// Comments from the Fellows

Chris Oleson Ph.D

A Brief Primer on the Natural Law (Part II)

Readers of the first installment of this short introduction to the rudiments of natural law ethics will remember that I tried to end the piece with a gripping cliff-hanger of a conundrum: How is it possible, I asked, if the natural law is supposed to be a source of moral insight that is naturally knowable to all people, that it is so widely repudiated today? How can one affirm the existence of a universal moral law rationally drawn from our common human nature when the widespread sensibility of modern secular society seems to reflect what Benedict XVI called a "dictatorship of relativism"? Does not the seemingly ubiquitous cultural celebration of diversity and difference argue against the existence of a universally knowable moral truth? In other words, does not the fact of cultural and moral pluralism entail the conclusion of moral relativism and falsify claims about a common natural law?

As a matter of simple logic, the answer to this question is “no.” The widespread repudiation of, or failure to recognize, a claim that is asserted to be true and universally knowable does not logically entail that the claim is not true or universally knowable. This is a “non sequitur,” which is to say, a conclusion that “does not follow” from the premises. Just as no one rightly thinks that the pervasive belief in the flatness of the earth made the globe any less spherical, so likewise is it illegitimate to infer from the widespread societal failure to recognize the evil of forced enslavement the morally unexceptional nature of that institution. As interesting as they sometimes are, the results of opinion polls bear no logical relationship to the truth or falsity of moral statements.

However, merely to point out that our society’s pluralism and skepticism does not in and of itself falsify the claims of natural law is not a sufficient response to the issue at hand. The question we are tackling is an honest one and deserves to be answered, for there is genuine bafflement abut how the natural law and its widespread repudiation can both simultaneously exist. Those who recognize and assert the existence of the natural law need to be able to explain how its precepts can become obscured in the consciences of individuals and even of whole societies. Fortunately, a philosophical explanation for such a thing has been around for at least as long as the writings of Aristotle. But before we offer a sketch of this explanation, there is one point that needs to be made quite clear.

Verbal denials of the universal objectivity of moral precepts do not necessarily mean that the deniers do not actually have universal and objective moral commitments (and accordingly make absolute moral judgments). As I said in part one of this piece, everyone at some level does recognize the reality of human nature and acts and judges accordingly. As we shall see, the natural law can be obscured and perverted in human consciences, but it cannot be entirely erased. For instance, I have yet to meet someone who does not see that there are appropriate and inappropriate expressions of the emotion of fear. Who seriously disagrees that a man who abandons his own child in the woods because he was too afraid of the dark to care about anything else but his own life has let his fear get the better of him and behaved in a cowardly manner?

Similarly, I cannot think of anyone (outside of those who are on an FBI watch list, or should be on one) who does not recognize that the expression of lust directed toward the very young is unnatural and iniquitous. Our sexual faculty has a natural use for which it was intended and this clearly falls outside of that use. We do not discuss the pros and cons of such a view with those who deny that pedophilia is unnatural, we prepare to incarcerate them, and rightly so, for only the pathologically damaged can have so eclipsed their rational faculties as to not see the violation of human nature here.

I take this extreme example simply for the sake of clarity. Human nature and its proper acts and ends are not voodoo concepts remote from human experience and understanding. Extremely rare is the person who has actually been so barbarized that he has lost every last vestige of understanding what is proper to human nature. Much more common is the “relativist” who unreflectively presupposes of an obscured sense of nature in his everyday judgments while simultaneously espousing “correct” opinions about the socially constructed nature of morality. Such a person miseducated into believing himself to be a relativist actually does recognize a line where “natural” crosses over to “unnatural,” he just doesn’t recognize that he recognizes it.

As true as all this is, we still have not yet explained how it is that people can come to have a profoundly diminished sense of the natural moral order among various human acts or acquire such varying views about the human good. This leads us back to Aristotle and his insights into human character and sound moral judgment. In order to understand the fragility and variability of our grasp of the proper acts and ends of human nature, we need to see with Aristotle that the moral life is principally about good habits (not “values”) and that our habits, whether good or bad, invariably shape how we experience and evaluate our passions and desires.

In other words, whatever we become accustomed to doing comes to appear progressively more “natural” to us. The more we do something habitually, the more it comes to seem like a good and normal thing to do, for the choices we make throughout our lives shape how we are disposed to experience our emotions and appetites. Thus, depending upon the habits people form, what pleases, pains, angers, and scares them will vary from person to person. Not everyone, for example, experiences the emotion of fear in the same way, at the same time, towards the same things, or for the same reasons (e.g., what will be experienced as idiotically reckless to a coward will be perceived as heroically noble to a brave man). Similarly, not everyone derives bodily pleasure from the same things, in the same way, or with the same intensity (e.g., what would be perceived as a sweet opportunity and a “good time” to an unfaithful womanizer will be experienced as a painfully abhorrent betrayal to a constant husband). As Aristotle says, “pleasure…is regarded differently by different persons, and varies according to the habit of individuals” (Politics, VIII, 3). To a person of virtuous habits, generosity is pleasurable and greed is painful. To the habitually greedy, hording money is a delight while sharing it is repellant.

This tells us a lot about the varying capacity of people to recognize the particular precepts of the natural law. The more someone through his or her choices develops habits contrary to the ends of human nature (e.g. cowardice, licentiousness, gluttony, greed, selfishness, laziness, cruelty, etc.) the more he or she will be unable to perceive such practices as morally problematic. As Aristotle puts it, “As soon as a man becomes corrupted by pleasure or pain, the [true] end no longer appears to him as a principle: he no longer sees [what is naturally appropriate], for vice tends to destroy” his moral understanding (NE, 1140b13-19). Our actions are not without effect upon our sensibilities. A long series of poor choices will metastasize our inordinate passions and desires and deprive us of the moral vision we would otherwise possess.

For Aristotle, then, the conclusion to be drawn from the widespread rejection of basic precepts of the natural law is not that good and evil are subjective and relative, but that all of us more or less struggle with the rationally distorting influence of bad habits: “If something is pleasant to a person whose character is bad, we must not think that it is actually pleasant to anyone other than him, just as we would deny that that is actually healthy, sweet, or bitter which is so to a sick man” (1173b21-25). That many people cannot see that pornography, fornication, or adultery is contrary to the good of human nature, for instance, is not a reason for fretting that perhaps after all there really is nothing naturally right or wrong, but for lamenting the tragic power of these vices to snuff out human understanding of their destructive malignity.

There is simply no egalitarian democracy of moral insight. The virtuous man or woman is the measure of moral understanding, not simply the holder of just another opinion. The idea of “one person, one vote” makes absolutely no sense when it comes to ascertaining right and wrong. To regard Hugh Heffner and Mother Theresa as equally worthy of being listened to on questions of moral propriety would be, for Aristotle and St. Thomas, the height of lunacy and bad education. The womanizing hedonist has profoundly eclipsed his rational capacity for correctly experiencing and judging the. proper ends of human sexuality. His “opinions” and “values” regarding sexual ethics are practically worthless. They do not constitute an equally interesting vote to be added to the list.

Now this dynamic at work in individual human characters can also take place in the cultures of entire societies. Habits in a single person have their social counterpart in the customs of a whole people. If those customs become corrupt, so will the consciences of those habitually living by those social customs. St. Thomas referred to this possible societal deficiency of knowledge of the natural law when he noted that “in some people reason is corrupted by passion, or bad custom, or a bad disposition of nature, as formerly among the Germanic tribes theft was not regarded as evil even though it is expressly contrary to the natural law, as Julius Caesar relates in his book The Gallic War (ST, I-II, 94, 4).

Turning back to our own customs, in particular our sexual customs, is it any wonder that people have a difficult time perceiving a countervailing natural law regulating the proper acts and ends of human sexuality when “consensuality” has become the only real requirement for “hooking up”? If our customs are formed within a social order significantly characterized by an incessant flow of sense stimulation, of thumping beats, suggestive images, erotic bodily movement, and alluring suggestions, how can one expect our capacity for moral understanding to not be correspondingly affected? This is, of course, only one particularly obvious aspect of the human good that our culture seems to struggle with appreciating. I present it not as the source of all our problems, but simply as one example of the general principle regarding the relationship between custom and knowledge of the natural law.

There is much more that can and needs to be said about the factors that contribute to our inability to see clearly in matters pertaining to the natural law. We have only scratched to surface of why relativism is such a fashionable doctrine. However, we have said enough here at least to begin to see how it is that individuals and even whole societies can lose their grip on universal moral precepts that are naturally knowable by all because rooted in a common human nature.

Chris Oleson Ph.D . is associate professor of philosophy for the Legion of Christ at their Center for Higher Studies in Thornwood, New York. He teaches the history of modern philosophy, the philosophy of culture, as well as various courses in moral and political philosophy. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a Master of Arts in Religion from Yale Divinity School.