Natural Right and History
Leo Strauss
G.D.O’Bradovich III
May, 2017
[unfinished]
The majority among the learned who still adhere to the principles of the Declaration of Independence interpret these principles not as expressions of natural right but as an ideal, if not as an ideology or a myth.
Present-day American social science … is dedicated to the proposition that all men are endowed by the evolutionary process or by a mysterious fate with many kinds of urges and aspirations, but certainly with no natural right. (pg. 3) |
In various essays, we have commented on our Founding Fathers’ wisdom of acknowledging certain rights that predate our country and originate from the Creator. Their insight is simple and elegant: since the state does not grant rights, the state does not have the authority to rescind these rights.
With the “high schoolers” quickly approaching graduation, and a not insignificant number joining the service, Yours Truly felt it would be appropriate to expound upon the historical uniqueness of our country: the first Republic to be explicitly founded upon the philosophic principles of natural law. To that end, I will provide select commentary to Strauss’ erudite insights.
Although Strauss touches upon various points of classical natural law that would expressed through our Bill of Rights, we will demonstrate that Natural Law is the foundation of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For example, the pursuit of happiness implies life and life implies self defense. Originally, self defense was fists, then clubs, then guns. Because of the ”inventiveness of wickedness”, when handheld phasers become commonplace, we do not doubt that certain well intentioned people will actively promote the mistaken belief that the Bill of Rights assumes only muskets are intended for self defense.
An implication of Natural Law is that man, as man, can both understand himself and find personal values that are not whimsical, emotional, or subjective. This understanding is opposed to the modern opinion that man cannot find meaning in his life, that life has no purpose, and, ultimately, has no value. Hence, the subjective viewpoints of modernism and historicism are closely allied to nihilism.
Strauss’ work on natural law and history has no explicit outline for the layman. However, we are reluctant to attempt another scheme, for example, chronological, let we inadvertently substitute our folly for his wisdom.
Strauss demonstrates that natural law must be discovered and natural law is older than any ancestral authority, hence natural law takes precedence over custom and convention. At our founding, the American Union had the custom of slavery, yet natural law was never suspended, although slavery interfered with the full application of natural law.
We hope our efforts to expound upon natural law will expose, if not convince, the Gentle Reader to the various reasons why the rule of gentlemen is the best practical government.
With the “high schoolers” quickly approaching graduation, and a not insignificant number joining the service, Yours Truly felt it would be appropriate to expound upon the historical uniqueness of our country: the first Republic to be explicitly founded upon the philosophic principles of natural law. To that end, I will provide select commentary to Strauss’ erudite insights.
Although Strauss touches upon various points of classical natural law that would expressed through our Bill of Rights, we will demonstrate that Natural Law is the foundation of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For example, the pursuit of happiness implies life and life implies self defense. Originally, self defense was fists, then clubs, then guns. Because of the ”inventiveness of wickedness”, when handheld phasers become commonplace, we do not doubt that certain well intentioned people will actively promote the mistaken belief that the Bill of Rights assumes only muskets are intended for self defense.
An implication of Natural Law is that man, as man, can both understand himself and find personal values that are not whimsical, emotional, or subjective. This understanding is opposed to the modern opinion that man cannot find meaning in his life, that life has no purpose, and, ultimately, has no value. Hence, the subjective viewpoints of modernism and historicism are closely allied to nihilism.
Strauss’ work on natural law and history has no explicit outline for the layman. However, we are reluctant to attempt another scheme, for example, chronological, let we inadvertently substitute our folly for his wisdom.
Strauss demonstrates that natural law must be discovered and natural law is older than any ancestral authority, hence natural law takes precedence over custom and convention. At our founding, the American Union had the custom of slavery, yet natural law was never suspended, although slavery interfered with the full application of natural law.
We hope our efforts to expound upon natural law will expose, if not convince, the Gentle Reader to the various reasons why the rule of gentlemen is the best practical government.
***
We are honored to dedicate this introductory work on natural right to certain youths who we have had the pleasure of knowing over the preceding two years and who not only possess, but demonstrate, the highest virtues. While the appellation of being ”a gentleman and a scholar” seems trite, or cliched, in our modern age, we have no reservation in applying this phrase to certain individuals who are deserving of the recognition.
These individuals are listed by the seemingly arbitrary convention of Astrological sign:
These individuals are listed by the seemingly arbitrary convention of Astrological sign:
Denver Drake, Brayden Drake, Parker Nelson, Jacob Loudermilk, RJ Wood,
Colton Martinek, Joe Mascari. and Adam Elia
If principles are … justified by the fact that they are accepted by a society, the principles of cannibalism are as defensible ... as those of civilized life. (pg. 4 )
Strauss immediately raises the issue of values and the implication that values are arbitrary.
[We] are able … to look for a standard ...which we can judge of the ideals of our own as well as of any other society. (pg. 4 )
That standard cannot be found in the needs of the various societies, for the societies … have many needs that conflict with one another: the problem of priorities arises. (pg. 4 )
This problem cannot be solved in a rational manner if we do not have a standard with reference to which we can ... discern the hierarchy ... of genuine needs. (pg. 4)
Our social science ... admits being unable to help us in discriminating between legitimate and illegitimate ... objectives.
(pg. 4)
[Our] social science … [prefers] — only God knows why — generous liberalism to consistency ... (pg.5 )
According to our social science, … we have to be resigned to utter ignorance in the most important respect: ... our ultimate principles have no other support than our arbitrary ... preferences. (pg. 5 )
The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism — nay, it is identical with nihilism. (pg. 6 )
[Social scientists] … believe that our inability to acquire any genuine knowledge of what is intrinsically good ... compels us to be tolerant of every opinion about good ... [and] to recognize all preferences ... as equally respectable. (pg. 6 )
The lack of values results in accepting all preferences and opinions.
The latter must be condemned because they are based on a demonstrably false premise ... that men can know what is good. (pg. 6 )
When liberals became impatient of the absolute limits to diversity ... 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. (pg. 6 )
One wonders by what values individuality was chosen over natural right.
Liberal relativism has … the notion that everyone has a natural right to the pursuit of happiness ...; but in itself it is a seminary of intolerance. (pg.7 )
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. (pg.7 )
The more we cultivate reason, the more we cultivate nihilism: the less are we able to be loyal members of society. (pg. 7 )
The inescapable practical consequence of nihilism is fanatical obscurantism. (pg. 7 )
Our indignation proves at best that we are well meaning. It does not prove that we are right. Utility and truth are two entirely different things. (pg.7 )
-The indignation of modern liberals is the result of good intentions.
Contrary to a popular notion, this will aggravate … the difficulty of impartial treatment. (pg.10 )
"Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas.”
(pg. 10 )
One is occupied by the liberals of various descriptions, the other by the ... disciples of Thomas Aquinas. They all are modern men. (pg.10 )
All natural beings have a natural end ...which determines what kind of operation is good for them. (pg. 10 )
[Reason] determines what is by nature right with ultimate regard to man's natural end. (pg.10 )
It is absurd to claim that the discovery of a still greater number of such notions by modern students has … affected the fundamental issue. (pg. 11 )
-
Political philosophy seems to begin with the contention that the variety of notions of right proves the nonexistence of natural right ... (pg. 11 )
-seems
[Agreement] may produce peace but it cannot produce truth. (pg. 12 )
The adherents of the modern historical view … reject as mythical the premise that nature is the norm; they reject the premise that nature is of higher dignity than any works of man. (pg. 12 )
But the classical opponents ... admit that the distinction between nature and convention is fundamental. Philosophizing means to ascend from the cave to the light of the sun, that is, to the truth. The cave is the world of opinion as opposed to
knowledge. (pg. 12 )
Men ... cannot live together, if opinions are not stabilized by social fiat. (pg.13 )
Philosophizing means … to ascend from public dogma to essentially private knowledge. (pg.13 )
The public dogma is originally an inadequate attempt to answer the question of the all-comprehensive truth or of the eternal order. (pg. 13 )
The fundamental premise of conventionalism is … nothing other than the idea of philosophy as the attempt to grasp the eternal. (pg. 13 )
The modern opponents of natural right reject precisely this idea. According to them, all human thought is historical and hence unable ever to grasp anything eternal. (pg.13 )
[According] to our contemporaries all philosophizing essentially belongs to a "historical world," "culture," "civilization," …, that is, to what Plato had called the cave. (pg. 13 )
We shall call this view "historicism." (pg. 13 )
We have noted … that the contemporary rejection of natural right in the name of history is based, not on historical evidence, but on a philosophic critique of the ... knowability of natural right. (pg. 13 )
We note ... that the philosophic critique in question is not particularly a critique of natural right or of moral principles in general. It is a critique of human thought ..
. (pg. 13 )
[It] is convenient to start with the moment when the … subterraneous movement ... began to dominate the social sciences in broad daylight. (pg. 14)
It was directed against both the ...conventional and the ... otherworldly. (pg. 15)
The utmost one could say is that it discovered ... the superiority of the local and temporal to the universal. (pg. 15 )
It would be more cautious to say that ... the historical school asserted that the local and the temporal have a higher value than the universal. (pg. 15 )
Transcendence is not a preserve of revealed religion. In a very important sense it was implied in the original meaning of political philosophy as the quest for the natural ... political order.
(pg.16 )
By denying ... the existence, of universal norms, the historical school destroyed the only solid basis of all efforts to transcend the actual. (pg.16 )
Historicism can ... be described as ...[an] extreme form of modern this-worldliness ... (pg. 16 )
Since any universal principles make ...
most men potentially homeless, it depreciated universal principles in favor of historical principles. (pg. 17 )
[History] was thought to supply ... the only solid, knowledge of what is truly human, of man as man: of his greatness and misery. (pg. 18 )
History ... divorced from all dubious or metaphysical assumptions — became the highest authority. (pg. 18 )
The historical school had succeeded in discrediting universal ... principles; it had thought that historical studies would reveal … concrete standards. (pg. 18 )
To the unbiased historian, "the historical process" revealed itself as the meaningless web spun by what men did, ...and thought, no more than by ... chance — a tale told by an idiot. (pg. 19 )
The only standards that remained were of a ... subjective character, standards that had no other support than the free choice of the individual. (pg. 19 )
No objective criterion … allowed the distinction between good and bad choices.
Historicism culminated in nihilism. (pg. 19 )
The view ... that there is no such thing as the "historical process" was not novel. (pg. 19)
It was fundamentally the classical view. But the manifest failure of the practical claim of historicism, that it could supply life with a better ... guidance than the prehistoricist thought of the past had done, did not destroy the prestige of the alleged theoretical insight due to historicism. (pg.19 )
It seems to show that all human thought is dependent on unique historical contexts that are preceded by ... different contexts and that emerge out of their antecedents in … [an] unpredictable way: the foundations of human thought are laid by unpredictable experiences .... (pg. 20 )
-seems
[If] the fact [of historicism] is so obvious, it is hard to see how it could have escaped the notice of the most thoughtful men of the past. (pg. 20 )
History … does not teach us ... whether the rejected view [of natural right] deserved to be rejected. (pg. 20 )
If the historicist contention is to have any solidity, it must be based not on history but … on a philosophic analysis proving that all human thought depends ultimately on ... fate and not on ... principles accessible to man as man. (pg. 20)
For the skeptic, all assertions are uncertain and therefore essentially arbitrary; for the historicist, the assertions that prevail at different times and in different civilizations are very far from being arbitrary. (pg. 21 )
No competent man of our age would regard as simply true the complete teaching of any thinker of the past. (pg. 21 )
In every case experience has shown that the originator of the teaching took things for granted which must not be taken for granted or that he did not know certain facts or possibilities which were discovered in a later age. (pg. 21 )
[There] was then no progress, but merely a change from one type of limitation to another type. (pg. 22 )
Since the limitations of human thought are ... unknowable, it makes no sense to conceive of them in terms of social, economic, and other conditions, that is, in terms of knowable or analyzable phenomena: the limitations of human thought are set by fate. (pg. 22 )
That technological development ... required that science be regarded as essentially in the service of the "conquest of nature" and that technology be emancipated from any moral ... supervision. (pg.24 )
[There] cannot be natural right if human thought is not capable of acquiring genuine, universally valid, final knowledge within a limited sphere ... of specific subjects. (pg.25 )
[Historicism] admits that human thought is capable of acquiring a most important insight that is universally valid and that will in no way be affected by any future surprises. (pg. 25 )
[Historicism] claims to have brought to light … a truth valid for all thought, for all time:.... The historicist is not impressed by the prospect that historicism may be superseded ... by the denial of historicism.
(pg. 26 )
Historicism thrives on the fact that it ...exempts itself from its own verdict about all human thought. (pg. 26 )
[We] have to choose such a view without any rational guidance. A single comprehensive view is imposed on us by fate. (pg.28 )
All human thought depends on fate, on something that thought cannot master and whose workings it cannot anticipate.
(pg. 28)
The final ... insight into the historical character of all thought would transcend history only if that insight were accessible to man as man ... at all times; but it does not transcend history if it ... belongs to a specific historic situation. (pg. 29 )
They presuppose … that a most important truth can … be accessible to man as man.
(pg.29 )
It assumes that philosophy ..., the attempt to replace opinions about the whole by knowledge of the whole, is ... absurd, because the very idea of philosophy rests ... on premises that are only "historical and relative." (pg. 31 )
Philosophy ... presupposes that the whole is knowable ... to say that the whole is knowable … is tantamount to saying that the whole has a permanent structure or that the whole as such is ... always the same. (pg. 31 )
"[T]o be" in the highest sense cannot mean — or … it does not necessarily mean — "to be always." (pg. 32 )
[Philosophy] is knowledge that one does not know … or awareness of the fundamental problems and … of the fundamental alternatives regarding their solution that are coeval with human thought. (pg.33 )
Historicism assumes that modern man's turn toward history implied ... the discovery of a dimension of reality that had escaped classical thought ... (pg. 34 )
The political philosophy of the eighteenth century was a doctrine of natural right. (pg. 36 )
-Declaration of Independence
It consisted in a peculiar interpretation of natural right, namely, the specifically modern interpretation. (pg. 36 )
Historicism is the ultimate outcome of the crisis of modern natural right. (pg. 36 )
The crisis ... of modern political philosophy could become a crisis of philosophy … only because … philosophy ... had become thoroughly politicized. (pg. 36)
[Philosophy] had been the ... quest for the eternal order, and … it had been a pure source of humane inspiration …. (pg. 36)
Since the seventeenth century, philosophy has become a weapon …. (pg.36 )
[The social scientist] committed the fatal mistake ... of ignoring the essential difference between intellectuals and philosophers. In this he remained the dupe of the delusion which he denounced. (pg. 36 )
For the politicization of philosophy consists ... in this, that the ... difference formerly known as the difference between gentlemen and philosophers … and the difference between sophists or rhetoricians and philosophers ... — becomes blurred and finally disappears.
(pg. 36)
The historicist contention can be reduced to the assertion that natural right is impossible because philosophy ... is impossible. (pg. 36 )
It would be unable to answer the question of what the ultimate goal of wise action is.
(pg. 36 )
[Philosophy] assumed that the fundamental political problem is susceptible of a final solution. This assumption ultimately rested on the ...answer to the question of how man ought to live. (pg. 37 )
By realizing that we are ignorant of the most important things, we realize at the same time that the most important thing for us, ... is quest for knowledge of the most important things …. (pg. 37 )
It is true that the successful quest for wisdom might lead to the result that wisdom is not the one thing needful. (pg. 37)
Natural right is ... rejected today not only because all human thought is held to be historical but … because it is thought that there is a variety of unchangeable principles ... and none of which can be proved to be superior to the others. (pg. 37 )
[Weber] parted company with the historical school, not because it had rejected natural norms … that are both universal and objective, but because it had tried to establish standards that were particular and historical indeed, but still objective. (pg. 38 )
Weber rejected both assumptions ... as based on the dogmatic premise that reality is rational. (pg. 38 )
To try to explain historical or unique phenomena by tracing them to general laws or to unique wholes means to assume ... that there are mysterious ... forces which move the historical actors.
(pg. 38 )
Nor did Weber have any doubt that modern science is … superior to any earlier form of thinking …. (pg.39 )
All science presupposes that science is valuable, but this presupposition is the product of certain cultures, and hence historically relative. (pg. 40)
No conclusion can be drawn from any fact as to its valuable character, nor can we infer the factual character of something from its being … desirable. (pg. 40)
Weber contended that the ... heterogeneity of facts and values necessitates the ethically neutral character of social science: social science can answer questions of facts and their causes; it is not competent to answer questions of value. (pg. 41 )
[Social] philosophy cannot solve the crucial value problems. (pg.41 )
Based on genuine knowledge of the true ends, social science would search for the proper means to those ends; it would lead up to objective and specific value judgments regarding policies. (pg. 42 )
Social science would be a truly policy-making … science rather than a mere supplier of data for … policy-makers. (pg. 42)
The … reason why Weber insisted on the ethically neutral character of social science … was … not his belief in the fundamental opposition of the Is and the Ought but his belief that there cannot be any … knowledge of the Ought. (pg. 42 )
He denied to man any science ... any knowledge, … of the true value system: the true value system does not exist; there is a variety of values which are of the same rank, whose demands conflict with one another, and whose conflict cannot be solved by human reason. (pg. 42 )
I contend that Weber's thesis ... leads ... to the view that every preference, however evil, ... or insane, has to be judged before the tribunal of reason to be as legitimate as any other preference. (pg. 43 )
An unmistakable sign of this necessity is supplied by a statement of Weber about the prospects of Western civilization. He saw this alternative: either a spiritual renewal ... or else ... the extinction of every human possibility but that of "specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart." (pg. 43 )
This amounts to an admission that the way of life of "specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart" is as defensible as the ways of life recommended ... by Socrates. (pg. 43 )
Whereas gentlemen, or honest men, ...agree as to things moral, they legitimately disagree in regard to such things as ...private property, monogamy, democracy, and so on. (pg. 44)
Weber's ... recognition of all "ideal" goals or of all "causes," seems to permit of a non arbitrary distinction between excellence and … depravity. (pg.46 )
[It] culminates in the imperative ... "Strive for excellence or baseness." (pg. 46 )
[For] Weber, in his capacity as a social philosopher, excellence and baseness ... lost their primary meaning. (pg. 47 )
What difference can this still make after we have been reduced to a condition in which the maxims of the heartless … as well as those of the ... philistine have to be regarded as no less defensible than those ... of the gentleman, or of the saint? (pg. 48 )
[One] must not make the dishonest attempt to give one's preferences an objective foundation which would … be a sham foundation. (pg. 49 )
Why … should one not prefer pleasing delusions or edifying myths to the truth?
(pg.49 )
One may call the nihilism to which Weber's thesis leads "noble nihilism." (pg. 49)
Is it not the plain duty of the social scientist truthfully and faithfully to present social phenomena? (pg.50 )
[Contrary] to what Weber suggested, such understanding enables and forces him to distinguish between genuine and spurious religion, ... those religions are higher in which the specifically religious motivations are effective to a higher degree. (pg. 51 )
The sociologist of religion cannot help noting the difference between those who try to gain the favor of their gods by ...bribing them and those who try to gain it by a change of heart. (pg. 51 )
In the case studied by Weber, the cause was a genuine and high religion, and the effect was the decline of art: both the cause and the effect become visible only on the basis of value judgments as distinguished from mere reference to values. (pg. 53 )
[Can] one say anything relevant on public opinion polls … without realizing ... that many answers to the questionnaires are given by unintelligent, uninformed, … and irrational people, and that not a few questions are formulated by people of the same caliber — can one say anything relevant about … opinion polls without committing one value judgment after another? (pg. 54)
The political scientist or historian has … to explain actions of statesmen and generals … He cannot do this without answering the question of whether the action concerned was caused by rational consideration of means and ends or by emotional factors ... (pg. 54)
Social science could avoid value judgments only by keeping strictly within the limits of a purely historical or "interpretive" approach. (pg. 56 )
The social scientist would have to bow without a murmur to the self interpretation of his subjects. (pg. 56 )
But this limitation exposes one to the danger of falling victim to every deception and every self-deception of the people one is studying; it penalizes every critical attitude; taken by itself, it deprives social science of every possible value. (pg. 56)
[The] problem concerning the difference ... between genuine prophets and pseudo-prophets, between genuine leaders and successful charlatans — …. (pg. 57 )
It is his [Weber’s] boast that he does not praise or blame, but understands. (pg. 57 )
-modern liberalism also understands.
Within the limits of this purely historical ... work, that kind of objectivity which implies the foregoing of evaluations is legitimate and even indispensable from every point of view. (pg. 58)
The … inadequacy of this scheme, which perhaps fitted the situation in the nineteenth century but hardly any other situation, forced Weber to add the charismatic type of legitimacy to the two types imposed on him by his environment. (pg. 58 )
But this addition … merely concealed, the basic limitation inherent in his scheme.
(pg. 58 )
[Weber] did not hesitate to describe Plato as an "intellectual," without ...considering the fact that the whole work of Plato may be described as a critique of the notion of "the intellectual." (pg. 59 )
By calling something the essence of a historical phenomenon, one either means that aspect of the phenomenon which one considers to be of permanent value, or else that aspect through which it exercised the greatest historical influence.
(pg. 59 )
He did not even allude to a third possibility,... that the essence of Calvinism, e.g., would have to be identified with what Calvin himself regarded ... as the chief characteristic, of his work. (pg. 60 )
He contended that Calvinist theology was a major cause of the capitalist spirit. He stressed the fact that the effect was in no way intended by Calvin, … [and] that the crucial link in the chain of causation (a peculiar interpretation of the dogma of predestination) was rejected by Calvin but emerged "quite naturally" ... among the broad stratum of the general run of Calvinists. (pg. 60)
[Weber] ... avoided identifying the essence of Calvinism with what Calvin himself considered essential, because Calvin's self-interpretation would naturally act as a standard by which to judge objectively the Calvinists who claimed to follow Calvin.
(pg.61 )
Almost all have implied an objective value judgment on vulgar Calvinism: the epigones unwittingly destroyed what they intended to preserve. (pg. 63)
But this merely means that only after having rejected vulgar Calvinism is one faced with the real issue: the issue … of genuine religion versus noble irreligion, as distinguished from the issue of mere sorcery, or mechanical ritualism versus the irreligion of specialists without vision and voluptuaries without heart. (pg. 63 )
[In] spite of the fact that social science stands or falls by value judgments, social science ...cannot settle the decisive value conflicts. (pg. 64)
Such appreciation enables and forces the social scientist ... to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious and between the higher and the lower: between genuine religion and spurious religion, between genuine leaders and charlatans, between knowledge and … sophistry, between virtue and vice … (pg. 64)
[Weber's] whole notion of the scope ... of the social sciences rests on the allegedly demonstrable premise that the conflict between ultimate values cannot be resolved by human reason. (pg. 65 )
[Weber’s] thesis was only the generalized version ... [that] the conflict between ethics and politics is insoluble: political
action is sometimes impossible without incurring moral guilt. (pg. 65 )
[Weber] put "peace" in quotation marks, whereas he did not take ... measure when speaking of conflict. (pg.66 )
"[P]eace and universal happiness" appeared to him to be an illegitimate or fantastic goal. (pg. 66)
He had to combine the anguish bred by atheism (the absence of any redemption ...) with the anguish bred by revealed religion (the oppressive sense of guilt).
(pg. 67 )
Weber assumed … that there is no hierarchy of values: all values are of the same rank. (pg. 67 )
[One] would have to know whether it makes sense to say that nature committed an injustice by distributing her gifts unequally, whether it is a duty of society to remedy that injustice, and whether envy has a right to be heard. (pg. 69 )
If ... no solution is morally superior to the other, the reasonable consequence would be that the decision has to be transferred from the tribunal of ethics to that of convenience or expediency. (pg. 70)
What Weber really meant ... was … that the conflict between this- worldly ethics and otherworldly ethics is insoluble by human reason. (pg. 71)
[Weber] never proved that the unassisted human mind is incapable of arriving at objective norms or that the conflict between different this- worldly ethical doctrines is insoluble by human reason.
(pg. 71 )
Social science is human knowledge of human life. Its light is the natural light. It tries to find … reasonable solutions to social problems. (pg. 72 )
The insights and solutions at which it arrives might be questioned on the basis of superhuman knowledge or of divine revelation... (pg. 72)
[If] genuine insights of social science can be questioned on the basis of revelation, revelation is not merely above reason but against reason... (pg. 72)
He contended that science ... rests … not on evident premises that are at the disposal of man as man but on faith. (pg. 72)
Science or philosophy is unable to give a clear or certain account of its own basis. One recognizes therewith the principle that preferences do not need good or sufficient reasons. (pg. 73)
[Those] who regard the quest for truth as valuable in itself may regard such activities as the understanding of the genesis of a doctrine, or the editing of a text … as ends in themselves: the quest for truth has the same dignity as stamp collecting. (pg. 73 )
It is concerned with the knowable truth, which is valid regardless of whether we like it or not. (pg. 73 )
The result of this conflict … was his belief that the conflict between values cannot be resolved by human reason. (pg. 75 )
Yet the crisis of ... modern science does not necessarily make doubtful the idea of science. (pg. 75 )
The fundamental question ... is whether men can acquire that knowledge of the good ... by the unaided efforts of their natural powers, or whether they are dependent ... on Divine Revelation. (pg. 75)
[Weber] yearns … for a solution of that riddle and human knowledge is always so limited that the need for divine illumination cannot be denied and the possibility of revelation cannot be refuted.
(pg. 76 )
Philosophy, … the quest for evident knowledge available to man as man, would itself rest on an unevident, arbitrary, or blind decision. (pg. 76)
When he demanded … that interpretive understanding be subservient to causal explanation, he was guided by the observation ... that the lower is mostly stronger than the higher. (pg. 78)
According to him, reality is an infinite and meaningless sequence … of unique and infinitely divisible events, which in themselves are meaningless: all meaning … originates in the activity of the knowing or evaluating subject. (pg. 78)
He ... could not deny that there is an articulation of reality that precedes all scientific articulation: ... that wealth of meaning, which we have in mind when speaking of the world of common experience or of the natural understanding of the world. (pg. 78 )
Only a comprehensive analysis of social
reality … as men always have known it since there have been civil societies, would permit an adequate discussion of the possibility of an evaluating social science. (pg. 79)
Such an analysis would make intelligible the fundamental alternatives which essentially belong to social life and
would ... supply a basis for responsible judgment on whether the conflict between these alternatives is ... susceptible of a solution. (pg. 79)
[From] the seventeenth century, ... modern thought emerged by … a break with classical philosophy. (pg. 79 )
[The] originators of modern thought ... agreed with the classics in so far as they conceived of philosophy ... as the perfection of man's natural understanding of the natural world. (pg. 79 )
The victory of the new ... science was decided by the victory of its decisive part … the new physics. (pg. 79)
[The] new physics and the new natural science … became independent ... of philosophy which … came to be called "philosophy" in contradistinction to "science"; and ..."science" became the authority for "philosophy." (pg. 80)
"Science" … is the successful part of modern philosophy or science, whereas "philosophy" is its less successful part. (pg. 80)
Thus not modern philosophy but …. science came to be regarded as the perfection of man's natural understanding of the natural world. (pg. 80 )
It became apparent that the scientific understanding of the world emerges by way of a radical modification ...of the natural understanding. (pg. 80 )
The natural world … in which we live and act … is a world ... of "things" or "affairs" which we handle. (pg. 80 )
Yet as long as we identify the ... prescientific world with the world in which we live, we are dealing with an abstraction. To grasp the natural world as a world that is … prescientific ..., one has to go back behind the first emergence of science ….
(pg. 80 )
The information that classical philosophy supplies about its origins suffices … for reconstructing the essential character of "the natural world." (pg. 82 )
Natural right had to be discovered, and there was political life prior to that discovery. (pg. 82)
The idea of natural right must be unknown as long as the idea of nature is unknown. (pg. 82)
The discovery of nature is the work of philosophy. (pg. 82 )
The Old Testament… does not know "nature": the Hebrew term for "nature" is unknown to the Hebrew Bible. (pg. 82)
Philosophy is older than political philosophy. (pg. 83)
Philosophy … came into being when nature was discovered, or the first philosopher was the first man who discovered nature. (pg. 83)
For the discovery of nature consists precisely in the splitting-up of ... phenomena which are natural and phenomena which are not natural: "nature" is a term of distinction. (pg. 83)
"Custom" or "way" is the pre philosophical equivalent of "nature." (pg. 84)
“There is a … presumption against
novelty, drawn out of a ... consideration of human nature …. (pg. 84)
But not everything old everywhere is right.
… so "new and strange" originally stood for bad... (pg. 84 )
Pre philosophic life is characterized by the … identification of the good with the ancestral. (pg. 84 )
The identification of the good with the ancestral leads to the view that the right way was established by gods or sons of gods or pupils of gods: the right way must be a divine law. (pg. 85 )
The first things and the right way cannot become questionable ... or philosophy cannot emerge, or nature cannot be discovered, if authority as such is not doubted or as long as ... any ... statement ... is accepted on trust. (pg. 85)
-Hearsay
The emergence of the idea of natural right presupposes ... the doubt of authority.
(pg. 85 )
Plato has indicated by the conversational settings ... how indispensable doubt of authority or freedom from authority is for the discovery of natural right. (pg. 85 )
[In] a community governed by divine laws, it is strictly forbidden to subject these laws to ... critical examination, in the presence of young men; Socrates, however, discusses natural right — a subject whose discovery presupposes doubt of the ancestral or divine code — not only in the presence of young men but in conversation with them. (pg. 86)
This is not to deny that, once the idea of natural right has emerged and become a matter of course, it can easily be adjusted to the belief in the existence of divinely revealed law. (pg. 86)
We … contend that the predominance of that belief ... makes the quest for natural right infinitely unimportant: if man knows by divine revelation what the right path is, he does not have to discover that path by his ...efforts. (pg. 86 )
The assumption that there is a variety of divine codes leads to difficulties, since the various codes contradict one another...
(pg. 87)
The view that the gods were born of the earth cannot be reconciled with the view that the earth was made by the gods. (pg. 87)
The right way is now no longer guaranteed by authority... (pg. 87 )
The ... identification of the good with the ancestral is replaced by the ... distinction between the good and the ancestral; the quest for the right way ... is the quest for the good as distinguished from the ancestral. (pg. 87)
It will prove to be the quest for what is good by nature as distinguished from what is good ... by convention. (pg. 87)
Men must always have distinguished (e.g., in judicial matters) between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes and have preferred what one has seen to what he has merely heard from others. (pg. 87 )
But the use of this distinction was originally limited to ... subordinate matters. (pg. 87)
As regards the most weighty matters — the first things and the right way — the only source of knowledge was hearsay.
(pg. 87)
Confronted with the contradiction between the many sacred codes, someone — … a man who had seen the cities … and recognized the diversity of their thoughts and customs — suggested that one apply the distinction between seeing with one's own eyes and hearsay ... to the most weighty matters. (pg. 88)
-a cosmopolitan man
Judgment on ... the divine or venerable character of any code or account is suspended until the facts upon which the claims are based have been made manifest or demonstrated. (pg. 88 )
[These claims] must be made ... manifest to all, in broad daylight. (pg. 88 )
[Man] becomes alive to the crucial difference between what his group considers unquestionable and what he himself observes; it is ... that the I is enabled to oppose itself to the We without any sense of guilt. (pg. 88)
But it is not the I as I that acquires that right. (pg. 88 )
Dreams and visions had been of ... importance for establishing the claims of the divine code or of the sacred account
of the first things. (pg. 88 )
By virtue of the universal application of the distinction between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes, a distinction is now made between the one true … world perceived in waking and the many ... private worlds of dreams and visions. (pg. 88)
[Neither] the We of any particular group nor a unique I, but man as man, is the measure of truth and untruth... (pg. 88)
[Man] … learns to distinguish between the names of things which he knows through hearsay ... and the things themselves which he, as well as any other human being, can see …. (pg. 88 )
He … can start to replace the arbitrary distinctions of things which differ from group to group by their "natural"
distinctions. (pg. 88 )
The divine codes and the sacred accounts of the first things were said to be known not from hearsay but by way of super-
human information. (pg. 88)
When it was demanded that the distinction between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes be applied to the most weighty matters, it was demanded that the superhuman origin of all alleged superhuman information must be proved by examination in the light, not, for example, of traditional criteria used for distinguishing between true and
false oracles, but of such criteria as ultimately derive in an evident manner from the rules which guide us in matters ...accessible to human knowledge. (pg. 88)
The highest kind of human knowledge that existed prior to the emergence of ... science was the arts. (pg. 89 )
The second pre philosophic distinction
that originally guided the quest for the first things was the distinction between ...man-made things and things that are not man-made. (pg. 89 )
Nature was discovered when man embarked on the quest for the first things in the light of the ... distinctions between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes … and between things made by man and things not made by man …. (pg. 89)
The first of these two distinctions motivated the demand that the first things must be brought to light by starting from what all men can see now. But not all visible things are an equally adequate starting point for the discovery of the first things. (pg. 89)
The man- made things lead to no other first things than man, who ... is not the first thing .... The artificial things are seen to be inferior … or to be later than, the things that are not made but found or discovered by man. (pg. 89 )
The artificial things are seen to owe their being to human contrivance or to forethought. (pg.89 )
The assertion that all visible things have been produced by thinking beings or that there are any superhuman thinking beings requires ... a demonstration: a demonstration that starts from what all can see now. (pg. 90 )
[It] can be said that the discovery of nature is identical with the actualization of a human possibility which … is trans-historical, trans-social, trans-moral, and trans-religious. (pg. 90 )
The philosophic quest for the first things presupposes not merely that there are first things but that the first things are
always and that things which are always ... are more truly beings than the things which are not always. (pg. 90 )
These presuppositions follow from the fundamental premise that no being emerges without a cause or that it is impossible ... that the first things jumped into being out of nothing and through nothing. (pg.90 )
-The Big Bang Theory
[The] manifest changes would be impossible if there did not exist something permanent or eternal, or the
manifest contingent beings require the existence of something necessary and therefore eternal. (pg. 90 )
Beings that are always are of higher dignity than beings that are not always, because only the former can be the ultimate cause of the latter … or because what is not always finds its place within the order constituted by what is always.
(pg. 90 )
Beings that are not always, are less truly beings than beings that are always, because to be perishable means to be in between being and not-being. (pg.90 )
-Threefold- being, perishable, not being.
One may express the same fundamental premise ... by saying that "omnipotence" means power limited by knowledge of "natures," … of unchangeable and knowable necessity; all freedom and indeterminacy presuppose a more fundamental necessity. (pg. 91 )
Once nature is discovered, … the "customs" of natural beings are recognized as their natures, and the "customs" of ... human tribes are recognized as their conventions. (pg. 91)
The primeval notion of "custom" or "way" is split up into the notions of "nature," ... and "convention," …. (pg. 91)
The distinction between nature and convention ...is … coeval with the discovery of nature and hence with philosophy. (pg. 91)
Nature would not have to be discovered if it were not hidden. (pg. 91)
"[N]ature" is necessarily understood in contradistinction to something else, namely, to that which hides nature in so far as it hides nature. (pg. 91 )
There are scholars who refuse
to take "nature" as a term of distinction, because they believe that everything which is, is natural. But they ... assume that .... "nature" is ... as obvious as, say, "red." (pg. 91 )
[They] are forced to distinguish between natural ... things and ... things which pretend to exist without existing; but they leave unarticulated the manner of being of the most important things which pretend to exist without existing. (pg. 91)
The distinction between nature and convention implies that nature is … hidden by authoritative decisions. (pg. 91)
The law … appeared to be a rule that derives its binding force from the agreement or the convention of the members of the group. (pg. 92)
The law or the convention has the tendency … to hide nature; it succeeds to such an extent that nature is ...experienced or "given" only as "custom."
(pg. 92 )
[The] philosophic quest for the first things is guided by that understanding of "being" or "to be" according to which the most fundamental distinction of manners of being is that between "to be in truth" and "to be by virtue of law or convention" a distinction that survived in a barely recognizable form in the scholastic distinction between ens reale and ens fictum. (pg. 92)
[Philosophy] … affects man's attitude toward political things ... and toward laws ..., because it … affects his understanding of these things. (pg. 92 )
[The] root of all authority was the ancestral. (pg. 92)
Through the discovery of nature, the claim of the ancestral is uprooted; philosophy
appeals from the ancestral to the good, to that which is good intrinsically, to that which is good by nature. (pg. 92 )
-Threefold ancestral, good intrinsically, good by nature
[Philosophy] uproots the claim of the ancestral in such a manner as to preserve an essential element of it. (pg. 92 )
[When] speaking of nature, the first philosophers meant ... the oldest things; philosophy appeals from the ancestral to something older than the ancestral. (pg. 92 )
Nature is the ancestor of all ancestors ... Nature is older than any tradition .... (pg. 93 )
The view that natural things have a higher dignity than things produced by men is based not ... on the discovery of nature itself. (pg. 93 )
Art presupposes nature, whereas nature
does not presuppose art. (pg. 93)
Man's "creative" abilities … are not themselves produced by man: ….
(pg. 93 )
Nature supplies not only the materials but also the models for all arts; "the greatest and fairest things" are the work of nature as distinguished from art. (pg. 93 )
By uprooting the authority of the ancestral, philosophy recognizes that nature is the authority. (pg. 93 )
Philosophy recognizes nature as the standard. (pg. 93 )
For the human faculty that, with the help of sense-perception, discovers nature is ...understanding, and the relation of ...understanding to its objects is fundamentally different from that obedience without reasoning …. (pg. 93)
By calling nature the highest authority, one would blur the distinction by which
philosophy stands or falls, the distinction between reason and authority. (pg. 93)
By submitting to authority, philosophy ... would lose its character; it would degenerate into … apologetics for a given or emerging social order, or it would undergo a transformation into theology or legal learning. (pg. 93 )
“The clergy and the monarchists claimed special rights as divine right. The revolutionists resorted to nature." (pg. 93)
The discovery … of the fundamental distinction between nature and convention is the necessary condition for the emergence of the idea of natural right.
(pg. )
Right presents itself … as identical with law ... or as a character of it ... comes to sight, with the emergence of philosophy, as that which hides nature.
(pg. )
God, or whatever one may call the first cause, is beyond good and evil and even beyond good and bad. (pg.94)
94
God is not concerned with justice in any sense that is relevant to human life as such : God does not reward justice and punish injustice. Justice has no superhuman support. (pg. )
That justice is good and injustice is bad is due ... ultimately to human decisions.
(pg. )
[No] one can say that all distinctions between good and bad which men make ... are … conventional. (pg. )
-Some of these distinctions are the result of natural right.
We must ... distinguish between ... human desires … which are natural and those which originate in conventions. (pg. )
95
[We] must distinguish between those human desires … which are in accordance with human nature and … good for man, and those which are destructive of … his humanity and ... bad. (pg. )
We are ... led to the notion of … a human life, that is good because it is in accordance with nature. (pg. )
In order to arrive at a clear distinction between the natural and the conventional, we have to go back to the period in the life of the individual ... which antedates convention. (pg. )
It further leads to the question of what man's original condition was like:
whether it was perfect or imperfect and, if it was imperfect, whether the imperfection had the character of gentleness ... or of savagery. (pg. 96 )
96
This modern view is a consequence of the rejection of nature as the standard. (pg.97 )
As for the question of whether man's actual condition in the beginning was perfect or imperfect, the answer to it decides whether the human race is ... responsible for its actual imperfection or whether that imperfection is "excused" by the original imperfection of the race.
(pg. 97)
[Philosophy] necessarily presupposes the arts; therefore, if the philosophic life is indeed the right life or the life according to nature, man's beginnings were necessarily imperfect. (pg. )
That argument is ... that there cannot be natural right because "the just things" differ from society to society. This argument has shown an amazing vitality throughout the ages, a vitality which seems to contrast with its ... worth.
(pg. )
-
[The] ... fact of variety … of "the just things" … does not warrant the rejection of natural right except if one makes certain assumptions, and these assumptions are in most cases not even stated. We are ... compelled to reconstruct the conventionalist argument out of ... fragmentary remarks. (pg. )
It is granted ... that there cannot be natural right if the principles of right are not unchangeable. (pg. )
[The] facts to which conventionalism refers do not seem to prove that the principles of right are changeable. They ... seem to prove that different societies have different notions of justice ... (pg. )
As little as man's varying notions of the universe prove that there is no universe or that there cannot be the true account of the universe or that man can never arrive at true and final knowledge of the universe, so little seem man's varying notions of justice to prove that there is no natural right or that natural right is unknowable. (pg.98 )
98
The variety of notions of justice can be understood as the variety of errors, which variety does not contradict, but presupposes, the existence of the one truth regarding justice. (pg. 99 )
This objection to conventionalism would hold if the existence of natural right were compatible with the fact that ... most men … are ignorant of natural right. (pg. 99)
[Only] all normal men, agree as regards sounds, colors, and the like. (pg. 99 )
99
[At] the most, the members of some particular societies must be regarded as the only normal human beings ... (pg. )
If it is asserted that ... many societies agree in regard to the principles of justice, it is at least as plausible to rejoin that this agreement is due to accidental causes ...than to say that these particular societies ... have preserved human nature intact.
(pg. 100 )
[The assertion] loses its force … once one assumes that knowledge of natural right must be acquired by ... effort or that knowledge of natural right has the character of science. (pg. 100 )
100
But science has as its object what is … unchangeable .... Therefore, natural right ... must truly exist, and ... it must "have everywhere the same power.'"
(pg. )
[We] see that human thoughts on justice are in a state of disagreement and fluctuation.
(pg. )
[This] … fluctuation and disagreement would seem to prove the effectiveness of natural right. (pg. )
Different societies make different arrangements in regard to ... measures, and money; these arrangements do not contradict one another. (pg. )
But if different societies hold different views regarding the principles of justice, their views contradict one another. (pg. )
Differences regarding things which are
… conventional do not arouse ... perplexities, whereas differences regarding the principles of right and wrong … do. (pg. )
The disagreement regarding the principles of justice … seems to reveal a genuine perplexity aroused by … [an] insufficient grasp of natural right — a perplexity caused by something ... natural that eludes human grasp. (pg. 101 )
This suspicion could be thought to be confirmed by a fact which, at first
glance, seems to speak decisively in favor of conventionalism. (pg. 101 )
101
The ...fact that the same laws which were … enacted by the city are repealed by the same city ... would seem to show the doubtful character of the wisdom that went into their making. (pg. 102 )
But if the just is identical with the common good, the just … cannot be conventional: the conventions of a city cannot make good for the city what is ... fatal for it and vice versa. (pg. )
The nature of things and not convention ... determines in each case what is just. To establish what is just in each case is the function of the political art or skill. (pg. 103 )
The difference of regimes has its root in the difference of the parts ... out of which the city is composed. (pg. 103 )
[Democracy], which claims to be the rule of all, is ... the rule of a part; for democracy is … the … rule of the majority of all adults ….; but the majority are the poor; and the poor are a section ... which has an interest distinct from the interests of the other sections. (pg. 103 )
103
Or is it not possible that the true interest of one particular section (of the poor or of the gentlemen, for example) coincides
with the common interest? (pg. )
Objections of this kind presuppose that the city is a genuine whole or … that the
city exists by nature. (pg. )
But the city would seem to be a conventional ... unity. For what is natural comes into being and exists without violence. All violence applied to a being makes that being do something which goes … against its nature. (pg. )
But the city stands or falls by violence, compulsion, or coercion. (pg. 104 )
A citizen appears to be … the natural product, of born citizens, … Yet he is a citizen only if the [citizens] ... who generated him are lawfully wedded to each other ... Otherwise, he is only a "natural" child and not a "legitimate" child. (pg. 104 )
104
And what a legitimate child is depends not on nature but on law or convention. (pg. 105)
[The] monogamous family ... is not a natural group, as ... Plato was forced to admit. (pg. 105 )
The difference between citizens and noncitizens is not natural but conventional. (pg. )
It is convention that … cuts off one segment of the human race and sets it off against the rest. (pg. )
But languages are ... conventional. (pg. )
This distinction is based on the convention that people taken prisoner in war ... are to be made slaves; not nature but convention makes slaves... (pg.105 )
[The] city is a multitude of human beings who are united not by nature but … by convention. (pg. 105 )
105
[This] account of justice … is said to make intelligible those … experiences regarding right and wrong which are at the bottom of the natural right doctrines. (pg. )
[Justice] is understood as the habit of [1] refraining from hurting others or [2] as the habit of helping others or [3] as the habit of subordinating ...the good of the individual ... to the good of the whole. (pg. )
Justice ... is … necessary for the preservation of the city. (pg. 106 )
[There] is no reason why collective selfishness should claim to be more respectable than the selfishness of the
individual. (pg.106 )
106
Are cities not compelled to use force ... to take away from other cities what belong to the latter, if they are to prosper? Do they not come into being by usurping a part of the earth's surface which by nature belongs equally to all others? (pg. )
Experience shows that only few individuals and hardly any cities act justly except when they are compelled to do so.
(pg. )
This ... confirms what was shown before, that justice has no basis in nature.
(pg. )
The selfish interest of the collective is derived from the selfish interest of the only natural elements of the collective, namely, of the individuals. (pg. )
By nature everyone seeks his own good and nothing but his own good. Justice ... tells us to seek other men's good. What justice demands from us is ... against nature. (pg. 107 )
107
Justice appears to be derivative from
selfishness and subservient to it. (pg. )
To be good at seeking one's own good is prudence or wisdom. (pg. )
Prudence or wisdom is ... incompatible with justice proper. (pg. )
Conventionalism claims ... the individual is too weak to live … without the assistance of others. (pg. 108 )
[The] fact that something is useful does not prove that it is natural. (pg. )
The city and right are no doubt advantageous; but are they free from great disadvantages? (pg.108 )
108
Conventionalism rejects natural right on these grounds:
(1) justice stands in an inescapable tension with everyone's natural desire, which is directed solely toward his own good;
(2) as far as justice has a foundation in nature — as far as it is, generally speaking, advantageous to the individual — its demands are limited to the members of the city, i.e., of a conventional unit; what is called "natural right" consists of certain rough rules of social expediency which are valid only for the members of the particular group and ... lack universal validity ...;
(3) what is universally meant by "right" or "justice" leaves wholly undetermined the precise meaning of "helping" or "hurting" or "the common good"; it is only through specification that these terms become truly meaningful, and every specification is conventional. (pg. )
The variety of notions of justice confirms rather than proves the conventional character of justice. (pg. 109 )
When Plato attempts to establish the existence of natural right, he reduces the conventionalist thesis to the premise that the good is identical with the pleasant.
(pg. 109 )
109
[The] things forbidden by ancestral custom ... present themselves as emphatically natural and hence intrinsically good. (pg. )
The things forbidden by ancestral custom are forbidden because they are desired; and the fact that they are forbidden by convention shows that they are not desired on the basis of convention; they are ... desired by nature. (pg. )
-Wow
Now what induces man to deviate from the narrow path of ancestral custom ... appears to be the desire for pleasure and the aversion to pain. (pg. )
The natural good thus appears to be pleasure. Orientation by pleasure becomes the first substitute for the orientation by the ancestral. (pg. )
What is good by nature shows itself in what we seek from the moment of birth, prior to all reasoning, calculation, discipline, restraint, or compulsion.
Good, in this sense, is only the pleasant.
(pg.110 )
Opinion, which comprises both right and wrong reasoning, leads men toward three kinds of objects of choice: toward the greatest pleasure, toward the useful, and toward the noble. (pg. 110 )
-Threefold pleasure, usefull, noble
110
[The] useful, it is not in itself pleasant, but is conducive to pleasure, to genuine pleasure. (pg. )
The noble is that which is praised, which is pleasant only because it is praised or because it is regarded as honorable; the noble is good only because people call it good or say that it is good ... (pg. )
The noble reflects in a distorted manner the substantial good for the sake of which men made ... the social compact. (pg. )
Virtue is... becomes desirable only on the basis of calculation, and it contains an element of compulsion …. (pg. 111 )
Prudence, temperance, and courage bring about pleasure through their natural consequences, whereas justice produces the pleasure which is expected from it — a sense of security — only on the basis of convention. (pg.111 )
111
Both justice and friendship originate in calculation, but friendship comes to be intrinsically ... for its own sake. Friendship is at any rate incompatible with compulsion. (pg. )
112
According to Lucretius, men ... and their fear of the dangers threatening them from wild beasts induced them to unite … for the sake of the pleasure deriving from security. (pg. )
But the life according to nature is the life of the philosopher. And philosophy is impossible in early society. (pg. )
The happiness of the philosopher ... belongs to an entirely different epoch than the happiness of society. (pg. )
There is … a disproportion between the requirements ... of the life according to nature and the requirements of society as society. It is owing to this necessary disproportion that right cannot be natural.
(pg. )
The disproportion is necessary for the following reason. The happiness of early, non coercive society was ultimately due to the reign of a salutary delusion. (pg. )
The members of early society is afforded to them by "the walls of the world." It was this trust which made them innocent, kind, and willing to devote themselves to the good of others….(pg. )
The trust in the firmness of "the walls of the world" was not yet shaken by reasoning about natural catastrophes. Once this trust was shaken, men lost their innocence, they became savage; and thus the need for coercive society arose. (pg. 113 )
Once this trust was shaken, men had no choice but to seek support and consolation in the belief in active gods; the free will of the gods should guarantee the firmness of "the walls of the world" which had been seen to lack ... natural firmness; the goodness of the gods should be a substitute for the lack of intrinsic firmness of "the walls of the world."
(pg. )
113
The belief in active gods ... grows out of fear for our world and attachment to our world — … the world of life as distinguished from the lifeless but eternal elements (the atoms and the void) out of which our world has come into being and into which it will perish again.
(pg. )
[However] comforting the belief in active gods may be, it has engendered unspeakable evils.
(pg. 114)
The only remedy lies in breaking through "the walls of the world" at which religion stops and in becoming reconciled to the fact that we live … in an infinite universe in which nothing that man can love can be eternal.
(pg. )
The only remedy lies in philosophizing, which alone affords the most solid pleasure. Yet philosophy is repulsive to the people because philosophy requires freedom from attachment to "our world."
(pg. )
[People] ... must ... continue the ... unnatural life that is characterized by the cooperation of coercive society and religion. The good life … is the retired life of the philosopher who lives at the fringes of civil society. The life devoted to civil society and to the service of others is not the life according to nature.
(pg. )
114
Hobbes would say that the city and right originate in the desire for life and that the desire for life is at least as natural as the desire for ruling others.
(pg. )
It is true that the desire for superiority to others can come into its own only within the city.
(pg. )
[This] ... means that the life according to nature consists in ... exploiting the opportunities created by convention ….
(pg. )
Such exploitation requires that one be not hampered by ... respect for city and right.
-immoral and amoral
(pg. )
The life according to nature requires such perfect inner freedom from the power of convention as is combined with the appearance of conventional behavior.
(pg. 115 )
[The] life according to nature is the preserve … of the natural elite, of those who are truly men and not born to be slaves.
(pg. 115 )
115
Philosophers, who as such have tasted more solid pleasures than those deriving from wealth, power … could not possibly identify the life according to nature with the life of the tyrant.
(pg. 116 )
Vulgar conventionalism owes its
origin to a corruption of philosophic conventionalism. It makes sense to trace that corruption to "the sophists."
(pg. 116)
[The] city appears to be against natural right, for the city stands or falls by inequality … and by the restriction of freedom.
(pg. )
This means that natural freedom and equality will be thought to have been fully effective at the beginning, when nature was not yet corrupted by opinion.
(pg. )
The only way in which this can be done is to assume that civil society, to the
extent to which it is in agreement with natural right, is based … on the contract of the free and equal individuals.
(pg. 119 )
119
As long as nature was regarded as the standard, the contractualist doctrine, ... implied a depreciation of civil society, because it implied that civil society is not natural but conventional.
(pg. )
For in the modern era the notion that nature is the standard was abandoned, and ... the stigma on whatever is conventional … was taken away.
(pg. )
In the Republic the philosopher's duty of obedience to the city is not derived from any contract. The city of the Republic is the best city, the city according to nature. But the city of Athens, that democracy, was from Plato's point of view a most imperfect city.
(pg. )
Socrates ... is said to have been the founder of political philosophy.
(pg. 121 )
121
[The] distinction between nature and law (convention) retains its full significance ...for classic natural right in general.
(pg. 122)
The classics ... preserve the same distinction by distinguishing between genuine virtue and ... vulgar virtue.
(pg.122 )
[Socrates] identified wisdom, or the goal of philosophy, with the science of all the beings … (pg. 123 )
The whole has a natural articulation.
(pg. 124 )
To understand the whole ... means no longer primarily to discover the roots out of which the completed whole, … the cosmos, has grown, or to discover the cause which has transformed the chaos into a cosmos, or to perceive the unity which is hidden behind the variety of things or appearances, but to understand the unity that is revealed in the manifest articulation of the completed whole.
(pg. 124 )
For every opinion is based on some awareness ...
(pg. 125 )
Philosophy consists ... in the ascent from opinions to knowledge ..., in an ascent that may be said to be guided by opinions.
(pg. )
The friendly dispute which leads toward the truth is made possible ... by the fact that opinions about what things are, or what some very important groups of things are, contradict one another.
(pg. )
The opinions are ... seen to be ... soiled fragments of the pure truth.
(pg.125 )
125
The variety of notions of justice could be said to refute the contention that there is natural right, if the existence of natural right required actual consent of all men in regard to the principles of right.
(pg. 126)
[We] learn ... from Plato, that what is required is not more than potential consent.
(pg. 126)
[Take] any opinion about right … that you please; you can be certain prior to having investigated it that it points beyond itself, that the people who cherish the opinion in question contradict that very opinion somehow and ... are forced to go beyond it in the direction of the one true view of justice, provided that a philosopher arises among them.
(pg. 126)
All knowledge, however limited or "scientific," presupposes a horizon, a comprehensive view within which knowledge is possible.
(pg. 126)
All understanding presupposes a fundamental awareness of the whole: prior to any perception of particular things, the human soul must have had a vision of the ideas, a vision of the articulated whole.
(pg. 126)
However much the comprehensive visions which animate the various societies may differ, they all are visions of the same — of the whole. Therefore, they … contradict, one another.
(pg.126 )
This ... fact forces man to realize that each of those visions ... is merely an opinion about the whole or an inadequate articulation of the fundamental awareness of the whole and … points beyond itself toward an adequate articulation.
(pg. 126 )
There is no guaranty that the quest for adequate articulation will ever lead beyond an understanding of the fundamental alternatives ... and will ever reach the stage of decision.
(pg. 126 )
The unfinishable character of the quest for adequate articulation of the whole does not entitle one ... to limit philosophy to the understanding of a part, however important.
(pg. 126 )
126
For the meaning of a part depends on the meaning of the whole. In particular, such interpretation of a part as is based on fundamental experiences alone, without recourse to hypothetical assumptions about the whole, is ultimately not superior to other interpretations of that part which are frankly based on such hypothetical assumptions.
(pg. 127)
Conventionalism disregards the understanding embodied in opinion and appeals from opinion to nature.
(pg. 127 )
The basic premise of conventionalism appeared to be the identification of the good with the pleasant. Accordingly, the
basic part of the classic natural right teaching is the critique of hedonism.
(pg. 127)
The thesis of the classics is that the good is … different from the pleasant, that the good is more fundamental than the pleasant.
(pg. 127 )
The ... common pleasures are connected with the satisfaction of wants; the wants precede the pleasures; the wants supply, ...the channels within which pleasure can move; they determine what can ... be pleasant.
(pg. 127 )
It is the variety of wants that accounts for the variety of pleasures; the difference of kinds of pleasures cannot be understood in terms of pleasure but only by reference to the wants which make possible the various kinds of pleasures.
(pg. 127 )
The different kinds of wants are not a bundle of urges; there is a natural
order of the wants. Different kinds of beings seek or enjoy different kinds of pleasure ….
(pg. 127)
The order of the wants of a being points back to the natural constitution ...
(pg. 127 )
[Man] will be good if he does ... the work corresponding to the nature of man ….
(pg. )
To determine what is by nature good for man … , one must determine what ... man's natural constitution, is.
(pg. )
It is the hierarchic order of man's natural constitution which supplies the basis for natural right as the classics understood it.
(pg. )
That … which distinguishes man from the brutes, is speech or ... understanding.
(pg. )
[The] proper work of man consists in living thoughtfully, in understanding, and in thoughtful action.
(pg. )
The good life ... is in accordance with the natural order of man's being, the life that flows from a well-ordered .... soul.
(pg. )
The good life ... is the life in which the requirements of man's natural inclinations are fulfilled in the proper order to the highest possible degree, the life of a man who is awake to the highest possible degree, the life of a man in whose soul nothing lies waste.
(pg. )
The good life is the perfection of man's nature. It is the life according to nature. One may therefore call the rules circumscribing the … character of the good life "the natural law . "
(pg. )
The life according to nature is the life of human excellence … and not the life of pleasure as pleasure.
(pg. )
128
[From] the point of view of hedonism, nobility of character is good because it is conducive to a life of pleasure ...: nobility of character is the handmaid of pleasure; it is not good for its own sake.
(pg. )
According to the classics, this interpretation distorts the phenomena as they are known from experience to every unbiased and competent, i.e., not morally obtuse, man.
(pg. )
We admire excellence without any regard to our pleasures or to our benefits. No one understands by a good man or man of excellence a man who leads a pleasant life.
(pg. )
We distinguish between better and worse men. The difference between them is ... reflected in the difference in the kinds of pleasure which they prefer.
(pg. )
[One] cannot understand this difference in the level of pleasures in terms of pleasure; for that level is determined not by pleasure but by the rank of human beings.
(pg. )
We know that it is … [an] error to identify the man of excellence with one's benefactor. We admire … a strategic genius at the head of the victorious army of our enemies.
(pg. )
There are things which are admirable, or noble, by nature, intrinsically.
(pg. )
It is characteristic of all or most of them that they contain no reference to one's ...interests or that they imply a freedom from calculation.
(pg. )
The various human things which are by nature noble or admirable are essentially the parts of human nobility in its completion ...; they all point toward the well ordered soul, incomparably the most admirable human phenomenon .
(pg. )
The phenomenon of admiration of human excellence cannot be explained on hedonistic or utilitarian grounds ...(pg. 129 )
-
These [ad hoc] hypotheses lead to the assertion that all admiration is … a kind of telescoped calculation of benefits for ourselves.
(pg. 129)
[These hypotheses] are the outcome of a materialistic or crypto-materialistic view, which forces its holders to understand the higher as nothing but the effect of the lower, or which prevents them from considering the possibility that there are phenomena which are simply irreducible to their conditions, that there are phenomena that form a class by themselves.
(pg. 129)
The hypotheses in question are not conceived in the spirit of an empirical science of man.
(pg. )
Man is by nature a social being. He is so constituted that he cannot live ... except by living with others. Since it is ... speech that distinguishes him from the other animals, and speech is communication, man is [more] social [than] any other social animal: humanity itself is sociality.
(pg. )
Man refers himself to others, … in every human act, regardless of whether that act is "social" or "antisocial."
(pg. )
[Man’s] sociality does not proceed … from a calculation of the pleasures which he expects from association, but he derives pleasure from association because he is by nature social.
(pg. )
Love, affection, friendship, … are as natural to him as concern with ... what is conducive to his own good.
(pg. )
It is man's natural sociality that is the basis of natural right in the ... strict sense of right.
(pg. )
Because man is by nature social, the perfection of his nature includes the social virtue ..., justice; justice and right are natural.
(pg. )
Every ideology is an attempt to justify before one's self or others such courses of action as are somehow felt to be in need of justification … as are not obviously right. (pg. 130)
130
By virtue of his rationality, man has a latitude of alternatives such as no other earthly being has.
(pg. )
The sense … of this freedom, is accompanied by a sense that the full and unrestrained exercise of that freedom is not right.
(pg. )
Man's freedom is accompanied by a sacred awe … that not everything is permitted.
(pg. )
We may call this awe-inspired fear "man's natural conscience."
(pg. )
Restraint is ... as natural … as freedom.
(pg. )
As long as man has not cultivated his reason properly, he will have all sorts of fantastic notions as to the limits set to his freedom; he will elaborate absurd taboos.
(pg. 131)
Man cannot reach his perfection except ...in civil society.
(pg. )
Civil society ... is a closed society and is … what today would be called a "small society."
131
[Trust] presupposes acquaintance.
Without such trust ... there cannot be freedom; the alternative to the city … was the despotically ruled empire … or a condition approaching anarchy.
A city is a community commensurate with man's natural powers of firsthand … knowledge.
[Political] freedom that justifies itself by the pursuit of human excellence, is not a gift of heaven; it becomes actual only through the efforts of many generations, and its preservation … requires the highest degree of vigilance.
The probability that all human societies should be capable of ... freedom at the same time is exceedingly small. For all precious things are exceedingly rare.
An open … society would consist of many societies which are on … different levels of political maturity, and the chances are overwhelming that the lower societies would drag down the higher ones.
An open ... society will exist on a lower level of humanity than a closed society, which ... has made a supreme effort toward human perfection.
132
If the society in which man can reach the perfection of his nature is necessarily a closed society, the distinction of the human race into a number of independent groups is according to nature.
This distinction is not natural in the sense that the members of one civil society are by nature different from the members of others. Cities do not grow like plants.
They come into being through human actions. There is an element of choice and even of arbitrariness involved in the "settling together" of these particular human beings to the exclusion of others.
This would be unjust only if the condition of those excluded were impaired by their exclusion.
But the condition of people who have not yet made any ... effort toward the perfection of human nature is … bad in the decisive respect; it cannot possibly be impaired by the … fact that those among them whose souls have been stirred by the call to perfection ... make such efforts.
Civil society as a closed society is ... necessary in accordance with justice, because it is in accordance with nature.
If restraint is as natural to man as is freedom, and restraint must ... be forcible restraint in order to be effective, one cannot say that the city is ... against nature because it is coercive society. Man is so built that he cannot achieve the perfection of his humanity except by keeping down his lower impulses.
133
He cannot rule his body by persuasion. This fact … shows that even despotic rule is not per se against nature. What is true of self-restraint, self-coercion, and power over one's self applies in principle to the restraint and ... to power over others.
[Despotic] rule is unjust only if it is applied to beings who can be ruled by persuasion or whose understanding is sufficient ...
Justice and coercion are not mutually exclusive; ... it is not altogether wrong to describe justice as a kind of benevolent coercion.
The full actualization of humanity would ... seem to consist, ... in the properly directed activity of the statesman, the legislator, or the founder.
Being sensitive to mankind's great objects, freedom and empire, they sense somehow that politics is the field on which human excellence can show itself in its full growth and on whose proper cultivation every form of excellence is in a way dependent.
134
Political activity is … properly directed ...toward human perfection or virtue.
The city has ... ultimately no other end than the individual.
The morality of civil society ... is the same as the morality of the individual.
Since the ultimate end of the city is the same as that of the individual, the end of the city is peaceful activity in accordance with the dignity of man….
Since the classics viewed moral and political matters in the light of man's perfection, they were not egalitarians.
Not all men are equally equipped by nature for progress toward perfection, or not all "natures" are "good natures."
While … all normal men, have the capacity for virtue, some need guidance by others, whereas others do not at all ….
[Regardless] of differences of natural capacity, not all men strive for virtue with equal earnestness.
135
Since men are then unequal in regard to human perfection, … equal rights for all appeared to the classics as … unjust.
They contended that some men are by nature superior to others and ... according to natural right, the rulers of others.
By this expression they indicated … in order to be good, … a society in which there exists government of men and not ...administration of things.
136
The politeia is more fundamental than any laws; it is the source of all laws.
The laws regarding a politeia may be deceptive, unintentionally and even intentionally, as to the true character of the politeia.
The American Constitution is not the same thing as the American way of life.
We shall translate politeia by "regime," taking regime in the broad sense ...
137
The thought connecting "way of life of a society" and "form of government" can provisionally be stated as follows : The character … of a society depends on what the society regards as most respectable or most worthy of admiration.
-Gentlemen,educators or the common man
When the authoritative type is the common man, everything has to justify itself before the tribunal of the common man; everything which cannot be justified before that tribunal becomes ... despised ...
What is true of the society ruled by the common man applies also to societies ruled by the priest, the wealthy merchant, the war lord, the gentleman, and so on.
138
We are in the habit of speaking of "civilizations," where the classics spoke of "regimes." "Civilization" is the modern substitute for "regime. "
It is difficult to find out what a civilization is.
A civilization is said to be a large society, but we are not told clearly what kind of society it is. If we inquire how one can tell one civilization from another, we are informed that the most obvious and least
misleading mark is the difference in artistic styles.
This means that civilizations are societies which are characterized by something which is never in the focus of interest of large societies as such: societies do not go to war with one another on account of differences of artistic styles.
The best regime would today be called an "ideal regime" or simply an "ideal." The modern term "ideal" carries with it a
host of connotations which obviate the understanding of what the classics meant by the best regime.
139
[An] examination would show that the best regime is the object of the wish ... of all gentlemen : the best regime … is the object of the wish ... of gentlemen as that object is interpreted by the philosopher.
But the best regime, … is not only most desirable; it is also meant to be … possible on earth.
It is both desirable and possible because it is according to nature.
Since it is according to nature, no miraculous … change in human nature is required for its actualization; ... it is therefore possible.
Its actualization is very difficult … even extremely improbable. For man does not control the conditions under which it could become actual. Its actualization depends on chance. The best regime, which is according to nature, was perhaps never actual; there is no reason to assume that it is actual at present; and it may never become actual.
It is of its essence to exist in speech as distinguished from deed. In a word, the best regime is, in itself — to use a term coined by one of the profoundest students of Plato's Republic — a "utopia."
140
There is only one best regime, but
there is a variety of legitimate regimes.
The best regime is that in which the best men habitually rule ... Goodness is ... dependent on wisdom: the best regime would ... be the rule of the wise.
It would be absurd to hamper the free flow of wisdom by any regulations; hence the rule of the wise must be absolute rule. It would be ... absurd to hamper the free flow of wisdom by consideration of the ...wishes of the unwise; hence the wise rulers ought not to be responsible to their unwise subjects.
141
To make the rule of the wise dependent on ... consent of the unwise would mean to subject what is by nature higher to control by what is by nature lower, i.e., to act against nature.
The unwise multitude must recognize the wise as wise and obey them freely because of their wisdom.
[It] is extremely unlikely that the conditions required for the rule of the wise will ever be met.
What is more likely to happen is that an unwise man, appealing to the natural right of wisdom and catering to the lowest desires of the many, will persuade the multitude of his right: the prospects for tyranny are brighter than those for rule of the wise.
[From] the point of view of egalitarian natural right, consent takes precedence over wisdom, from the point of view of classic natural right, wisdom takes precedence over consent.
142
The classics held that this type of man is the gentleman. The gentleman is not identical with the wise man.
He is the political reflection, or imitation, of the wise man.
Gentlemen ... "look down" on many things which are ... esteemed by the vulgar or that they are experienced in things noble and beautiful.
They ... refuse to take cognizance of certain aspects of life, and because, in order to live as gentlemen, they must be well off.
The gentleman will be a man of not too great inherited wealth, chiefly landed, but whose way of life is urban. He will be an urban patrician who derives his income from agriculture.
The best regime will then be a republic in which the landed gentry, which is at the same time the urban patriciate, well-bred and public spirited, obeying the laws and completing them, ruling and being ruled in turn, predominates and gives society its character.
-The founding of our Republic
143
[The] fact is overlooked that there is a class interest of the philosophers qua philosophers, and this oversight is ... due to the denial of the possibility of philosophy.
The ... class interest of the philosophers consists in being left alone, in being allowed to live ... on earth by devoting themselves to investigation of the most important subjects.
Only in the nineteenth century did this state of things profoundly ... change, and the change was … due to a complete change in the meaning of philosophy.
144
The classic natural right doctrine ... is identical with the doctrine of the best regime.
The political character of natural right became blurred ... under the influence of both ancient egalitarian natural right and the biblical faith.
145
According to the classics, political life
… is ... inferior in dignity to the philosophic life.
Can natural right be deduced from man's natural end? Can it be deduced from anything?
[There] is hardly any disagreement as to whether a given being is a man, whereas there is .... disagreement in regard to things just and noble.
146
[We] may distinguish three types of classic natural right teachings …. These three types are the Socratic-Platonic, the Aristotelian, and the Thomistic.
If justice is to remain good, we must conceive of it as essentially independent of law.
We … define justice as the habit of giving to everyone what is due to him according to nature.
147
Justice will … be the habit of benefiting others.
This being the case, there cannot be ... giving to everyone what is by nature good for him, except in a society in which wise men are in absolute control.
[We] have to say is that just ownership is ... entirely different from legal ownership.
Justice is … incompatible with what is generally understood by private
ownership.
148
[Everyone] does best that for which he is best fitted by nature.
The justice of the city may be said to consist in acting according to the principle "from everyone according to his capacity and to everyone according to his merits."
The only proper reward for service is honor, and ... the only proper reward for outstanding service is great authority.
In a just society the social hierarchy will correspond … to the hierarchy ... of merit alone.
[Civil] society ... qualifies the principle of merit, i.e., the principle ... of justice, by the ... principle of indigenousness. In order to be truly just, civil society would have to drop this qualification; civil society must be transformed into the "world-state."
149
Civil society as closed society ... implies that there is more than one civil society, and ... that war is possible.
150
Men are citizens of this city ... only if they are wise; their obedience to the law which orders the natural city ... is the same thing as prudence.
151
[The] wise do not desire to rule; they must ... be compelled to rule.
[The wise] must be compelled because their whole life is devoted to the pursuit of something which is absolutely higher in dignity than any human things — the unchangeable truth.
[The] man who is merely … moral without being a philosopher appears as a mutilated human being.
152
[The] obvious dependence of the philosophic life on the city and the natural affection which men have for men ..., make it necessary for the philosopher … to take care of the affairs of the city ….
[The] philosopher admits that what is ... by nature the highest is not the most urgent for man, who is essentially ... between the brutes and the gods.
-Threefold gods, man, brutes
The city requires that wisdom be reconciled with consent.
153
[What] is good by nature and which is ... distinct from the ancestral, must be transformed into the politically good, which is ... the quotient of the simply good and the ancestral: the politically good is what "removes a vast mass of evil without shocking a vast mass of prejudice."
154
155
156
Plato never discusses any subject ... without keeping in view the … question, "What is the right way of life?"
157
Civil society is incompatible with any any immutable rules, ... for in certain conditions the disregard of these rules may be needed for the preservation of society; but ... society must present as universally valid certain rules which are generally valid.
Natural right … understood is obviously mutable.
160
Considerations which apply to foreign enemies may well apply to subversive elements within society. Let us leave these sad exigencies covered with the veil with which they are justly covered.
161
By saying that in extreme situations the public safety is the highest law, one implies that the public safety is not the highest law in normal situations; in normal situations the highest laws are the common rules of justice.
Justice has two different ... sets of principles: the requirements of … what is necessary in extreme situations to preserve the mere existence … of society ... and the rules of justice in the more precise sense ….
Natural right must be mutable in order to be able to cope with the inventiveness of wickedness.
[A] man who is not capable of being a member of civil society is not necessarily a defective human being; … he may be a superior human being.
162
There is a universally valid hierarchy of ends, but there are no universally valid rules of action.
-The city must be preserved, but how this accomplished is determined by the specific threat.
163
The only universally valid standard is the hierarchy of ends. This standard is sufficient for passing judgment on the level of nobility of individuals and groups and of actions and institutions. But it is insufficient for guiding our actions.
The natural law which is knowable to the unassisted human mind and which prescribes chiefly actions in the strict sense is ... founded upon, the natural end of man; ...moral perfection and intellectual perfection; intellectual perfection is higher in dignity than moral perfection; but intellectual perfection … does not require moral virtue.
164
[The] ultimate consequence of the Thomistic view of natural law is that natural law is practically inseparable not only ... from a natural theology which is ...based on belief in biblical revelation — but even from revealed theology.
165
Locke ...was an eminently prudent man, and he reaped the reward of superior prudence: he was listened to by many people, and he wielded ... great influence on men of affairs and on a large body of opinion.
[Locke] had the good sense to quote only the right kind of writers and to be silent about the wrong kind, although he had more in common … with the wrong kind than with the right.
165
167
Hobbes ... accepted on trust … that political philosophy or political science is possible or necessary.
To understand Hobbes's … claim means to pay … attention to his emphatic rejection of the tradition … and to his almost silent agreement with it ….
[One] must first see the tradition as Hobbes saw it and forget ... how it presents itself to the present-day historian.
(pg.168 )
[The] noble and the just are ...distinguished from the pleasant and are by nature preferable to it; … there is a ...political order which is best because it is according to nature. (pg. 168 )
168
169
Hobbes ... became the creator of political hedonism, a doctrine which has revolutionized human life everywhere on a scale never … approached by any other teaching. (pg. )
The epoch-making change which we are forced to trace to Hobbes was ... understood by Edmund Burke: "Boldness formerly was not the character of atheists … But of late they are grown active … and seditious."
(pg. )
[We] realize that political atheism and political hedonism belong together.
(pg. 170 )
They arose together in the same moment and in the same mind.
(pg. 170 )
170
From his point of view, pre-modern philosophy or science as a whole was "rather a dream than science" ….
(pg. )
[Hobbes’] philosophy ... may be said to be the ... modern combination of political idealism with a materialistic and atheistic view of the whole. (pg. 171 )
171
[Philosophy], or the quest for wisdom….
(pg. )
[One] must first give free rein to extreme skepticism: what survives the onslaught of extreme skepticism is the absolutely safe basis of wisdom. (pg. )
172
[The] vision, not of a new type of philosophy or science, but of a universe that is nothing but bodies and their aimless motions.
(pg. 173 )
"Scientific materialism" could not become possible if one did not first succeed in guaranteeing the possibility of science against the skepticism engendered by
materialism. (pg. 173 )
173
The world of our constructs is wholly unenigmatic because we are its ... cause and … we have perfect knowledge of its cause. (pg. 174 )
174
That ... invention eventually permitted an attitude of ... indifference toward the secular conflict between materialism and spiritualism. (pg. )
[It] leads to the consequence that natural science ... will always remain ... hypothetical. Yet this is all we need in order to make ourselves masters and owners of nature. (pg. )
[However] much man may succeed in his conquest of nature, he will never be able to understand nature. The universe will always remain ... enigmatic.(pg. )
Skepticism is the inevitable outcome … of the unfounded belief in its [the universe’s] intelligibility. (pg. 175 )
175
Man can guarantee the actualization of wisdom, … because of, the fact that the universe is unintelligible.
(pg. )
Man can be sovereign only because there is no cosmic support for his humanity.
(pg. )
Since the universe is unintelligible and since control of nature does not require understanding of nature, there are no knowable limits to his conquest of nature.
(pg. 176 )
[What] is certain is that man's natural state is misery ....
(pg. 176 )
176
But "History" limits our vision ... "History," ... fulfils the function of enhancing the status of man ... by making him oblivious of the whole or of eternity.(pg. 177 )
All ... meaning has its ultimate root in human needs. (pg. 178 )
"I ... hold there is no sin but ignorance." This is almost a definition of the philosopher.(pg.178 )
178
[Machiavelli believed] the correct way of answering the question of the right order of society consists in taking one's bearings by how men actually do live. (pg. 179 )
[Machiavelli’s belief] entailed a deliberate lowering of the ultimate goal [of man’s end]. (pg. 179 )
Necessity rather than moral purpose determines what is in each case the sensible course of action. (pg. )
[All] social or moral orders have been established with the help of morally questionable means; civil society has its root ... in injustice. (pg. 180 )
180
[Hobbes] was to maintain the idea of natural law but to divorce it from the idea of man's perfection; only if natural law can be deduced from how men actually live, ...can it be ... of practical value.
(pg. 181)
What is most powerful in most men most of the time is not reason but passion.
(pg. 181 )
The most powerful of all passions is the ... fear of violent death ...(pg. 181 )
181
[Death] insofar as it can be avoided or avenged, supplies the ultimate guidance. Death takes the place of the telos.
(pg.182 )
The state has the function, not of ... promoting a virtuous life, but of safeguarding the natural right of each.
(pg. 182 )
[Hobbes] ...originated an entirely new type of political doctrine.
(pg. 183 )
He is ...the founder of the specifically natural law doctrine.
(pg. 183 )
Men can more safely be depended upon to fight for their rights than to fulfil their duties.
(pg. )
What is required to make natural right effective is enlightenment ... rather than moral appeal.
(pg. 184 )
[During] the modern period natural law became ... more of a revolutionary force than it had been in the past.
(pg. )
[All] rights of civil society ... are derivative from rights which originally belonged to the individual.
(pg. )
184
If everyone has by nature the right to preserve himself, he … has the right to the means required for his self- preservation. (pg. 186 )
[The]... best regime is the absolute rule of the wise and the best practicable regime is the rule of gentlemen.
(pg. 186 )
[The fundamental compact] … leads to the ... conclusion that command …, and not ... reasoning, is the core of sovereignty or that laws are laws … not of truth or reasonableness, but of authority alone.
(pg. 187)
[We] may say, two "general" virtues: magnanimity, which comprises all other virtues in so far as they contribute to the excellence of the individual, and justice, which comprises all other virtues in so far as they contribute to man's serving others.
(pg. 188 )
The moral law … was to be ... simplified by being deduced from the natural right of self-preservation.
(pg. )
Self-preservation requires peace.
(pg. 188 )
Those forms of human excellence which have no direct … relation to peaceableness — courage, temperance, magnanimity, liberality, to say nothing of wisdom — cease to be virtues in the strict sense.
(pg. 188 )
188
For the contract that makes possible all other contracts is ... the contract of subjection to the sovereign.
(pg. 189 )
[Vice] becomes identical ... with pride or vanity ... rather than with ...weakness of the soul.
(pg. 189 )
The rights of sovereignty are assigned to the supreme power on the basis ... of natural law…
(pg. 191 )
Natural public law ... is a new discipline that emerged in the seventeenth century.
(pg. 191 )
Their origin is the concern with a right or sound order of society whose actualization is probable ... or does not depend on chance.
(pg. 192)
The "reason of state" school replaced "the best regime" by "efficient government."
(pg. 192 )
The "natural public law" school replaced "the best regime" by "legitimate government."
(pg. 192)
We may call this type of thinking "doctrinairism," and we shall say that doctrinairism made its first appearance within political philosophy … in the seventeenth century.
(pg. 193)
At that time the … flexibility of classical political philosophy gave way to ... rigidity.
(pg. 193 )
We ... have to remind ourselves of the practical meaning of the doctrine that the only legitimate regime is democracy.
(pg. 194 )
From the point of view of natural public law ...what is needed in order to establish the right social order is not … the formation of character as the devising of the right kind of institutions.
(pg. 194 )
Man can guarantee the actualization of the right social order because he is able to conquer human nature by understanding and manipulating the mechanism of the passions. (pg. 195)
"Power" is an ambiguous term. It stands for potentia… and for potestas (or jus or dominium) ... It means both "physical" power and "legal" power.
(pg. 195 )
The ambiguity is essential: only if potentia and potestas … belong together, can there be a guaranty of the most sacred right (the right of self-preservation).
(pg. 195 )
[When] the social fabric has completely broken down, … there comes to sight the solid foundation on which every social order must … rest: the fear of violent death ...
(pg. 197 )
[Hobbes] ... admitted that there exists an insoluble conflict between the rights of the government and the natural right of the individual to self-preservation.
(pg. 198)
There was only one fundamental objection to Hobbes's basic assumption which he ... made every effort to overcome.
(pg. )
In many cases the fear of violent death proved to be a weaker force than the fear of hell fire or the fear of God.
(pg. 199 )
Hobbes saw his way to solve this contradiction: the fear of invisible powers is stronger than the fear of violent death as long as people ... are under the spell of delusions about the true character of reality; the fear of violent death comes
… into its own as soon as people have become enlightened.
(pg. 199)
It requires such a radical change of orientation as can be brought about only by the disenchantment of the world, by the diffusion of scientific knowledge ….
(pg. 199 )
199
[Mathematical] knowledge of ... the new doctrine of natural right and the new natural public law that is built on it cannot destroy the wrong opinions of the vulgar, if the vulgar are not apprised of the results of that ... knowledge.
(pg. 200)
200
Chance will be conquered by systematic philosophy issuing in systematic enlightenment...
(pg. 201 )
[If] the fear of violent death is ... the strongest force in man, one should expect the desired social order always,... to be in existence, because it will be produced ... by the natural order.
(pg. 201)
Hobbes overcomes this difficulty by assuming that men in their stupidity interfere with the natural order.
(pg. 201)
201
[Hobbes] teaches that reason is impotent ...
(pg.202 )
Reason is impotent because reason or humanity have no cosmic support: the universe is unintelligible ….
(pg. 202 )
[The] fact that the universe is unintelligible permits reason to rest satisfied with its free constructs ...and to anticipate an unlimited progress in its conquest of nature.
(pg. 202 )
Whereas the philosophy ... of nature remains fundamentally hypothetical, political philosophy rests on a non hypothetical knowledge of the nature of man.
(pg. 202 )
The law of nature imposes perfect duties on man as man, regardless of whether he lives in … nature or in civil society.
(pg. 203)
"The law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men," for it is "plain and intelligible to all rational creatures.”
(pg. 203 )
It is identical with "the law of reason."
(pg. 203 )
It is "knowable by the light of nature … without the help of positive revelation."
(pg.203 )
He says, ... in order to be a law, the law of nature must ... be known to have been given by God, … [and] it must in addition have as its … "rewards and punishments … in another life."
(pg. 204 )
[However], he says that reason cannot demonstrate that there is another life.
(pg. 204 )
[Natural] reason is ... unable to demonstrate that the souls of men shall live forever.
(pg. 205 )
[Locke] encountered some ... obstacles on his way toward a strictly scriptural natural law teaching regarding government.
(pg. )
Locke ... was a cautious writer. The fact that he is generally known as a cautious writer shows … that his caution is obtrusive, and therefore perhaps not what is ordinarily understood by caution. … the scholars who note that Locke was cautious do not always consider that the term "caution" designates a variety of phenomena and that the only authentic interpreter of Locke's caution is Locke himself.
(pg. )
Caution is a kind of noble fear.
(pg. )
"Caution" means something different when applied to theory than when applied to practice or politics.
(pg. 207 )
There may be … facts which … would inflame popular passion and thus prevent the wise handling of those ... facts.
(pg. 207 )
A cautious political writer would state the case for the good cause in a manner which could be expected to create general good will toward the good cause.
(pg. 207 )
He would avoid the mention of everything which would "displace the veil beneath which" the respectable part of society "dissembles its divisions."
(pg. )
207
[The] cautious man of affairs would ... enlist all respectable prejudices in the service of the good cause.
(pg. )
"Logic admits of no compromise. The essence of politics is compromise."
(pg. )
Locke … appealed as frequently as he could to the authority of Hooker — of one of the least revolutionary men who ever lived. He took every advantage of his partial agreement with Hooker.
(pg. )
[Locke] avoided the inconveniences which might have been caused by his partial disagreement with Hooker by being ... silent about it.
(pg. )
[Locke] did not proceed in an altogether different manner when composing his ... Essay: "since not all, nor the most of those that believe a God ... have the skill, to ... comprehend the demonstrations of his being, I was unwilling to show the weakness of the argument there spoken of [in Essay, IV, 10, sec. 7 ] ; since possibly by it some men might be confirmed in the belief of a God, which is enough to preserve in them true sentiments of religion and morality."
(pg. )
Speaking of the ancient philosophers, he [Locke] says : "The rational and thinking part of mankind . . . when they sought after him, they found the one supreme, invisible God; but if they acknowledged and worshipped him, it was only in their own minds. They kept this truth ... as a secret, nor ever durst venture it amongst the people; much less amongst the priests, those ... guardians of their own creeds and profitable inventions."
(pg. 208 )
It does not appear that Locke regarded the conduct of the ancient philosophers as reprehensible. Still that conduct might be thought to be incompatible with biblical morality.
(pg.208 )
208
[Locke] says that Jesus used "words too doubtful to be laid hold on against him" ...and that he tried "to keep himself out of the reach of any accusation, that
might appear just or weighty to the Roman deputy."
(pg. )
Jesus "perplexed his meaning," "his circumstances being such, that without such a prudent carriage and reservedness, he could not have gone through with the work which he came to do. . . . “
(pg. )
[It] was not easy to understand him [Jesus]. If he had acted differently, both the Jewish and the Roman authorities would "have taken away his life; at least they would have . . . hindered the work he was about." (pg. )
[If] he [Jesus] had not been cautious, he would have created "manifest danger of tumult and sedition"; there would have been "room to fear that [his preaching the truth] should cause . . . disturbance in civil societies, and the governments of the
world."" (pg. 209)
209
[According] to Locke, cautious speech is legitimate if ... frankness would ... expose one to persecution or endanger the public peace; and ... caution is ... compatible with going with the herd in one's outward professions or with using ambiguous language ... so … that one cannot easily be understood.(pg. 210 )
[According] to Locke ... one cannot prove that a given phenomenon is a miracle by proving that the phenomenon in question is supernatural; for … one must know the limits of the power of nature, and such knowledge is hardly available.
(pg. )
The Old Testament miracles were not sufficiently attested to convince the pagans, but the miracles of Jesus ... were sufficiently attested to convince all men, so much so, that "the miracles [Jesus] did . . . never were, nor could be denied by any of the enemies, or opposers of Christianity . ""
(pg. 211 )
One could perhaps find Locke's remark less strange if one could be certain that he was not well read in "those justly did not confine his miracles or message to the land of Canaan, or the worshippers at Jerusalem. But he ... preached at Samaria, and did miracles in the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and before multitudes of people gathered from all quarters. And after his resurrection, sent apostles amongst the nations, accompanied with miracles; which were done in all parrs so frequently, and before so many witnesses of all sorts, in broad daylight, that . . . the enemies of Christianity have never dared to deny them …”(pg. 211 )
211
[If] no one denies the miracles reported in the New Testament, it would seem to follow that all men are Christians, .... Yet Locke knew that there were men who were familiar with the New Testament without being believing Christians ….
(pg. 211 )
Since Locke knew … of the existence of deists ..., he must have been aware of the fact that a political teaching based on Scripture would not be … accepted as ... true, … without a … very complex argument for which we seek in vain in his writings.
(pg. 211 )
One can state the issue in simpler terms as follows: The veracity of God is … a demonstration of any proposition which he has revealed. Yet … "our assurance can be no greater than our knowledge is, that it is a revelation from God."
(pg. 213 )
"[Our] assurance that the souls of men shall live forever belongs to the province of faith and not to that of reason."
(pg. 213 )
[If] there is to be "a law knowable by the light of nature ... without the help of positive revelation," that law must consist of a set of rules whose validity does not presuppose life after death ….
(pg. 213 )
[While] unassisted reason cannot establish a necessary connection between virtue and prosperity or happiness, the classical philosophers realized … a ... connection between a kind of ... happiness and a kind ... of virtue.
(pg. 214 )
Locke does not even attempt to confirm this rule [property tax requires consent of the property owner] by clear and plain statements of Scripture.
(pg. 215)
[Locke's] political teaching stands or falls by his natural law teaching concerning the beginnings of political societies.
(pg. )
The … teaching cannot … be based on Scripture because that beginning of a political society with which the Bible is ... concerned — that of the Jewish state — was the ... beginning of a political society which was not natural.
(pg. )
[Locke's] entire political teaching is based on the assumption of a state of nature. This assumption is ... alien to the Bible.
(pg. 216)
[In] the Second Treatise of Government, in which Locke sets forth his own doctrine, explicit references to the state of nature abound; in the First Treatise, in which he criticizes Filmer's allegedly scriptural doctrine of the divine right of kings and therefore uses much more biblical material than in the Second Treatise, there occurs … only one mention of the state of nature.
(pg. 216 )
From the biblical point of view, the important distinction is ... between the state of innocence and the state after the Fall.
(pg. 216 )
The state of nature, as Locke conceives of it, is not identical with either the state of innocence or the state after the Fall. If there is any place ... in biblical history for Locke's state of nature, the state of nature would begin … a long time after the Fall; for … men did not have the natural right to meat which is a consequence of the natural right to self-preservation, and the state of nature is the state in which every man has "all the rights and privileges of the law of nature."
(pg. 216 )
216
[If] the state of nature begins a long time after the Fall, the state of nature would seem to partake of all characteristics of "the corrupt state of degenerate men." In fact,... it is a "poor but virtuous age," an age characterized by "innocence and sincerity," not to say the golden age."
(pg. )
[The] punishment for the Fall ceased to be of any significance for Locke's political doctrine. He holds that ... God's curse on Eve does not impose a duty on the female sex "not to endeavor to avoid" that curse: women may avoid the pangs of childbirth "if there could be found a remedy for it."'
(pg. 217 )
The tension between Locke's natural law teaching and the New Testament is perhaps best illustrated by his teaching about marriage and related topics.
(pg. )
In the First Treatise he characterizes adultery, incest, and sodomy as sins. He indicates there that they are sins independently of the fact that "they cross the main intention of nature."
(pg. )
217
One is therefore forced to wonder whether their being sins is not chiefly due to "positive revelation."
(pg. )
Later on he raises the question "what
in nature is the difference betwixt a wife and a concubine?"
(pg. )
He does not answer that question, but the context suggests that natural law is silent about that difference.
(pg. )
[Locke] indicates that the distinction between those whom men may and may not marry is based exclusively on the revealed law.
(pg. )
He does not leave it at saying that "the conjugal bonds" must be more "lasting in man than the other species of animals"; he also demands that those bonds be "more firm ... in man than the other species of animals"; he fails to tell us, however, how firm they should be.
(pg. )
218
[Polygamy] is perfectly compatible with natural law.
(pg. )
It should also be noted that what Locke says about the difference between conjugal society among human beings and conjugal society among brutes … does not require any prohibition against incest and that he … remains silent about such prohibitions. (pg. )
-Incest is a vague term.
[Locke] declares later on, in full agreement with Hobbes and in full disagreement with Hooker, that civil society is the sole judge of which "transgressions" are, and which are not, deserving of punishment."
(pg. )
[Locke] ... does not tire of quoting "Honour your parents." But he gives the biblical commands an unbiblical meaning by disregarding … the biblical distinctions between lawful and unlawful unions of men and women.
(pg. )
But it is certainly, as he states explicitly, "no natural tie": children who are of age are under no natural law obligation to obey their parents.
(pg. )
219
Locke ... admits … that if the parents have been "unnaturally careless" of their children, they "might" "perhaps" forfeit their right "to much of that duty comprehended in the command, 'Honour your parents.' "
(pg. )
The categoric imperative "Honour thy father and thy mother" becomes the hypothetical imperative "Honour thy father and thy mother if they have deserved it of you."
(pg. )
It can safely be said … that Locke's "partial law of nature" is not identical with clear and plain teachings ... of Scripture ….
(pg. )
If "all the parts" of the law of nature are made out in the New Testament in a clear
and plain manner, it follows that the "partial law of nature" does not belong at all to the law of nature.
(pg. )
[In] order to be a law in the proper sense of the term, the law of nature must be known to have been given by God. But the "partial law of nature" does not require belief in God. The "partial law of nature" circumscribes the conditions which a nation must fulfil in order to be civil ….
(pg. )
220
The "partial law of nature" is … not a law in the proper sense of the term."
(pg. )
We … arrive at the conclusion that Locke cannot have recognized any law of nature in the proper sense of the term.
(pg. )
This conclusion stands in ... contrast to what is … thought to be his doctrine ...
(pg. )
[The] accepted interpretation of Locke's teaching leads to the consequence that "Locke is full of illogical flaws and inconsistencies," … which are so obvious that they cannot have escaped the notice of a man of his rank and his sobriety.
(pg. )
221
It is for this reason that the argument of that work [Second Treatise] is based partly on generally accepted opinions, and even to a certain extent on scriptural principles: "The greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe," ...
(pg. )
222
223
224
The law of nature cannot be truly a law if it is not effective in the state of nature.
(pg. )
The law of nature cannot be a law if it is not known; it must be known and ... it must be knowable in the state of nature.
(pg. )
After having … suggested this picture of the state of nature ..., Locke demolishes it as his argument proceeds.
(pg. )
225
[Civil] society is the state of war." This is either the cause or the effect of the fact that the state of nature is a state not of plenty but of penury.
(pg. )
Those living in it are "needy and wretched.
(pg. )
"Plenty requires civil society."
(pg. )
Being "pure anarchy," the state of nature is not likely to be a social state.
(pg. )
In fact, it is characterized by "want of society."
(pg. )
"Society" and "civil society" are synonymous terms.
(pg. )
The state of nature is "loose."
(pg. )
For "the first and strongest desire God planted in man" is ... the desire for self-preservation."
(pg. )
But "nobody can be under a law which is not promulgated to him."
(pg. )
[No] moral rules are "imprinted in our minds" or "written on [our] hearts" or "stamped upon [our] minds" or "implanted." (pg. )
[All] knowledge of the law of nature is acquired by study: to know the law of nature, one must be "a studier of that law." (pg. )
227
[Man] must be allowed to defend his life against violent death because he is driven to do so by some natural necessity ...
(pg. )
Since happiness presupposes life, the desire for life takes precedence over the desire for happiness in case of conflict.
(pg. )
228
"No wonder ... that the state of nature is full of fears and continual dangers."
(pg. )
[The] state of nature is "not to be endured": the only remedy is … civil society.
(pg. )
229
[A] society which complies with the law of nature enjoys less of temporal happiness than a society which transgresses the law of nature.
(pg. )
230
But only such men could know the law of nature while living in a state of nature who have already lived in civil society, or rather in a civil society in which reason has been properly cultivated.
(pg. )
231
It is on the free consent, can be just; ...
civil society … cannot be established lawfully by force or conquest: consent alone "did or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world."
(pg. )
232
[By] virtue of the fundamental contract, every man "puts himself under an obligation to everyone of that society to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it" … the fundamental contract establishes … an unqualified democracy; … this ... democracy may by majority vote either continue itself or transform itself into another form of government …
(pg. )
The contradiction disappears if one considers the fact that society exists, and acts, without government only in the moment of revolution.
(pg. )
233
The individual's right of resistance to organized society, which Hobbes had stressed and which Locke did not deny, is an ineffectual guaranty for the individual's self-preservation.
(pg. )
According to Locke, the best institutional safeguards for the rights of the individuals are supplied by a constitution that, in practically all domestic matters, strictly subordinates the executive power (which must be strong) to law, and ultimately to a well-defined legislative assembly. (pg. )
-US government
234
Equality, he thought, is incompatible with civil society. The equality of all men in regard to the right of self-preservation does not obliterate completely the special right of the more reasonable men.
(pg. )
[Since] self-preservation and happiness require property, ... the end of civil society can be said to be the preservation of property, ... the protection of the industrious and rational against the lazy and quarrelsome — is essential to public happiness or the common good.
(pg. )
235
[Once] civil society is formed, ... the natural law regarding property ceases to be valid; what we may call "conventional" or "civil" property — the property which is owned within civil society — is based on positive law alone.
(pg. )
The natural right to property is a corollary of the fundamental right of self-preservation; it is not derivative from compact, from any action of society.
(pg. )
236
[For] man has a natural right not only to self-preservation but to the pursuit of happiness as well.
(pg. )
Nor does natural law encourage begging; need as such is not a title to property.
(pg. )
Persuasion gives as little a title to property as does force.
(pg. )
[The] only honest way of appropriating things is by one's own labor.
(pg. )
Labor is the only title to property which is in accordance with natural right.
(pg. )
[The] individual prompted by his self-interest alone — is the originator of property.
(pg. )
237
For it is not "the largeness" of what a man appropriates by his labor ... but "the perishing anything uselessly in [his] possession" which makes him guilty of a crime against the natural law.
(pg. )
The terrors of the natural law no longer strike the covetous, but the waster.
(pg. )
238
It is the "original law of nature" which obtained "in the first ages of the world" or "in the beginning.”
(pg. )
The original law of nature was the dictate of reason in the beginning, because in the beginning the world was sparsely populated and there was "plenty of natural provisions."
(pg. )
[It] was ... impossible for man to appropriate by his labor more than … what was absolutely necessary for mere self-preservation … ; the natural right to comfortable self-preservation was illusory.
(pg. )
239
It is the poverty of the first ages of the world which explains why the original law of nature (1) commanded appropriation by labor alone, (2) commanded the prevention of waste, and (3) permitted unconcern for the need of other human beings.
(pg. )
240
Gold and silver are not only scarce but, ...they have become "so valuable to be hoarded up."'
(pg. )
[Since] gold and silver are now ... valuable, equity would seem to demand that man should lose the natural right to accumulate as much money as he pleases.
(pg. )
One privilege enjoyed by man in the state of nature is … denied to man living in civil society: labor no longer creates a sufficient title to property.
(pg. )
241
[Man] may now "rightfully and without injury, possess more than he himself can make use.
(pg. )
According to the natural law — and this means according to the moral law — man in civil society may acquire as much property of every kind, and in particular as much money, as he pleases; and he may acquire it in every manner permitted by the positive law, which keeps the peace among the competitors and in the interest of the competitors.
(pg. )
Even the natural law prohibition against waste is no longer valid in civil society.
(pg. )
242
Restrictions on acquisitiveness were required in the state of nature because the state of nature is a state of penury.
(pg. )
243
Unlimited appropriation without concern for the need of others is true charity.
(pg. )
“[Labour] makes the far greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in this world."
(pg. )
Labor ceases to supply a title to property in civil society; but it remains, what it always has been, the origin of value or of wealth.
(pg. )
Man is induced to work by his ... selfish wants.
(pg. )
Real work — the improvement of the ...gifts of nature — presupposes that man is not satisfied with what he needs.
(pg. )
The men of larger views are "the rational," who are a minority.
(pg. )
Real work presupposes ... that man is willing and able to undergo the present hardship of work for the sake of future convenience; and "the industrious" are a minority.
(pg. )
"The lazy and inconsiderate part of men" makes "the far greater number."
(pg. )
The production of wealth requires ... that the industrious and rational, who work hard spontaneously, take the lead and force the lazy and inconsiderate to work against their will, if for their own good.
(pg. )
244
[They] create a ... scarcity which forces the lazy and inconsiderate to work much harder than they otherwise would and ... to improve their own condition by improving the condition of all.
(pg. )
But real plenty will not be produced if the individual does not have an incentive to appropriate more than he can use.
(pg. )
While labor is ... the ... cause of plenty, it is not its sufficient cause; the incentive to that labor which is productive of real plenty is ... the desire for having more than man can use — which comes into being through the invention of money.
(pg. )
245
[The] people is identical with plenty; if the end of government is ... plenty; if plenty requires the emancipation of acquisitiveness; and if acquisitiveness ...withers away whenever its rewards do not securely belong to those who deserve them — if all this is true, it follows that the end of civil society is "the preservation of property."
(pg. )
"The great and chief end ... of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property.
(pg. )
The protection of [different and unequal faculties of acquiring property] is the first object of government.
(pg. )
246
Civil society... creates the conditions under which the individuals can pursue their productive-acquisitive activity without obstruction.
(pg. )
Locke's followers in later generations no longer believed that they needed "the phraseology of the law of nature" because they took for granted what Locke did not take for granted: Locke … thought that he had to prove that the unlimited acquisition of wealth is not unjust or morally wrong.
(pg. )
While … concealing the revolutionary character of his doctrine of property from the mass of his readers, he yet indicated it clearly enough.
(pg. )
247
By building civil society on "the low but solid ground" of selfishness or of certain "private vices," one will achieve much greater "public benefits" than by futilely appealing to virtue, which is by nature "unendowed."
(pg. )
"[Nature] and the earth furnish only the almost worthless materials as in themselves."
(pg. )
248
But in his thematic discussion of property, he is silent about any duties of charity.
(pg. )
According to Locke, ... the work of man and not the gift of nature, is the origin of almost everything valuable: man owes almost everything valuable to his own efforts.
(pg. )
[Hopeful] self reliance and creativity become ... the marks of human nobility.
(pg. )
Man is … emancipated from the bonds of nature by the emancipation of his productive acquisitiveness, which is ... beneficent and ... susceptible of becoming the strongest social bond: restraint of the appetites is replaced by a mechanism whose effect is humane. And that
emancipation is achieved through the intercession of … money.
(pg. )
The world in which human creativity seems to reign supreme is ... the world which has replaced the rule of nature by the rule of convention.
249
(pg. )
[Nature] furnishes … worthless materials ... the forms are supplied … by man's free creation.
(pg. )
For there are no natural forms, no intelligible "essences": "the abstract ideas" are "the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for its own
use."
(pg. )
Understanding and science stand in the same relation to "the given" in which human labor, called forth to its supreme effort by money, stands to the raw materials.
(pg. )
There are... no natural principles of understanding: all knowledge is
acquired; all knowledge depends on labor and is labor.
(pg. )
Locke is a hedonist: "That which is properly good or bad, is nothing but barely pleasure or pain."
(pg. )
But his is a peculiar hedonism: "The greatest happiness consists" not in enjoying the greatest pleasures but "in the having those things which produce the greatest pleasures."
(pg. )
It is not altogether an accident that the chapter in which these statements occur
… is entitled "Power." For if, as Hobbes says, "the power of a man ... is his present means, to obtain some future apparent good," Locke says in effect that the greatest happiness consists in the greatest power.
(pg. )
Since there are no knowable natures, there is no nature of man with reference to which we could distinguish between pleasures which are according to nature and pleasures which are against nature, or between pleasures which are by nature higher and pleasures which are by nature lower: pleasure and pain are "for different men . . . very different things."
(pg. )
Therefore, "the philosophers of old did in vain inquire, whether summum bonum consisted in riches, or bodily delights, or virtue, or contemplation?" In the absence of a summum bonum, man would lack completely a star and compass for his life if there were no summum malum.
(pg. )
250
"Desire is always moved by evil, to fly it."" The strongest desire is the desire for self-preservation.
(pg. )
The evil from which the strongest desire recoils is death.
(pg. )
Death must ... be the greatest evil: Not the natural sweetness of living but the terrors of death make us cling to life.
(pg. )
What nature firmly establishes is that
from which desire moves away, the point of departure of desire; the goal toward which desire moves is secondary. The primary fact is want.
(pg. )
But this want, this lack, is no longer understood as pointing to something complete, perfect, whole.
(pg. )
The necessities of life are no longer understood as necessary for the complete life or the good life, but as mere inescapabilities. (pg. )
The satisfaction of wants is … no longer limited by the demands of the good life but becomes aimless. (pg. )
-nihilism
The goal of desire is denned by nature only negatively — the denial of pain.
(pg. )
It is not pleasure more or less dimly anticipated which elicits human efforts: "the chief, if not only, spur to human industry and action is uneasiness."
(pg. )
So powerful is the natural primacy of pain that the active denial of pain is itself painful.
(pg. )
The pain which removes pain is labor.
(pg. )
It is this pain … which gives man originally the most important of all rights: sufferings and defects, rather than merits or virtues, originate rights.
(pg. )
Hobbes identified the rational life with the life dominated by the fear of fear, by the fear which relieves us from fear.
(pg. )
[Locke] identifies the rational life with the life dominated by the pain which relieves pain.
(pg. )
Labor takes the place of the art which imitates nature; for labor is, in the words of Hegel, a negative attitude toward nature.
(pg. )
The starting point of human efforts is misery: the state of nature is a state of wretchedness. The way toward happiness is a movement away from the state of nature, a movement away from nature: the negation of nature ...
(pg. )
251
Rousseau was not the first to feel that the modern venture was a radical error and to seek the remedy in a return to classical thought.
(pg. )
But Rousseau ... abandoned himself to modernity.
(pg. )
253
[Nietzsche] ... ushered in the second crisis of modernity — the crisis of our time.
(pg. )
"The ancient politicians spoke unceasingly of manners and virtue; ours speak of nothing but trade and money."
(pg. )
Trade, money, enlightenment, the emancipation of acquisitiveness, luxury, and the belief in the omnipotence of legislation are characteristic of the modern state ...
(pg. )
254
The modern state presented itself as an artificial body which comes into being through convention and which remedies the deficiencies of the state of nature.
(pg. )
255
Virtue apparently requires support by faith or theism, although not necessarily by monotheism.
(pg. )
256
Rousseau deviates from his classical models at two points. … he regards virtue as the principle of democracy: virtue is inseparable from equality or from the recognition of equality. "
(pg. )
257
On the other hand, science ... is essentially universal.
(pg. )
[Whereas] science is essentially cosmopolitan, society must be animated by a spirit of patriotism, by a spirit which is by no means irreconcilable with national hatreds.
(pg. )
Philosophy ..., on the contrary, is destructive of the warlike spirit.
(pg. )
[The] element of science is admittedly leisure, which is falsely distinguished from idleness. … the true citizen is devoted to duty, whereas the philosopher or scientist selfishly pursues his pleasure.(pg. )
258
Science is concerned with truth as such, regardless of its utility, and thus by reason of its intention is exposed to the danger of leading to useless or even harmful truths.
(pg. )
The element of society is faith or opinion. Therefore ... the attempt to replace opinion by knowledge, necessarily endangers society.
(pg. )
But the … scientist must follow his "own genius" with absolute sincerity or without any regard to the general will or the communal way of thinking."
(pg. )
259
The pursuit of science … requires the cultivation of talents … of natural inequality; its fostering of inequality is so characteristic of it that one is justified in saying that concern with superiority .. is the root of science ....
(pg. )
It was by means of science ... that Rousseau established the thesis that science or ... is incompatible with free society and … with virtue.
(pg. )
260
According to Rousseau's second suggestion, science is good ... for "some great geniuses" or "some privileged souls" ...," ..., but bad for "the peoples" or "the public" or "the common men"....
(pg. )
[Rousseau] attacked ... not science as such, but popularized science or the diffusion of scientific knowledge.
(pg. )
The diffusion of scientific knowledge is disastrous not only for society but for science … itself; through popularization, science degenerates into opinion, ...
(pg. )
Science must remain the preserve of a small minority; it must be kept secret from the common man.
(pg. )
Since every book is accessible not only to the small minority but to all who can read, Rousseau was forced by his principle to present his … scientific teaching with a great deal of reserve.
(pg. )
He believed … that in a corrupt society, like the one in which he lived, the diffusion of philosophic knowledge can no longer be harmful; but,... he wrote not merely for his contemporaries.
(pg. )
The function of that work [First Discourse] is to warn away from science, ... the common men.
(pg. )
261
[Rousseau] addresses only those who are not subjugated by the opinions of their century, of their country, or of their society. (pg. 262 )
It is certainly in opposition to the Enlightenment that he reasserts the crucial importance of the natural inequality of men in regard to intellectual gifts.
(pg. 263 )
The third suggestion solves the contradiction by distinguishing between" two kinds of science : a kind of science which is incompatible with virtue and which one may call "metaphysics" (or purely theoretical science) and a kind of science which is compatible with virtue and which one may call "Socratic wisdom
" (pg. 263)
Socratic wisdom is not identical with virtue, for virtue is "the science of the simple souls," ...
(pg. 263 )
[Socratic] wisdom is the preserve of a small minority. Socratic wisdom has the function of defending "the science of the simple souls," ... against all kinds of sophistry.
(pg. 263 )
263
Being the teachers of the human race,
… they alone, can enlighten the people as to their duties and as to the precise character of the good society.
(pg. )
Theoretical science, which is not intrinsically in the service of virtue and is therefore bad, must be put into the service of virtue in order to become good.
(pg. )
[Only] an esoteric theoretical science can become good.
(pg. )
It suffices here to refer to the "idleness" which the philosopher shares with natural man.
(pg. 264)
264
[Rationality] is the specific difference of man among the animals.
(pg. 266 )
It is man's power to choose and his consciousness of this freedom which cannot be explained physically and
which proves the spirituality of his soul.
(pg. 266)
[Natural] law must have its roots in principles which are anterior to reason, i.e., in passions which need not be specifically human.
(pg. 267 )
[Hobbes] is ... inconsistent because ... he denies that man is by nature social and ... he tries to establish the character of natural man by referring to his experience of men which is the experience of social man."
(pg. 269)
By thinking through Hobbes's critique of the traditional view, Rousseau was
brought face to face with a difficulty which embarrasses most present-day social scientists: not the reflection on man's experience of men, but only a specifically "scientific" procedure, seems to be able to lead one to genuine knowledge of the nature of man.
(pg. 269 )
269
270
The power of compassion decreases with the increase of refinement or convention.
(pg. 271 )
For the same reason for which natural man lacks pride, he also lacks understanding ... and ... freedom. (pg. 271 )
Reason is coterminous with language, and language presupposes society: being presocial, natural man is prerational.
(pg. 271 )
Since language is not natural, reason is not natural. (pg. 271 )
271
Natural man is premoral ... Natural man is subhuman.(pg. 272 )
There is no natural constitution of man to speak of: everything specifically human is acquired or ...depends on ... convention.
(pg. 272 )
Man is by nature almost infinitely malleable.
(pg. 272 )
Man has no nature in the precise sense which would set a limit to what he can make out of himself.
(pg. 272)
272
[Man's] humanity must be understood as a product of accidental causation.
(pg. )
He had distinguished between the natural or mechanical production of natural beings and the voluntary or arbitrary
production of human constructs.
(pg. )
Hobbes … erroneously assumed that presocial man is already a rational being, a being capable of making contracts.
(pg. )
The transition from the state of nature to civil society … coincided for him with the conclusion of the social contract.
(pg. )
But Rousseau was forced ... to conceive of that transition as consisting in, or at least as decisively prepared by, a natural process: man's ... embarking on the venture of civilization, is due not to a good or a bad use of his freedom or to ...necessity but ... to a series of natural accidents.
(pg. )
Man's humanity or rationality is acquired.
(pg. 273 )
273
Man is ... forced to think — to learn to think — in order to survive.
(pg. )
Man, the product of blind fate, ... becomes the seeing master of his fate. Reason's ...mastership over the blind forces of nature is a product of those blind forces.
(pg. 274 )
274
[Rousseau] had shown that what is
characteristically human is ... is the outcome of what man did, or was forced to do, in order to overcome … nature: man's humanity is the product of the historical process.
(pg. 275)
He realized that to the extent to which the historical process is accidental, it cannot supply man with a standard, and that, if that process has a hidden purpose, its purposefulness cannot be recognized except if there are trans-historical standards.
(pg. 275)
The historical process cannot be recognized as progressive without previous knowledge of the … purpose of the process.
(pg. 275)
275
At the beginning of the Social Contract he seems to say that knowledge of the "historical" state of nature is irrelevant
for the knowledge of natural right.
within the whole, or of man's origin.
(pg. 276 )
276
277
If society is natural, it is not essentially based on the wills of the individuals; it is essentially nature, and not a man's will, which makes him a member of society.
(pg. 278 )
278
It means … that freedom is not so much either the condition or the consequence of virtue as virtue itself. What is true of virtue can also be said of goodness..
(pg. 279 )
279
280
281
282
[Man] in the state of nature is happy because he is radically independent, whereas man in civil society is unhappy because he is radically dependent.
(pg. 283)
[Rousseau's] answer to the question of the good life takes on this form: the
good life consists in the closest approximation to the state of nature which is possible on the level of humanity.
(pg. 283 )
On the political plane that ... approximation is achieved by a society which is constructed in conformity men are free and equal and that the fundamental desire is the desire for self-preservation. (pg. 283 )
283
[Rousseau] contends that ... in the original state of nature, the promptings of the desire for self-preservation were tempered by compassion and that the original state of nature was considerably changed through accidental necessity, prior to man's entering civil society; civil society becomes necessary or possible only in a very late stage of the state of nature. (pg.284 )
The decisive change which took place within the state of nature consisted in the weakening of compassion. (pg. 284)
Compassion was weakened because of the emergence of … pride and ... because of the emergence of inequality and therefore of the dependence of man on his fellows.(pg.284 )
-Pride originates in the thinking man and this understanding causes inequality.
As a consequence of this development, self-preservation became increasingly difficult. (pg. 284 )
Once the critical point is reached, self-preservation demands the introduction ... of a conventional substitute for that natural freedom and that natural equality which existed at the beginning.(pg. 284)
It is the self-preservation of everyone which requires that the closest
possible approximation to original freedom and equality be achieved within society.(pg. 284 )
The root of civil society must ... be sought … in the desire for self-preservation ....(pg. 284 )
The right to self-preservation implies the right to the means required for self-preservation.(pg.284 )
[There] exists a natural right to appropriation. Everyone has by nature the right to appropriate to himself what he needs of the fruits of the earth.(pg.284 )
Everyone may acquire through his labor, and only through his labor, an exclusive right to the produce of the land which he has cultivated, and … an exclusive right to the land itself, at least until the next harvest. (pg.284 )
[Continuous] possession of the
land cultivated … does not create property right in that land; property right is the creation of positive law; prior to
the sanction by positive law, land is ...acquired by force, and not truly owned. (pg.284 )
284
Otherwise, natural right would hallow the right of the first occupier to the detriment of the right of self-preservation of those who … failed to take possession of land; the poor retain the natural right to acquire as free men what they need for self-preservation. (pg. 285 )
If they are unable to appropriate what
they need by cultivating a plot of their own because everything has already been appropriated by others, they may use force. (pg. 285 )
[A] conflict arises between the right of the first occupiers and the right of those who must rely on force. (pg.285 )
The need for appropriation of the necessities of life transforms the latest stage of the state of nature into the most horrible state of war. (pg. 285 )
Once this point has been reached, it is to the interest of everyone, of the poor as well as of the rich … that peace be guaranteed through convention or compact.(pg. 285 )
This amounts to saying that "according to the maxim of ... Locke, there could not be injustice where there is no property" or that in the state of nature everyone has "an unlimited right to everything which tempts him and which he can get."(pg. 285 )
The compact which is at the basis of factual societies transformed men's factual possessions as they existed at the end of the state of nature into genuine property. It ... sanctioned earlier usurpation. (pg. 285 )
Factual society rests on a fraud perpetrated by the rich against
the poor: political power rests on "economic" power. (pg. 285 )
[It] is inevitable that the law should favor the haves against the have-nots. (pg.285 )
Yet, … the self-preservation of everyone requires that the social contract be concluded and kept.(pg. 285 )
285
[It]is of the essence of civil society that private judgment be replaced by public judgment. (pg. 286 )
[The] social contract requires "the total alienation of each associate ... to the whole community" or the transformation of "every individual who by himself is a perfect and solitary whole into a part of a greater whole from which, in a sense, that individual receives his life
and his being." (pg.286 )
286
By surrendering all his rights to society, man loses the right to appeal ... from the positive law, to natural right: all rights become social rights. (pg. 287 )
While everyone must have a vote, the
votes must be "arranged" in such a manner as to favor the middle class and the rural population as against la canaille of the big towns. Otherwise, those who have nothing to lose might sell freedom for bread." (pg. 287 )
The general will is therefore in need of enlightenment.(pg. 287 )
The solution of this twofold problem is supplied … by a man of superior intelligence, who, ... by honoring the gods with his own wisdom, both convinces the people of the goodness of the laws which he submits to its vote and transforms the individual from a natural being into a citizen.
(pg. 288)
It goes without saying that the
arguments by which the legislator convinces the citizens of his divine mission ... are necessarily of doubtful solidity. (pg. 288 )
[This] suggestion overlooks the fact that ... "the prejudice of antiquity" which is indispensable for the health of society, can only with difficulty survive the public
questioning of the accounts regarding their origin. (pg. 288 )
[Society] must do everything ... to render the citizens oblivious of the ... facts that political philosophy brings to the center of their attention as the foundations of society. (pg. 288 )
Free society stands or falls by a specific
obfuscation against which philosophy ...revolts. (pg. 289 )
[The] "insoluble objections" to which ... all religions is exposed are dangerous truths.
(pg. 290)
Apart from the civil religion, the equivalent to the action of the early legislator is custom. Law is … preceded by custom. (pg. 290 )
Hence the past … of one's own nation tends to become of higher dignity than any cosmopolitan aspirations.
(pg. 291)
Virtue presupposes effort ... ; it is primarily a burden, and its demands are harsh.(pg. 291 )
Through love, man achieves a closer approximation to the state of nature on the level of humanity than he does through a life of citizenship or virtue.
(pg. 292)
The feeling of existence is "man's first feeling."(pg293. )
[Man] is concerned with the preservation of his existence because existence ... is … pleasant.(pg. 293 )
[Civilized] men who have returned from civil society to solitude reach a degree of happiness of which the stupid animal must have been utterly incapable.
(pg. 293 )
The ultimate justification of civil society is ... the fact that it allows a certain type of individual to enjoy the supreme felicity ... by living at its fringes.
(pg. 293 )
293
[Rousseau] says in his last writing that he ... was ... a useless citizen, yet that his contemporaries have done wrong in proscribing him from society as a pernicious member, instead of merely removing him from society as a useless member.
(pg. )
One must contrast the dreamlike character of Rousseau's solitary contemplation with the wakefulness of philosophic contemplation.
(pg. 294 )
294
Burke sided with "the authors of sound antiquity" against "the Parisian philosophers"... the originators of a "new morality" or "the bold experimenters in morality."
(pg. 296 )
[Burke] did not hesitate to use the language of natural right whenever that could assist him in persuading his modern audience …
(pg.297 )
[Happiness] can be found only by virtue, by the restraints "which are imposed by the virtues upon the passions.”
(pg.298 )
Political power … does not belong to the rights of man, because men have a right to good government, and there is no necessary connection between good government and government by the many; the rights of man ... point toward the predominance of the "true natural aristocracy" ….
(pg. 299 )
-gentlemen
Since the function of civil society is the satisfaction of wants, the established constitution derives its authority less from the original convention or from its origin than from its beneficent working through many generations or from its fruits.
(pg. )
300
Burke traces the extremism of the French Revolution to a novel philosophy.
(pg. )
301
302
Those principles have ... a powerful appeal, since they are "most flattering to the natural propensities of the unthinking multitude."
(pg. )
The French Revolution is the first "philosophic revolution."
(pg. )
It is the first revolution which was made by men of letters, philosophers, "thoroughbred metaphysicians," ... as the chief contrivers and managers.
(pg. )
It is the first revolution in which "the spirit of ambition is connected with the spirit of speculation. "(pg. )
303
[Burke] spoke more emphatically and more forcefully on this problem … because he had to contend with a new and most powerful form of "speculatism," with a political doctrinairism of philosophic origin.
(pg. )
304
All these approaches to political matters ...are not controlled by prudence, the controlling virtue of all practice.
(pg. )
305
307
[Practical] wisdom always has to do with exceptions, modifications, balances, compromises, or mixtures.
(pg. )
Practical wisdom … requires … "the most delicate and complicated skill," a skill which arises only from long and varied practice.
(pg. 308 )
308
309
310
Speculation ... is concerned with the truth without any regard to public opinion.
(pg. )
"[National] measures" or "political problems” do not primarily concern truth or falsehood. They relate to good or evil.
(pg. 312)
Hence it may easily happen that what is metaphysically true is politically false.
(pg.311 )
"There is a sacred veil to be drawn over the beginnings of all governments.(pg. 311 )
311
Whereas theory rejects error, prejudice, or superstition, the statesman puts these to use.(pg. 312 )
312
313
314
According to the classics, the best constitution is a … conscious activity or of planning on the part of an individual or of a few individuals. (pg. 315 )
-united states
315
316
[
It almost goes without saying that Burke regards the connection between "the love of lucre" and prosperity .... and "a great variety of accidents" and a healthy political order … as part of the providential order; it is because the processes which are not guided by human reflection are part of the providential order that their products are infinitely superior in wisdom to the products of reflection. (pg. 317 )
317
This radical change appears in its undisguised form in the emergence of modern ... science; it is not primarily a change within theology. (pg. 318 )
What presents itself as the "secularization" of theological concepts will have to be understood ... as an adaptation of traditional theology to the intellectual climate produced by modem ... science both natural and political.(pg. 318 )
But it is precisely a lowering of these goals [human action] which modern political philosophy consciously intended from its very beginning. (pg. 318 )
318
319
Political philosophy or political theory had been from its inception the quest for civil society as it ought to be.(pg. 320 )
320
321
One should note ...whereas Burke assumed that the model constitution was actual in his time, Cicero assumed that the best polity had been actual in the past but was no longer actual.
(pg. 332)
If Cicero preferred the Roman polity, which was the work of many men and many generations, to the Spartan polity, which was the work of one man, he did not deny that the Spartan polity was respectable. (pg. 323 )
[Cicero] did not abandon the notion that civil societies are founded by superior individuals. (pg. 323)
323
***
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