Ignorance of the Wrong-Innate Reason v. Propositional Reason

WE CANNOT APPROACH THE QUESTIONS we have posed in our prior posting about the invincible ignorance of the natural law without some sort of distinctions being made as a preliminary to addressing the answers.

We are wont to say that the natural law is innate, that it is impressed upon the very nature of man, and in a manner of speaking it is. But in a manner of speaking it is not. The natural law is not innate in the sense that Plato or Descartes understood innate knowledge to be, as knowledge preexisting in the mind of man. Like all human knowledge, we come to the knowledge of the natural law largely by observation, by experience, though the observation and experience includes both internal assessments (e.g., conscience) as well as external assessments (e.g., bodily needs, needs of the social good) and the use of reason. Our senses must look both inward and outward, be informed by the realities of life, and then we must apply reason to these observations to obtain knowledge of this law. It is, moreover, a law that can be taught intellectually, learned through character or behavior (that is by culture, or individual virtue), which suggests that it is a work of reason, not of mere innate disposition.

There is, however, a certain innateness regarding the law, but this innateness is tendential, inclinatory, not fully intellectual, though it certainly is not irrational. It means, simply, that "man, like all other creatures, must tend to his end according to laws bound up with his very nature." Bertke, 15.* When we say that the natural law is innate, we mean only that "man, like every other creature, tends to his end according to laws which agree with his nature." Bertke, 15. These inclinations, of course, would involve man as body-and-rational-soul.

But the natural law, though it is this innate tendency, is also more than this innate tendency of man-wanting-to-reach-his-end, this entelechy. The natural law is, as St. Thomas puts it, aliquid rationis, "something of reason," or aliquid pertinens ad rationem, "something pertaining to reason.** It is, as he further clarifies, something "established by reason," in fact a "work of reason," an opus rationis, "just as the proposition is a work of reason."*** The natural law, then, is clearly something more than innate tendency, disposition, or inclination though it is also includes this tendency, disposition, or inclination. The natural law is not solely a proposition of reason without tie to the tendencies, dispositions, or inclinations in man that are part of his innate nature. "A careful reading of St. Thomas reveals that the essence of the natural law may be understood in a sense that protects both its innate character in the strict sense of the word, and at the same time does not sacrifice the relation of the intellect to being." Bertke, 16.

Several commentators of St. Thomas have tried to understand the innatism in natural law with the realism in natural law by distinguishing three elements in the essence of natural law. They observe that St. Thomas Aquinas appears sometimes to refer to the natural law as innate, at other times he seems to see it as something relating to the application of practical reason and propositional, and though natural, not innate. Sometimes he seems to see it both natural an innate.† As a consequence, they distinguish three elements of the Thomistic teaching of the natural law, all of which combine to be part of the natural law in its essence:

1. the natural inclinations;
2. the faculty of reason; and
   
3. the proposition of reason.

The first two elements are naturally innate. The third element is natural in man but not innate, though it presupposes the innate elements. All three elements combine in man as part of the natural law, the most important relatively and the most distinctive of man (relative to the brute animals) is the third element. Therefore man has a certain autonomy relative to the brute animals. "Animals are ruled [by inclinations]; man participates formally in the Eternal Law by taking part in the ruling of himself." Bertke, 18-19. In fact, it is the second two elements, and especially the third, that allow man to freely participate rationally in the eternal law, something brute animals cannot do, since their participation is limited to their natural inclinations (lacking the faculty of reason essential for the exercise of the moral faculty). Nevertheless, inclinations are not to be maligned or considered inferior:

[T]he superiority of the proposition of reason does not obviate the necessity of the natural inclinations and the light of reason, for the proposition depends for its all-important right ordaining of actions to the end on its conformity with the inclinations. Thought the correct aligning of the inclinations in relation to the means depends on the practical intellect, "the relation to the natural inclination is the measure of truth in the practical reason."

Bertke, 19 (quoting from St. Thomas's Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, Book VI, Lecture 2, n. 8 (rectitudo appetitus per respectum ad finem est mensura veritatis in ratione practica).

Bertke sums up the three elements in the essence of the natural law thus:

Summing up this doctrine on the essence of the natural law it can be said that the proposition of reason [the third element] pertains to the essence in "actu secundo,"† or as presupposing the other two elements [the natural inclinations and the faculty of reason], while the inclinations and the light of reason pertain to the essence in "actu primo,"† or as necessarily presupposed by the proposition of reason.

Bertke, 19 (citing to Merkelbach, 227).


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*Rev. Stanley Bertke, The Possibility of Invincible Ignorance of the Natural Law (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1941) (hereinafter "Bertke").
**S.T. IaIIae, q. 90, art. 1, s. c. & c.
***S.T. IaIIae, q. 93, art. 1. (lex naturalis est aliquid per rationem constitutum, sicut etiam propositio est quoddam opus rationis).
†Bertke cites to the work of Walter Farrell, The Natural Moral Law (Ditchling: St. Dominic's Press, 1930), 82-103 and Henricus Benedictus Merkelbach, Summa Theologiae Moralis (Paris: Desclee), T.1, 227. For examples where St. Thomas treats the natural law as something innate, Bertke (pp. 16-18) quotes the following:

Wherefore it (human nature) has a share in the Eternal Reason whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law.

Unde et in ipsa participatur ratio aeterna, per quam habet naturalem inclinationem ad debitum actum et finem. Et talis participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura lex naturalis dicitur.

[Iª-IIae q. 91 a. 2 co.]

As an example of natural law in the second sense, the following example is given:

Thus implying that the light of natural reason whereby we discern what is good and what is evil which is the function of the natural law is nothing else than the imprint of the divine light [being the faculty of reason].

[Q]uasi lumen rationis naturalis, quo discernimus quid sit bonum et malum, quod pertinet ad naturalem legem, nihil aliud sit quam impressio divini luminis in nobis.

[Id.]

As an example of natural law in the third sense:

Hence we find in the practical reason something that holds the same position in regard to operations, as in the speculative intellect, the proposition holds in regard to conclusions. Such universal propositions of the practical intellect that are directed to actions have the nature of law. And these propositions are sometimes under our actual consideration, while sometimes they are retained in the reason by means of a habit.

[I]deo est invenire aliquid in ratione practica quod ita se habeat ad operationes, sicut se habet propositio in ratione speculativa ad conclusiones. Et huiusmodi propositiones universales rationis practicae ordinatae ad actiones, habent rationem legis. Quae quidem propositiones aliquando actualiter considerantur, aliquando vero habitualiter a ratione tenentur.

[Iª-IIae q. 90 a. 1 ad 2]

Finally, as an example of all three elements together, Bertke cites the following passage from St. Thomas Aquinas:

[L]aw, being a rule and measure, can be in a person in two ways: in one way, as in him that rules and measures; in another way, as in that which is ruled and measured, since a thing is ruled and measured, in so far as it partakes of the rule or measure. Wherefore, since all things subject to Divine providence are ruled and measured by the eternal law, as was stated above (Article 1); it is evident that all things partake somewhat of the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its being imprinted on them, they derive their respective inclinations [element 1] to their proper acts and ends. Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to Divine providence in the most excellent way, in so far as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident both for itself and for others [element 3, as it requires propositional reason]. Wherefore it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end [element 1]: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. Hence the Psalmist after saying (Psalm 4:6): "Offer up the sacrifice of justice," as though someone asked what the works of justice are, adds: "Many say, Who showeth us good things?" in answer to which question he says: "The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us": thus implying that the light of natural reason [element 2], whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine light. It is therefore evident that the natural law is nothing else than the rational creature's participation of the eternal law.

[L]ex, cum sit regula et mensura, dupliciter potest esse in aliquo, uno modo, sicut in regulante et mensurante; alio modo, sicut in regulato et mensurato, quia inquantum participat aliquid de regula vel mensura, sic regulatur vel mensuratur. Unde cum omnia quae divinae providentiae subduntur, a lege aeterna regulentur et mensurentur, ut ex dictis patet; manifestum est quod omnia participant aliqualiter legem aeternam, inquantum scilicet ex impressione eius habent inclinationes in proprios actus et fines. Inter cetera autem rationalis creatura excellentiori quodam modo divinae providentiae subiacet, inquantum et ipsa fit providentiae particeps, sibi ipsi et aliis providens. Unde et in ipsa participatur ratio aeterna, per quam habet naturalem inclinationem ad debitum actum et finem. Et talis participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura lex naturalis dicitur. Unde cum Psalmista dixisset, sacrificate sacrificium iustitiae, quasi quibusdam quaerentibus quae sunt iustitiae opera, subiungit, multi dicunt, quis ostendit nobis bona? Cui quaestioni respondens, dicit, signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, domine, quasi lumen rationis naturalis, quo discernimus quid sit bonum et malum, quod pertinet ad naturalem legem, nihil aliud sit quam impressio divini luminis in nobis. Unde patet quod lex naturalis nihil aliud est quam participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura.

[Iª-IIae q. 91 a. 2 co.]
†The terms "actus primus" and "actus secundus," literally prime actuality and secondary actuality, respectively, are scholastic terms in Latin. The term actus means a determination, complement, perfection, an actuality. The actus primus, then, is the first such actuality that begins another actuality or series of actualities or upon which a subsequent actuality or series of further actualities is founded. These second actualities are the acta secunda (singular, "actus secundus"). Since the actus secundus does not come into play until after the actus primus, the actus secundus may be said to be in potentiality relative to the actus primus. As the conclusion to C. A. Dubray's treatment of it in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913, s.v. "actus primus") notes:

And this is the most frequent application of the terms actus primus and actus secundus. The former is the faculty; the latter, the exercise, or function. To see in actu primo simply means to have the sense of vision; to see in actu secundo is to actually perform acts of vision. The modern distinction of potential and kinetic energy might serve as another illustration: the loaded gun, or the engine with steam up represent first actualities; the bullet speeding to the mark, the engine flying over the rails, represent second actualities.

Long on Porter: Natural Law as Capacity

THE THEORY OF NATURAL LAW ADVANCED by Professor Jean Porter* in her book Nature as Reason is given significant approbation by Professor Steven A. Long. He lists in a sort of litany the many things that in his view she has got right in her extensive treatment on the subject:

• the importance of "pre-rational nature" within moral theology and philosophy;
• a non-dualist account of human nature;
• a posteriori (realist) reasoning which relies and abstracts from sensory experience;
• acceptance of the priority of the speculative to the practical, with an understanding that the speculative extends into the practical;
• an appreciation of how there is a hierarchy of natural ends that are objective, that is, that do not depend upon and are prior to choice, that are ethically significant;
• nature, prescinded from grace, has a certain relative integrity and autonomy.
  

These are solid, expectable features of a classically-based natural law theory. Indeed, her book is heartily recommended, as its merits, which are legion, fully outweigh any deficiencies:

[I]n this book Dr. Porter has achieved a penetrating and profound treatment of the natural law, one that does great justice to its speculative and metaphysical character as well as to its practical importance and unfolding. With respect to her skepticism regarding the "naturalistic fallacy" or dichotomy of nature and good; her diagnosis of the errors of dualism; her account of the essentially speculative component of natural moral knowledge; her treatment of the nature of the object of the human act; her distinction of natural and supernatural; and her sense of the essentially theological foundation of the belief in a minimum quotient of human dignity and the claim for equal regard of each human person, Dr. Porter is again and again not only correct, but eloquently and rigorously so.

Porter, 158.

Dr. Jean Porter

And yet there are parts of Dr. Porter's theory that are geared to sympathize with pluralism and with the modern notion of subjective rights that Long finds troubling or at least worthy of particular exploration and criticism. Dr. Porter actually moves beyond the mere idea of minimal practical consensus espoused by Maritain** to "an overt admission of 'plural' socially embedded natural law perspectives open to one another in dialogue." Long, 156. She also embraces the notion of subjective rights, but tries to tether them to an objective notion of the subject. To Long, it seems like a sort of Maritain redivivus. In fact, he states that "not since Maritain has a mind so rich in scholastic preoccupation attempt to marry Thomism with subjective right and modernity (and now, postmodernity)." Long, 158.

Long finds five areas of in Porter's work that merit further exploration in the context of whether the concept of natura pura, pure nature, implies a secularist minimalism.

1. Porter's view of natural law as a "capacity" for moral judgment, instead of an actual ordering to judgment;
2. Porter's discomfort with "close-in" teleologies as being morally significant which is tied to a fear of "biologism";
3. Porter's overemphasis of "the social embeddedness of our knowledge of the natural law."
4. Porter's account of subjective right; and
5. Porter's view of the role that earthly happiness apart from supernatural beatitude has in the area of achieving social and political consensus.

Our next postings shall focus on Long's analysis of these five areas. We shall focus on the presentation by Porter of the natural law as a capacity rather than an actual inclinational ordering, a distinction that Long thinks is important when the natural law interacts with society and with what Long calls "close-in" teleologies.

Long addresses Porter's tendency to view natural law merely as a sort of mere power or capacity rather than an "actual motion or teleological ordering with respect to judgment." Long, 158. The natural law must not be seen as a sort of static ability to make a judgment. It should more properly be seen as "actual inclinational ordering," an "actual impress of the divine ordering passively received, whereby every creature receives it being, nature, powers, ordering to acts, objects and the hierarchy of ends, from God, and on the basis of which he have genuinely natural reason to do or not to do." Long, 159. The problem with seeing the natural law as a mere capacity or power is that it makes the natural law into something that is in potency only, and not something that is already in act. It makes natural law into a pond concept, rather than a stream concept. It is as if Porter would put man on a summit without any dynamic predisposition or inclination, neutral with respect to gravity, rather on some sort of incline where we have the inclination already to go a certain way, where gravity is already tugging down upon us.

The emphasis upon capacity or power seems to place in a status of pure potency what is an actual ordering, articulated in the inclinations of human nature toward the connatural good for man. . . . [T]he stress upon power and capacity can be misleading, as it may seem to subtract from the actual teleological ordering of nature any genuine act that is at root inexpungeable.

Long, 160. The difference is subtle, nuanced, perhaps, but important. The difference between seeing natural law as a power or capacity only on the one hand, and not as an inclination or actual inclinational ordering shows itself when addressing issues arising out of "pre-moral" natural orderings (particularly in the "close-in" teleologies), and the effect and role of social mediatory structures in the formulation or formation of natural law.

These are the topics we will handle in our next two blog postings.

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*Dr. Jean Porter is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.
**In the public realm, Jacques Maritain's advocated an accommodation by religious believers to modernity's concept of "human rights," a project, which in Long's view, was ill-conceived since "rights" are derivative concepts and without a hierarchical order of ends and a basis for the exercise of prudence (which are external to rights) the only result is endless bickering. See Avoiding Secularist Minimalism: Jacques Maritain, Part 1 and Avoiding Secularist Minimalism: Jacques Maritain, Part 2.

Virtue Defined

WE ARE NOW POISED TO PROPOSE a definition of moral virtue. But before we do, we ought briefly to recapitulate our prior postings on this issue. First, we looked at and criticized the modern substitutes for virtue: the notion of natural spontaneity, the notion of psychology and its techniques, and the notion of social engineering. Each of these, while they contain germs of truth, are not, in any event virtue. They may have a subordinate role to play in perfecting man, but they are subordinate to moral virtue which objectively fits into natural law, and so has a guide to right and wrong which these other techniques dangerously do not have. From these substitutes, we looked at the notion of habit, and distinguished the Aristotelian notion of hexis which has been translated as "habitus," and the meaning of which is inadequately conveyed by the term "habit." Principally, hexeis or habitus is grounded on an objective reality. It is a form of knowledge (epistēmē), in the area of morality practical knowledge to be sure, and not opinion (doxa). Though the word virtue is used by Aristotelian and his followers in a sense broad enough to include both intellectual and moral virtues, and, may broadly be used even to refer to inanimate behaviors that are reliable and dependable, it needs to be distinguished in its general sense from its sense in the context of moral virtues. Simon distinguishes the intellectual virtues from the moral virtues by using the concept of existential readiness and qualitative readiness. The intellectual virtues have a qualitative readiness, but not necessarily an existential readiness (which may be equated with the notion of "finality"); whereas the moral virtues have both qualitative and existential readiness (finality) as part of them. From the notions of qualitative and existential readiness, we looked at the notion of disposition or diathesis, which is the the arrangement of that which has parts, in respect either of place, or of potency, or of kind, and in the area of morality, yields the notion of reliable, arranged, and ordered response to the contingent circumstances met by a human being during the course of his life. From these concepts, we turned to the traditional four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.

The Moral Relativist, who Demands Normativity,
Cuts Himself Off From the Trunk of Normativity

With this backdrop, we are ready to tackle a definition of virtue. This notion of virtue has an unusually strong and rich pedigree, and it has been found among the followers of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, St. Augustine, and the medieval theologians, most notably St. Thomas, and into all the moral theologians, manualists, and advocates of traditional morality. Only recently, with the advent of modern, materialistic substitutes of the natural law taking precedence in the 18th but especially mid-19th centuries, have these notions been lost. Instead, there has been a collapse of a central moral ethic, and we wallow in relativism which is not benign and tolerant, but which has turned out to be quite tyrannical. It imposes the normativity of relativism on an objectivist, though it has sawn itself off the trunk of objectivism. Refusing to recognize that it sits proverbially on the branch which it is sawing off from the tree, and so is bound to being supported by nothing, relativism accuses the entire stable trunk from which it has sawed itself off as intolerant, dogmatic, obscurant, and unfeeling. The fundamental inconsistency does not seem to bother the relativist, since he is based upon nothing other than naked assertion, a moral ideology not founded on reality, but on a moral revolt and skepticism. There has been a resurgence--how lasting it will be is difficult to tell--of both the natural law and virtue ethics which may result in these concepts once again being central to Western thought. But we are a long way off from that, if it even happens.

In any event, we may start with Aristotle's definition of moral virtue found in his Nicomachean Ethics.

Virtue (aretē, ἀρετὴ), then, is a state of character (hexis, ἕξις) concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e., the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle (logō, λόγῳ), and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom (ho phronimos, ὁ φρόνιμος) would determine it.

ἔστιν ἄρα ἡ ἀρετὴ ἕξις προαιρετική, ἐν μεσότητι οὖσα τῇ πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ὡρισμένῃ λόγῳ καὶ ᾧ ἂν ὁ φρόνιμος ὁρίσειεν.

Aristotle, Nic. Eth., 1106b-1107a.

The translation of hexis into "state of character," might be better rendered by the term "habitus" were that latter term better known. The notion of a "state of character" or moral habitus is, as we have seen, "a stable, objective disposition of the diverse parts of the soul." Simon, 105. This state of character or moral habitus avoids both excesses and defects into which all our actions may fall. This is the famous Aristotelian "golden mean," or aurea mediocritas, the via media between defect and excess wherein virtue lies. One should not fail to see the genius in the definition, as it incorporates both objective notions of excellence and habitus, yet also subjective realization of those in a particular person ("relative to us"). "The mean has to be relative to us," Simon notes, "because it is we and nobody else who have to decide what to do in a given situation." Therefore, what may be within the mean of temperance for someone who can hold their liquor, would be intemperance for an alcoholic. What would be an act of courage for a lifeguard who saves a person drowning, might be an act of rashness on the part of a man who cannot swim. Though the decision is our own, and must reflect circumstances, including those of our ourselves, "that does not make our decision unqualifiedly subjective. For if we have practical wisdom, we shall determine what is to be done, and do it, on the basis of rational principle and objectively with regard to the circumstances." Simon, 106.

Aristotle insists that our choice must be in accord with "rational principle," or in accord with logos or reason. The invocation of logos into the moral mix is significant. Logos as Simon notes, is "a powerful word with a beautiful multiplicity of meaning. It means 'word,' it means 'concept,' it means 'reason,' it means 'rational principle.'" Simon, 109. Yet, for Simon, this statement of Aristotle is "rather ambiguous," and does not sufficiently invoke the notion of "what is good or what is bad" into his definition. Some effort is made to tie in the decision with that of a wise or prudent man, the objective man of practical wisdom. However, in Simon's view, the Aristotelian definition of virtue does sufficiently contain a "theory of how we know the basic premises of the moral order." Simon, 107. In other words, it seems inadequately grounded, at least in any express sense, in the natural moral law. In a world that accepts an objective moral order to be referenced in moral decisions, the gap in Aristotle's definition is not consequential. However, where such a concept is lacking in a culture, as in ours, the gap becomes problematic, and Aristotle's definition's insufficiency is felt.

The notion of right and wrong relates to the notion of nature and its finality. "To know what do do, one must consider the nature of things." Simon, 107. In the case of man, it requires the recruitment of both reason and inclination, an "intellectual feltness" which is grounded in the natural moral law.

Natural law . . . is known first of all by inclination. That does not mean, of course, that it cannot be known rationally, or that rational knowledge of its principles is not desirable. it is simply that primordially, primitively, and primarily, natural law, whose core is constituted by the premises of the moral order, is known by inclination.

Simon, 108.* Again, this knowledge by inclination, though intensely subjective, is also intensely tied to the objective moral order. Through this intellectual feltness, a man intellectually "smells" and what is wrong, though this intellectual "smelling" is consisting with an intellectual "feel" or an intellectual "sight." As Simon observes:

For just as we use metaphors derived from the sense of sight when we speak of analysis, and metaphors derived from the sense of touch when we want to convey certainty, we come closes to describing knowledge by inclination in moral matters by comparing its feelings of attraction and repulsion to the sense of smell.

Simon, 109. There is, then, this wonderful synthesis of objective and subjective worlds in the decision of a virtuous man:

In knowledge by inclination, subjectivity--that is, the constitution of a subject--works as a way of judgment in all cases, including the case of correct, right good objective judgment. And then we, too, can say with Kierkegaard that "in der Subjektivität liegt die Wahrheit [Truth lies in subjectivity]."

Simon, 111.** Perhaps the simplest way to explain the intermingling of objectivity and subjectivity is the Scholastic formula that joint right reason with good will. We might view it in antimetabolically: to be virtuous, we must use both use both heartfelt reason and a reasoning heart.

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*Simon invokes the teaching of Jacques Maritain on the natural law, particularly his notion of the role of inclinations in informing our sense of right and wrong from a natural law standpoint. It has been the subject of prior postings. The reader is particularly referred to Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Inclination and Law, Part 1 and Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Inclination and Law, Part 2. We have described the Maritanian notion of inclination as an "intellectual feltness." Simon characterizes this "intellectual feltness" or inclination, as an intellectual sense of "smell," which should be distinguished from strictly rational operations which might be analogized to sense of "touch" or "sight."
**Simon's reference is to Kierkegaard's "Concluding Unscientific Postscript."

Being and the Natural Law: Inclinations

INCLINATIONS PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THOMISTIC understanding of the natural law. In St. Thomas's responsio in q. 94, art. 2 in the IaIIae of his Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas speaks of a sort of tripartite natural inclination in man and of an "order of natural inclinations" which informs the "order of the precepts of the natural law." Secundum igitur ordinem inclinationum naturalium, est ordo praeceptorum legis naturae. (Iª-IIae q. 94 a. 2 co.)

There is some controversy on what exactly these inclinations are, and whether they incline before or after "contact" with human nature. Are these inclinations something only formal, do they have to do only with the ratio boni in its most abstract form, in the order of the transcendental? And do they become "enfleshed" only upon contact with human nature? Or are these inclinations already informed by human nature when they come to us? Are the inclinations already "enfleshed" as it were and particularized in a manner so that they are something more than mere formal inclinations? Dr. Knasas believes the latter. In his view, by the time we encounter the natural moral law in the form of its first inclinations we have already encountered ourselves and our fellow man as "intellectors of being as the good." The ratio boni then has already been through the process of enfleshment, of humanization. "A consideration of human nature has been going on extensively already" before we get to the order of inclinations.

[T]he natural inclinations correspond to further confrontations of practical reason with humans as heightened presentations of the ratio boni. Human experience involves various epiphanies of this object. Around these epiphanies form injunctions of practical reason. These injunctions incline us. Hence, when Aquinas remarks that 'those things to which man has natural inclination are naturally apprehended by reason as being good and so as objects of pursuit,' he does not mean that the natural inclinations invest these things with the appearance of being good.

What, then does St. Thomas mean? Do inclinations inform us what is good? Or does the good inform the inclinations? Which is first, the inclination or the good? Does the inclination incline to the good? Or is it the good which draws the inclination toward it? For Dr. Knasas the answer is obvious: the good precedes the inclinations:

[I]t is because things are first apprehended as good that one has natural inclinations to them. In other words, the inclinations form in the wake of the apprehension of good; the apprehension of goods does not form in the wake of the natural inclinations.

This is not, Dr. Knasas, notes the view of most Thomists. Most contemporary Thomists or neo-Thomists appear to start the moral life of man with a very "formalistic or empty, hence uninspiring" notion of the good of the first principle. The strain of music that hits our inner ear, our synderesis, in the fundamental chant that "good ought to be done" is insipid, ethereal, formal, not yet sung by human voices. Dr. Knasas disagrees with this view. He suggests the strain of music that hits our inner ear of synderesis with the fundamental moral chant that "good ought to be done" is already sung with human voices. It is not the voice of God we hear. It is the voice of God in man we hear. So the good is already touched by human nature by the time we are inclined to it. We are already aware of ourselves and our fellows as "intellectors of being" and "willers of good" by the time the inclinations come around to draw us to them as the begining of the moral life. The inclinations we have for self-preservation, for procreation, for social and political life, for God himself are already aware of our fellow man as an "intellector of being" and "willer of good." In distinction with the brute animals who have inclinations toward self-preservation and procreation, man's inclinations have already been stamped with the uniqueness that comes from being human. That is why, for example, the act of sexual union is for man already fully informed by the dignity that comes with being an intellector of being and willer of the good. Casual sex, or sex without commitment, is already abusive of the special dignity we have and the special dignity our coupling partner has. We assault the fundamental ratio entis and ratio boni, which is in us in a much more splendid way than in the rest of creation, when we treat the encounter between to intellectors of being and willers of good in such a casual way. We abuse being, we abuse good by treating sexual congress so flippantly.

Here, alas, we ran out of time, and we were unfortunately deprived of Dr. Knasas's insights with respect to the inclinations of man to the social life and to belief in God. We were also unable to get into the role of secondary and tertiary precepts of the natural law, and notions of intrinsic and extrinsic variability in the precepts of natural law. Perhaps he can be re-invited?

It is manifest that Dr. Knasas is hounded by the beauty of being and its rich meaning in both our intellectual life and our moral life. His insights were valuable, and his enthusiasm catching. Our prayer is that we may all be as "slain by being" as Dr. Knasas.

Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Natural Law, Onto-Gnoseologically Speaking

IN THE LAST POSTING WE LEFT OFF with the Maritainian concept of the development of the natural law. Maritain advances the notion that there has been a progressive development of the natural law, or perhaps more accurately, a progressive development in the knowledge of the natural law, prodded by the knowledge obtained through inclinations or connaturality. It is this internal, amorphous yearning, feeling, or impulse, what we have referred to in previous posts as intellectual feltness or perhaps even better expressed as an intellectual tedentiousness, that is later looked at with conceptual, discursive reasoning and which has led to a greater understanding of the content of natural law over history from ancient times into modernity. What was implicit, or rather what is known through inclination, has become explicit, which is to say, stated through conceptual and discursive terms. What was there ab initio, but not known or not fully grasped by philosophy or word, has in tempore been brought to the surface and is known and made fully intelligible in the way of philosophical concepts and words.

[H]uman knowledge of natural law has been progressively shaped and molded by the inclinations of human nature, starting from the most basic ones. We should not expect philosophy [L.C. since it is based upon conceptual, discursive knowledge and not knowledge by inclination] to offer us an a priori picture of those genuine inclinations [which are rooted in man's being as vitally permeated with the preconscious life of the mind, and]* which either developed or were released as humanity advanced. They are evinced by he very history of human consciousness.

Maritain, 35.

How can we tell authentic inclinations from spurious ones? Knowing which inclinations are legitimate and which are not would seem fundamental to distinguish between authentic knowledge and inauthentic knowledge, that is, whether something is natural law or not. Maritain's test, which is not particularly precise, but highly amorphous, is as follows:

Those inclinations were really genuine which, in the immensity of the human past, have guided reason in becoming aware, little by little, of the regulations that have been most definitely and most generally recognized by the human race, starting from the most ancient social communities. For the knowledge of the primordial aspects of natural law was first expressed in social patterns rather than personal judgments. This knowledge was developed from inside, within the double protecting tissue of human inclinations and human society.

Maritain, 35-36. Maritain seems to advocate a sort of vox populi vox legis naturalis, a very challenging form of distillate law.

Gnoseologically speaking, then, natural law is that law which is "naturally known, or, more exactly, . . . the knowledge of which is embodied in the most general and most ancient heritage of humanity." Maritain, 36 (emphasis Maritain's). These constitute, in Maritain's view, the "first principles" known through inclination starting from the "most common" to the "more and more specific ones." Maritain, 36.

Not particularly convincingly, or at least not particularly clearly, Maritain suggests that he has thus "put together two perspectives [of natural law] which, at first glance appear contradictory," namely the ontological and the gnoseological.**

Maritain identifies areas where a knowledge by inclination, "spontaneous knowledge," Maritain, 37, before they are specifically determined, would take us. They would take us to certain "dynamic schemes" or "tendential frameworks" recognized by the data of anthropology:

• to take a man's life is not like taking another animal's life
• the family group has to comply with some fixed pattern
• sexual intercourse has to be contained within given limitations
• we are bound to look at the Invisible
• we are bound to live together under certain rules and prohibitions
  

Maritain, 36-37. This is the sort of knowledge, universally known, that is gained by inclination. It is subsequent to these "tendential frameworks" or "dynamic schemes," when they are fleshed out by individual tribes and cultures that the "immense amount of relativity and variability is to be found in the particular rules, customs, and standards . . . among all peoples of the earth." Maritain, 37. It is within these "tendential frameworks" or "dynamic schemes" that "many various, still defective contents can occur,--not to speak of the warped, deviated, or perverted inclinations which can mingle with the basic ones." In other words, Maritain seems to advocate that knowledge by inclination by connaturality comes up with these "tendential frameworks" or "dynamic schemes," the bones, as it were, of what is natural law. It is when conceptual or discursive reasoning steps in and fleshes out these bones that we get human variability and, inevitably, along with some good, also some corruption and perversion.

The rotten flesh on the clean bones of natural law can be progressively identified and healed in Maritain's view. The identification and healing is performed "in a double manner," both through inclination and discursive reason. Over the course of history, reason "has become aware in a less and less crepuscular, rough, and confused manner, of the primordial regulations of the natural law." On the other hand, man's inclinations have made man more "aware . . . of its further, higher regulations." Maritain, 37. It is therefore why "natural law essentially involves a dynamic development," and why "moral conscience, or the knowledge of natural law, has progressed" from cave man to modern man. Maritain, 37. Indeed, for Maritain that progress is, apparently by natural means alone and not by any supernatural help,**** ineluctable, undeniable, infallible, assured:

[S]uch knowledge is still progressing, it will progress as long as human history endures. That progress of moral conscience is indeed the most unquestionable instance of progress in humanity.

Maritain, 37. It is this notion of progress, a progress without Christ,***** that Maritain uses as his springboard to effect some sort of synthesis with classic natural law and modern natural right. This will be the subject of our next few blog postings. Here, however, we shall end with what might be called the preface of what is to come. First, we have a summary of Maritain's efforts at synthesizing the ontological and gnoseological aspects of the natural law, that is, the natural law as it is, and the natural law insofar as it is known:

I have said that the natural law is unwritten law: it is unwritten law in the deepest sense of that expression, because our knowledge of it is no work of free conceptualization, but results from a conceptualization bound to the essential inclinations of being, of living nature, and of reason, which are at work in man, and because it develops in proportion to the degree of moral experience and self-reflection, and of social experience also, of which man is capable in the various ages of his history.

Maritain, 38. Within certain limits, this would appear unobjectionable, indeed, irrefragable. But as an absolute principle, it would seem untenable. Yet it is from this untenable basis that Maritain leaps into his heart's desire, which is to effect some sort of engrafting of the Enlightenment doctrine of human rights with the classical Thomist doctrine of natural law:

[T]hus it is that in the ancient and medieval times attention was paid, in natural law, to the obligations of man more than to his rights. The proper achievement--a great achievement indeed--of the XVIIIth Century has been to bring out in full light the rights of man as also required by natural law. That discovery was essentially due to a progress in moral and social experience, through which the root inclinations of human nature as regards the rights of the human person were set free, and consequently, knowledge through inclination with regard to them developed.

Maritain, 38. It is true that Maritain tempers his zeal from the advance of human rights caused by the Enlightenment somewhat; he does put one foot on the brake while he has another on the accelerator. He does not wish to swallow the Enlightenment "human rights" and the Enlightenment "ideology" whole. Maritain wants to indulge in Enlightenment fare, but not on a take-all-or-nothing table d'hôte basis; he'd rather order Enlightenment dishes selectively à la carte. To his credit and his Catholic sensibilities, there are some dishes, or combination of dishes, that he simply finds unpalatable.

[A]ccording to a sad law of human knowledge, that great achievement [of the Enlightenment] was paid for by ideological errors, in the theoretical [L.C. and not moral?] field, that I have stressed at the beginning. Attention even shifted from the obligations of man to his rights only. A genuine and comprehensive view would pay attention both to the obligations and the rights involved in the requirements of natural law.

Maritain, 38.

Maritain, it would seem, would enjoy a blended cuisine, a cuisine of both Thomist natural law and of Enlightenment natural right. Can such a blend be done, and, if so, how? If done, can such a blend be digested? Does the effort result in dyspepsia or eupepsia? Will we enjoy the nouvelle cuisine? Or suffer indigestion?

The scholars and theologians are still thinking, writing, debating, arguing, and pontificating. Some burp with satisfaction. Others groan with the pains of acid reflux. And the jury of history is still deliberating without having reached a verdict.

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*The part in these brackets was not in the original text when published as Leçon 1- La loi naturelle ou loi non écrite, but was added when re-published as part of Chapter IV in Maritain's Man and the State. See Maritain, 25 n. 5. The part in the preceding brackets was added for clarity by Lex Christianorum.
**I do not see the ontological perspective in Maritain's synthesis, unless it is expressed in the phrase "the knowledge [of natural law] embodied in the most general and most ancient heritage of humanity." But he refers to this as part of the "gnoseological element." His synthesis seems therefore entirely weighted on the gnoseological perspective. Granted, the sentence in which purportedly effects this synthesis is not felicitously written. "With regard to the second basis element, the gnoseological element which natural law implies in order to have force of law, we can say that natural law--that is, natural law naturally known, or, more exactly, natural law the knowledge of which is embodied in the most general and most ancient heritage of humanity--covers only the field of the ethical regulations of which men have become aware by virtue of knowledge through inclination, and which are the basic or first principles of moral life--progressively recognized from the most common principles to the more and more specific ones. This is to put together to perspectives which, at first glance, appear contradictory: the first perspective sees the natural law as coextensive with human nature, so that every ethical regulation that might be discovered may be found to be in agreement with this 'normality of the functioning of human nature': the other perspective does not deal with the entire set of moral regulations, but only with the very first principles (because it focuses not so much on the ontological element as on the gnoseological element, and because it deals only with those regulations that are known by inclination)." Maritain, 36. Unless I'm thick-headed, this sentence is hardly a model of clarity. Perhaps we need to access the original French.
***These "tendential frameworks" or "dynamic schemes" seem horribly without substantive value. If these for the principal part of the natural law gained through the knowledge by inclination, they are disappointingly without substance. The knowledge gained by inclination, under Maritain's theory, would be disappointingly thin.
****This is again troublesome. If progress in our knowledge of the natural law is naturally assured as a result of some sort of ineluctable law of human progress, then what need is there for Christ? What need for His Church? It seems that, in Maritain's view, human progress, by human effort alone, without the need of grace, will take us asymptotically to the limit of Gospel morality. This appears to be a Pelagian-stained doctrine, and not one authentically Thomistic, Augustinian, or, for that matter, Evangelical. Again, I am not a Maritainian scholar, and Maritain's Catholic and Thomistic credentials are far, far superior to any claim I, as a mere autodidact amateur, have to such, but there seems to something in this Maritainian doctrine that rubs against the Tradition and a strict Orthodoxy. This doctrine would seem to be somewhat temerarious, or at least inching towards such temerity. But again, I withhold any kind of final or even preliminary judgment on Maritain's thought. These areas, however, seem to be problematic and require further analysis.
*****In fact, a progress that may have been inspired by anti-Christian, and certainly anti-Catholic, sentiment. The Enlightenment Project, whatever good may be found in it mixed with whatever evil may be found in it, was certainly inspired by a spirit of rebellion from the Church. Its motto and inspiring spirit may have been taken from Voltaire's lips and poisoned heart: "écrasez l'infâme." But all involved, both advocates and enemies, may have been confusing the civil order, and the ecclesiastical interest in maintaining civil order, including its privileged status (and the benefits to the common good gained thereby), and avoiding bloodshed that comes with revolution, with the ecclesiastical order itself. These, like most historical areas, are full of thorny thickets, with very few clearings.

Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Inclination and Law, Part 2

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES of the notion that the fundamental moral experience is gained, not through rational, conceptual, discursive knowledge, but through intellectual knowledge gained by means of inclination, connaturality, or congeniality? What does it mean that moral knowledge is, at its heart, gained through"intellectual feltness"*?

Maritain identifies three consequences that result from this fundamental feature of the classical natural law theory. First, there is a marked restriction upon the borders of what natural law encompasses and what is outside of it. Second, in the area of knowledge by inclination we enter into an area of the self-evident, that is, indemonstrable, pre-philosophical knowledge, givens, as it were. Third, this givenness suggests that the fundamental principle of natural law is given and is discovered or found or encountered--indeed it is divine and must be confronted as Moses did the burning bush--and not something man creates out of whole cloth as if conventional.

Since the natural law is founded upon inclination or what we have called intellectual feltness, it follows that, strictly speaking, the positive law--which is founded upon human reasoning--is not part of the natural law, though is some cases, clearly, positive law is an expression of this fundamental law or at least its determinations. Analogously, those tenets of moral law known through the exercise of practical reason, that is, through the "spontaneous or philosophical exercise of conceptional and rational knowledge," are not, strictly speaking, part of natural law, though they may be so intimately tied to it that to reject them is to reject the very natural law itself. Natural law, however, in its most strict in rigorous sense, applies only to the knowledge that is gained by connatural means, by inclination, by this intellectual feltness. Once conceptual and rational knowledge is applied to these inclinations, this intellectual feltness, one travels beyond the strict border of natural law into moral philosophy, a form of knowledge which Maritain calls a "reflective knowledge, a sort of after-knowledge." Maritain, 22.

Natural Law, dealing only with regulations known through inclination, deals only with principles immediately known (that is known through inclination, without any conceptual and rational medium) of human morality.

Maritain, 21. The discipline of natural law, defined in its most restrictive sense, is therefore extremely narrow since it addresses only this non-discursive knowledge gained by inclination. In practice, however, the moral knowledge gained through the application of discursive, conceptual knowledge upon these inclinations or connatural knowledge is also called "natural law," though it is not, in fact, the natural law in sensu stricto, in the strict sense, but only by loose analogy based on the fact that these conclusions, reached through discursive and conceptual knowledge, are based or predicated upon the inclinations or intellectual feltness which precedes it.

The consequence of the fact that moral knowledge is, at its heart, one based upon intellectual feltness or inclination is that the fundamental precepts gained thereby are indemonstrably true. In other words, their truth is simply beyond the ken of philosophy because the truth gained by inclination or intellectual feltness is pre-philosophical. At best, philosophy can show that denial of this intellectual feltness, of these inclinations leads to absurdity, to relativism, to no morality at all and to denial of any possible grounds for it. But it remains fundamentally true that the basis of morality is simply philosophical unprovable. It is a given, like all creation:

Thus it is that men . . . are unable to give account of and rationally to justify their most fundamental moral beliefs: and this very fact is a token, not of the irrationality and intrinsic invalidity of these beliefs, but on the contrary, of their essential naturality, and therefore of their greater validity, and of their more than human rationality.

Maritain, 21. Si comprehenderis, is the upshot of Maritain's thesis, non est lex naturalis. If you comprehend it using human concepts and human discursive knowledge, if you are able to prove it, it is not the natural law, strictly so called. In the area of intellectual feltness, or inclinations, we are in the area where God, not man, has writ the script. Man will never comprehend, much less govern or rule, this intimate area where God the Creator has writ his law in the heart of every man and in the hearts of all men. It is here, in the area of intellectual feltness, the knowledge gained by inclination or connaturality, that man must bow down, venerate, listen, learn, and obey. This is the most natural, the greatest, the most noble and divine source of human moral knowledge. It is, at heart, unutterable, like the very name of God himself. It is, in a manner of speaking, the I am who am, the אהיה אשר אהיה‎, the ehyeh asher ehyeh, of morality. It is God with us in us. It is Emmanuel, צמנוּאל, in us. That is why this knowledge will recognize, if uncorrupted by convention or other moral flaw, Christ and his body the Church, which are likewise God with us. The natural law is Christ, and Christ is the natural law. This is the meaning behind Tertullian's claim: Anima naturaliter Christiana. The word of God in us should recognize, in theory if not always in practice, the word of God in Jesus, and will recognize the word of God in the Church Jesus founded.

Moses Before Burning Bush, Mosaic from Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

It is for this reason that Maritain distinguishes a third feature of this law accessed by inclination. Since it is pre-philosophical, pre-conceptual, pre-discursive in nature, the natural law is based, not upon created, that is human, reason, but upon uncreated Reason. It participates, then, in the very Reason of God, the eternal law. In entering this inner sanctum within us, where the natural law dwells, we enter, as it were, the inner sanctum of our temple. We confront, like the high priest of the Jews in the Holy of Holies, the Kodesh Hakodashim, the Ark of the Covenant, wherein lies the very presence, the Shekinah (שכינה), of God. We encounter by this intellectual feltness the light of the Lord which travels ahead of us, like it did the Jews wandering in the desert, in a pillar of cloud to guide us by day, and in a pillar of light to guide us by night, so that we may walk in both light and darkness under the guidance of the Lord God. (Cf. Exodus 13:21) Is it any wonder that human reason, in its conceptual and discursive or created form, must remain mute when confronted by this knowledge gained by inclination?

[U]ncreated Reason, the Reason of the Principle of Nature, is the only reason at play not only in establishing Natural Law (by the very fact that it creates human nature), but in making Natural Law known, through the inclinations of that very nature, to which human reason listens when it knows Natural Law. And it is precisely because Natural Law depends only upon Divine Reason that it is possessed of a character naturally sacred, and binds man in conscience, and is the prime foundation of human law, which is a free and contingent determination of what Natural Law leaves undetermined, and which obliges by virtue of Natural Law.

Maritain, 22.

As humans, we, of course, cannot encounter God and sit idly by. We are commanded to love God with all our heart, minds, soul, and strength. (Mark 12:30; Deut. 6:4, 5) Similarly, we are commanded to love this moral inclination in us with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We are called to exercise discursive, conceptual reason to understand this moral encounter with God by inclination. We are called to practice, to the exercise of virtue, by asceticism to habituate ourselves to life in accordance with this inclination, and to shun vice, that is any habitual or even singular act that may insult this inclination.

In applying human reason to the moral truths gained by inclination, however, we travel outside the realm of natural law strictly speaking and into the threshold of moral philosophy. "Philosophers and philosophical theories supervene," as it were, "in order to explain and justify, through concepts and reasoning, what, from the time of the cave-man, men have progressively known through inclination and connaturality." Maritain, 22. This is moral philosophy. But "[t]he moral law was discovered by men before the existence of any moral philosophy." The moral law existed before Thales of Miletus.** The moral law existed in Adam. Where man has been, it has always been, and will always be.

And yet, moral philosophy ought not to be shunned, though it be a servant, and not master, to the law learned by inclination:

Moral philosophy has critically to analyze and rationally to elucidate moral standards and rules of conduct whose validity was previously discovered in an undemonstrable manner, and in a non-conceptual, non-rational way; it has also to clear them, as far as possible, from the adventitious outgrowths or deviations which may have developed by reason of the coarseness of our nature and the accidents of social evolution.

Maritain, 22. Moral philosophy since the Enlightenment has apparently forgotten its subservient role, its reflective role. Man's reason has usurped the role of inclinations, and thereby supplanted the eternal, divine, and uncreated source of moral knowledge and replaced it with temporal, human, created knowledge. So human reason, and not divine reason, has become the source of modern, post-Enlightenment theories of natural law.

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. No wonder that finally 'eight or more new systems of natural law made their appearance at every Leipzig booksellers' fair' at the end of the eighteenth Century, and that Jean-Paul Richter might observe that "every fair and every war brings forth a new natural law."

Maritain, 23 (quoting Heinrich Rommen, The Natural Law).

This notion that moral knowledge is, at its fundament, gained by an intellectual feltness, by inclination, and not by discursive and conceptual knowledge consequently takes the classical theories of natural law completely outside the Kantian critique of moral knowledge. The Kantian critique of knowledge is part of metaphysics, and thus enters human thought as part of its discursive, conceptual aspect. It does not, indeed cannot, address that human knowledge which is non-discursive, which is gained by pre-philosophical, pre-metaphysical knowledge. The knowledge it critiques is that knowledge gained a priori through intuition or a posteriori following sense experience. But knowledge gained by inclination is outside the categories of a priori or a posteriori knowledge. "[N]either in this intellectual intuition nor in sense-perception is there the smallest element of knowledge through inclination." Maritain, 23. Applying metaphysical concepts to knowledge gained by inclination is a fool's errand since it "confuses the planes and orders of things." Maritain, 23. When metaphysics ventures into the land of inclination, and inclination into the land of metaphysics, it is as if they are foreigners who venture into a land of unknown tongue. So "everyone loses his head, [and] knowledge through inclination and metaphysics are simultaneously spoiled." Maritain, 24.

For a philosopher, Kantian or otherwise, to enter into the realm of knowledge by inclination or intellectual feltness with his blunt metaphysical tools, and claim to rule as if he were king in that realm, is a manifest absurdity. It is as foolish a proposition as if a son were to suggest that he had sired his father. It is perhaps this foolish proposition, which is at the heart of the Enlightenment Project, that has thrown mankind into the intellectual infinite, absurd loop of a son who insists he has engendered the one who has engendered him. This is the absurdity of modern man, who insists that he is father to his own morality, that he is the sire of who he is.

____________________________
*For an explanation of the term "intellectual feltness," see the footnote in the earlier posting in this series, Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Inclination and Morality, Part 1.
**Thales of Miletus (ca. 624-546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor. Considered one of the Seven Sages of Greece, he is generally regarded as the first philosopher in the Greek, and hence Western, tradition.

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.

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*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.

Something More Than Pure Reason

HOW IS THE NATURAL LAW KNOWN? This question Yves Simon questions "formidable," and perhaps it is. It is certainly formidable, in fact impossible to answer, if scientific knowledge is the only kind of knowledge that is demanded. The knowledge of the natural law and its content is scientifically unknowable. For one, there is no experiment that could be envisioned to prove whether a proposition is part of the corpus of the natural law or not. Moreover, if we were to engage in a rigorously scientific social study across peoples and cultures to try to establish content of the natural law (if that were even possible), presumably on the basis of a majority or perhaps supermajority view, it's foreseeable without even taking such a study that we would confront disappointment. But which advocate of natural law ever suggested that the the natural law is to be learned through materialistic means, or that a majority opinion among men is equivalent to natural law? To the questions of natural law, like many deeper human questions questions (Does God exist? What is man's end? and so forth), science and "social statics" yield no answer. Natural law is not an empirical matter. It is not a matter of statistics. It is a matter of deep thought.

That the natural law is a matter of deep thought does not mean it is a matter of pure reason. In striving to know the natural law, we are not called to practice a discipline of pure reason, abstracted from all human inclination. Man does not become moral by physical disembowelment. There are natural inclinations that are part of the recipe of man, and that inform him of right and wrong. Natural inclinations are a form of knowing right and wrong. The natural inclinations ought not be ignored.

Thus, Yves Simon talks about the two "modes" or two "ways" of determining judgments of right and wrong, the "way of cognition" and the "way of inclination." Cognition is knowledge that is obtained "by antecedent cognitions up to axioms or experience." In other words, with respect to a certain proposition or judgment (say, doing "x" is wrong), knowledge of whether that proposition or judgment is true is gained by working "backwards" from that proposition or judgment until one reaches, through a certain chain of reasoning, back to an axiom or an irrefutable datum of experience. Once the entire chain of reasoning or cognition backwards to an axiom or a datum of experience is obtained and anchored back to an axiom or to an irrefutable datum of experience, we have what we could call rational knowledge. This is the "way of cognition." Outside of this pure chain of intellectual title (a work which Simon states in some cases may take "centuries"), as it were, we work within the realm of probable and not certain propositions and opinions. Simon, 127-28.

The "way of cognition" is not the only form of knowledge of right and wrong. Where the "way of cognition" is available, it takes a certain precedence and serves as a sort of load star. Yet, in a wide variety of matters and circumstances the "way of cognition" is not available to us. In such circumstances, the "way of inclination" is an alternative means of forming judgment on the veracity of certain propositions of what is right or wrong. However, not every human inclination is to be followed willy nilly. Only sound human inclinations are worthy guides. There are unsound or disordered inclinations which ought not to be followed at all, but shunned as unreliable guides. To follow unsound or disordered inclinations is like the blind following the blind. In post-lapsarian man, in man after the Fall, not all inclinations are planted in human nature by God.

Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind, and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit.

Matt. 15:13-14.

The Blind Leading the Blind by Pieter Breugel the Elder

In the way of inclination, one walks outside or parallel to (and certainly never contrary to) the way of cognition. "One way is not necessarily exclusive of the other." Simon, 130. Sometimes judgments or propositions are known by cognition and inclination ("cheating on a contract is wrong"). Simon, 135. Yet the "way of inclination" is antecedent to the "way of cognition." Simon, 135. Decisions based upon the "way of inclination" are largely intuitive, based upon "moral sign" and "moral symbol," in the extreme we are in the area of the mantic, of divination, and so may be difficult to explain and to justify. Simon, 128, 132. There is a certain groping in the dark, perhaps, in the "way of inclination," and so we ought to be open to the guidance of the prudent, the wise, the sage.

(Indeed, as Christians, we have a yet more reliable guide regardless of whether we act in the "way of cognition" or the "way of inclination": the Magisterium of the Church, which, guided by the Holy Spirit of God ceded her by the Son of God, is a competent, reliable, even infallible guide of right and wrong. We ought to be inclined to follow the Church in matters moral without--certainly external, but also internal--dissent, even in those matters that do not clearly involve infallible teachings. Sound inclination on the part of Christians would require religious submission of will and mind (obsequium religiosum) to the Church's guidance even where not clearly infallible. In the case of infallibly-taught teachings, whether ordinarily or extraordinarily expressed, more than religious submission is required: they are to be accepted de fide, as moral dogma.)

The rejection of inclinations, and reliance on reason alone, dehumanizes us. That is what makes Kant so unattractive. Similarly, it is what makes Bertrand Russell such an unattractive guide in the area of marriage and sexual mores, for example. (Bertrand Russell had the temerity to write a book Marriage and Morals, when his own multiple marriages were failures, and his affairs and infidelities notorious. He was a cad, a very clever cad, perhaps, but a cad. Only a fool would take him as a guide of marital life and its morals.) These men, and those of their ilk, disemboweled of all inclination, seem to relish in a way of cognition alone, as if the natural inclinations, prejudices, repugnance of men even when sound ought to be ignored as if they were voices of sirens.

Indeed, sound inclinations are not the voices of sirens.

They are the voice of God.

They are part of the way of the natural law.