Leo Strauss and Natural Law: Rousseau's Doctrine of Natural Right

ROUSSEAU'S UNDISCIPLINED AND WOBBLY GENIUS addressed the "history" of man in his Second Discourse (Discourse on the Origin of the Inequality of Man). It purports to be an exploration of man's "history" using techniques of modern natural and social science, and starts with Cartesian presuppositions. The Second Discourse is "identical with a study of the basis of natural right and therewith of morality." Strauss, 266. Rousseau's aim to reveal for us what political order accords with natural right. In so doing he seems to dethrone God, and certainly to disennoble man.

Rousseau . . . tells us the story of man in order to discovery that political order which is in accordance with natural right. . . . [H]e follows Descartes . . . [and] assumes that animals are machines and that man transcends the general mechanism, or the dimension of (mechanical) necessity, only by virtue of the spirituality of his soul. . . . Rousseau questions not only the creation of matter but likewise the traditional definition of man. Accepting the view that brutes are machines, he suggests that there is only a difference of degree [and not of kind] between men and the brutes in regard to understanding . . . . It is man's power to choose and his consciousness of this freedom . . . which proves the spirituality of his soul.

Strauss, 264-65. The uniqueness in man relative to the brute animals, at least to Rousseau, was not in his reason, but in his freedom of the will. But it was not the freedom of man which was the foundation upon which Rousseau built his theory. Seeking to avoid the arguments that accompanied the notion of human freedom, Rousseau (controversially) sought to build his argument on something less controversial: on the perfectibility of man. This foundational decisions was "mean to be neutral with regard to the conflict between materialism and antimaterialism, or to be 'scientific' in the present-day sense of the term." Strauss, 266.

The general tack that Rousseau takes in his Second Discourse is interesting. Essentially, he accepts the Hobbesian premises, but then forgoes the Hobbesian conclusions, instead extending the Hobbesian premises to more extreme conclusions, thereby undercutting the Hobbesian premises. Strauss identifies two of these Rousseauian extensions of Hobbesian premises. The first such extension has to do with the Hobbesian "state of nature" premise, which Rousseau washes clean of any social nature whatsoever. The second such extension relates to the foundation of natural right on passion, and not reason, Rousseau essentially robs man of any reason in his "state of nature," reason being something acquired as a result of language which is conventional. The result is an entire disassembly of any notion of natural law or natural right. The last remnants of any kind of classical or Christian stain of natural law or natural right remaining in Hobbes were bleached out by Rousseau. Both the baby and the bathwater were now thrown out.

In any event, Rousseau clearly rejects any traditional teaching of natural law, and in exchange adopts the Hobbesian premise that natural law can be found only be going to the "state of nature." "Hobbes," Rousseau says, "has seen very well the defect of all modern traditions of natural right."[1] Hobbes a très bien vu le défaut de toutes les définitions modernes du droit naturel. Rousseau clearly rejects any definition of natural law that placed predominance upon man's use of reason or put man under some natural duty, under some natural law. Likewise, he clearly intended to reject any scriptural influences, being "fully aware of the antibiblical implications of the concept of the state of nature." Strauss, 267 n. 32. Any foundation of natural law must not be based upon reason (or a fortiori must not be based upon scripture), but upon something that is prior and preeminent to reason (or scripture), namely, passion, and most specifically, the impulse to self-preservation, which, of course, is an impulse that is self-regarding, not other-regarding:

[Rousseau] agrees, then, with Hobbes's attack on the traditional natural law teaching: natural law must have its roots in principles which are anterior to reason. i.e., in passions which need not be specifically human. He further agrees with Hobbes in finding the principle of natural law in the right of self-preservation, which implies the right of each to be the sole judgment of what are the proper means for his self-preservation.

Strauss, 266. Such a view of man's nature immediately jettisons the formulations of traditional natural moral law, most notably perhaps, the "Golden Rule." For Rousseau, like Hobbes, the "Golden Rule" is not a principle of natural law.

Rousseau expresses his loyalty to the spirit of Hobbes's reform of the natural law teaching by substituting for "that sublime maxim of reasoned justice 'Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you' . . . this much less perfect, but perhaps more useful maxim 'Do good to yourself with as little evil as possible to others.'"[2]

Strauss, 266-67 (quoting Rousseau's Second Discourse).

While Rousseau accepts the Hobbesian premise that one must go back to the "statute of nature," it does not lead him to where Hobbes ends up. Hobbes, like all others that have resorted to a "state of nature" analysis, "felt the necessity to go back to the statute of nature, but not one of them has arrived there." Les philosophes qui ont examiné les fondements de la société ont tous senti la nécessité de remonter jusqu’à l’état de nature, mais aucun d’eux n’y est arrivé. No, none but our narcissistic Rousseau, with his remarkable genius, foresight, and light was able to "arrive." Like a good Trekkie, Rousseau was the only one who was able "to boldly go where no other man has gone before." (Had Rousseau lived in the era of Star Trek, would he have dressed himself up as Captain Kirk like he dressed himself up like an Armenian?) Rousseau (who was buffeted by passion) alone can figure out which one of men's passions are conventional, arising as they do from man's decision to leave the "state of nature" and bind himself in conventional society, and which are to be found only in a "state of nature." Rousseau found the "method," the "physical" investigation, that could overcome all others' failures:

The method which he uses is a "meditation on the first and most simple operations of the human soul"; those mental acts which presuppose society cannot belong to man's natural constitution, since man is by nature solitary.

Strauss, 269.

Rousseau also erases any role of reason in natural law or right, and he does this, again, on Hobbesian premises. Hobbes is right, Rousseau insists, on founding natural right on passions, but he goes wrong in drawing out of this premise any sort of rules or duties, or even conclusions or theorems, using reason. For Rousseau, if the natural law is going to speak to man, it must be in his "state of nature," and that means it must be "rooted directly in passion," "it must be prerational." Strauss, 269.

The fact that the "state of nature" is presocial and prerational results in Rousseau concluding that "man is by nature good." Strauss, 269. In a "state of nature," there can be no such thing as pride or vanity, because these are social vices, and man, prior to society in his "state of nature" cannot suffer from these vices. The same is true mutatis mutandis for all vices, pride being the basis for all of them. For Rousseau, then, "[n]atural man is therefore free from all viciousness." Strauss, 269-70. Moreover, "natural man is compassionate." Strauss, 270. And it is compassion which is the "passion from which all social virtues derive." Strauss, 270. Similarly, man in a "state of nature" lacks reason. Reason requires language for Rousseau, and language is conventional, presupposing society. "Since language is not natural, reason is not natural." Strauss, 270. This thought process of Rousseau naturally leads to an entirely revolutionary concept of man. Man in his "state of nature" is no longer a "rational animal," nor a "social animal." He is a "stupid animal." Strauss, 276. In the Rousseauian view, therefore, natural law understood in its classical, traditional sense does not exist:

[S]ince natural man is prerational, he is utterly incapable of any knowledge of the law of nature which is the law of reason . . . . Natural man is premoral in every respect: he has no heart. Natural man is subhuman. . . . There is no natural constitution of man to speak of: everything specifically human is acquired or ultimately depends on artifice or convention. . . . Man is by nature almost infinitely malleable. . . . Man's humanity or rationality is acquired

Strauss, 270-71, 272. All this has significant importance in the history of natural law. As Strauss observes:

By thinking through [Hobbes's] teaching, Rousseau was brought face to face with the necessity of abandoning it completely. If the state of nature is subhuman, it is absurd to go back to a state of nature in order to find in its the norm of man. Hobbes had denied that man has a natural end. He had believed that he could fin a natural or nonarbitrary basis of right in man's beginnings. Rousseau showed that man's beginnings lack all human traits. On the basis of Hobbes's premise, therefore, it became necessary to abandon altogether the attempt to find the basis of right in nature, in human nature.

Strauss, 274. All law, all right, all justice then was conventional. This was the upshot of the Hobbesian premises. Humanity had no end to provide guidance. This was Hobbes's marvelous contribution to human thought. Humanity had no beginning that could provide guidance. This was Rousseau's marvelous clarification of Hobbesian thought. There was hence no natural foundation for law, for right, for justice. All of these--law, right, justice--were arbitrary, standardless. The only law is that which the infinite malleable man gives to himself. Rousseau "says that freedom is obedience to the law which one has given to one's self." Strauss, 278.

Accordingly, we shall next look at Rousseau's concept of human "freedom."

_____________________________________
[1]By "modern" he means "contemporary," that is to say, "the traditional definitions which still predominated in the academic teaching of his time." Strauss, 266.
[2]"c’est elle qui, au lieu de cette maxime sublime de justice raisonnée : Fais à autrui comme tu veux qu’on te fasse, inspire à tous les hommes cette autre maxime de bonté naturelle bien moins parfaite, mais plus utile peut-être que la précédente : Fais ton bien avec le moindre mal d’autrui qu’il est possible." For a discussion of Hobbes's treatment of the "Golden Rule," see our prior posting, Golden Rule in Thomas Hobbes.

Leo Strauss and Natural Law: The Rousseauian Crisis of Virtue

YOU CAN'T GO TINKERING WITH TRADITION without causing crises. Often, little changes in thought have great unintended consequences: a wrong step at the beginning of a journey can make a big difference at the end. So, it appears, was the Enlightenment Project to Rousseau who felt "that the modern venture was a radical error." Strauss, 252. Unfortunately for both Rousseau and those who seized upon and those who suffered the effect of his teachings--most poignantly those whose heads were severed from their bodies through the morbidly efficient invention of Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin--Rousseau felt right, but reacted wrongly. "He abandoned himself to modernity" while rebelling against it.

In confronting the Enlightenment thinkers, Rousseau's modus operandi was to return to the classics, drawing therefrom the ideas of "city and virtue, on the one hand, and nature, on the other." Strauss, 253. But in doing this, he not only maintained the error of the moderns, he advanced their error by rejecting parts of the classical thought that even the moderns had the sense to leave in place. Rousseau was sort of like a little boy who goes into a messy room, makes it messier, and then claims to have cleaned it and earned his allowance. As Strauss sees it, therefore, Rousseau's "return to antiquity, was at the same time, an advance of modernity." Strauss, 252. Best as I can figure it out, Rousseau the "modern" dressed up in the city-virtue-nature clothes of the ancients, but it was as unimpressive as when he dressed himself in the furs of an Armenian. In both instances he was unconvincing. All dress, no show. This vain little narcissist is singularly one of the least impressive of little men--we might point out, for one, the five children he fathered out of wedlock that he abandoned--, and he thought he could fool us by dressing up his thoughts in the words of the ancients. Rousseau was sort of like a little kid at a carnival who's dressed up as a soldier, and in his vivid (if puerile) imagination really sees himself as one. Did Rousseau really think that by dressing up his thought with a chiton or a toga we would think him a Socrates or a Cato?[1]

Rousseau Dressed Like an Armenian

Rousseau was a wobbler. He could never quite figure out what he liked more about the ancients, the city (convention) or nature. There is an obvious tension between the convention of the city and the state of nature, and this "tension is the substance of Rousseau's thought." Strauss, 254. But this wasn't the tight tension of a synthesis. No, rather it was the "confusing spectacle of a man who perpetually shifts back and forth between two diametrically opposed positions." Strauss, 254. One the one hand, the city. On the other, nature. On the one hand, the rights of the individual. On the other, the complete submission of the individual to the state. Rousseau was, as I said, a wobbler.

Locke was the Grand Dissembler. Rousseau was the Grand Wobbler.[2]

Rousseau never solved his dilemma, and his thought wallowed in inconsistency. Complaining of the moderns, he appealed to the classics and their "city," and then "almost in the same breath," he appealed the the "'man of nature,' the prepolitical savage." Strauss, 254. "The question is, then, not how he solved the conflict between the individual and society [since he never solved it] but rather how he conceived of that insoluble conflict." Strauss, 255. Strauss believes Rousseau never resolved his problem between the conflict of the individual versus society, any resolutions were clearly tentative and unstable.

Virtue! screamed the unvirtuous Rousseau in his First Discourse,[3] yielding the word like a club against the arts and the sciences, when he should have been beating his breast praying mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa and taking care of his abandoned children, or at least controlling his sexual appetite. But virtue for Rousseau was principally envisioned as a political virtue, not a personal one, the "virtue of the patriot or the virtue of a whole people." Strauss, 256. This virtue, though he points to Socrates, or the austere Fabricius and Cato as exemplars, is something different from the classical and Christian understanding of it on at least two points. First, it is squeezed into democratic and egalitarian bottles. Equality, or at least the recognition of equality, is made inseparable from Rousseau's virtue. Second, Rousseau finds the source of this virtue not in reason, but in conscience. However, Rousseau's understanding of conscience is non-traditional; it is more akin to "sentiment" or "instinct." Strauss, 256. Here, then, passion is king. Then he ties the two together: "Rousseau saw a connection between his inclination toward democracy and his preference for sentiment above reason." Strauss, 256. In Rousseau, "passion began to pass judgment, in the severe accents of Catonic virtue." Hmmm, something is rotten in the state of Rousseauville.

This Rousseauian virtue was so tied to the conventional "city," that is, it was contrary to science or philosophy (Rousseau uses the word "science" broadly in the original Latin sense of scientia to include any sort of "knowledge," including philosophy, but also the natural sciences) because virtue was particular to a nation, to a people, whereas science was universal. Science or philosophy therefore can act as a solvent against the particular genius of a people and nationalistic and patriotic virtues. Science further emasculates a people, removing from them their warlike spirit. Any effort applied to science, moreover, is effort that is wrongly diverted from the common good of the people. So the "dogmas" of a people, "the sacred dogmas authorized by the laws" face unhealthy competition from science. A people are cemented together with opinion and faith. Science dissolves these bonds through truth and knowledge. Science is, moreover, fostering of inequality. The philosopher or scientist, in short, cannot be a good citizen.

But here we come upon a Rousseauian contradiction. It is through philosophy that Rousseau condemns philosophy and science and promotes political or national freedom and virtue. He also heaps encomia upon such men as Bacon, Descartes, and Newton, which would appear inconsistent with his primary thesis. So he devises some ways out of his situation, none of them entirely convincing. First, he suggests that "science is bad for a good society and good for a bad society." Strauss, 259. In other words, science has a role when society is bad in criticizing that society, but once that society becomes purified of its evils, science has no more role. But he saw his "science" as perennial, and therefore lasting and valid even in the context of a good society. Obviously, our diminutive narcissist would not want his "science" ever to be passé. So there is another explanation given, this one equally as narcissistic. Science is bad for the hoi polloi, for the common man, but not for the brilliant minority, of which, naturally, Rousseau was a part. Again, our little man was nothing but a little boy who loved to dress up:

[Rousseau] intimates that, far from being a common man, he is a philosopher who merely appears in the guise of a common man and that, far from ultimately addressing "the people," he addresses only those who are not subjugated by the opinions of their century, of their country, or of their society.

What hubris! Rousseau, the grand philosopher, suffers to show himself a common man, so as to speak to--not the common man, for the common man could not understand him--but the visionary equally brilliant as he to impart his divine gnosis! This way he can save the common man. Oh Rousseau, who, being equivalent to divine philosophers, did not consider equality to be grasped at, but humbled himself, taking the nature of the common man, and so lowered himself, even toward the death of being misunderstood. Presumably, our virtuous light from light did all this so as to save us from our darkness.

Me thinks our little man suffered from a Messiah complex. Indeed, as Professor Carol Blum notes in her Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue, Rousseau envisioned himself a kind of Christ figure, for Rousseau's “wish was not to imitate Jesus Christ, but to compete with him.” Well, I have news for Rousseau. He lost the competition. Besides, now he finds himself in another quandary. Now he has re-injected inequality among men, which is inconsistent with his egalitarian premises.

The third way Rousseau sought to get out of his quandary between the philosophy being bad for the city, and yet his philosophy being exceptional is as follows. Rousseau distinguished between two kinds of science or philosophy. There is one kind ("metaphysics) which was incompatible with virtue, and there was another kind ("Socratic wisdom") which was compatible with virtue. Naturally (is it any surprise?), Rousseau's philosophy was the latter kind. This Socratic wisdom was consistent with virtue because it recognized the need to be concerned with the "science of the simple souls." As Strauss puts it: "Socratic wisdom is needed, not for the sake of Socrates, but for the sake of the simple souls or of the people." Strauss, 263.

The true philosophers fulfil the absolutely necessary function of being the guardians of virtue or of free society. Being the teachers of the human race, they, and they alone, can enlighten the peoples as to their duties and as to the precise character of the good society.

Strauss, 263. This would seem to be a solution, yet Rousseau again wobbles things by questioning the very thing the one with Socratic wisdom was meant to serve: the city and virtue. "In the name of nature, Rousseau questioned not only philosophy but the city and virtue as well." Strauss, 263. This was forced upon him because his particular brand of "Socratic wisdom" was highly untraditional and against the classical and Christian spirit that came before him. The Rousseauian philosophy was not philosophy at all, but "a particular kind of theoretical science, namely, modern natural science." Strauss, 263.

And this leads naturally to Rousseau's Second Discourse,[4] the Straussian view of which shall be the topic of our next blog posting on Rousseau.

______________________________
[1] Rousseau has been the subject of prior postings, and you can search the blog using the gadget on the upper left of the blog, using his name as a search term to find them. But his hypocrisy was particularly treated in Ecstatsis and Telos: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Disfigured Man.
[2] Rousseau wobbled in his faith. He converted (in a fashion) from his childhood Calvinism to Catholicism in 1728, only to give it up in favor of Calvinism in 1754. But whether Protestant or Catholic, his life was not particularly led by Christian values. He also wobbled in his occupation, and in his relations with women. He was a man with no true compass. His only consistent attribute was a self-preening narcissism.
[3] The First Discourse refers to Rousseau's Discours sur les sciences et sur les arts (A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts).
[4] The Second Discourse refers to Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality). It is significantly the more important text in understanding Rousseau's political philosophy.

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 19: Rights of the State

THE TERM RIGHTS OF THE STATE has an unfamiliar ring to it, but it is shorthand for the ensemble of "juridical [legal] relations which unite the governed to the governing power in the civil society." [325(106)] Within this division, and under the guidance of a natural law philosophy, Mercier explores the nature, origin, and end of the State. He asks what the functions of public authority ought to be, and in what form those functions ought be assumed and exercised. Mercier addresses the rights and duties of citizens to the State, the principles that ought to govern international relations, and the relationship between the civil society and the religious society. "All these questions . . . belong to the sphere of the philosophy of Natural Law." [325(106)] The answers to those questions are all predicated upon the theory of the State that one adopts.

The first matter addressed by Mercier is the various theories of the existence of the State. He reviews some of the main theories that are outside the classical natural law tradition: (1) a pantheistic view of the State (Plato, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte); (2) the view of the State as an institution of positive divine right (such as that advanced by Filmer or Bodin); (3) the view that the State is a creature of social contract alone (Hobbes, Rousseau); and (4) the view of the State as a social organism (Lilienfeld, Schäffle, Spencer). Finally, as against all these other theories, he discusses the rival Christian, that is natural law, conception of the State.

The pantheistic theory of the State is probably not much held modernly, and it is difficult to conceive that it was ever advocated in earnest. But it was. In some sense, Plato may be viewed as being its originator. In our day, we can trace this view largely to the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).

Plato's philosophy, specifically his ontology, had the "germ of pantheism." He saw the entirety of the cosmos informed by "a kind of psychic principle," of which individual's soul was "but an emanation." This view, coupled with the notion that universal ideas correspond to universal essences in the divine wrap up all things in a pantheistic blanket. These underlying metaphysical presuppositions inform his ideal state in his Republic. After all, the state is viewed as the cosmos writ large, and the state as the soul of man writ large. Thus they are all intimately joined and linked in one pantheistic chain of being. For Plato, justice was tied to harmony and unity. "Liberty and the traditional philosophy of man's spiritual nature stand or fall together."
--Cardinal MercierAccordingly, the role of reason was to harmonize and unify the various human faculties. Similarly, the role of the city state was to harmonize and unify its citizens into one body corporate of the City-State. This required a subordination of the individual to the City-State. Anything that could present itself as a threat to the unification was suspect, and so intermediate institutions such as the family, private property, and idiosyncratic activities such as poetry and so forth had to be banned from Plato's ideal state. (It is this tendency in Plato, noted by Mercier, that led Karl Popper to identify Plato (along with Hegel and Marx) as one of the traditional enemies of the "open society".) But even Plato, in his extremity, cannot be said to have "identif[ied] the State with the deity of the universe," though he came awful close. [326(107)] The same cannot be said for Hegel.

Portrait of Hegel by Jakob Schlesinger (1792-1855)

"With Hegel, who here follows Schelling and Fichte, the case is otherwise. . . .[I]n his later writings he professed the completest pantheism." [326-27(107)]

'The State', he says, 'is the social substance that has arrived at self-consciousness . . . . It is the rationnel* of itself and for itself . . . it is a terrestrial divinity.' Here we find the State has become an aspect of the Absolute which, according to Hegel, is the common substrate of all things, the universal substance, of which individual beings are but so many modes or determinations.

[327(107)] (quoting Hegel's Philosophy of Right) For Hegel, the State, being in essence divine, lives for its own ends, and not for the common good. "Hegel's answer is that the State must be viewed as an organic and living unity having its own subsistence as its one end." [327(107)] Similarly, the State is the source of all right:

[S]ince [the State] is the divine being, its will must be the sovereign law, the source of all rights and all duties. Therefore against its decisions no individual right founded on nature can be of any avail.

[327(107)] This divinization of the State is a serious lapse into paganism because it absolutizes the State. One of the boons of Christianity was to force a separation between the secular State and the religious life of man (the Church). Christianity thus demoted the pretensions of an absolute State, and it would seem that the State, like a man with a heart darkened by the bitterest desire for vengeance, has been unforgiving since that time, biding its time and nursing its wounds until it could destroy the Church and re-assume the powers that Satan would give it.

Charles I by Unknown Artist Receiving His
Divine Right to Rule Immediately from God
(National Portrait Gallery, London)

Another theory of the State is what may be called the "divine right" theory. Stemming from 17th century jurisprudence, it held the monarchy to be appointed by God himself in an office of divine right. Thus the prince was responsible not to his subjects, but to God alone. As if by divine election, the monarch was chosen from the mass of men and given special authority by God. Not only was he given authority directly from God, but apparently as part of it the power to cure his subjects of scrofula, known thereby by the moniker "the King's evil."**

The political interest of the monarch, namely, the consolidation and extension of his power, dominates all other interests. He is known as the 'raison d'Etat' Before his superior claims the rights of the individual must yield.

[328(108)] Such a theory of government is largely Eastern in inspiration. "Its origin is not Christian." [328(108)] Obviously, such a theory is not held by anyone modernly. One need only read the work of Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653) to see the risibility of such a theory. Another advocate of the theory was Jean Bodin (1530-1596). It is of merely historical interest currently.

The social contract theory of the State is probably the view held by a majority of political theorists currently since it is at the heart of political liberalism. Although there is great variety among advocates of this theory, the essential kernel shared among all of them is that "civil society owes its rights to a contract, either expressed or tacit, that has been freely entered into by its members." [328(109)]

Hobbes is an early advocate of the concept, but his theory has a decided monarchical slant, although his theory may be translated and mutated to the power of an absolute State of other stripes.

Portrait of Jean Jacques Rousseau in Armenian Dress

Rousseau was the theory's great popularizer and democratizer. Rousseau's writings, however, resulted in a dichotomous interpretation. On the one hand, Rousseau gave birth to an individualistic notion of the social contract theory, where the State's role was by common agreement or contract stipulated to be one that would allow men to express their autonomy, free of any extrinsic influence. What was originally the fruit of rationalism in thought (philosophy) and morality and religion (i.e., autonomy), found its expression in political theory. "There it fostered liberalism, and drew conclusions from the theory of the social contract which were directly opposed to those of Hobbes." [329(111)]

Essentially, any social contract theory of the State makes the institution's origin entirely human. It is formed by consent of men, and God has nothing to do with it. The social contract theory is the basis for the modern school of political liberalism, as from this theory it has borrowed two fundamental tenets. The first principle liberalism has borrowed is the legal basis of public authority. The second principle borrowed from the social contract theory relates to the purpose of the State.

Liberalism, along with the social contract theory, believes that the "free consent of individuals is the one and only source of all lawful authority." Thus the State and law finds its ultimately source in human consent, human contract, and it is therefore independent of any divine law. Public authority is viewed as limited by agreement or compact. Its role is to assure the greatest possible freedom among its citizens, without regard to morality or to nature.

As it is contrary to the principle of rationalism to accept any guidance from constituted authority alike in matters intellectual as well as moral, so it is consistent to assert that the function of the State is not in any way to direct the action of individuals as regards any ideal whatever, but simply to safeguard them from all obstacles that would hinder their free development. Accordingly the function of the State is not to civilize, but only to guarantee that the rights and liberty of the citizens shall be protected.

[330(111)] This is the path that Kant took: "As an advocate of the principle of the autonomy of reason, he gives us the conception of the State as the mere guardian of the rights of the individual." [330-31(111)] All this liberalism, shunning the World's enchantment, ignores God's Grandeur. But:

The world is charge with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights of the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.***

Liberalism has trod, and trod, and trod, and has lost its sense of truth and freedom. It wallows in self-indulgence, and revels in pollution of all sorts, especially social pollution like pornography, homosexuality, dead babies, ruined families, and ruined marriages, the empty shells of which are found anywhere it has had some say. Its expression in classical liberalism, of the laissez faire type, has not been particularly edifying either. The waste, the disregard for the world's resources, the disrespect for nature and the environment, the social and chemical dross left behind by Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is disheartening. How much beauty been have the grasping industrialists destroyed by careless exploitation of the world's resources?

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew —
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene****.

The other prong of Rousseau's thought took a decidedly less liberal path, and expressed itself in the notion of the "General Will" and the absolutism of a democratic state. Rousseau attributes to the general will qualities of absolute sovereignty, indefectibility, and infallibility, and by a sleight of hand, though it is but the will of the majority, makes it by transference the will of each individual. As it turns out, under this branch of Rousseauism, it is "law or, more accurately, the will of the majority, that creates rights, and especially the right of property." [331(112)] The seeds of collectivity are already present:

By becoming a citizen a man has even lost his own individual existence. For Rousseau informs us that 'the mission of the legislator is to transform each individual, who by himself is a solitary unit, into a part of a larger whole from which this individual in a certain measure receives his life and being.' . . . Christianity in asserting the independence of religious from civil authority had liberated the human conscience form the yoke of the State. Rousseau would replace that yoke.

[332(112)] Like a dog, it would seem, man left Christ and then returned to his own earlier pagan vomit. This is in keeping with proverbial wisdom: "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so is the fool that repeateth his folly." Sicut canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum sic inprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam. (Proverbs 26:11).

Herbert Spencer by John McClure Hamilton (1853-1936)

The last theory addressed by Mercier before launching in the natural law way of things is the theory of the "social organism" or organicism. Though it has some Platonic roots, and was present in the teachings of the Physiocrats, and even in a form in Hegel and his disciples, this now-forgotten theory was advanced by the likes of Paul (Pavel) von Lilienfeld (1829-1903), Albert Eberhard Friedrich Schäffle (1831-1903), and the social Darwinist Herbert Spencer (1820-19

We are told by Spencer that all phenomena are governed by a law of evolution. . . . Now under this same law of evolution individuals are brought together to form social organisms. . . . For he viewed the life of society as not essentially different from the organic life of man . . . .

[333-34(113)]. Mercier cuts to the quick: this theory "is simply a restatement of the old-world materialism." Like all materialism it denies the human personality. [334(113)] Ultimately, the question revolves around whether "the individual, who is also the social unit, is not something more than a mere aggregation of cells, such as materialists would have us believe." Their denial of any further principle other than atomism or cell-aggregation, "when applied to political science," leads to "the most radical absolutism." [335(113)]

"Liberty and the traditional philosophy of man's spiritual nature stand or fall together." [335(114)] And it is to that conception of man and to the State, that Mercier directs his attention and ends his foray in the natural law in his A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy. That will be the subject matter of our next, and also last, posting on Cardinal Mercier and the natural law.

___________________________
*Rationnel (adjective) is French for rational.
**The "King's Evil" (le mal du roy) or Scrofula (Tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis) is essentially tuberculosis of the neck. Popular belief held that the "royal touch" of the monarch of France or England could cure the unfortunate subject of the disease. It was viewed as a power collateral to his right of rule. Apparently, the power respected the Salic law in France, but not in England, where Queens apparently claimed it.
***Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur."
****Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Binsey Poplars."

Ecstasis and Telos: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Disfigured Man

"A LOVER OF HIS KIND, but a hater of his kindred," is how Edmund Burke aptly described Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Rousseau abandoned as many as perhaps five children he fathered out of wedlock with the seamstress Thérèse Levasseur. But we mustn't forget that this noble act gave the responsible "citizen of Geneva" Jean Jacques Rousseau the time and the peace and quiet to write about so many things with great authority and aplomb, including morality, good citizenship, and (no kidding!) the proper rearing and education of children. Edmund Burke was right: Rousseau was worse than a bear, for a "bear, loves, licks and forms her young, but bears are not philosophers," at least not "philosophers of vanity." (Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 1791). The remarkable thing is that men (particularly the French) listened to Rousseau, lionized him, and idolized this sensual and diminutive whining egoist to the point that Burke could mock the French as running to foundries with the kettles of their poor and the bells of their churches to have them smelted down into statues of Rousseau. Preposterously, the French even enshrined the ashes of this cad who wrote words sweet, but did things bitter, in the Panthéon in Paris.


In his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754), the most famous of his political discourses, Rousseau resolves to discover the true nature of mankind by doing what Hobbes did, hypothesizing on man's "state of nature" or "original condition." Coming to the exact opposite of Hobbes's conclusions, however, Rousseau sees man in his "state of nature" not as a state of constant war, but a state of constant peace, a paradise. Rousseau comes to believe that culture and society have stained the warp and woof that is man, and that in his natural state man was far more pure and altruistic. Famously, Rousseau compares his analysis of man to the Greek statute of Glaucus:

Like the statue of Glaucus, which time, sea and storms had disfigured to such an extent that it look less like a god than a wild beast, the human soul altered in the midst of society by a thousand constantly recurring cause, by the acquisition of a multitude of bits of knowledge and of errors, by changes that too place in the constitution of bodies, by the constant impact of the passions, has, as it were, changed its appearance to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. And instead of a being active always by certain and invariable principles, instead of that heavenly and majestic simplicity whose mark its author had left on it, one no longer finds anything but the grotesque contrasts of passion which thinks it reasons and and understanding in as state of delirium.

Poor Rousseau. It was not mankind that was like Glaucus's statue. It was Rousseau that was like Glaucus's statue. It was Rousseau, whose egotistic and self-regarding sensualism and sexual license led him to his life of hideous selfishness, one which led him to abandon his children, marked him with a chronic inability to get along with any of his colleagues, and fed his palpable paranoia. By his behavior, he had disfigured himself, his soul, to where it had no semblance of its original nobility.

And that the grass, which methought hung so wide
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes he vainly sought to hide,
Were or had been eyes:—
. . .
'First, who art thou?'—'Before thy memory,
'I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died,
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Had been with purer nutriment supplied,
'Corruption would not now thus much inherit
Of what was once Rousseau,—

Shelley, "Triumph of Life" (1822).

As the poet Shelley put it, Rousseau had lost his eyes. Where there had once been eyes, there were but gaping holes, a man who had blinded himself. And why should we follow a blind guide, especially one self-blinded? Rousseau is called Father of the French Revolution, a revolution that during its Reign of Terror led to the death of perhaps as many as 40,000. If you include his five children (who very likely died in the foundling hospitals where they were abandoned) to the tally, that would be 40,005. These were but collateral damage to the theories of Rousseau.


Be all that as it may, Rousseau's efforts at unearthing human nature like some sort of philosophical paleontologist was not for the purpose of discovering an end or teleology in that nature. He rejected any notion of a teleology in nature, and saw that nature as "self-contained rather than ordered beyond itself." Levering, 109. Moreover, there is no notion in Rousseau wherein man finds fulfillment in community (as a political animal) or where he is "guided toward 'ecstatic' fulfilment by an ordering established by God." What Rousseau intended to do was discover this original nature so that it could be the foundation of the natural rights of the individual as against society. Thus, though Rousseau's conclusions about human nature are more optimistic than Hobbes's, they still suffer from the same individualistic strain.

The two fundamental principles of "natural law" that he finds [through his analysis] are self-preservation and compassion for others; the second principle will predominate and guide human society unless the first principle is threatened. What he calls "natural right" flows from these two principles.

Levering, 111-12.


Rousseau's conclusion was that man was radically free and equal in his original state. All goods, even women, were free and could be picked and chosen at will as if they were fruit on a tree. "Savage man is free of entangling social bonds, whether with neighbours, wife, or children, and therefore is free to seek peacefully his self-preservation and to exercise compassion." Levering, 114. It was only the invention of private property (and exclusive marriage, an invention of civilized women to control men) that led to man's fall from his idyllic savage existence.

The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch . . . .

Levering, 114-15 (quoting Part II of Discourse on the Origin of Inequality).

The original sin was not disobedience to God, but the institution of private property, and following its institution, the natural law disappeared to be replaced by a regime of violence, or, only marginally better, human law, which was nothing less than violence writ on paper. Laws

gave new fetters to the weak and new forces to the rich, irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, established forever the law of property of inequality, changed adroit usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the profit of a few ambitious men henceforth subject the entire human race to labor, servitude, and misery.

So, deftly, with his free, easy, and irresponsible pen (what did he care; it helped sell books), Rousseau managed to contradict Hobbes's view of the state of nature and the value of the commonwealth and Locke's veneration of the right to private property and contractual government. All ills were placed at the foot of civil society. As he famously wrote in the opening lines of the Social Contract: "Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains!"

It's true. Rousseau could write a line. But he could not live a life. And he could and would ruin many, and most certainly five. And whatever it was that he advanced, and for whatever it is that he is famous for, it is not because he advanced the cause of the natural moral law and the cause of virtue.

Natural Law: Ecstasis and Telos

ETIAMSI DAREMUS . . . NON ESSE DEUM. These temerarious but still tenuously introduced words in the introduction (Prolegomena) of Hugo Grotius's treatise De iure belli ac pacis (1625) symbolize a historical phenomenon of which anyone who studies the Natural Law must be aware. In this treatise on international relations, Grotius (1583-1645), commonly called the "Father of International Law" (although the title could equally be claimed by the Spaniard and Catholic Vittoria), relied on the doctrine of the Natural Law. Though the Dutch Grotius was himself a Christian [of Protestant bent, he wrote an apologetic of Christianity in Dutch, Vewisjs van den waren Godsdienst (1622) which was translated into Latin as De veritate religionis Christianae (1627)], he argued that the Natural Law would bind us etiamsi daremus . . . non esse Deum, even if "we dare to say there is no God." It is true that the Natural Law binds all men, including the Atheist, and if understood in this manner, there is no controversy to what was said. But Grotius's etiamsi is indicative of something in the air a little more subtle, and a little more ominous. It is perhaps the first shoot, the first flowering of a Natural Law theory wholly unmoored from the notion of God, if such a theory is even tenable. It was the maturation of trend of turning away from God being the measure of all things to a Protagorean man is the measure of all things. In his classic The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988), the historian of Natural Law, Henrich Rommen, identifies Grotius as the "turning point." The "turn," however, started much earlier than Grotius.


In his excellent book Biblical Natural Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), Matthew Levering, an Associate Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University, discusses this "turn" from a theocentric notion of Natural Law to an anthropocentric notion of Natural Law. According to Matthew Levering, two things are required for a wholesome (and also Biblical, i.e., consistent with Revelation) theory of Natural Law. The first he calls ecstasis. The second he calls teleology.

What do these words mean? Ecstasis is the transliteration of a Greek word ekstasis or ἔκστασις. It means to "extend outwards" to "stretch out." It is the word from which we derive the English word ecstasy. It is used here for the desire of union with the Divine. This ecstasis need not be religious in origin, though it most often is. For example, the neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus, no Christian himself, in his Enneads speaks of his ecstasis, his virtual experience of union, with his philosophic notion of God which was based upon a natural theology. The term ecstasis was readily adopted by Christians to describe the union with the Trinity. Levering's point is that the Natural Law must recognize ecstasis, a desire for union with God, which means that our lives on earth are ordered to God.


The second requirement that Levering argues is required for an adequate theory of Natural Law is a teleology of nature. The word teleology is a technical word derived from a combination of two Greek words: telos (τέλος), which means "end", "purpose", or "goal," and logos (λόγος), a word which means "reason" or "word." For example, in the Gospel of Christ Christ is referred to as the Logos of God, the Word or Reason (logos) of God. John 1:1. In St. Paul's letter to the Romans, Christ is also referred to the end (telos) of the Law. Rom. 10:4. As applied to Nature, a teleological view would include the concept that God created nature, including the nature of man, and that He did so with a plan, a purpose, an end, a reason in view.

In short, requiring a theory of Natural Law to possess a notion of ecstasis and a notion of teleological nature means that God is both the origin and the end of things, including man. God is the alpha (A), He is the omega (Ω), the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, and the first and last letters of the Natural Law. Put another way, the requirement that a theory of Natural Law include notions of ecstasis and notions of teleology in nature mean that a theory of Natural Law must presuppose Eternal Law.

The traditional or classical notion of Natural Law includes both notions of ecstasis and teleology in nature. This notion of Natural Law found its most mature expression among the Stoics, e.g., Cicero, and was advocated in modified form by the Church, e.g., in St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, as consonant with, and in fact revealed in, Scripture and Tradition. Many modern theories of the Natural Law shun notions of ecstasis. They turn not outward to God (ecstasis), but wholly inward (in what may be called an entasis) to man. Though a turning inward to man is not fatal to a theory of the Natural Law (in fact it would be part of our discovery of our nature), it is when this turning inward is exclusive or in opposition to the turning outward to God that it becomes a problematic to a theory of Natural Law.

The story of how the Natural Law came to be progressively emancipated from its theological roots is a long one, and there are many controversial points about it, for example who initiated the process, and whether the arguments made to justify such emancipation are valid or not. Regardless, Levering calls this disassociation from of the Natural Law from its original theological roots the "Anthropocentric Turn" or "Anthropocentric Shift." He wrests out eight individuals from history to make his point. And for the next series of reflection we will rely on his choices: Renè Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, George W. F. Hegel, and Friederich Nietzsche. There are many others Levering could have chosen (e.g., Ockham, Scotus, Machiavelli, or Luther). Though these may (or may not) have been believers in various shades, the "natural law" of Messrs. Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel is not the Natural Law. These gentlemen's ideas are already on the way out of the Porch (Stoa) or the Church (Ekklesia) , and in some instances completely out of the Porch or the Church into the Wilderness.

To a greater or lesser degree, each of these men rejected the notion of ecstasis and teleology in nature. In some cases, there was no apparent rejection, but some of their presuppositions would lead to or implied such rejection. Each played a part in the Western world's turning from God as the measure of all things, including Law, to Man as the measure of all things, in particular Law. Some of their notions have prevailed and are assumed in modern culture, and we have to be aware of them in order to understand better the Natural Law, to reject these ideas, or to respond to them.