Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Reasonable Myth and Revelation, Part 1

REASON IS A FOUNDATIONAL BULWARK of any theory of natural law, and it is self-evident that the life of reason is a basic value which ought to be promoted, and in which no way should be disdained. Who could argue that man ought to be unreasonable in governing his actions? It is absurd as saying that man ought not be man, that man ought to fight against his very nature. An unreasonable man is (though we see it often enough) living an oxymoronic existence, not a moral, flourishing existence. It is a man who dulls his edge, who foolishly cuts with the broad end of the knife, who takes what is sharp, acidic, acute (ὀξύς)--his reason--, and abuses it or ignores it and thus makes himself dull (μωρός), blunt, a moron. A man who argues thus is a man who cannot be argued against, as he has made himself into a fool.

But might there nevertheless be an explanation for the obligation to be reasonable, to practice practical reasonableness, albeit that the obligation to do so is self-evident? Can we find some other reason that one ought to be reasonable because it just is so and it cannot not be so? It is impossible for man to be satisfied with such an answer, and so man has sought to go beyond: to the reason behind self-evidency.

Some have predicated the obligation to be reasonable upon some form of voluntarism, using the express will of God in some sort of foundational anchor or base. But such answers suffer from some fundamental problems, most significantly they suffer from the unknowability of God's will through reason. Invariably, the arguments fail or they must ultimately grasp (even if unacknowledged) at some sort of revelation or assumption about God. The existence of God as the Uncaused Cause can be established by the use of reason, but beyond that reason cannot seem to go:

[T]hose who [philosophically] claim to know what God [as the Uncaused Cause] wills in some human context, and that that will should be obeyed are . . . going beyond what can be affirmed about [God as Uncaused Cause] on the basis of philosophical argumentation.

NLNR, 404.

As St. Thomas Aquinas states, "the will of God cannot be investigated by reasoning, except for those items that it is absolutely necessary for God to will. Now, as we have said before, such items do not include what God wills in regard to creatures." S.T. Ia, q. 46, art. 2, c. God's will is naked, or perhaps better, invisible to reason. It becomes visible only if it is clothed with revelation. Thus, those who build an argument that we ought to be reasonable because it is God's will ultimately are saying (though they may not admit it) that we ought to be reasonable because it is revealed (or presupposed or assumed):

They are claiming . . . relying . . . upon some definite revelation . . . that God positively favours both the basic goods and human adherence to the principles and requirements of practical reasonableness in pursuit of those goods; that the evils and disorders of this world are not favoured so, but are merely tolerated by God for the sake of some positive good (what, and how attained, we do not know); and that friendship with God, some sharing in God's life and knowledge and love-of-goods, is available to those who positively favour what God positively favours.

NLNR, 405. It is these beliefs* that are the ground for any argument that it is God's will we follow reason and the good toward which it points, and the evil that it commands we shun. But then the explanation presupposes these beliefs in order to make sense, so it is no longer reason that answers, but belief. In terms of reason, it is an answer that is no answer.

So if neither reason (i.e., the existence of an Uncaused Cause) nor voluntarism (God's will) yields a ready answer as an explanation of the foundation of morality, what then? Where else do we go? Must we have recourse to positive revelation, a raw naked fideism?

Man a Marionette?
Then Who's the Puppeteer?

Ultimately, it seems, we have to go to faith, but not to naked fideism. For reason has one last precursory, mythic role.** Before it decreases, it must increase in a last bloom of speculation, hope, anticipation even if it goes beyond itself in doing so. Reason prepares the way, as St. John prepared the way for Christ, by a reasoned speculation, a reasoned hope, a reasoned desire that the Uncaused Cause may be more than just Uncaused Cause. Perhaps--reason might speculate, hope, desire--perhaps this Uncaused Cause is personal, intentional in its acts and reasonable, perhaps it is desirous of communicating with us, perhaps it is a person that is concerned with our good and, ultimately, ought to be loved because the Uncaused Cause is lovable. It is this speculation that proposes the plausible explanation of the "why" of all things: of why we ought to be reasonable, of why one friend ought to yield to another, of why it is reasonable for a man to sacrifice himself for his family or his country (against the inclination toward self-preservation), of why there is a point of living at all (since our lives are clearly so limited as, in the long run, to be patently in vain).

[I]f these speculations and hopes [of reason] were confirmed [by some sort of revelation], a more basic account of obligation would become possible. For if the uncaused cause were revealed to favour the well-being of everyman, for no other reason than [God's] own goodness . . . the common good could be pursued by us for a new reason, viz. out of love or friendship for the personal being ('God') who not only makes possible whatever well-being of persons there can be and actually is, but also positively favours (though in ways often unintelligible to us) that common good. . . . And this would not only explain, in principle, how self-sacrifice in friendship can make sense; it also would account for our obligation to the common good. . . . So if God could be recognized to be our friend . . . and to be one who favours the common good of human persons, we would have a new and pertinent reason for loving that common good . . . .

NLNR, 406-07.

This reasonable speculation, hope, anticipation or yearning, if confirmed to be true by some revelation, would likewise yield deeper answers to the reason why the basic human values ought to be promoted and never attacked beyond their self-evidency. It is, as we have noted in earlier postings,*** self-evident that life, knowledge, aesthetic appreciation, play, friendship, practical reasonableness, religion. But if our reasonable speculation, hope, or anticipation of the Uncaused Cause is one who personal, reasonable, lovable is true, then we have attained a reason behind the self-evidency. If true, the reasoned speculation, the reasoned myth, would go beyond the self-evident nature of the basic values. And because this reasoned myth--if true--offers a better explanation of these things than if it were not true, it is reasonable to accept it. Reason hands us off in one elegant gesture to Faith, very much like Virgil handed Dante off to Beatrice in the poet's journey in the Divine Comedy.

Plato, indeed, went through such an exercise in his last work, the Laws in what Finnis characterizes as "one of the foundation texts in the tradition of theorizing about natural law." NLNR, 408. The characters are talking about law, and the Athenian speculates, through a parable or myth, through imaginings, that man may be modeled to be a sort of puppet, a plaything of the gods, or perhaps not a plaything, but something with a more serious purpose. Man is pulled by opposite chords, chords of pleasure (ἡδονή) and chords of pain (λύπη). These antagonistic chords when cognizant of the future feed states based upon their anticipation, fear (φόβος) or confidence or courage (θάρρος). There is, however, beyond these two antagonistic chords, a faculty of reckoning or judgment (λογισμός) which distinguishes which, under any circumstance, is better or worse. When this judgment (λογισμός) is predicated not of man and his psyche, but of the city as a whole, as a public decree (δόγμα) it is known as law (νόμος).

Let us conceive of the matter in this way. Let us suppose that each of us living creatures is an ingenious puppet of the gods, whether contrived by way of a toy of theirs or for some serious purpose—for as to that we know nothing; [644e] but this we do know, that these inward affections of ours, like sinews or cords, drag us along and, being opposed to each other, pull one against the other to opposite actions; and herein lies the dividing line between goodness and badness.

Plato, Laws, I, 644d-e.

In addition to the chord of pleasure/confidence and pain/fear, man in his psyche has yet a third chord, a subtle, soft, and golden chord, a chord of practical reasonableness (λογισμός χρύσεος). In the life of the city, this golden chord of reason is known as the common law (κοινός νόμος). Plato, Laws, I, 645a. There is, then, an analogue between the moral life of man, the golden chord of reason, and the common life of man, the golden chord of reasoned law. The reason this is so is because man is a puppet, perhaps a puppet-plaything-of-the-gods, but perhaps, perhaps a puppet-with-a-serious-purpose, a puppet-beloved-of-God?
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*And while these beliefs may be true, they are beliefs, not reasons. They are ultimately based upon a view of God that is more-than-philosophical. They are based upon a view of God which is either assumed or a view of God that is strangely alike that of the God of revelation, namely the God as revealed in the Christian revelation.
**We use myth in the manner that C. S. Lewis used the term, as a sort of precursor or weak prophet of revelation, a reasonable though speculative longing that is put into story, and which, ultimately became fact in the reality of God-becoming-Man. Christ is therefore the speculative longing of every man, every culture, every society confirmed as real and made Flesh: "If ever a myth had become a fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this [Christ presented in the Gospels]. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another. But nothing was simply like it . . . Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, man. This is not "a religion," nor "a philosophy." It is the summing up and actuality of them all." C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy. We might also borrow the definition of Carol Hamilton, who defines myths, as "unformed forecasts of God's ultimate plan." Carol J. Hamilton, "Christian Myth and Modern Man," 29 Encounter 251 Summer (1968).
***See, e.g., Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: The Seven Basic Values.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Seeds of Eternal Law in Plato

NEITHER PLATO NOR ARISTOTLE BUILD THEIR ethics on the existence of God top-down according to John Finnis. It is not to God that they look to as the source of objective norms of human flourishing (happiness). The flow of argument is not God→Norm→Man, but rather Man→Norm→God. They build their ethics on the existence of God bottom-up. They both start from nature, to objective norms of right and of wrong, and, in reflecting upon the nature of these norms, come to see "that there is a transcendent source of being (i.e., of entities and states of affairs, and of their existing) and in particular of our capacity and desire to understanding being (or nature) and its many forms of good." NLNR, 395. This is a very beautiful thought to which we in the West are heir, although it is prevalent enough in the Eastern notion of dharma and the Tao:

[I]n realizing one's nature, in flourishing (eudamonia), and (what is the same thing from another aspect) in recognizing the authoritativeness of practical reasonableness, its principles, and its requirements, one is responding to the divine pull and recognizing the mastery of God.

NLNR, 395-96. Plato comes very close indeed to an understanding of God's law as an Eternal Law in which natural law, with its foundation in man's reasonable nature, participates. If we did not know their source, it would be hard to distinguish these words of Plato from the words of a Christian theologian:

Let us, then, speak to them thus:—“O men, that God who, as old tradition tells, holds the beginning, the end, and the center of all things that exist, completes his circuit by nature's ordinance in straight, unswerving course. With him follows Justice, as avenger of them that fall short of the divine law; and she, again, is followed by every man who would fain be happy, cleaving to her with lowly and orderly behavior . . . Every man ought so to devise as to be of the number of those who follow in the steps of the God. . . . What conduct, then, is dear to God and in his steps? One kind of conduct, expressed in one ancient phrase, namely, that “like is dear to like” when it is moderate, whereas immoderate things are dear neither to one another nor to things moderate. In our eyes God will be “the measure of all things” in the highest degree—a degree much higher than is any “man” they talk of. He, then, that is to become dear to such an one must needs become, so far as he possibly can, of a like character; and, according to the present argument, he amongst us that is temperate is dear to God, since he is like him.

Plato, Laws.* Patently, Plato had no benefit of the Christian revelation. The "revelation" of the Greek gods was one he, by an large a student of Socrates (who was condemned for atheism and the corruption of youth), rejected. It is therefore to be expected that he had no conception of a distinction between divinely promulgated law (such as that found in the Old Testament or the New Testament) and the naturally promulgated law. Plato had formed a concept of the latter, but not the former.

For Plato, while he would affirm that God can be apprehended by us in the act and experience of human understanding, has no conception of a revelation accessible to men without the effort of rational dialectic and contemplation--of the sort of empirical revelation, for instance that would be 'folly to the Greeks' (but would be offered to them non the less).

NLNR, 396. But the reason and dialectic of both Plato and Aristotle was something markedly different from the reason and dialectic of the Enlightenment. For both Aristotle and Plato, reason did not mean that man was the measure of all things, but reason meant that God was the measure of all things. Practical reason was--for them--theologically ordered and centered. It was not anthropologically-centered. Unlike the reason unleashed by the Enlightenment thinkers, reason was not a vehicle toward an autonomy, but rather reason was a vehicle toward a theonomy.

[Plato and Aristotle] were encouraged to treat reason as more than a skill, knack, or characteristic that men, unlike animals, happen to have; and to treat the nature or reality that both includes and is illuminated by man's understanding as more than a fortuitous agglomeration of entities and states of affairs devoid of any significance that could attract human admiration and allegiance. Practical reasonableness gains for them the significance of a partial imitation of God; the basic values grasped by practical reason gain an objectivity; and practical reason's methodological requirements of constancy and impartiality are reinforced by the worth of adopting the viewpoint of the God who 'contemplates all time and all existence.'

NLNR, 398 (quoting Plato, Republic, VI, 486a).

Christos Basileus (Christ the King)

For all their yearning, and for all their leanings toward the right and the true, there is both in Plato and Aristotle a certain diffidence, an "uncertainty," which comes from reason's limits. They have reached the boundaries of reason's gift, and there they await, panting as a deer for living waters, the living waters that only Christ and His Church could impart, and which, they, at best, smelled, sort of like one feels the approaching of a rain storm. This living water was not something that could be found through the exercise of Greek reason. It required the coming to God to earth: his self-communication by the assumption of human nature by the Person of the Son of God. All Plato and Aristotle yearned for and had but an inkling at best, was to find fulfillment in Christos Basileus and the Theopolis of the Church.

Without some revelation more revealing than any that Plato or Aristotle may have experienced, it is impossible to have sufficient assurance that the uncaused cause of all the good things of this world (including our ability to understand them) is itself a good that one could love, personal in a way that one might imitate, a guide that one should follow, or a guarantor of anyone's practical reasonableness.

NLNR, 398.

Aristotle and Plato, like all men bar none, needed the "foolishness" of the revelation of God in Christ. Cf. 1 Cor. 1:23. The revelation of God in Christ is the capstone of any theory of natural law. Without the revelation, a theory of natural law will get close, but not even as close as Moses got to the Promised Land when he viewed the terrain from the top of Mount Pisgah. And close counts only in horseshoes and hand grenades as the saying goes. Close is not good enough in the formation of one's moral life. Nor is it good enough in the formation of the life of the community.

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*Plato, Laws, IV, 715e-716d (“ἄνδρες” τοίνυν φῶμεν πρὸς αὐτούς, “ὁ μὲν δὴ θεός, ὥσπερ καὶ ὁ παλαιὸς λόγος, ἀρχήν τε καὶ τελευτὴν καὶ μέσα τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντων ἔχων, εὐθείᾳ περαίνει κατὰ φύσιν περιπορευόμενος: τῷ δὲ ἀεὶ συνέπεται δίκη τῶν ἀπολειπομένων τοῦ θείου νόμου τιμωρός, ἧς ὁ μὲν εὐδαιμονήσειν μέλλων ἐχόμενος συνέπεται ταπεινὸς καὶ κεκοσμημένος . . . . “τίς οὖν δὴ πρᾶξις φίλη καὶ ἀκόλουθος θεῷ; μία, καὶ ἕνα λόγον ἔχουσα ἀρχαῖον, ὅτι τῷ μὲν ὁμοίῳ τὸ ὅμοιον ὄντι μετρίῳ φίλον ἂν εἴη, τὰ δ᾽ ἄμετρα οὔτε ἀλλήλοις οὔτε τοῖς ἐμμέτροις. ὁ δὴ θεὸς ἡμῖν πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἂν εἴη μάλιστα, καὶ πολὺ μᾶλλον ἤ πού τις, ὥς φασιν, ἄνθρωπος: τὸν οὖν τῷ τοιούτῳ προσφιλῆ γενησόμενον, εἰς δύναμιν ὅτι μάλιστα καὶ αὐτὸν τοιοῦτον ἀναγκαῖον γίγνεσθαι, καὶ κατὰ τοῦτον δὴ τὸν λόγον ὁ μὲν σώφρων ἡμῶν θεῷ φίλος, ὅμοιος γάρ, ὁ δὲ μὴ σώφρων ἀνόμοιός τε καὶ διάφορος καὶ [ὁ] ἄδικος, καὶ τὰ ἄλλ᾽ οὕτως κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον ἔχει. νοήσωμεν δὴ τούτοις ἑπόμενον εἶναι τὸν τοιόνδε λόγον, ἁπάντων κάλλιστον καὶ ἀληθέστατον οἶμαι λόγων, ὡς τῷ μὲν ἀγαθῷ θύειν καὶ προσομιλεῖν ἀεὶ τοῖς θεοῖς εὐχαῖς καὶ ἀναθήμασιν καὶ συμπάσῃ θεραπείᾳ θεῶν κάλλιστον καὶ ἄριστον καὶ ἀνυσιμώτατον πρὸς τὸν εὐδαίμονα βίον καὶ δὴ καὶ διαφερόντως πρέπον, τῷ δὲ κακῷ τούτων τἀναντία πέφυκεν.)