Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Inclination and Law, Part 1

IT IS THE COMMON EXPERIENCE OF MEN to encounter knowledge of morality through connatural means or as a result of inclination. For Maritain, the moral experience is par excellence knowledge gained by connaturality or, what is the same thing, by inclination. Many men throughout history have not experienced the grace of contemplation, that is, mysticism natural or supernatural. Similarly, most men do not have the natural grace of poetic knowledge. These are graces, gifts--talents--either natural or supernatural that God dispenses, for reasons we do not know, as he, the Lord, sees fit. Recipients of these gifts, we are not to bury them, but to use them ad majorem Dei gloriam. On the other hand, the moral experience, and the connatural knowledge or inclinations that are part of it, is one that is given all men barring some sort of mental, or perhaps even moral, defect such as psychopathy. Morality is first of all experienced, lived, coming from the heart. It is not known conceptually as if some sort of Athena sprouting forth from the mind of man fully formed. Morality is first felt, though it be an intellectual feltness.* Moral philosophy, which is conceptual, discursive knowledge, follows this intellectual feltness.

It is through connaturality that moral consciousness attains a kind of knowing--inexpressible in words and notions--of the deepest dispositions--longings, fears, hopes or despairs, primeval loves and options--involved in the night of the subjectivity.

Maritain, 19. There is in man and intellectual feltness, that is "secret elements of evaluation which depend upon what he is, and which are known to him through inclination, through his own actual propensities and his own virtue, if he has any." Maritain, 19-20. It is, Maritain acknowledges, at least modernly, a "most controversial tenet" in the moral philosophy known as the classical natural law theory, and yet one absolutely essential to it, that moral knowledge is natural in the sense that it is naturally known, that is it is first and most fundamentally known through inclination or by connatural means, by an intellectual feltness, and not through conceptual knowledge or by way of reasoning.

The genuine concept of Natural Law is the concept of a law which is natural not only insofar as it expresses the normality of functioning of human nature, but also insofar as it is naturally known, not through conceptual knowledge and by way of reasoning.

Maritain, 20. This notion--that the natural law is principally one that is known through connaturality or inclination--was largely jettisoned by the Enlightenment theories of natural law and their progeny. In Maritain's view, it is on account of the rejection of moral knowledge by connaturality or inclination that these post-Enlightenment theories of "natural law" are not natural law theories at all, but cheap imitations, disguises, even falsifications of the classical natural law theory.

Eighteenth-century rationalism assumed that Natural Law was either discovered in Nature or a priori deduced by conceptual and rational knowledge, and from there imposed upon human life by philosophers and by legislators in the manner of a code of geometrical propositions. . . . I submit that all the theories of Natural Law which have been offered since Grotius (and including Grotius himself) were spoiled in disregard of the fact that Natural Law is known through inclination or connaturality, and not through conceptual and rational knowledge.

Maritain, 22-23. Against the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment theories of natural law, Maritain insists that any viable theory of natural law must incorporate an understanding of the moral experience as being fundamentally one known by inclination, by connatural means, or what he also calls congenial means. The moral experience is not one first gained through conceptual knowledge or by some knowledge imposed from on high through revelation. It is a deeply internal, "felt" notion, arising out of subjective experience, yet intellectual in origin and objective all the same because it involves a form of objective knowledge, albeit one not conceptual. This knowledge by inclination or connaturality may be later studied or analyzed using conceptual analysis--hence we have moral philosophy--and yet at its center the moral experience is fundamentally inside each individual man and is intellectually known in another form before the practical reason is exercised:

My contention is that the judgments in which Natural Law is made manifest to practical Reason do not proceed from any conceptual, discursive, rational exercise of reason; they proceed from that connaturality or congeniality through which that what is consonant with the essential inclinations of human nature is grasped by the intellect as good; what is dissonant, as bad.

Maritain, 20. Some of these inclinations are, we might point out, intimately tied to our animal nature. They are, for all that, no less human. The inclinations, Maritain points out, "even if they deal with animal instincts, are essentially human, and therefore, reason-permeated inclinations." Maritain, 20. Thus, the urge to procreate, the yearning to live and to survive against threats to our survival, to live in common with others of our kind, and so on, while tied to our animal nature, are not somehow inhuman or ignoble desires. Though in some respects shared with the brutes, they are, in man, wrapped up in reason and are no less noble than any purely intellectual yearning.** These inclinations, however "earthy" or "base" they may seem to a Platonic philosopher or a Jansenist theologian, are "inclinations refracted through the crystal of reason in its unconscious or preconscious life." Maritain, 20. It is this understanding of these basic drives that allows the advocate of a natural law theory to skirt the accusation that natural law advocates advance some sort of primitive biologism. The accusation is nonsense. It is this deep understanding of the body/soul union in man that allowed John Paul II to advance his theology of the body, which is as far from biologism as any theory can be. Without neglecting the soul, the body, and its inclinations--those things connatural to it or congenial to it--inform us of God's pattern for us, it is part of God's creation of us and so within it can be found his norms, his pattern, his law.

Since these inclinations are intimately tied to our nature, they are also intimately tied to the fact that man, by nature, is social and therefore historical. We ought therefore not be surprised--indeed we must understand--that these inclinations, this knowledge by congenial or connatural means, is affected by where man is in history. Sometimes our intellectual feltness is wrong, is missteered by convention or historical circumstances, and requires correction.***

There is therefore a complex relationship between the connatural knowledge that man, both individual and in the aggregate, has of the moral experience and where he happens to have been placed in society and history. We ought not be surprised, therefore, that social man, that historical man has both experienced times where these inclinations, this knowledge of moral right and wrong, develops and corrupts, ebbs and flows. We ought not be surprised that there are cultures, social structures, that are conducive to the flowering of these inclinations, that promote the connatural knowledge of the moral experience. Equally, we ought not be surprised that there are cultures, social structures and conventions, that inhibit the flowering of the bloom, sometimes even squelch the germination of the seed entirely, of this form of moral knowledge. Man is too tied to his time and place in history for any moral philosopher to pull him out of his conventional, historical state, place him in a "state of nature," and then claim that the "state of nature" where he has place man defines man truly. And yet though man travels through history, and always find himself placed in convention, there is a kernel, a golden thread, even a patrimony that may be recognized, gained, and seized:

[M]an being an historical animal, these inclinations of human nature either developed or were released in the course of time: as a result, man's knowledge of Natural Law progressively developed, and continues to develop. And the very history of moral conscience has divided the truly essential inclinations of human nature from the accidental, warped or perverted ones. I would say that these genuinely essential inclinations have been responsible for the regulations which, recognized in the form of dynamic schemes from the time of the oldest social communities, have remained permanent in the human race, while taking forms more definite and more clearly determined.

Maritain, 21. The development which Maritain points to is not monolithic. And Maritain may be criticized for his naive, if well-meaning, historical optimism. There is an ebb and flow in the human moral patrimony. There is both development and corruption, and development may be found in one portion of mankind in both time and place, and corruption and brutality in another in both time and place. So we have such advances as a near unanimous rejection of human chattel slavery, which in times past has been tolerated if not promoted.
"I submit that all the theories of Natural Law which have been offered since Grotius (and including Grotius himself) were spoiled in disregard of the fact that Natural Law is known through inclination or connaturality, and not through conceptual and rational knowledge."
--Jacques MaritainYet, accompanying such development, we have also such moral retrogression, indeed moral blindness, such as a near universal acceptance of artificial contraception as a "good," and abortion as a "right." Not so long ago, we might remember, a sophisticated people denied humanity to a good part of their fellow men. And before that, a sophisticated king performed enormities on his African brothers in the Congo. Modernly, there is a good part of Islam--it is impossible to measure the proportion--that apparently finds it good to kill innocent civilians in the name of their bloodthirsty Allah, when who they actually worship is Moloch or Huitzilopochtli by another name. Modernly, we are utterly blind to fundamental sexual sins, that is, fundamental misuse, abuse of the sexual faculty. Indeed, so perverse have we become that we call access to contraception, to abortion, to homosexual sex "rights." These corruptions show that not all progress is upward. So long as man travels through history, there will be patches of light, and splotches of darkness. At the same time, we would hope that man may have learned from historical mistakes, and may, as he travels through time, become a little wiser.

There are, Maritain notes, important consequences that the natural law is known through inclination or connaturality, and not through discursive, conceptual knowledge. Maritain identifies three, and we will discuss them in our next blog posting in this series.

________________________________________
*In struggling with this concept of knowledge by inclination or by connaturality, I have coined the term "intellectual feltness." The term is intended to express the inclinatory, connatural, or congenial aspect of this intellectual knowledge. At the same time, it is meant to distinguish this experience from mere "feelings" or "urges" that are corrupt or have no basis in reason. It is this deep, unutterable reason, which is what the concept of knowledge by inclination, connaturality, or congeniality is intended to express, that I hope to encompass by this word.
**And yet, they are not absolute values. They may be yielded or abandoned, not because they are evil, but from some greater good. Hence the desire to procreate may be given up in a vow of celibacy for the glory of God, in the manner of Catholic religious. A man, imitating the Son of God, may give up his life for another such as St. Maximilian Kolbe. Similarly, a hermit gives up the natural inclination to live in common so as to achieve a closer union with God. Exceptional, these exceptions prove the general rule.
***Hence the practical need for Revelation and the Magisterial teaching of the Church.

Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Connaturality and Knowledge

KNOWLEDGE IS MORE THAN CONCEPTS AND LOGIC. In Maritain's Thomistic theory of natural law, there is a kind of knowledge that may be gained by means other than through discursive process or logical application of concepts. The existence of such other knowledge, of course, causes problem to some, like Kant and his disciples, who maintain that all thought is based upon "pure" reason. By ignoring this other source of knowledge, what Maritain (following St. Thomas) calls "knowledge through connaturality," the Kantians leave a great part, perhaps the more important part, out of the equation in their analysis of speculative and practical knowledge, and of judgment. In guarding their neat little boundaries, in arbitrarily ruling this knowledge outside the pale of human knowledge, they leave out a whole universe of knowledge from their ken.

There are several aspects of "knowledge by connaturality" that should be understood:

• First, it is a form of intellectual knowledge, and so has as much dignity as knowledge based upon rational concepts and demonstration, that is, connatural knowledge is equally as valid as discursive knowledge; though connatural knowledge is obscure, and though it is not rational in the sense of based upon intellectual concepts and demonstration, it is not irrational.
  
• But knowledge by connaturality is more than intellectual knowledge. It is a form of intellectual knowledge not acting alone, but aided by"affective inclinations and dispositions of the will." Maritain, 15. Thus, it includes the whole man, not just a small intellectual sliver of him.
  
• Knowledge by connaturality works through inclinations, through a sort of embodiment or habitual tendencies (in moral contexts, virtues, but knowledge by connaturality is valid in other contexts, say, mysticism, poetry, etc.). It suggests a congeniality, a union, a connaturality with that concept. It informs us by means of "inner bents and propensities or our own being." Maritain, 15. It is more that the mere experience or pragmatism of William James. It is more than Bergsonian intuition. It is felt, it is learned, it is given.
  
• Knowledge by connaturality plays an important part, perhaps the more significant part, in our human existence. It is the more common form by which we fashion judgments in many contexts, moral, speculative, poetic, mystical.
• It helps us realize the analogical overlap behind various kinds of knowledge, that is knowledge as conceptual and logico-discursive, and knowledge, by connaturality.

Knowledge by connaturality is used day to day, "especially in that knowing of the singular which comes about in everyday life and in our relationship person to person." Maritain, 16. Indeed, one wonders if humans could function without having a sort of connatural knowledge with respect to day to day affairs. If one had to use syllogistic, discursive reasoning at every turn, confronting every situation, things would slow down to a snail's pace. Most decisions day to day are made by a snap reaction, a sort of immediate apprehension of the situation and applied judgment, in short, as a result of knowledge by connaturality. No man, after he has learned to drive, thinks discursively on his way to work that he must stop his car at a red light. If he has been driving for any length of time, he knows by connaturality, by a sort of acquired reflexivity, that he should stop at red, and his body responds by inclination without forming concepts and thinking discursively. What happens in the most mundane of affairs can also happen in more important affairs. To help us understand knowledge by connaturality, Maritain looks at this kind of knowledge within four contexts: mysticism, poetry, morality, and metaphysics.

Though this sort of notion, or something similar to this notion, has had "a long history in human thought," awareness of knowledge by connaturality appears to have been the fruit, at least in the West, of efforts to understand the mystical experience of contemplatives. Maritain, 14, 16-17. The knowledge of God gained by mystics is not derived through concepts, through logic and discourse, through human effort. But it is knowledge seized, as it were, by faith and by the union caused by love. This sort of knowledge is ultimately brought about by a loving response to God's inspiration and grace, a God that inhabits, as it were, that very human soul. The theologians grasped that they were dealing with a different sort of knowledge here:

They observed that obviously a fruitive experience of the deity cannot be provided by our concepts or ideas which, as true as they may be, make us know divine things at a distance, and through the analogy of creatures. Consequently, such supra-conceptual knowledge can come about only through connaturality, through the connaturality that love of charity, which is a participation in God's very love, produces between man and God.

Maritain, 16. This form of knowledge was perceived as objective, equally as objective as, though perhaps even of greater dignity than, conceptual knowledge. It was, in fact, the only adequate knowledge of God, since conceptual knowledge of God was impossible. If our concept of God comprehended God, then it would not be God, for God was greater than our intellect, and certainly greater than our concepts. What our intellect comprehended could therefore not be God (si comprehenderis non est Deus). Thus the mystical experience engendered by love was transformed into a form of objective knowledge, amor transit in conditionem objecti per connaturalitatem. This form of knowledge replaced, or increased our understanding of, that sort of knowledge which is properly conceptual, where the intellect grasps the thing known, that is, knowledge as adequatio rei et intellectus. The latter form of knowledge being, with respect to God, inadequate, in any event, since, at the "summit of our knowledge," we can only "know God as unknown," tanquam ignotus cognoscitur. Maritain, 17. So in assessing the contemplative experience, the theologians distinguished an appreciation of two forms of knowledge: conceptual and connatural.

In Maritain's view, there is also an analogous natural mystical experience that man, outside of the Christian revelation, also partakes in. As examples, Maritain cites Plotinus or the Indian mystics. One may also cite Plato or Muslim or Buddhist mystics as examples of this naturally-based mysticism. By definition, this sort of experience would not be grace-based; nevertheless, it is authentically human and consists of a sort of forced, disciplined introspection along with self-emptying that leads one to a supra-conceptual, connatural understanding of Being. It may be better to let Maritain speak:

The reality to be experience [in this sort of connatural form of knowledge] is the very Existence, the very Esse of the Self in its pure metaphysical actuality--Atman--and as proceeding from the One Self . . . .

Maritain, 18. This form of knowledge, of course, is subject to being misunderstood, misinterpreted, guided by forces, spirits that can work to our destruction. Naturally, such sort of human knowledge, like all human knowledge, remains subject to the guidance of the Magisterium of the Church.