Natural Law Isn’t About Law…

…it’s about morality.

Freedom for Excellence: Virtue and Moral Character According to Aquinas (Part One) (audio), Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P. 

He begins by examining what Thomas would write regarding the purpose of natural law.

For St. Thomas Aquinas, the question of what it means to be moral is, in fact, a central question – the central question.  The central part of the Summa Theologica is all about morality. 

His work was about morality.  But was it not also about laws to back up this morality?

For St. Thomas Aquinas, morality – and people often balk at this, but it’s true – does not involve primarily duty or obligation or obedience to the law.  It was only later, beginning in the fifteenth or sixteenth century where Catholic moralists started focusing on law excessively and using Aquinas to excuse themselves – mostly the Jesuits (then, clears his throat).

Hey, he said it, not me.  I will stay out of the Catholic infighting, and leave Fr. Petri’s words to speak for themselves.

So, in that whole central section about morality, only a small section of it is about the law – only a small part.  For St. Thomas, morality is about two questions: first, what is happiness; secondly, how do I get it.  That’s basically what morality is for St. Thomas.

Please keep all of this in mind as we continue.  Forgive the length, but there is much to be covered.

Edward Feser delivered the Hayek Memorial Lecture at the Mises Institute in 2005.  He commented on the fact that many people associated with the Institute also are sympathetic to the idea of Natural Law, and he is complimentary about this.  However, furthering this is not his purpose with this lecture.  In his words, he intends to “accentuate the negative”:

In particular, I would argue that the work of Austrian thinkers, including Hayek and Rothbard, has been deficient where it has strayed from economics per se and forayed into the realm of moral theory.

He holds that from a Catholic point of view, positions held by Hayek and Rothbard have weaknesses.  What are these weaknesses, and what do these have to do with the cited passages from Fr. Petri, above? 

I will skip his criticisms of Hayek.  These are secondary to Feser’s main focus, and secondary to me.  What of his criticisms of Rothbard?

Rothbard’s views, by contrast, are often radically at odds with a Catholic conception of natural law.

Feser notes that natural law theorists will differ profoundly on the content and metaphysic of natural law.  Feser will come at it from the views associated with Thomas and the Scholastics – and opposes this to the views coming from Locke, as Locke rejects the traditional grounding of natural law in the natural ends of man.  Without going into the details of Feser’s criticisms, to summarize:

For if Lockean natural law is a watering down of the traditional Scholastic conception of natural law, Rothbardian natural law theory seems itself little more than a watering down of Locke. 

Which now brings me to the point.  Feser offers a section entitled “Morality and the law.”  Feser touches on the issue of suicide – yet I cannot determine why this is even relevant when speaking of “law.”  Yes, suicide is a violation of Thomistic natural law, but what does man’s law have to do with this?  The perpetrator is dead, for goodness sakes.  What punishment can be further inflicted?  I am reminded of this scene from the Cadaver Synod (scroll down for the picture). 

He then moves to Rothbard’s views on abortion and on the issue of the parent’s obligation to feed their children.  Here, I agree that Rothbard’s views are in disagreement with natural law.  Contrary to Murray Rothbard, Walter Block and other libertarian thinkers, I have argued that abortion is also in violation of the non-aggression principle (my most thorough examination is here). 

Regarding obligations to children, I also disagree with Rothbard – but here, again, I have made my argument from a libertarian perspective.  (For a complete listing of my thoughts on abortion and children, including addressing challenges, etc., see here).

If Feser left it here, I would have no disagreement with him – nor would I have any reason to include the above passages from Fr. Petri, or to even write this post.  But Feser doesn’t leave it here:

Social Justice

Social Justice Reconsidered: Austrian Economics and Catholic Social Teaching, Edward Feser

Feser gave the Hayek Memorial Lecture at the Mises Institute’s Austrian Scholars Conference in 2005.  In it, he touches of some points that will further shed light on his views of conflict between natural law and libertarianism.  Feser began to give up on libertarianism by 2004, so this lecture was given after this evolution in his views.

In this lecture, he focuses particularly on the social writing of Hayek and Rothbard:

My critique is an internal one, though, a friendly challenge to Austrian sympathizers from someone who shares their sympathy.

Throughout, he uses the term Austrian, but what he is discussing is some combination of Austrian economics and libertarianism as he discusses both economic and social / political theory.  Feser’s focus is social justice, but not as the term is used in the broad sense today:

Both these thinkers rejected the very idea of social justice as incoherent – Hayek explicitly, Rothbard implicitly.  I want to argue that they were wrong to do so, and wrong even though they were right to criticize the specifically socialist conceptions of social justice that were their main targets.

I do not intend to go through the details of these critiques – offering my critique of Feser’s critiques; this post is already much too long.  Instead, I will look at his arguments for this narrowed version of social justice and alternatives to his views that these necessarily lead away from libertarianism. 

As I have mentioned, the task for individuals who favor liberty – including the non-aggression principle – is to build this political philosophy on a solid foundation.  In other words, don’t use the shortcomings (real or perceived) as reasons to run away; use these shortcomings as reasons to build a better political theory toward liberty.

To somewhat narrow the focus of Feser’s meaning of “social justice,” a few of his comments will be helpful:

…it simply isn’t true that all conceptions of social justice are concerned with equality, or with economic distribution fitting some pattern or other.  In particular, the Catholic natural law conception does not have these concerns, as we will see.

He will later bring focus on this point.

…the very natural rights that support a free society and market economy themselves rest on an objective moral order, on natural law.

I am moving more and more toward this view; the devil is in the details, of course – like the detail of who or what has responsibility to uphold that objective moral order.

…the utilitarian tendency to reduce all value to individual subjective preferences…is flatly incompatible with the Catholic natural law conception of value.  For example, it is, from a natural law point of view, just a straightforward objective moral fact that the availability of sound moral and religious instruction is of greater value to every single individual than is the availability of Coca Cola and Britney Spears albums.

It is also, from that point of view, just a straightforward objective moral fact that pornography and drugs, say, have no value whatsoever, whether or not anyone wants to pay for them.

He is not making the point (yet) that government ought to regulate such matters; he is offering that whatever the wisdom in calling for the government not to do so cannot rest on the concept of subjective value when viewed through a natural law lens.

The natural law theory associated with Aquinas and the Scholastic tradition in general is committed to the idea that human beings have a natural end or purpose and that their particular natural capacities (whether intellectual, procreative, or whatever) have natural ends or functions as well.  These various natural ends determine the content of the moral law, including (for those Scholastic natural law thinkers who are also natural rights theorists) the rights we possess.

Feser is aiming at moral law that supports a human being’s natural ends and purposes.  Again, the devil is in the details: do violations of these “moral laws” get you thrown in prison, or do violations of these “moral laws” get you into the confession booth?  For me, the distinction is vital if one is truly speaking of a free society, as Feser does.

Again, the issue of self-ownership arises; for some background on his views (and mine) on this, I offer my previous post on Feser’s work.  But in contrast to the possibilities of either a) I own me or b) someone else owns me, Feser offers a third alternative:

…no one at all owns either himself or anyone else.  To own oneself, after all, is just to have certain rights over oneself, and there are certainly philosophers who would deny that we have any rights, or at least any natural rights, at all. 

Without first identifying the rights that come with ownership, one cannot speak of ownership.  It is not difficult to identify situations of less-than-absolute property rights (in other words, conditional ownership) in many aspects of life – and not all such conditions are forced upon us by the state.

I recall a couple of such examples from the Middle Ages – and as I find the law during this period to be the closest extended period of libertarian law in history, I lean on it.  For example, one was not allowed to destroy physical property that he owned.  Another example regards usury; while the history here is a bit muddled, I think there are clear examples where such a practice was frowned upon.

The natural rights we have just are, and can only be, the rights that we require in order to fulfill those obligations and realize that [natural] end [or purpose].

The rights that I have determine the extent of the meaning of ownership.  Thus, returning to the thought that if one is to build his libertarianism on natural law – from which our natural rights are derived – one might consider the entirety of the law and its implications.  This may not lead to libertarianism as it is currently understood, but it just might lead to liberty.  Again, those devilish details rear their heads.

Feser does use the term “self-ownership”; he has refined the definition such that he can then lean on the term:

Is this conception of natural rights consistent with a recognition of self-ownership?  I think it probably is, for the Catholic natural law tradition is so insistent on the dignity and inviolability of the human person that it is plausible to hold that the bundle of rights that that tradition ascribes to individuals constitutes a kind of ownership.

However, the ownership is not absolute.  For example, one has no right to commit suicide, as this interferes with the natural ends or purposes of a human life.  It can be extended to other issues such as abortion, the care and feeding of one’s children, even adolescent disobedience (running away from home).  Each of these come between a human being and his ability to fulfill his purpose.

Now we come to that devil to which I have often referred:

Quite obviously, this difference between conceptions of natural law is bound to imply differences in public policy.

Plato’s Cave

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser

The standard one-line summary of the Enlightenment goes like this: Because religion is based on blind faith, the founders of modern Western thoughts sought to free science and philosophy from its irrational embrace, to reduce or eliminate its influence on public life, and to re-orient even private life toward improving this world rather than preparing for an illusory afterlife.

A long line, but a nice summary.  As Feser has demonstrated, however, the Christian religion does not rest on blind faith but on the metaphysical worldview that one can trace back to the Greeks.  It was not and is not a battle between science and religion, but instead a battle between two competing metaphysical worldviews.  Feser has demonstrated the emptiness of the modern worldview. 

From where was this modern worldview born?  Feser offers that some of the groundwork was inadvertently laid by medieval thinkers such as Ockham and by the Protestant Reformation, with some early modern thinkers less hostile to religion than others – trying, albeit in vain, to preserve some elements of it.  Ultimately, it took bloom in the Enlightenment.

It took centuries for this modern worldview to take hold, precisely because the worldview born in ancient Greece held sway for so long – and because that ancient worldview rested on what was obvious common sense.

Ultimately the costs of this modern philosophy are to be found in our morals – or lack of any foundation for any morality.  Feser notes that it is easy to point to National Socialism or communism, but even the liberal West cannot withstand criticism: in all cases, human beings are reduced to “congeries of mechanical forces” a “disgusting…dehumanizing…and utterly incoherent” vision.

If there is no such thing as a natural order (again in the classical realist sense) then there can be no basis for morality at all.

No need to offer the countless examples to prove the point.  As Feser offers, “the pathologies in question are in any event blindingly obvious to anyone sympathetic to the classical philosophical worldview” as described by Feser in this book.

Had you told a William Gladstone or even a John F. Kennedy that the liberalism of the future would be defined by abortion on demand and “same-sex marriage,” and that the avant-garde would be contemplating infanticide, bestiality, and necrophilia, they would have thought you mad.

Feser suggests that you cannot even attempt the reductio ad absurdum with a liberal, as he will merely thank you for the suggestion.  They are blind, like those in Plato’s Cave, thinking you mad for describing the world outside.

From an article in The Atlantic Monthly in 1948, by W.T. Stace – an empiricist and not in sympathy with the Aristotelian-Thomistic worldview: the turning point came when seventeenth century scientists turned their backs on “final causes,” an invention not only of Christiandom but reaching back to Socrates.

The conception of purpose was frowned upon….This, though silent and almost unnoticed, was the greatest revolution in human history, far outweighing in importance any of the political revolutions whose thunder has reverberated through the world.

Stace continues, offering that our picture is purposeless, senseless, and meaningless.  “Nature is nothing but matter in motion.”  And so goes man – purposeless, senseless, and meaningless.  “Everything is futile.”

If our moral rules do not proceed from something outside us in the nature of the universe – whether we say it is God or simply the universe itself – then they must be our own inventions.

We are left with our likes and dislikes, but we know how variable these are.

Conclusion

Feser offers that what we are left with is to return to first principles.  Given that we today have no foundation upon which to build a moral society – including the morality of non-aggression – this suggestion would seem to be one that libertarians take seriously when considering liberty as the objective.

But to consider “final causes,” one cannot at the same time say “anything peaceful.”  The two are incompatible.  I always struggled with that phrase – “anything peaceful.”  It seemed a right thing to believe as a libertarian, yet something told me it was dangerous to liberty.  It is clear to me now why this is so.

As I hope is clear by now, I do not suggest legislation and prison for “anything peaceful” acts.  Correction of these belongs to family, church, and society at large.  For this to come about, it seems theologians, pastors, priests, and philosophers have some work to do.  Most of these are currently failures at this task.

Epilogue

Feser’s final chapter is entitled “Aristotle’s Revenge.”  In it, he summarizes his takedown of the modernists.  To make a long story short, they cannot avoid final causes in their arguments, yet attempt to use these arguments to eliminate final causes from philosophy; their arguments only make sense when understood in Aristotelian terms…and, therefore, their arguments make no sense.

Self-Ownership

RMB January 20, 2019 at 7:27 PM

I read Feser's description of his journey in and out of Libertarianism. Sounds like his beliefs have quite a bit of overlap with yours BM. Sounds like he has thought pretty deeply about these issues too. Not sure I agree with him 100% but he raises some good points about the NAP not being enough.

You know, I wasn’t really looking to understand Feser’s views on libertarianism, and then RMB poked me right where it counts.  It is difficult to let stand “Sounds like his beliefs have quite a bit of overlap with yours BM.”  True or not, it must be addressed, such that nothing is left to the imagination of the ne’er-do-wells among us.

What do I mean by this?  Am I pointing to RMB as a ne’er-do-well?  Not at all; I stand in awe of his ability to so easily find my weak spot and prod me to action.  No, my concern regards those who might paint me with a Feserian brush where none is deserved.  So, call this post a proactive defense. 

Be warned, this is a long post.  Also, keep in mind that for me the idea of libertarianism is a philosophy that supports liberty – hence, perhaps, something more than the non-aggression principle is necessary.

The road from libertarianism, Edward Feser

As the term libertarianism can mean many things to many people, it is worth understanding what Feser means:

For me (and for at least many libertarians) libertarianism is merely a view about the proper bounds of state power, and not a general social, cultural, or moral philosophy.

Given this description, it seems that Feser’s move away from libertarian could mean his move toward the use of state power.  As I find myself in agreement with much of what he has written on the topic of natural law and morality – and in my case, at least, how these are supportive of liberty – it will be an unfortunate turn of events if at the end of Feser’s road one is to find the state.

He gives a hint of this with the following:

A libertarian could say, for example, that using cocaine for recreational purposes is morally wrong but should not be illegal.  And that is the sort of thing I would have said in my libertarian days.

I suspect the portion of the statement on which his view has changed is the “not be illegal” part, as I don’t believe Feser would now consider cocaine use morally right.  To reinforce this, Feser offers that while he was once committed to a view “in favor of private initiative and against government action.”

I have been committed to it ever since, even though I no longer take the latter component to the extremes a libertarian would.

A little “government action” is OK.

Nozick and Hayek were in any event the biggest influences on my thinking, with Rothbard a secondary influence.  Rand was never a big influence, though like most libertarians I had a general regard for her.

Feser begins with a history of his political-philosophical background and how he came to libertarianism; he would have at one time described himself as a libertarian-conservative (he would now describe himself as a “free-market conservative” or “limited government conservative”).  I will begin this examination only from the point of his rejecting libertarianism.

But immediately upon reaching this [libertarian] climax, the arguments started slowly to unravel.

At the core of his libertarian thinking was the idea of self-ownership.

In particular, I thought the conception of natural rights embodied in the thesis of self-ownership -- which I took to be independently plausible and which was the very heart of my own libertarianism -- fit in naturally with the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) natural law approach to ethics that had become my settled view by the early 2000s. 

I was dead wrong.

It should be kept in mind, it is the idea of self-ownership that he is rejecting; as his libertarianism is built on this foundation, he then rejects libertarianism.  However, it seems plausible to me that one can reject this particular foundation without rejecting the house built upon it; just as we have seen that many libertarians have as their foundation individualism, yet this foundation also proves rather indefensible if liberty is the objective.  Perhaps one just needs a stronger foundation.  This, after all, has been the project I have stumbled upon.

But I should be clear: the house I am after building is liberty, not libertarianism.  Libertarianism may not be sufficient for liberty, yet one cannot reject libertarianism without also rejecting liberty.  Let’s say libertarianism (as it is currently understood) is a necessary but insufficient foundation for liberty.

…we cannot plausibly be said to own ourselves in a substantive way if the right to self-ownership protects us only “from the skin inward” and says nothing about whether we may bring our powers to bear on the world. 

Two castaways on an island.  While you sleep, your mate builds a fence around you, claiming the remainder of the island for himself.  He has not touched you.  Now what?  I know some libertarians will say that the action of the mate is not allowed – not enough mixing of labor with land.  But who is to say “not enough”?  How much is enough?  On what basis? 

Natural Rights and Morality

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser

Can one have natural rights without a natural moral law?  The moderns certainly believe so; Feser begs to differ.

One will not find the idea of natural rights explicitly stated by Aristotle or Aquinas; however, later Scholastic thinkers developed this idea based on the earlier work.  Natural rights follow from Aristotelian formal and final causes:

If every man has, by virtue of having the same form or nature, the same ultimate natural end (God) and various subsidiary natural ends (those associated with natural capacities like reason, procreation, and so forth), then they have the same basic moral obligations under natural law.

While reading Feser, I continue to return to this idea of natural law – and, specifically, the reliance on natural law by many libertarians as a philosophical foundation.  Is it possible to take from natural law only the negative (do not interfere with my achieving my natural ends) without the positive (the moral obligations) derived from the same natural law?  Can one exist without the other?

The same natural law that blocks others from interfering with our natural ends also places obligations on us.  These are more than merely reciprocating regarding the prohibition of interfering with another (e.g. violating my natural right not the be murdered); natural law, as developed by Aristotle and Aquinas, places moral burdens on us – precluding us from actions that would otherwise not violate the non-aggression principle.

The child wants to enjoy the benefits of living under daddy’s roof but doesn’t want to live by daddy’s rules.  Is this workable?  Does such a relationship have any possibility of longevity?

Now, what becomes of natural rights if there are no formal or final causes, and thus no universal human nature nor any natural ends or purposes by reference to which rights get their point?

What do you aim at if there is no target?  This was the task of the moderns – Hobbes, Lock, Hume, Kant, etc. – as they believed they could aim without a target.  Feser examines these.

Hobbes understood this most clearly: without the target, everyone can do what he wants: murder, steal, and harm others as he wishes.  No one has a right to not be killed, stolen from, etc.  Morality would have to be invented by us in order to avoid the naturally resulting chaos.

Locke would have none of this; without final causes, he would rely on God’s ownership of us.  Therefore, we do not have any rights ourselves; God has all the rights and whatever rights we enjoy are derivative.  But without formal and final causes, there is still no target to aim at.

Take Locke’s theory of property: it leaves more questions than it provides answers.  Most basic: what counts as “mixing”?  How much mixing?  Why not build a small fence around your neighbor and thereafter claim all property outside of it?

One could appeal to divine revelation, but then this turns Locke’s theory into theology.  I have often answered “custom” or “tradition,” but without a target to aim at, custom and tradition can stray (and has strayed) far from any definition of “good” you can come up with.

To deny that there are any formal or final causes in the natural world is implicitly to deny that there is any objective standard of goodness in the world either.

The early moderns could toy with such ideas because they lived within a custom and tradition that was well-grounded in the “good” of Christian ethics.  Hence, the destructiveness of losing the target was not obvious.  But, it has been demonstrated that the target cannot sustain itself; we have seen the devolution over the last two centuries.

Where does this leave reason?  It is every man’s reason for itself: reason can tell us what to do to achieve our objectives, but what of the objectives?  Without ultimate values based on formal and final causes, what do we aim at?

Is the elimination of slavery good?  Why or why not?  The acceptance of divorce, homosexuality?  What if it is accepted to kill unwanted babies?  It already is accepted for the unborn child, why not the newborn?  Old and sick people; Jews, blacks, Muslims?  Nazis, communists, pro-choice activists?  Why…or why not?

Well, we just “know it.”  But consider how drastically different much of what we “know” today is from what we “knew” even a few decades ago – even a few years ago.  Were we wrong then?  Are we wrong today?  Is change the same as progress?  Can reason tell us when reason has no target to aim at?

Do we aim for the greatest happiness for the greatest number?  Good luck measuring or quantifying that one.  You can’t even say why anyone would care about the greatest happiness for the greatest number.  On what basis is this better than the good of the many outweigh the good of the one?  What is “good”?

Why exactly should we believe that reason tells us to follow [Kant’s] Categorical Imperative – as opposed to being the “slave of the passions” (in Hume’s sense) or following our rational self-interest (as Hobbes says)?

Reason to what end?

The bottom line is that by abandoning formal and final causes, modern philosophy necessarily denied itself any objective basis for morality.

Including, it seems, the morality of the non-aggression principle.

Conclusion

Would you be more inclined rigorously to abide by policy X if you were truly convinced that God or nature unconditionally commands it, or if cooked up because it is “mutually advantageous” (even if you don’t see much advantage to  following it yourself just now)?

To ask this question is to answer it.

Epilogue

Feser has apparently walked a path through libertarianism and then moved on.  Someday it might be important to me to understand why, but not today.  That he has walked such a path does not discount for me the points he raises in this book.

Mind Your Punctuation

Was that semi-colon some kind of flirty wink or just bad punctuation?

― Azadeh Aalai

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser

While this post will cover material from Feser’s book, you will find in it a break from the metaphysical.  The context is Aristotle’s science – well, science based on our narrow definition of today. 

Aristotle, like his contemporaries and many of his successors viewed that the earth stood at the center of the solar system.  Some have used what is now known as a faulty view as “proof” that Aristotle’s metaphysics are all wrong.  Feser offers that Aristotelian metaphysics don’t rely on his science at all.

As always, Aquinas affords us a clear example.  Far from insisting dogmatically that the Ptolemaic astronomy accepted in his day must be correct, he acknowledged that “the suppositions that these astronomers have invented need not necessarily be true; for perhaps the phenomenon of the stars are explicable on some other plan not yet discovered by man.”

Ptolemy was a second-century philosopher (in the broadest sense) who developed a geocentric view of the solar system; his view was accepted as valid for the better part of 1500 years – to include, therefore, the life of Aquinas.

In 1543, Copernicus published his work, challenging this long-standing view.  He concluded that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the solar system.  Despite this publication, the geocentric view held sway for the time.  Was it due to religion hindering science?  No, not really:

The geocentric system was still held for many years afterwards, as at the time the Copernican system did not offer better predictions than the geocentric system, and it posed problems for both natural philosophy and scripture. The Copernican system was no more accurate than Ptolemy's system, because it still used circular orbits.

The Copernican system offered no better predictions; it was not considered an improvement in the science (narrowly defined).  This brings us to Galileo; Feser goes on to briefly discuss this controversy.  He describes the knowledge that most people have of this incident as a caricature, taken as “evidence of Scholastic intransigence.”

Quite the opposite: Cardinal Bellarmine offered at the time that if there were real proof of Copernicus’s view, the Church would have to acknowledge that the common interpretation of certain biblical passages was mistaken. 

Galileo’s difficulty was not that he advocated Copernicus – he had done so for years with the knowledge and approval of the Church and the warm encouragement of the Pope; his difficulty came because he insisted on treating this view as proven, when it had not been proven.

Indeed, some of Galileo’s own arguments, it is now known, were seriously flawed. [While his conclusions are now known to be correct], the fact remains that it was Galileo, and not the Church, who dogmatically went beyond the evidence then available….

Feser offers that Galileo’s popular image as a martyr for science holds no more validity than the story of George Washington and the cherry tree.

OK, OK…Feser is just doing his apologia.  Maybe.

The Inquisition's Semicolon: Punctuation, Translation, and Science in the 1616 Condemnation of the Copernican System (PDF):

This paper presents high-resolution images of the original document of the 24 February 1616 condemnation of the Copernican system, as being “foolish and absurd in philosophy”, by a team of consultants for the Roman Inquisition.  Secondary sources have disagreed as to the punctuation of the document. 

In this Inquisition, Galileo was exonerated (it was only when he persisted that his further troubles began):

Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits, who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Keep in mind: this was a second Inquisition, more than fifteen years after the Inquisition being examined in the subject paper.  The 1616 Inquisition, in which Galileo was exonerated, asked consultants for an examination of the Copernican system.  The Inquisition delivered no formal condemnation, but the Vatican book censors went to work.  Did they strike the name Copernicus from every book, document, or manuscript?  Not exactly:

…[they censored] books that presented the Copernican system as being more than a hypothesis.

Yes, I know it isn’t total free speech, but it was a decision that conformed with the known science of the time.

Natural Law and Liberty

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser

The “nature” of a thing, from an Aristotelian point of view, is, as we’ve seen, the form or essence it instantiates.

Feser will demonstrate the objective foundations for natural law, grounded in Aristotle’s metaphysics as developed by Aquinas and the Scholastics; the foundation is Aristotle’s four causes, culminating in the final cause.  If taken as understood by Feser, this will burden libertarians who lean on natural law as foundational to the development of libertarian theory.

Feser returns to his triangle: its essence, nature, or form will have three perfectly straight sides.  That the triangle we draw contains defects does not change this reality – the essence, nature, or form of a triangle.

The point is that these are defects, failures to conform to the nature or essence of triangularity…

Feser applies this to human organs – take an eyeball.  It has a final cause, to enable us to see.  That our eyeballs might have some defect does not change their essence or nature; that we wear glasses to correct this defect is at the same time not against nature – we are enabling our eyeballs to perform their final cause, according to their nature.  In other words, defects – even if natural in one sense – are not natural in the relevant sense of the essence of the thing. 

When applied to humans, we can think of many such defects – consider the possibilities and realities regarding defects of organs, limbs, etc.  Many, but not all, of these we would not consider as moral issues.  Eyes requiring glasses do not lead us to confession – or prison.

Feser now turns to such moral issues: “…there can be no satisfying explanation of almost anything that doesn’t make reference to final causes.”  Aristotle takes a thing’s form, essence or nature to determine the good for it – a “good” triangle” is one that conforms most closely to the perfect form of triangularity. 

What of the squirrel that eats crackers covered in toothpaste?  Even if one were to find a genetic defect in the squirrel – a defect that drove it to desire crackers and toothpaste – would we say that the squirrel was conforming to its nature?

Human beings also have a nature, or essence – and the “good” for humans is determined by this nature or essence, by its form:

Unlike other animals, though, human beings have intellect and will, and this is where moral goodness enters the picture.  Human beings can know what is good for them and choose whether to pursue that good.

Our intellect and will also have final causes, to allow us to understand the truth about things – including to understand what is good for us given our nature or essence – and to act accordingly; through our intellect and will, we are to pursue truth and avoid error. 

Just as we would know that a toothpaste-eating squirrel is not acting according to its nature….

…so too a good human being is one who successfully carries out the characteristic activities of human life as determined by final causes or natural ends of the various faculties that are ours by virtue of our nature or essence.

So how does this apply to moral questions?

To choose in line with the final causes or purposes that are ours by nature is morally good; to choose against them is morally bad.

To “choose” requires reason, but not reason as the moderns see it – reason as it has been developed since the Enlightenment.  Thanks to David Hume, “reason” has struggled with how to derive an “ought” from an “is,” or how to uphold morality in light of the fact / value distinction.  Nonsense, says Feser; there are no such issues if one builds on Aristotle.

A Giant Among Pygmies

…[Thomas Aquinas] once came upon “a holy nun who used to be levitated in ecstasy.”  His reaction was to comment on how large her feet were.  “This made her come out of her ecstasy in indignation at his rudeness, whereupon he gently advised her to seek greater humility.”

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser

Feser moves from Aristotle to Aquinas.  Much of this chapter is devoted to Feser’s examination of Aquinas’ proof of God’s existence, using and developing Aristotle’s metaphysical logic.  Further, Feser examines the feeble responses of today’s New Atheists – the group who claim that morality can be found without God, and in fact can only be found without God.

Why is this important to me at this blog?  It isn’t to prove the existence of God.  It leads right back to the idea of the necessity of a foundation – and a specific foundation – if we are to move toward liberty.  To greatly summarize: Christian ethics are a required foundation for liberty as we have come to know it in the west; without this foundation, we have no chance for liberty. 

New Atheists claim that these ethics can be had without God – and without God, our liberty will increase.  Many libertarians also believe the same – in fact, some will say that religion must be crushed for liberty to thrive.  Of course, I believe they are wrong, therefore – despite having the evidence of the last century or two on my side – it seems worthwhile to explore the reason as to why.

Feser begins by pointing out the paucity – if not complete absence – of New Atheist arguments contra Aquinas.  He really is funny when he does this – his ability to abuse with words is fabulous. 

One wonders how [Aquinas] would have reacted to the mental and moral midgets now being marketed as “New Atheists” who peddle stale “refutations” of theism that were themselves refuted long before Aquinas came on the scene.

What do these New Atheists do with Aquinas?  Dawkins – a biologist, not a student of philosophy – “is the only “New Atheist” to offer anything even remotely like an attempt to answer [Aquinas], feeble as it is.”  Sam Harris – who at least has an undergraduate degree in philosophy – finds room to mention Feser in his book End of Faith, yet says nothing of Aquinas and very little about the classical arguments for God’s existence.

Daniel Dennett – “a long-established “big name” academic philosopher” – in his 448-page book devoted to “breaking the spell” of religion, devotes three pages to addressing the classical philosophical arguments for God’s existence.  Even Dennett’s peers found his work lacking “philosophical depth”; Michael Ruse offered by email to Dennett: “I thought your new book is really bad and not worthy of you…”

Why Aquinas?  He has written perhaps eight million words examining God.  Feser describes him as a towering intellect with a single-minded devotion to God. When his brothers held him captive to prevent his joining the Dominicans, Aquinas memorized the entire Bible and the four books of the Sentences of Peter Lombard.

The Four Books of Sentences (Libri Quattuor Sententiarum) is a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the 12th century. It is a systematic compilation of theology, written around 1150; it derives its name from the sententiae or authoritative statements on biblical passages that it gathered together.

A commentary on the Sentences was required of every master of theology, and was part of the examination system. At the end of lectures on Lombard's work, a student could apply for bachelor status within the theology faculty.

Puny thinker Aquinas was not.

The classical argument for God’s existence is attacked by these New Atheists as if a scientific hypothesis; instead, Aquinas is making an argument based on the reasoning evidenced in geometry or mathematics: for example, the Pythagorean Theorem can be reasoned through once one understands triangularity, etc.

Geometry doesn’t work that way.  It doesn’t involve the formulation and testing of hypotheses, after the fashion of empirical science.  This hardly makes it less rational than empirical science; it just shows that the sort of argumentation used in empirical science is not the only kind of rational argumentation that there is.

I will not attempt to present Aquinas’s arguments here; I will offer that these are built on the metaphysical arguments made by Aristotle: we observe things that exist, these undergo change, and exhibit final causes; therefore “there necessarily must be a God who maintains them in existence at every instance.”

Metaphysical arguments cannot be dismissed as “not scientific”; in fact, scientific arguments are built on metaphysical assumptions: there is a physical world existing independent of our minds, there are objective laws of logic and mathematics that apply to this objective world.  To dismiss metaphysical arguments is to dismiss science.

As E.A. Burtt offers: “But inasmuch as the positivist mind has failed to school itself in careful metaphysical thinking, its ventures at such points will be apt to appear pitiful, inadequate, or even fantastic.”

In my previous post on Feser’s work, RMB asked: “Wonder how Aristotle defended the existence of the 4 causes. Or was it simply that he asserted and defended the distinction of actuality and potentiality?”  To which I replied, basically…I have no idea.  But, maybe, some hints of it can be found here – in this understanding of metaphysics: premises that are obviously known from our sensory experience.

Conclusion

As mentioned, I will not present Feser’s review of Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of God – albeit I have marked up this section in my copy of this book perhaps more extensively than any other pages I have read anywhere.  I will just offer:

I realize, of course, that many will reply that there is still a fatal flaw in Aquinas’s argument insofar as final causes don’t exist. …But they are wrong to say it.  The reality of formal and final causes is rationally unavoidable, as we will see by the end of this book.

All I can say: if final causes don’t exist, I have no idea the point of life; if final causes don’t exist, we can all quit this libertarianism nonsense.

Epilogue

I am going out on a limb here, but I believe that it is through Kant that this idea of turning metaphysics into a science gained traction.  Reason must be limited to what we “know”: the physical objects of our experience.  

Turning metaphysics into a science makes it something man can manipulate.  And dominate.  Like making a triangle something other than a triangle; this could be “reasonable,” depending on who was doing the reasoning.

Aristotle finds cause in the essence of things; Kant finds cause in the physical thing – there is no essence.  Like there is no such thing as a triangle unless there is a physical triangle.  Per Kant, it would be unreasonable to assume otherwise.