemn
others.

What is so bizarre to me about this phenomenon among (especially
Catholic) Christians is that while Jesus was at his most tender in
dealing with those guilty of sexual sin, he reserved his scorn for the
self-righteous, for those with all kinds of ideas about how other
people can improve at no cost to themselves. Such cost-free moralizers
seem to think that they are our betters simply for making condemning
remarks. Goodness to them is little more than simply holding the right
ideas in their heads on issues that they don't personally face. Why do
you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, asked Jesus, when you don't
notice the log in your own? Unless Natural Law has any utility in
seeing the log in your own eye--for making moral discernments where
one doesn't think they know in advance what will turn out to be
right--and is only useful for condemning others, I don't see anything
worth keeping about the notion. It is just a way of baptizing our
current conventions by dressing them up in the guise of the demands of
Nature and of no use in situations where the conclusion is not
predetermined by our existing views.

Does the MOQ have the same problem as Natural Law theory in its
utility for moral deliberation?

Best,
Steve