Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: The Seven Basic Values

TO GET AT OTHER BASIC VALUES beyond knowledge, one has to cut through urges, drives, tendencies which perhaps in some way are aligned with values or contradict them, the material, physical, psychological conditions which may be required for the exercise of values, individual and particular goals that participate in the values, and means used to implement values. One has also to clamber over the myriad expressions of those values in a variety of cultures. But Finnis is confident that careful study yields a relatively non-controversial list of basic values that are incontrovertible and self-evident. What values may be placed in that set that can fit in the blank: "____ is a good in itself"? Finnis identifies seven: life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability (friendship), practical reasonableness, and 'religion.'

There is a particular importance in calling these values basic. In the Finnisian theory of natural law, basic when used with the term value has a technical meaning:

First, each [basic value] is equally self-evidently a form of good. Secondly, none can be analytically reduced to being merely an aspect of any of the others, or to being merely instrumental in the pursuit of the others. Thirdly, each one, when we focus on it, can reasonably be regarded as the most important. Hence there is no objective hierarchy amongst them.

NLNR, 92. The basic values are, in short, equally fundamental. "[T]here is no objective priority of value amongst them," though in our self-determination "[e]ach of us has a subjective order of priority amongst the basic values." NLNR, 93. They are, however, objectively incommensurable.*

Another point that Finnis makes with respect to the basic values is that they are not really pursued as one might goals, and they are certainly not ever fully realized in toto. Rather, the basic values are participated in. "So 'pursuit' and 'realization' are rather misleading in their connotations here, and it is convenient to say that one participates in the basic values." NLNR, 96. Participating in such human values through projects, activities, and choices often leads to pleasure, but it need not. Ultimately, whether pleasure is obtained or not, participating in such human values leads to happiness, not in the trite sense, but in the deeper, fuller, Aristotelian sense of eudaimonia, an authentic human flourishing:

By participating in them [the basic human values] in the way one chooses to, one hopes not only for the pleasure of successfully consummated physical performance and the satisfaction of successfully completed projects, but also for 'happiness' in the deeper, less usual sense of that word in which it signifies, roughly, a fullness of life, a certain development of a person, a meaningfulness of one's existence.

NLNR, 96.

There is, ultimately, some link between these basic human values and the natural law:

[T]he practical principles which enjoin one to participate in those basic forms of good, through the practically intelligent decisions and free actions that constitute one the person one is and is to be, have been called in the Western philosophical tradition the first principles of natural law, because they lay down for us the outlines of everything one could reasonably want to do, to have, and to be.

NLNR, 97. With this understanding of what Finnis understands a basic value to be, we now turn to the basic values he has identified.

Life in its broadest sense is such a self-evident basic value. It includes "every aspect of the vitality (vita, life) which puts a human being in good shape for self-determination." NLNR, 86. It is an obvious value, and a tremendous investment of human resources, both individual and social, are aimed at supporting this value. It is what lies behind the drive for self-preservation, what lies behind the great weight given to the transmission of life by the procreation of children which is nothing other than "life-in-its-transmission," and what lies behind myriad social institutions, including our legal, medical, and charitable institutions. NLNR, 86-87. Though the value is intellectual at root, it shows itself predictably in strong urges of self-preservation and urges to couple. The value of life, however, must be distinguished from the manner in which it is supported by more basic physical, emotional, psychological drives.

Knowledge, another basic value, was treated in our last post.**

Play is "engaging in performances which have no point beyond the performance itself, enjoyed for its own sake." NLNR, 87. Whether solitary (solitaire) or social (bridge), whether intellectual (crossword puzzle) or physical (rock climbing), whether strenuous (jogging) or relaxed (drinking bourbon and smoking a cigar), whether highly structured (playing chess) or relatively informal (charades), conventional (an opera or ballet) or ad hoc (a practical joker), it is expressed in multitudinous ways.

Aesthetic experience, another basic good in Finnis's list, in some ways overlaps with play, but it is nevertheless its own value. Aesthetic experience is broader because it includes both a passive appreciation of beauty (e.g., in nature, appreciating the orange alpenglow on a snow-capped mountain peak, for instance, or in art, e.g., listening to Franz Schubert's Piano Sonatas), although it may also exist in the experiences associated with the creation of beauty (painting) or active appreciation of it (reading poetry, e.g., Gerard Manley Hopkins).

Sociability is the next basic value identified by Finnis. This value's expansive breadth includes the minimum level of social peace and harmony for tolerable society, to stronger, more intimate forms of community and collaboration, to the zenith of its expression in friendship. It would be unreasonable to take the position that one is better off without friends. Self-evidently, friendship is a great value that has everywhere been appreciated.

Practical reasonableness is the good of "being able to bring one's own intelligence to bear effectively (in practical reason that issues in action) on the problems of choosing ones actions and lifestyle and shaping one's own character." NLNR, 89. It has both negative and positive, and internal and external components, and so is almost an amalgam complex, one "involving freedom and reason, integrity and authenticity." Obviously, bringing one's intelligence to play in the acts of one's life requires, negatively, freedom from compulsion (internal or external). It also requires something positive, namely the recruitment of reason so as to bring forth "an intelligent and reasonable order," a ratio ordinis, "into one's own actions and habits and practical attitudes." NLNR, 88. It is internal: one's emotions and urges ought to be self-disciplined under reason's rule so as to be in some sort of tranquility of order. It is also external: one's outward actions ought to be consonant with, integrated with, one's internal ordering and so authentic.

'Religion' is the last basic value identified by Finnis. Finnis blames Cicero for the "scare quotes" around the word.*** Essentially, however, at the core of this value is the limited nature of all the other values: they all terminate, at least for any particular individual, with death. How, then, can these other values relate to the greater reality of the cosmos beyond any one of us? What is the source of human freedom, human intelligence, and human self-mastery. What is the value above all human values? Is there "something . . . which is free, intelligent, and sovereign in a way (and over a range) no human being can be?" NLNR, 89. Finnis acknowledges that a materialist, an empiricist, one who "doubt[s] or den[ies] that the universal order-of-things has any origin beyond the 'origins known to the natural sciences," will have "misgivings" with this value. NLNR, 89. But the point is that there is a self-evident value in pursuing the ultimate meaning of life, of human freedom, and of reason even if (arguendo) the answer is that there is no meaning. But really, this is conceding too much. Utrum Deus sit,† one should think, is not a trip to Ultima Thule, an unattainable goal. The "God question" is important, fundamental:

But is it reasonable to deny that it is, at any rate, peculiarly important to have thought reasonably and (where possible) correctly about these questions of the origins of cosmic order and of human freedom and reason . . . And does not that importance in large part consist in this: that if there is a transcendent origin of the universal order-of-things and of human freedom and reason, then one's life and actions are in fundamental disorder if they are not brought, as best one can, into some sort of harmony with whatever can be known or surmised about the transcendent other and its lasting order?

NLNR, 90.

In addition to these basic values, Finnis also identifies ways or modes of pursuing the basic values. Basic values are "aspects of human self-determination and self-realization," but they are not the only aspects. There are also aspects that are modal or vital (and not just instrumental) to the exercise of the aspects of basic values. Finnis gives examples of courage, generosity, moderation, gentleness--what seems to be a list of virtues. They are very close to the basic values and almost enjoy the status of "good for its own sake" that the basic values do. Sometimes these ways or modes become more important that the basic goods, in which event you may have "'peculiar' conventions, norms, institutions, and orders of preference." NLNR, 91. He gives as example the aristocratic code of honor--the pundonor or punto de honor that led to the code duello in contradiction to the very basic value of life, and so led to such events as that between Alexander Hamilton and Raymond Burr, a display of foolishness if there ever was one.

Finnis is clear to distinguish "inclinations and urges of one's nature" from basic values since "there are many inclinations and urges that do not correspond to or support any basic value: for example, the inclination to take more than one's share, or the urge to gratuitous cruelty." NLNR, 91. He insists that his list of basic good is not derived from inclinations and urges--whether these are in support of the basic values or to their detriment. Inclinations and urges, moreover, are in need of justification, whereas the basic human values are not. Indeed, there are times where these inclinations are so destructive of human values that they are "as baffling as persistent illogicality, as opaque and pointless as, say, a demand for a plate of mud for no reason at all." NLNR, 91. Whether they arise as a result of a corruption of the search for a basic value through "exclusiveness or inversion" or just simple "psychosomatic disease," these corrupt inclinations remain separate and distinct from the basic values.

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*For the notion of "incomensurability" see the article Inommensurable Values in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
**See Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: To Know is Good.
***For an extensive treatment on the word "religio," see Friedrich Max Müller's Gifford Lecture 2, available on line at Gifford Lectures.

It is well known that Lactantius derived religio from religare, to bind or hold back, and he did so, not simply as a philologist, but as a theologian. ‘We are born,’ he says, ‘under the condition that, when born, we should offer to God our justly due services, should know Him only, and follow Him only. We are tied to God and bound to Him (religati) by the bond of piety, and from this has religion itself received its name, and not, as Cicero has interpreted it, from attention (a relegendo).’

Before we examine this etymology, it will be useful to give the etymology which Lactantius ascribes to Cicero, and which he is bold enough to reject. Cicero says: ‘Those who carefully took in hand all things pertaining to the worship of the gods, were called religiosi, from relӗgere,—as neat people (elegantes) were so called from elegere, to pick out; likewise diligent people, diligentes, from diligere, to choose, to value, and intelligent people from intelligere, to understand; for in all these words there is the meaning of legere, to gather, to choose, the same as in religiosus.

Müller, Gifford Lectures, Lecture 2 (footnotes omitted) (citing to Lactantius, Institut. Div. iv. 28 and Cicero, De Nat. Deor. ii. 28). In using "scare quotes," then Finnis seems to be leaning toward a Lactantian definition of "religion," rather than a Ciceronian.
†Latin: "Whether God is"

Life under the Microscope: Life v. The New Fates of "Having a Life"

SOME OF THE OPPONENTS OF THE SANCTITY OF LIFE distinguish between life (which they equate generally with merely biological process) and "having a life." (e.g., James Rachels in his book End of Life, quoted by Oderberg, 159.). This effort at measuring the concept of "having a life" is the consequentialist effort at objectifying the determination of when life is no longer worth living from the perspective of the potential victim. Once again, we have here a notion of life which is instrumental--life as a backpack, not as the hub of a wheel.*

"Having a life" to these folks means the panoply of "biographical" aspects of a person, the "plans, projects, aspirations, memories, desires, preferences, making choices, fulfilling ambitions, and so on" that humans all enjoy and value. Oderberg, 159. It is the latter only that we value, say these folks, and not the biological life which is their carrier or their host; hence, they argue, biological life has no real moral import. It is what we value that is morally important. Those who merely subsist in biological life--the comatose, the ancephalic, or those whose suffering prevents, in any real sense the "biographical" aspects from developing--perhaps even the deaf, the dumb, the blind, those with severe physical or mental handicaps, the bedridden, the senile, the list could go on and on depending on who's doing the defining--do not really "have a life" in any moral sense.

Those persons that make this distinction seize on, and take advantage of, the psychological horror that can accompany suffering of those of our less fortunate brothers and sisters. Who, after all, would prefer (if he had a choice) a life of constant pain, or life in a coma, to a life of ordinary flourishing? Who would ever want the life of St. Lydwine of Schiedam? (And yet look what she did with it.) But that preference and that question are entirely different from the question of whether the life of the unfortunate person who suffers from these disadvantages is to be regarded as of less value to the point where he can be considered dispensable. The question of flourishing or the question of tragedy in life is a different question from the question of life, but the opponents of the sanctity of life doctrine would have us confuse the two, and then capitalize on the confusion. One could almost speak here of a "consequentialist fallacy," a fallacy in logic which jumps from flourishing or lack of flourishing to living and not living.

The extra moral theory that critics [of the sanctity of life doctrine] almost unanimously add to their judgments about a "life worth living" is one or other version of consequentialism, the theory that what matters is, purely and simply, the maximization of good effects, the greatest possible balance of good effects over bad. Since the test of maximization is an objective one it is, the critics believe, a natural ally in the devising of an objective test of whether a life is not "worth living."

Oderberg, 160-61. The problems that the advocates of such "objective" calculus face, are, of course, the same which any consequentialist theoretician faces. And they are insurmountable. What facts to we include in our universe of consequentialist calculus? What are our time boundaries? How do we measure the subjective components of the person whose life we, like some sort of modern version of the three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, spin into a thread, measure its length, and then cut it with "th'abhorred shears," to slit "the thin spun life"? (John Milton, Lycidas, l. 75)

The Modern Consequentialists: Would-be Clothos, Lachesises, and Atroposes?

We might scoff: Who died and made the consequentialists judge? The consequentialists' assumption of the office of the Fates, the Moirae, is hubristic, if nothing else, though it may also be be objected to as entirely arbitrary because their measurements are of impossible complexity.

Exactly what factors, in what degrees . . . and in what combinations? No answers to these crucial questions are forthcoming. . . . Consequentialism promises to come to the rescue, since it professes to offer a single, precise formula for reducing the various factors to a "common currency" that can be weighed and calculated . . . [b]ut there is . . . no agreement as to what that common currency is . . . .

Oderberg, 161.

Judge not lest you be judged, Oh ye consequentialists who would assume the role of masters of our fate! For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. (Cf. Matt. 7:1-2.) Perhaps we ought to consider that it is not those who suffer who do not "have a life." Perhaps it is those who would assume the mantle of the Fates, who would don the role of a measurer and cutter of life's thread, who do not "have a life," for they seem to have exploited it, commercialized it, cheapened it. In exchange for their filthy lucre--thirty pieces of their common consequentialist currency--they have sold life away, including their own, in a Faustian bargain, a vicious trade not unlike the one Judas made twenty centuries ago. Where is the Potter's Field that this blood money will buy and upon which the modern Vernichtungslagern and Todeslagern, the new consequentialist death camps, shall be built? This is not hyperbole. There are some already built as far away as Holland, and some are being planned in places as close as the State of Oregon. There are some who say that these are found in semine and in appropriately washed form in the two thousand or so pages of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the law that ushered in Obamacare and which will ration care against the interests of the terminally ill in favor of the young and robust. There is a frightening inhumaneness in the notion that government bureaucrats will be making consequentialist calculations on health care using using consequentialist-driven concepts such as those of the Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years (QARY) system. Under QARY, health care decision-makers seek to “amortize” the cost of treatment for a patient--say $120,000 for a hip replacement for an overweight 80 year old suffering from diabetes--over the remaining “quality years of life” likely for that patient--suppose three years for our example. Under our consequentialist-driven QARY calculation, the $40,000/year calculation suggests the treatment is contraindicated. Is this really how we want to be making these decisions?

Quomodo cecidisti de caelo, consequentialitarius? How art thou fallen from heaven, consequentialist? (Cf. Isaiah 14:12.)

Life under the Microscope: The Tomfoolery of "Life Worth Living" Advocates

THE HORRIBLE DOCTRINES OF THOSE messengers of death that find life to be an instrumental good, and therefore subject to moral commerce and exchangeable for worth, are foul to sight and insulting to reason. To trade with life, to give it up like some old shoe when worn or an undergarment when soiled, is morally abhorrent. It is very close to, in fact it may be a form of, an implicit blasphemy, because it is an assault on being, on existence, and created being is very nigh to God who is the self-subsistent being from whom all created being comes.

The proponents of "life worth living" doctrines generally formulate arguments with both subjective and objective components. The subjective component looks at the person whose life is being analyzed from that person's perspective (an "internal perspective" test). The objective components are broken down into two: an objective valuation of the person's whose life is being analyzed (an objective analysis of the subject's life), and the effects of his death (or continued living) on others ("side effects test").

These doctrines will be explored, beginning, in this posting, with the subjective test which considers continued living from the standpoint of the person whose life is at issue. The next blog postings will address the objective prongs of these "life worth living" doctrinaires. All the "life worth living" advocates view life as instrumental, as a backpack whose use is only to hold or carry other goods, and when it is unable to carry these other goods well, it ought to be considered to be refuse. Thus human life is a vehicle for consciousness, or a vehicle for knowledge, or pleasure, etc. And if it is no longer able to support consciousness, or knowledge, or pleasure, etc. it ought to be gotten rid of. So the subjective test, in the words of Jonathan Glover, is an effort to see a person's life "from his own point of view and to see what he gets out of it." Oderberg, 155 (quoting Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives, p. 191).

We immediately confront problems in figuring out how to mix and measure the pottage of ingredients, the vast and complex matrices, that come with life, the "plans, projects, desires, preferences, feelings, memories, sense of identity, and so on," that are part of even the most ordinary life. How do we identify what ought to be present, and in what proportion, and in what combination? Who has the right recipe of life, if there is one recipe? And if there are recipes, then who has the right recipes? Who and how measure the so-called quality of life?

The "life is worth living" advocates are remarkably flippant about these questions. Given the value at stake--human life--one would have thought that these advocates would spouse something other than "a retreat to vagueness of such massive proportions." Oderberg, 155. Have we collapsed into the realm of mere feelings, and irrationality with this test? If not, then were is the rational, principled standard? It is particularly in the hard cases, in the controversial cases, that some sort of rational, principled standard is required, and yet the advocates of such theories appear to come up empty handed.

Not only is the test horribly unprincipled and not rationally founded, it is hopelessly amorphous in terms of time. The advocates recognize that the decision must be made "over a fairly long stretch of time" so as to avoid the vulnerability to "temporary changes of mood." We ought not come to the conclusion, these advocates admit, that "life is not worth living" because we have had a bad day. The days must be bad, and must be bad for a fairly long stretch of time. But just how long? That's a question that the advocates of "life worth living" doctrines cannot answer. Moreover, how do we assess hopes for the future? Is an optimist's life worth more than a pessimist's life, than a realist's life? On what basis? The whole procedure is clearly unmanageable.

There is, however, a more fundamental question that these advocates cannot appear to answer, and which suggests that something's gone awry in their thinking of human goods, which includes human life. There would seem to be no other basic human good for which we would entertain such a subjective test. Why is there such a subjective test when it comes to the basic human good of life? And why only when the matter becomes controversial? If we were to apply the subjective analysis that these advocates apply to the basic human good of life to another basic human good, say knowledge, the foolishness of their enterprise comes to light.

Like life in general, knowledge in general is worth having. It is a basic human good. Yet we would never judge the value of knowledge based upon a "personal standpoint" or "internal perspective" of the knower. Is knowledge only worth having if the knower feels he is getting enough out of it, only if it seems worthwhile to him? So if someone feels that learning math, or history, or English grammar is a waste of time, he ought not be made to learn math, or history, or English grammar? No, we don't look at knowledge this way. And so the question naturally arises, why, then, should we look at the basic human good of life in this way? More, why should we look at the basic human good of life in this way when the question is a hard one?

Moreover, the subjective test appears to be sort of like an intellectual Deus ex machina which rescues the "life is worth living" advocate from his quandary when the question becomes controversial, difficult. No one would think of applying such a subjective standard to a man who has all the objective external signs of happiness and a flourishing life. Why, then, should this subjective test all-of-a-sudden be rushed in from stage left to solve problems when the problem becomes thorny, difficult, controversial? Is this thinking? Or is this what it appears to be: an anodyne for thinking?

Life under the Microscope: When, if Ever, is Life Not Worth Living?

HUMAN LIFE HAS ITS TRAGIC INSTANCES; at its extremes, life can appear checked at every turn from flourishing. It can be burdensome, toilsome, fraught with pain, suffering, and hopelessness. It is not difficult to encounter or to envision what the consequentialist or "preference utilitarian" Peter Singer, in his Practical Ethics, calls "lives not worth living."* Jonathan Glover, another consequentialist beau, reasons that it is not life, but "how much the person himself gets out of life," that is crucial in the moral decision-making process. Oderberg, 153 (Oderberg gives no source). Opponents to the sanctity of life seize on these instances to carve exceptions to the law of the sanctity of life. Hard cases make bad law. While that may be true, there are hard cases, and there must be law even in hard cases. Hard cases do not take us into lawlessness. But that is where these sorts of consequentialists would have us go. They do not ask what is right or what is wrong, they ask such questions as:

• Is the life in question "worth living"?
• What effect does the effect of killing the life not "worth living" have on other people
• Would the preference of these other persons be satisfied?
• Would these other persons be traumatized by the continued existence of the life not "worth living"? Would they be relieved? etc., etc.
  

This is a collapse from law to expediency, from morality into barbarity. The lawlessness into which these "life-not-worth-living" folks would take us is apparent even to them. They acknowledge that it is difficult, if not impossible, to delineate with any sort of adequate precision when a life is "worth living," and when a life is "not worth living." Yet this sort of stuff is bandied about in the halls of academia, and in the board rooms where ethics are discussed, where decisions about life and death of some of the most vulnerable and suffering of our brothers and sisters are made.

German Euthanasia Propaganda Poster**

One might point out the frighteningly parallel thinking of the Nazi moralists who, in arguing for euthanasia in the 1930s (Aktion T4), spoke about "life unworthy of life," lebensunwerten Lebens. Are the likes of Singer and Glover dogs returning to their own vomit? In the matter of moral reasoning on euthanasia, if in nothing else, are they Nazi bedfellows?

It would seem so, and they are carrying many with them. But the apparent similarity between the apologists of the Nazi Euthanasia Program and modern proponents of euthanasia is not the only reason for rejecting these folks' reasoning. Perhaps we would be accused of engaging in an ad hominem attack. So we might also show that their moral reasoning is not objective reasoning at all--though it purports to offer some objective tests to determining when life is "worth living" and morally and legally protected, and when it is not "worth living" and may be dispensed with. In fact, the whole enterprise is a collapse into subjectivism, which is cousin to arbitrariness, which is the same thing is being lawless. To get to those whose life these folks deem is not worth living, these folks have laid the laws prohibiting murder all flat.

And when the last law was down, and the hard case turned round on you,
Where would you hide, Dr. Singer, the laws all being flat?
This county's planted thick with laws from coast to coast
Man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down--
And you're just the man to do it--
D'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Yes, I'd give the hard case benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.***

We will get into these folks' reasoning in a little greater depth in our next blog posting.
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*Singer would allow for the putting to death of a child with hemophilia, or even a mature handicapped, but well-adapted adult. What must be maximized in his utilitarianism the desires and preferences of people. So if the desires and preferences of one group of persons weighs greater than the preferences of a single individual, the desires and preferences of the many overcome the desire and preferences of the one, to the disadvantage of the one. So it is that the hemophiliac child or the handicapped adult can be put to death, since preference utilitarians "must allow that a desire to go on living can be outweighed by other desires."
**The poster reads "60000 RM kostet dieser Erbkranke die Volksgemeinschaft auf Lebenszeit. Volksgenosse das ist auch Dein Geld. Lesen Sie Neues Volk Die Monatshefte des Rassenpolitischen Amtes der NSDAP." Translated: "60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the German Community during his lifetime. Fellow Citizen, that is also your money. Read Neues Volk, the monthly magazines of the Office for Race Politics of the NSDAP." [NSDAP = Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei = Nazi party]
***Compare Roger Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (New York: Random House, 1990), 66.

Life under the Microscope: The Sanctity of Life and Innocence

HUMAN LIFE IS A GOOD INDEPENDENT of whether it it supports other human goods. Life alone, without regard to any other human goods, is good simpliciter. Even naked life, vita nuda, das bloße Leben, disrobed of all the human goods which can grace her sacred frame, is intrinsically good. This is what is meant by the sanctity of life. It follows that as an intrinsic good, life must needs be protected, and that leads to the doctrine of the sanctity of life: In Oderberg's words, the doctrine of the sanctity of life is this:

It is always and everywhere a grave moral wrong intentionally to take the life of an innocent human being.

Oderberg, 147.

Many objectors to this principle of the sanctity of human life find the exclusion of non-innocents from its purview as arbitrary, as reflective of social norm or convention. Why stop there, they ask? Why not, they argue, arbitrarily carve out of the doctrine's protection to allow for euthanasia and abortion? Why should the traditional formulation which (they argue) is arbitrary not be supplanted by a modern formulation equally arbitrary?

The exception to the rule against the taking of human life, which carves out non-innocents, is not, however, arbitrary. Rather, it is itself based upon reason. Human life is a good that is a good for every human being, and so it follows that all human beings enjoy the right to life, and a right to protect and defend it against an unjust aggressor. What then ought we do when an aggressor threatens this fundamental human good? "Some say that unjust aggressors forfeit their right to life. Others say that they waive their right to life by their actions." Oderberg, 149. This same sort of reasoning can justify the use of deadly force against an unjust aggressor in war, or capital punishment for an appropriate offense. There is therefore a "negative justification" related to the term "innocent." But there is also a positive justification or import to the term innocent. There is something more to the term "innocent," and for Oderberg, this "something more" is captured by the words of the Roman jurist Publilius Syrus (floruit 1st century BC):

When innocence trembles, it condemns the judge.

Ubi innocens formidat, damnat iudicem.*

The entire moral enterprise is the pursuit of the good. The innocent--those who live their lives in peaceable, orderly, harmonious ways so as to advance in virtue and serve the common good--are particularly exposed to the wrongdoer, to the vicious. To be good requires the donning of vulnerability, of openness to others, of a yielding of self. And it is this vulnerability that is a natural consequence of being open to the good which requires an extra solicitude, an extra protection, and must be recognized by moral law for the moral law to be consistent with itself. Similarly, those unable to protect themselves for reasons other than being innocent (though they also may be innocent): the young, the old, the sick, the handicapped, the less intelligent, the sleeping, the comatose, the drugged. These may be said to be innocents in sensu lato, in a loose sense, or innocents by grace or courtesy, and so fall under the the protection of the moral law in a special sense.

Justice, that excellent virtue, is at morality's heart, and law is its handmaid. Justice and the moral law are to protect the innocent, both those innocent in the strict sense, and those innocent by the proxy of vulnerability as it were. It is for this reason that we experience outrage when injustice is meted out to the innocent or to the vulnerable, especially by those organs whose role is to dispense justice and protect the innocent and vulnerable from those who would take advantage of the innocents' vulnerability. The entire moral enterprise, the entire pursuit of happiness and of the good, is challenged, is threatened by the attack on the vulnerability of innocence. The natural moral law must favor the innocent, those that are vulnerable because they are in pursuit of the good. And the positive law must follow the moral law, for as Oderberg stated earlier in his book Moral Theory, "[t]he fundamental principle governing the relationship of human law (or simply "law") and morality is as follows: it is morality that determines what is and what is not a just law, hence law always follows morality." Oderberg, 62. To suggest that the natural moral law places those who are acting in conformity with it in pari passu with those who are flouting it, would make the natural moral law an enormity. It would make the natural law not moral:

Justice, then, is fundamental to morality, and innocence is fundamental to justice. A system of rules cannot call itself truly moral if it is blind to the equal protection that is rightfully claimed by all human beings who to about their daily lives in ways which, although often radically diverse, have in common the feature that they are lives lived in the legitimate pursuit of the good. Only when a person subverts the good does he merit the condemnation of others; only when his subversion is serious does he merit the interference either by the lawful authorities or by other persons acting in defense of their own well-being; and only when his subversion is the most serious that it can be does he merit the most serious interference. Otherwise, as an innocent person, he has the full force of the moral law on his side.

Oderberg, 151. The Gospel may extraordinarily require us to turn the other cheek when the first has been struck, that is, yield our natural right for the sake of the Kingdom of God. (Luke 6:29) The natural law does not require us to expose the second cheek. But, in the pursuit of good, the natural moral law requires us to have our first cheek exposed, which makes it vulnerable to being struck by the wrongdoer in the first place. The natural law protects the exposed cheek, the cheek of the innocent, and allows blows against it by the wrongdoer to be blocked, parried, compensated for, and punished.

Though the moral law favors and courts the innocent, even the vicious, the moral outlaw, who acts outside the pale of the moral law, and does so seriously, gets the benefit of a law he flouts though he is not its favorite. Even the moral outlaw get the "benefit of clergy" associated with the natural moral law, though the face of the law he sees frowns upon him. He is never relegated to a place where there is no law, for wherever God is there is law, and no man, even the most vicious, can hide from God.

Si ascendero in caelum tu illic es,
Si descendero ad infernum ades.
If I ascend into heaven, thou art there:
If I descend into hell, thou art present.

Psalm 138:8.

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*The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave (D. Lyman, trans.) (Cincinnati: L. E. Barnard & Co., 1856), No. 944 (Publilius Syrus, Sententiae, V.10) [Publilius is often wrongly rendered Publius.] Oderberg quotes from another source and renders Publilius Syrus's maxim thus: "When innocence if frightened, the judge is condemned."

Life under the Microscope: Belief in Flying Pigs and Life

WE TALK ABOUT THE RIGHT TO LIFE AS IF IT IS A COMMONPLACE. It is writ in our foundational, organic documents that among the self-evident truths is the truth that man has the unalienable right to life. It is on the lips of every mouth. But do we really mean what we say? Our lips continue to mouth old truths, but do we really believe them? Not really. As a society, we no longer belief in the Jeffersonian "right to life," which is the same as the classical, traditional moral understanding of it, we believe in something else.

The modern rub with the right to life is revealed by making a simple statement and measuring our reaction to it: Is our life our own to do with it what we please? Or, put another way, can you do whatever you want with your body? For an advocate of the traditional morality, the answer is clear: obviously not.

But what if someone suggested, say a modern politician,** that we do not have the right to do whatever we want with our life or with our bodies? Most moderns--who have been imbued with relativism, with consequentialism, with subjectivism since their mothers gave them suck-- simply would reject the notion. Feminists are the most rabid proponents of the supposed "right" to do whatever they want to with their bodies or their lives, though, at least on the matter of abortion, they suffer under a double delusion. They suffer under a double delusion in that they are not even dealing with their own body and their own lives, but with another's life and another's body. Alas, it is a body and a life which they handle with the same disinterested aplomb as Caesar did to those poor gladiators whom he condemned with the pollice verso, the thumbs down sign.

If we believe that we are free to do what we want to with our life, that we own our life the way we own, say, our car, then we do not believe in the right to life in any traditional sense.

Most consider the traditional view that our life is not our own to do with what we want bizarre, antiquated, even obscurantist, something perhaps fed us by "monkish" or "priestly" types who would seek to enslave us with chains of religion. But it is those who reject the traditional view that are the obscurantist, ignorant fools. And it's simple to show why. All one has to do is compare people's view of another human good, say, reason, with people's view of the human good of life. The illogic in their treatment of the good of life versus another human good soon reveals itself. It is not reason that is behind the modern notion that we own our lives and bodies, it is moral depravity.

Reason, like human life, is generally regarded a human good. We would generally agree that reason ought not be abused, that reason is to be used to gain knowledge, to reach, to the extent one can, truths, and not to promote lies or falsehood. Reason ought not to be used to lie, to do evil, to hurt others. The Marquis de Sade's use of reason to engage in his perversity or to document it for posterity through pen and paper, or Ted Bundy's use of it to entrap his unsuspecting victims and then sexually abuse them and slaughter them, would be almost unanimously considered to be an abuse of that faculty. We would generally agree that, used properly, the use of reason contributes to man's happiness, and that its abuse leads to unhappiness. No one has the right, we would certainly all say, to use reason so as to believe something knowingly false or to pursue something known to be wrong. No man has the right to use his reason to conclude that there are such things as flying pigs, a flat earth, or a moon of green cheese.* We have reason, but we don't own reason. We possess reason, but we can't just do whatever we want to with it. We do not yet believe that we have the right to pervert the faculty of reason and to knowingly embrace falsehood. Perhaps that time will come.

Do we have the right to use our reason
to embrace the idea that flying pigs are real?

But until that time comes we can argue with the moderns who claim they own their bodies and their lives and can do with them whatever they like as follows. Why, then, should human life, also a fundamental good like reason, be any different? The fact that we possess life, that we have life, that we have a right to life does not mean that we have the right to do with our lives what we want without constraint.

If a person cannot legitimately give up on the pursuit of truth and understanding--and believing falsehood involves just such a renunciation-- . . . why should we think he can give up on life itself?

Oderberg, 146. In fact, the argument is even more compelling when it comes to the good of human life. Other human goods are enjoyed in all sorts of continuums. The good of friendship, for example, can be enjoyed through one friend or through a dozen. The good of reason can be expressed through reading Plato's Timaeus or by designing and building a birdhouse. The good of play can be obtained by playing intramural football, by playing a round of golf, or even by the smoking of a cigar, drinking some beer, and playing a hand or two of poker. The good of human life is not that way. It is a discrete good. It is binary: off or on. We either have the good of human life, or we do not. We cannot give any of it away, without giving all of it away.

The starkness of the case of life lies in the fact that there is no such thing as allowing a partial infringement or giving up some of the right: you are either alive or dead. In which case every giving up of the right must amount to renunciation or abandonment. And if renunciation or abandonment is illegitimate in the case of other basic goods, why should life be an exception?

Oderberg, 146.

Oderberg's question is rhetorical. Life should not be an exception. There is no reason for making it an exception. We have no right to own our life; we have no right to give it away, to renounce it. We have no right to own the life of others; we have no right to give others' lives away, to renounce others' lives. This is what is meant, this is what is encompassed by the notion of the "sanctity" of life. It is a human good that demands our veneration, or respect, our protection, our custody. In short, we need to develop the notion of a vitaecultio, a vitaeculture. We need to cultivate, with the same solicitude a farmer does his crop, life. Only through this vitaeculture can we have a "culture of life," a cultura vitae instead of a "culture of death," a cultura mortis.

To say we own our lives, then, is the epitome, or perhaps better, the nadir of foolish sayings. It is like a mortal saying, "I am God." Or perhaps, more accurately, we have appropriated ourselves the prerogative of Krishna:

I am become Death,
the shatterer of Worlds,
engaged in devouring mankind.***

Bhagavad Gita, 11:32 (= MBh 6.33.32).

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*Man has no right to abuse his reason to believe or justify his belief in such idiocies, and yet that does not mean we have the right to compel him to believe otherwise or to not believe such idiocies. So we tolerate the flat earth society, and would probably tolerate a flying pig society. But whether we tolerate or not is a different question from the question as to whether we recognize that no one has the right to use his reason to believe in anything he wants or to pursue anything he wants. Toleration goes just so far. There are some ways of thinking that we do intervene in and suppress by moral pressure or even by law. We do not allow a man to use his reason to persuade others, especially children, that child pornography is licit. We intervene, if not by law, by moral suasion and social ostracism, when somebody proposes the thesis that Jews, or women, or blacks are inferior beings or non-humans. We do not entertain the use of reason to argue the latter.
**One might point out the example of Christine O'Donnell, the Republican candidate for the 2010 Delaware Senate Race, and her public pillorying for her stance that masturbation is intrinsically wrong, something any traditional view of sexual ethics would maintain. There is no way publicly to advance traditional morality in this area without being ridiculed by every news media outlet and every late-night comedian. The notion that one can do what one want with one's body in terms of its sexual faculties, even abusing one's body as a tool for obtaining sexual pleasure, has infected our social fiber generally, and contributed to the notion that we can do what we want with our life generally.
***kālo 'smi / lokakṣayakṛt pravṛddho; / lokān samāhartum iha pravṛttaḥ. It may be that "time" is a better translation for kālo than "death," although Oppenheimer's quotation after the explosion of the atomic bomb has popularized the "death" translation of 11:32 of the Bhagavad Gita (=Mahabharata 6.33.32) The following translation is taken from http://www.bhagavad-gita.org/: "I am terrible time the destroyer of all beings in all worlds, engaged to destroy all beings in this world." I use poetic license, then, if not precision, in using kālo=death version.

Life under the Microscope: Is Human Life a Rucksack?

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS AN INTRINSIC GOOD? A good that exists and is unaffected by extrinsic circumstance, which is, in and of itself and without regard to its utility or instrumental value, good? It would seem that human life is one such good.

It is apparent that human life is foundational, the sine qua non for the pursuit of further goods. It is the starting point for any human good. A man with his life snuffed out is not, nor ever will be, fulfilled. There is no flourishing of hope or hope of flourishing in death, at least not in any natural sense. But the truism that one must be alive to pursue further goods is not an adequate formulation of the issue as to the status of human life in general. Is human life an intrinsic good?

The answer to this question might be framed by asking yet another question taking into consideration the notion of necessariness and sufficiency. Consider the following two statements:

• Human life is necessary for the pursuit of human goods.
  
• Human life is sufficient for the pursuit of human goods.

Which one is it? There is a marked difference depending upon our choice. What we will see is that if we chose the latter formulation--the human life is sufficient for the pursuit of further human goods--we will end up believing that human life is instrumental, that is, it is merely an instrument, a tool, with which to enjoy further goods. The "human life is an instrumental good" road is the broad path most moderns follow, but wide is the gate through which this path goes (cf. Matt. 7:13), and and it leads to destructive consequences, especially in beginning-of-life questions, in end-of-life questions, and in the moral treatment of those who may have serious physical or mental impediments. The road less followed modernly, the narrow road, is that human life is necessary for the pursuit of goods and as such it is a basic good regardless of whether it is capable of achieving other basic goods: it is the road, however, that leads to life.

The Narrow Gate to Heaven and the Wide Gate to Hell
by Cornelis De Bie (1627 - ca. 1715)

Let's explore the notion the claim that human life is simply sufficient for pursuing further goods. The claim that life is simply sufficient for pursuing human goods connects, in the mind of its advocate, life's sufficiency with the pursuit of other human goods. Invariably, there is a slippage and the reverse claim raises its ugly head: that human goods are what make life sufficient, that is, the human goods are the things that make human life of value. Goods must be pursuable for life to have value, which means that life has no value if goods cannot be pursued.

Is human life like a backpack?

This views human life as instrumental. Human life is a container for the acquisition of other goods, and if the container which holds these goods is broken, it ought simply be disposed of. Human life becomes something like a rucksack into which one puts human goods, and if the rucksack is torn and is no good for holding and carrying other human goods it is disposable. Viewing human life like a backpack is wrong, though many moderns view human life in that way.

Or is human life like the hub of a wheel?

The notion that life is necessary but not sufficient for the pursuit of human goods does not seem to fall into this trap. Human life seen as necessary, allows us to view human life as a good primus inter pares with other human goods. Although it is unique in that it is the precondition for other human goods to be pursued, it is not seen like a rucksack into which human goods may be packed. Rather, it is seen as as the hub of a wheel around which all other goods revolve like spokes. Human life is seen as a good pure and simple, whether or not other human goods are appended to it. Human life is thus not merely instrumental, it is one, certainly the most essential, of many human goods. Because of this human life has value even if it is not capable--for whatever reason--for pursuing those other human goods. Viewed this way, human life is a good simpliciter and not only because it allows other human goods to be pursued.

[L]ife indeed has value, pure and simple; in other words, it is a fundamental good that is the precondition for the pursuit of all other goods. This is not to say that life is not also instrumentally valuable . . . . But the point is that the value of life is not reducible to its instrumental value--it has its own intrinsic value as a basic human good.

Oderberg, 141. This view of human life, more like a wheel than a rucksack, looks at human life in a dual dimension:

In this way life reveals its dual role as a good: it is the basic precondition of the pursuit of all other goods [hub], and it is a good in its own right, whose fostering helps us to flourish as human beings.

Oderberg, 141-42.

Viewed properly, then, human life is a basic good itself, and cannot be demoted from its place without tragic consequences for our moral choice.

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*Note: The discussion of life as sufficient v. life as necessary is from Oderberg, 138-43. I am not satisfied with this treatment of his; it seems confused, and subject to non-sequiturs and some fallacious reasoning. But the point he tries to make in his text is sound: that human life must be seen as a basic good in itself, and not as a sort of carrier for basic human goods, and so it, like the other basic goods, has intrinsic value--and this whether other goods are even pursuable. The notion of life as a rucksack or life as the spoke of a wheel is my view of what Oderberg is trying to communicate in this section of the text.