Leo Strauss and Natural Right, Part 1: Introduction

LEO STRAUSS (1899-1973) will be the focus of our next several blog postings. In particular, we shall focus upon Leo Strauss's understanding of the natural law as presented in his Natural Right and History.* Originally published in 1953, the book was based upon Strauss's Walgreen Lectures of 1949.

Born in 1899 in Kirchhain, Hesse-Nassau, (Prussia) Germany of Jewish parents, Leo Strauss was raised in a ritually Orthodox Jewish home, one where the Jewish ritual was practiced, but where traditional Jewish learning was not. Rather, Strauss's parents appears to have wanted their son to gain a conventional education. After attending the Volksschule (public school) and the Protestant Rektoratsschule in Kirchhain, Strauss was graduated from the Gymnasium Philippinum in neighboring Marburg in 1917. There, he was exposed to neo-Kantianism. He briefly served in the German army during World War I, in between July 1917 and December 1918. At seventeen, the young Strauss turned Zionist, a movement to which he was attached until he was thirty and which exposed him to a number of Jewish intellectuals. He later referred to political Zionism as "problematic," though fulfilling an important "conservative function" in his life. After receiving his doctorate in Philosophy in 1921 from the University of Hamburg under the supervision of Ernst Cassirer (his doctoral thesis: "On the Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophical Doctrine of F. H. Jacobi"), he spent a short period of time attending classes taught by Edmund Husserl and Husserl's assistant, Martin Heidegger, at the University of Freiburg. In 1925, Strauss was employed in a research position at the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin. During the next three years, he researched and wrote what was to be his first published work, a work on the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In 1932 Strauss married the widowed Mirjam Bernsohn.

Leo Strauss (1899-1973)

In 1933 Strauss and his family moved to England. In between 1936 and 1937, Strauss held a research fellowship at Cambridge University where he was affiliated with Gonville and Caius College. Frustrated at finding permanent employment in England, however, Strauss moved to the United States where, for a short period of time, he was a research fellow at Columbia University in 1937. In between 1938 and 1948, Strauss was employed at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1944, Strauss became an American citizen.

In 1949, Strauss joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as a professor in the Department of Political Science, and in 1959 was appointed Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor, a position which he retained until 1969. In 1969 he moved to Claremont Men's College (now known as Claremont McKenna College) in Claremont, California for one-and-a-half years. In 1970, he transferred to St. John's College-Annapolis, where he served as the Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence until his death of pneumonia in 1973. "The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism--nay, it is identical with nihilism."
--Leo StraussDuring the course of his life, Strauss published numerous books on political philosophy, including what is probably his most popular and accessible work, Natural Right and History. An advocate of the traditional, classical natural law theory (at whose heart was Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero), Strauss was an indefatigable foe of modern liberalism and positivism, which he saw as founded on relativism and leading ultimately to nihilism. With respect to Strauss's faith, Edward Feser summarized it as follows:

Strauss was not himself an orthodox believer, neither was he a convinced atheist. Since whether or not to accept a purported divine revelation is itself one of the “permanent” questions, orthodoxy must always remain an option equally as defensible as unbelief.

Edward Feser, "Leo Strauss 101," in National Review (May 22, 2006). Thus, Strauss's advocacy of the traditional and classical natural law cannot be said to be based upon a religious presupposition, much less a Roman Catholic one. He based himself on the gem of Western tradition. Indeed, he based himself on what he viewed to be the sound nature of man himself.


Written on the heels of World War II, Leo Strauss's introduction to his Natural Right and History starts out rather forcefully by suggesting that Americans have traded in their inherited traditions, those documented in the Declaration of Independence, that man is endowed by his Creator with inalienable rights, and that such a truth is self-evident. It was a Esauian bargain, the trading of one's heritage and patrimony for a mess of pottage. In its place, America--indeed not only America, but the whole of the Western world--seemed bent on adopting the "yoke" of Germanic thought, in particular its relativistic "historical sense" political philosophy and jurisprudence. With the sole exception of Catholics, American social science--and this includes political science and jurisprudence--"is dedicated to the proposition that all men are endowed by the evolutionary process or by a mysterious fate with many kinds of urges and aspirations, but certainly with no natural right." Strauss, 2. That is, social thought was governed either by a nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw Darwinism or a boo-hurrah Emotivism, and not by natural law philosophy. Of course, rejection of natural right philosophy leads to (or results from) despair in objective morality, and therefore leads to a reliance upon pure positivism in law, where "right is determined exclusively by the legislators and courts of the various countries." Strauss, 2. So in this view the most that any ideal could be is convention, "nothing but the ideal adopted by our society . . . ." Arbitrary choice, perhaps not even so much active choice, but maybe even "dull and stale habit," define our values. Cannibalism for cannibals; abortionalism for abortionals; homosexuality for homosexuals; liberalism for liberals. "[O]ur ultimate principles have no other support than our arbitrary and hence blind preferences." Strauss, 4.

We are then in the position of beings who are sane and sober when engaged in trivial business and who gamble like madmen when confronted with serious issues--retail sanity and wholesale madness.

Strauss, 4.

This is absurdity. A form of delusional schizophrenia. Indeed, it is as if the floor has caved in and we have tumbled headlong into nihilism. "The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism--nay, it is identical with nihilism." Strauss, 5.

Strauss won't stand for it. We talk too much about justice. We argue and wrangle too much over right. By the very asking and arguing of these questions we give hint to the fact "that there is something in man that is not altogether in slavery to his society." Strauss, 3. Arguing belies the truth. There is a hint, then, of some extrinsic, extra-legal, extra-political, extra-cultural "standard" to which we even unwillingly pay implied obeisance despite our foolish rejection of natural right. The problem of justice, of right "cannot be solved if we do not possess knowledge of natural right." Strauss, 3. It is implicit in our discourse. And yet, Strauss warns, "the seriousness of the need of natural right does not prove that the need can be satisfied." Strauss, 6.

Even by proving that a certain view is indispensable for living well, one proves merely that the view in question is a salutary myth: one does not prove it to be true. Utility and truth are two entirely different things.

Strauss, 6.

Rejecting the tradition of natural right for another social theory is, from a juridico-political view, disastrous. It robs us of our ends, but leaves us with all our means. Bereft of a standard to discriminate between "legitimate and illegitimate, between just and unjust," between "soundness or unsoundness," our sciences become "instrumental and nothing but instrumental." Strauss, 4. (One thinks here of Saul Alinsky's vicious "If the ends don't justify the means, what else does?") It is a fortunate accident of history that, having jettisoned our end, we are given to "generous liberalism," and so the artificial god our means serve has not been bloodthirsty [we say that, but is that really so? How many victims have been sacrificed upon the altar of liberalism if one counts the hideous liberal "sacrament" of abortion?]. But without a standard, our sciences can just as well be used by tyrants as well as free peoples. A Shiite radical can use a nuclear device equally as well as Mr. Truman. Science is no respecter of persons; but then it is not much of a respecter of right or justice either. It works very well in the hand of the mighty, whether that hand is moved by a good or evil is unimportant to it. And it matters to science not, it cares not, it wants not, what the mighty makes of it.

Our country is (or at least was in the 1950s) full of "generous liberals." (The "liberals" of today are less than "generous," they seem bent on controlling thought and speech--political correctness--imposing their values on the majority--homosexual marriage and unabashed secularism, and their values are increasingly bloody--abortion, euthanasia . . . need I go on?)
"Liberal relativism has its roots in the natural right tradition of tolerance . . . but in itself it is a seminary of intolerance."
--Leo StraussThese "generous liberals" advance the virtue of tolerance as the only meaningful response to the impossibility of knowing objective (or intrinsic: it is the same thing as objective if it is intrinsic) right and wrong. But their purported tolerance of all views leads them down a strange road. If unlimited tolerance is what is in accord with reason, then it is nothing less than an admission that one must prefer (because reasonable) any preference that is tolerant of other preferences. What this means, negatively phrased, is that there is a "rational or natural right to reject or condemn all intolerant or all "absolutist" positions." (Strauss, 5) (emphasis added). One must be tolerant of the tolerant, but intolerant of the intolerant. All the tolerance of the "generous liberals" is, then, is a reverse sort of tolerance, where relativism is tolerated, but "absolutism" (objective morality) is not. An intolerant tolerance. And absolutism against absolutism. Liberalism is built on an oxymoron. Very weird.

Liberalism has done something else. Each and every time it is confronted with some limit, some natural right that constrains its madness for diversity, each time it encounters tension between natural law and diversity or individuality, it selects diversity and individuality.

When liberals became impatient of the absolute limits to diversity or individuality that are imposed by even the most liberal version of natural right, they had to make a choice between natural right and the uninhibited cultivation of individuality. They chose the latter.

Strauss, 5. What this means is that eventually liberalism is led to have to chose between the right to tolerance and diversity and individuality. This places the liberal in a sort of conundrum. If he chooses tolerance as an absolute value, then he has rejected his central tenet of uninhibited individualism. On the other than, if he opts for uninhibited individualism, then he places tolerance on equal footing with intolerance since liberals have no objective footing with which to distinguish objective reality. The liberal cannot advocate the moral equivalence of intolerance to tolerance, and so, by naked choice alone, by liberal fiat only (and not by any objective norm, since liberalism refuses objective, absolute norms), the liberal holds that tolerance is superior to intolerance. And so the liberal ends up being the most intolerant of them all:

Liberal relativism has its roots in the natural right tradition of tolerance or in the notion that everyone has a natural right to the pursuit of happiness as he understands happiness; but in itself it is a seminary of intolerance.

Strauss, 6. This is precisely at the heart of what Pope Benedict XVI has called the "dictatorship of relativism."

At the heart of this modern "dictatorship of relativism" or liberal intolerance, or what Strauss calls "fanatical obscurantism," is the lack of belief in any fundamental principles. It is the frightening reality that liberals "have to silence the easily silenced voice of reason, which tells us that our principles are in themselves as good or as bad as any other principles." Strauss, 6. Liberals choke the life out of the life of reason, and they are left with nothing, nihil. Having cultivated nihilism while choking the life out of reason, they become fanatical obscurants, fugitives from the law of nature that pursues them, like a hound of heaven, for murdering reason. Liberals then are pursued by demons. Like Orestes, then are pursued by Erinyes or Furies for having murdered reason. The blood of murdered reason, like the blood of liberalism's victims, cry out to heaven for vengeance. Could it be that God has heard the cries? Could it be that the rise of bloody Islam is his judgment? Could it be that these godless worshipers of a false God and a false prophet are the Chaldeans of old called by God to do his dirty work of cleaning up that which was caused by our even dirtier work?

Behold ye among the nations, and see: wonder, and be astonished: for a work is done in your days, which no man will believe when it shall be told. For behold, I will raise up the Chaldeans, a bitter and swift nation, marching upon the breadth of the earth, to possess the dwelling places that are not their own. They are dreadful, and terrible: from themselves shall their judgment, and their burden proceed.

Habacuc 1:5-6. We hope not, but we do not know.

The dead end, the intellectual and moral cul-de-sac into which liberalism leads, has led to some renewed interest in natural right. But Strauss warns that in facing the fanatical obscurantism to which the valueless liberalism inevitably tends, we must not ourselves fall into fanatical obscurantism. "Let us beware of the danger of pursuing a Socratic goal with the means, and the temper, of Thrasymachus." Strauss, 6.

In approaching natural right, moderns are in a situation markedly different from the situation that confronted the ancients. They were striving for knowledge that they did not have. We are striving to recover knowledge we once had. Therefore: "[t]he problem of natural right is today a matter of recollection rather than of actual knowledge." Strauss, 7. In the matter of natural right, we are trying to retrieve, not invent, to recover not advance.

In approaching the notion of natural law, we become aware that we will be confronted with a stark choice. We have to chose our loyalties. "Natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe."
--Leo StraussWe are in the same situation that confronted Christ's disciples after he taught that he was the bread of heaven which they would be required to eat. This made the Jew shudder. (John, Chapter 6) We have to chose to follow a way. We have to chose which way is the Way. And some of us will depart and go one way, and some of us will remain and go another. Perhaps a large number will just do nothing. Shall we follow and go live with the liberals? Or shall we follow and go live with the advocates of natural law? Or shall we simply duck the problem?

The issue of natural right presents itself today as a matter of party allegiance. Looking around us, we see two hostile camps, heavily fortified and strictly guarded. One is occupied by the liberals of various descriptions, the other by Catholic and non-Catholic disciples of Thomas Aquinas. But both armies and, in addition, those who prefer to sit on the fences or hide their heads in the sands are, to heap metaphor on metaphor, in the same boat. They are all modern men.

Strauss, 7.

What is one fact that all modern men--the liberals, the advocates of natural law, the fence sitters--confront? "We are all in the grip of the same difficulty." Strauss, 7. The problem arises from the nonteleological philosophy behind the modern sciences, compared with the teleological view that is inherent in the philosophy of the natural law.

Natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe. All natural beings have a natural end, a natural destiny, which determines what kind of operation is good for them. In the case of man, reason is required for discerning these operations: reason determines what is by nature right with ultimate regard to man's natural end.

Strauss, 7. Modern science, in adopting what is essentially a mechanistic view of the universe, would appear to have destroyed the notion of a teleology in nature. (One recalls Francis Bacon's disdain of the Aristotelian "final cause," and the Cartesian and Hobbesian view of man, or at least his body, as machine, his heart but a spring or coil.) When confronting the scientific, nonteleological view of the universe and the requirement in the classical, traditional theory of natural right or natural law that requires a teleological view of man, what is one to do? How is one to decide?

Two opposite conclusions could be drawn from this momentous decision. According to one, the nonteleological conception of the universe must be followed up by a nonteleological conception of human life. . . . [T]he alternative solution . . . [is] to accept a fundamental, typically modern, dualism of a nonteleological natural science and a teleological science of man.

Strauss, 8. In other words, we must be consistently nonteleological in both natural science and the science of man (the science of man becoming nothing other than part of the natural sciences), or we must become dualists: teleological in the science of man, and nonteleological in the case of all other natural sciences. If we chose the former, we are with the liberals, we are with the relativists, and like it or not, we help usher in the dictatorship of relativism. If we chose the latter, which "the modern followers of Thomas Aquinas, among others," feel compelled to take, we run into another problem. That problem is that we are not really disciples of Aristotle and St. Thomas at all. Because Aristotle and St. Thomas were not the dualists that we feel we are forced to be. They had a comprehensive teleological view, not a piecemeal, dualist teleological/non-teleological view, with science on the one hand, morality on the other.

The fundamental dilemma, in whose grip we are, is caused by the victory of modern natural science. An adequate solution to the problem of natural right cannot be found before this basis problem has been solved.

Strauss, 8.

Alas, however, Strauss avoids the problem in his book. Its limited role, useful enough we suppose, but admittedly not reaching to the heart of the basic problem, is to address the problem of natural right vis-à-vis the social sciences. The main focus of Strauss's book, then, will be whether natural right is plausibly rejected on the grounds of history (and the apparent relativism of values we find in history) or on the grounds of the modern philosophical and ethical distinction between "fact" and "value" (the so-called naturalistic fallacy). The answer to both, we shall learn, is "no."


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*Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971).

Cardinal Mercier and the Natural Law, Part 3: The Summum Bonum and Finis Ultimus

WE ENDED OUR LAST BLOG POSTING with a question: Is there a summum bonum, a good of all goods or a finis ultimus, an end of all ends? Hobbes temerariously (and foolishly) answered no. Hobbes thus entered the house of vice and there prostituted his mind. Cardinal Mercier, in line with the perennial philosophy, answered yes, and thus into the gates of the house of virtue and kept his sanity.

Mercier's acceptance of a final end, of a greatest good, is not irrational. It is not a matter of mere faith (though it certainly does not oppose faith). It is reasonable. "[W]e shall show that man has one natural end and only one; next we shall determine what that end is."

He shows. He determines. This is not a matter of taste, where de gustibus non est disputandum. It is not a matter of what that Hobbesian monster, the American Nietzsche, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes called "Can't helps." (For Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of "I hate justice" fame, see The Natural Law's Devil: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.) It is a matter of reason or determination, where there is a right and a wrong answer, where argument inclines us one way, and not another. Oh, sure, we can be fools, but we should recall that "fools die for lack of judgment," qui autem indocti sunt in cordis egestate morientur. Prov. 10:21b.

Mercier handles his discussion as to the existence and identification of the ultimate good and final end in six theses. He also includes some corollaries, and handles some difficulties.

The first thesis: "Man has subjectively and really a last natural end." In other words, a last end is both within us and without us. All acts, Cardinal Mercier observes, are performed with the view of an end. Once that end is achieved, the will is at rest (until, of course, something else is desired as an end).

If A is what is desired, and what is achieved, and there is nothing further wanted, then A is the ultimate end. The thesis is proved.

If A is not what is finally desired, but is a means to something further, say B, then the question is "simply put further back," for we merely have to ask as to B what we would have asked as to A. And so on, for a speculative C, D, E ad infinitum. Or can there be an ad infinitum? Can we go on in a series of ends for infinity?


Mercier answers that it is impossible to have an infinite series of ends. We must come at rest somewhere.

[B]ut it is impossible that there should be no limit to this subordination of ends to a higher end. In a series of ends subordinated to one another [A, B, C, D . . .], so that one does not act as an end except under the influence of another, the suppression of a last end, desirable in itself and capable of evoking the others, involves the abolition of every intermediate tendency and consequently the impossibility of any moral action.

[214(8)] In other words, deny a last, ultimate end (like Hobbes), and the whole pack of cards comes falling down, making moral action impossible. So the conclusion is, from a logical standpoint, certain:

Hence there must exist a supreme end which possesses in itself the power of moving the will through the medium of the subordinated ends.

[214(8)] This accords with St. Thomas's conclusions in his Summa Theologiae (S.T., Ia-IIae, q. 1, a. 4)

There is, Mercier acknowledges, a variety of faculties in man, all of which express themselves differently. Yet we are not a package of faculties as if we are a bundle of cells. All these faculties exist in a "single substantial being," one man, "one nature, one person." These faculties are therefore ordered under this primary principle. "Now, every principle of action tends by its activity towards an end." [215(8)] So every man, that is, every "single substantial being," every "person," every "nature" has an end, and it overrides all the other subordinate ends of our various faculties. "This primary end is the natural end of man, his natural good, the cause (ratio) of all his progress towards perfection." [215(8)]

Man has to have a natural end. The entirety of those substances beneath us, whether animals, plants, stones, have natural ends. Why would man, the most noble of these substances since he is self-directed, not have a natural end? What on heaven or on earth could support the proposition that the entirety of the cosmos has an end except for man? Nothing would explain this discrepancy. It follows that man, like the rest of the individual beings in the entirety of the universe, has an end. With respect to natural ends, we ought not assume the mantle of hubris of exceptionalism. We ought not to fall into the irrational supposition that the entirety of the cosmos operates within the ordering of ends, but that only man operates within chaos, a creature with no nature, no end.

[W]ere we to suppose human nature capable of being without an end, we should have to admit a disorder against which would have to be set the perfect order of the universe, especially the pre-eminent dignity of man, who is the crowning work of nature.

It is, moreover, impossible to suppose that an infinitely wise Being, the Creator of our nature, should have put us in a natural tendency which could never find its fulfillment [for lack of a final or ultimate natural end].

[215(8)]

Where do we get any rational support for the suggestion that man is end-less? That man has no ultimate good or final end? There is rational support for that. It is to land ourselves in absurdity.

Hobbes is absurd. It is the absurdity of absurdity to follow Hobbes. Yet moderns do. Is our modern world, to the extent it is built upon Hobbes, built upon absurdity?


Having answered the first thesis, Mercier travels to the next. "Man has only one natural end." [215(9)] Quoting St. Thomas's Summa Theologiae (Ia-IIae, q. 1, ad. 5), Mercier then asks rhetorical questions which make it obvious that man (his nature) can only have one end and not various natural ends.

The last end, St. Thomas tells us, must so fulfill all our desires that outside of it there is nothing left as an object of further desire. Hence it follows that we cannot have two or more last ends. If one good satisfies our desires to the full, how could the will seek anything beyond? And what purpose would a second good or second end serve?

[216(9)] Obviously the answer to both questions is "none." The conclusion is certain: Man has but one natural end.

What is it?

We come to Mercier's third thesis: "The end of human nature, regarded indeterminately and in the abstract, is the happiness of man." [216(10)] This is a very broad thesis. In fact, this is really not a thesis requiring proof; it is a conclusion from the prior theses. The end of man satisfies his natural tendency (his nature) necessarily since that is precisely to which it tends; it is thus its good, entirely and complete, which excludes any form of evil, and fulfills the aspirations of human nature. This is the definition of happiness according to St. Thomas: Beatitudo, cum sit perfectum bonum, omne malum excludit et omne desiderium implet. Happiness is the satisfaction of one's good, without admixture of evil.

Admittedly, this thesis is abstract, not concrete. It is indeterminate, not taking into account the myriad contingencies and situations that confront an individual man. We speak here in broad generalities. We are talking whole cloth, here. We haven't yet begun to make our clothes.

So the ultimate end, the final good of man is happiness? What is it then that gives man happiness?

It is God.* This is Mercier's fourth thesis: "Regarded in the concrete, the objective end is in no created good; it is in God." [216(11)]

Yes. yes. What reason demands, the heart does to. The heart does have reasons of its own, Pascal tells us. The reasons of the heart are the same as those of the mind. Love beckons the entirety of us.

Nos fecisti ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

St. Augustine, Confessions, I.1. God is our final good. God is the source of our perfection. God is our happiness. God is our summum bonum, the Good of all our goods. God is our finis ultimus, the End of all ends.

Our nature, that is, the natural law, inclines us to God. So we are restless, unsettled, unfulfilled, imperfect, and unhappy if we look for our final end anywhere else.


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*That is why Hobbes rejected a summum bonum, a finis ultimus. He had to, because, as we have explained before, a good above all goods, an end above all ends--which reason demands--reasonably means God. And Hobbes did not want to believe in God. So he had to reject the natural law. He continued to use the words "God" and "nature," as they were too entrenched in the people's habit of thinking and speaking of the time. But to Hobbes these terms did not mean the same thing that they had meant before. He had already cut them off from their foundation. Just like a plant looks green for a time after it is cut, but it eventually withers, dries, and crumbles. Hobbes is frequently referred to as the "founding father" of modern political philosophy. Is modern political philosophy, at least that which relies upon Hobbes, built upon a fundamental mistake? It would seem unquestionably so.

There is No Morality in Mathematics and Machines

ARISTOTLE FAMOUSLY DISTINGUISHED BETWEEN WHAT IS JUST by nature and what is just by convention or human law. Aristotle does this most notably in his Nicomachean Ethics (1134b), where he distinguishes between τὸ δίκαιον φυσικόν (to dikaion physikon) and τὸ δίκαιον νομικόν (to dikaion nomikon), natural justice and legal or conventional justice. With this Aristotelian distinction, we are introduced to the notion of "nature," physis, and what it all might mean in the context of natural justice and natural law. For Aristotle, the notion of justice broadly extends itself across both moral and non-moral spheres: it is a sense of fittingness or adjustment to a norm, both in what we today would call the physical order and in the moral order. Simon, 42. The Aristotelian and Thomistic notion of nature also encompasses both moral and non-moral spheres. It is a mistake to rend the Aristotelian "nature" into two separate worlds or orders: moral and physical. Though these may be distinguishable, they are not entirely separate in Aristotle's or for that matter St. Thomas Aquinas's mind. Separating these two worlds was, in large part, the error of Descartes and the result was the dualism he introduced between mind, the place where morals govern, and matter, the place where physical laws govern. And that dualism between mind and matter, soul and body, has only been intensified by the idealism of Kant because the latter stressed the noumenal over the phenomenal world, even suggesting we are incapable of knowing the phenomenal world. Aristotle's notion of nature is encompassing:

Nature, in the physics of Aristotle, signifies entity, essence, whatness, quiddity with a constitutional relation to action, operation, movement, growth, development. A nature is a way of being which does not possess its state of accomplishment instantly but which is designed to reach it through a progression.

Simon, 42-43 (citing Phys. 192b and Met. 1014b).

There are no natures in mathematics or geometry. "[I]n the modern as well as the ancient conception, a mathematical entity is not a nature." Simon, 43. Entirely absent from mathematical concepts is the notion of growth: The mathematical concept, whatever it is called, "does not grow; it is what it is by definition, by construction, instantly." Without growth, without development, without potentiality striving to actuality, imperfection or inchoateness striving toward perfection or completion, there is no nature in the Aristotelian sense. Where there is no nature in the Aristotelian sense, there is no morality, for morality, at a minimum, requires a becoming, even if that becoming is governed our reason and our freely-willed choices. This becoming is not a becoming without sense, toward an arbitrary or subjective goal, but a becoming toward a perfection that is one's own by virtue of his nature, his essence. Plant a mathematical point in soil, and it will not yield a line. Water a line all you want, and you will never get a triangle. But plant an acorn in soil and water it, and you will likely get an oak tree. Fertilize a human ovum and you will have a man. The acorn, like man, like everything in between, has a nature; the line or the point does not. This is even true for God who has a nature, although his nature, being immaterial, does not develop, as his being is his own existence, and he has no potentiality requiring any development, but is all act, all perfection. But even with regard to God, his nature is beyond mathematics. ∞ ≠ אהיה אשר אהיה.


In Yves Simon's view, three qualities distinguish the Aristotelian notion of created nature: plurality or diversity, teleology, and a certain relation between beginning and end. Simon, 45.

Plurality. Created nature is not one, but many. This is the notion of plurality. The nature of Aristotle rejects the Parmenidian notion that variety and plurality in the world are illusions, and that all things are, in reality, one. We are all not one big organism; the cosmos is made up of a plurality of organisms, each with its own particular nature. Aristotle would reject the Cartesian notion that there are, in reality, but two natures: one of extension, being physical, mechanistic, unconscious, governed by mathematical laws, and one (which is not really in any sense a nature in a traditional sense) without extension, being intellectual, conscious, governed by moral, or at least intellectual, laws. To deny the plurality of natures leads to absurdity as Aristotle pointed out in his Physics: it leads to the conclusion that there is no real difference between the good and the not good. In fact, the view that "all things are one," is really the same as saying that "they are nothing." Simon, 46 (quoting Phys. 185b19).

Teleology. "Wherever there is nature," in the Aristotelian sense, "there is direction toward a state of accomplishment," there is a teleology. Simon, 47. There is what Aristotle calls a final cause. Mathematical concepts are denuded of any nature. They have no final cause. What is the purpose of a circle? What is the circle's reason for existence? What does a circle do to obtain fulfillment? This is where the Cartesian world, which displaced the Aristotelian world, has had such significant effect on the natural law and on moral thinking. It represents the great philosophical vowel shift, the epistemological turn, virtually an intellectual and moral fall. "I do not accept in my physics [i.e., understanding of an already separated nature] any principles that are not accepted in mathematics." Simon, 48 (quoting Descartes, Meditations VI, Principles).

It is no coincidence that Descartes was unable to come up with anything other than a provisional ethic.

Nature, from Descartes forward, was to be largely considered something of extension, matter operating with Cartesian space and its three dimensions--x, y, z--governed by mathematical laws. And where mathematics takes precedence, there is no real Aristotelian nature, and it follows there is no final cause or end, and without an end, there is no manner of saying whether one is conforming to it or not conforming to it. In short, Cartesian nature is amoral.

The reason why teleological notions are held suspicious by the scientific mind are numerous. One of the most profound is . . . there are no natures and no final causes in mathematics. . . . It goes without saying that there cannot be such a thing as natural law in a thoroughly mechanistic universe.

Simon, 49-50.

Since morality cannot be found in the modern notion of mechanistic nature, it has to be found in the mind. And so morality becomes a matter of ideals, of values, of will or of pure and disembodied reason, and not of natural law. All of a sudden, morality is not really part of who we are, that is our nature, but is imposed upon us by some extrinsic, perhaps even arbitrary, command or some distilled reason. Descartes made the material stuff of which we are made subject to mathematical law. Kant, as we have seen, later made our mind subject to an ethic as unwavering as a mathematical law. Between Descartes and Kant, both our bodies and our souls have been entrapped in mathematical cages. Descartes first trapped our body. Kant then trapped our souls. It is time for rebellion. The natural law will once again set us free.

What a world is this that Descartes wrought! Philosophically speaking, there is no difference in the brain of Descartes between an oak tree and a corn plant; indeed, there is no difference between either of these two, and the physical body of man. All is extension governed by ineluctable, amoral mathematical laws.

For Descartes, to say that the oak tree and the oak plant are natures different from each other is philosophically nonsensical. Such language is adequate in the art of farming and in the art of forestry but not in philosophy. An oak tree is an arrangement of extension, and a corn plant is another arrangement also of extension. And one-half of man--though not the better one--belongs to space just as certainly as a corn plant or an oak tree.

Simon, 49. In Descartes' view, consciousness and extension are parallel worlds, with different laws. We are dealing with two alternative realities. Man is therefore split into two. For Descartes, a theology or philosophy of the body is nonsense. Since the body is but extension, only mathematics or geometry is necessary for an understanding of the body, and this whether the body we are dealing with is corn, an oak tree, a dog, or a human body.

Now, what happens when you divide man into two, one part governed by the mathematical laws that govern machines, and another part, the mind, independent of the former? One falls from philosophical realism to a form of idealism, and ideals and not law begin to govern the life of the mind. So moral law turns ever-so-subtly into moral value. "When mechanism is associated with idealism, as it is in Descartes and most modern philosophers--again, whether outspokenly or not--we have values instead of natural laws." Simon, 50. Values are products of mind trapped in body, not products of a unified man of body and soul.

[W]hen we hear today of moral values, esthetic values, social values, political values, spiritual values, etc., we know where these come from. They come from the mind, they come from outside the things, they are not embodied in entities, in nature.

Simon, 51.

Beginning, Middle, End. "The opposition of beginning and end is relevant in all consideration of nature," Yves Simon states. Simon, 51. What does this mean? It means that when we are dealing with nature we are dealing with something that develops, that has a beginning, a terminus a quo, and an end, a terminus ad quem, and a continuum of development in between the two points. Thus nature may refer to the beginning, in opposition to the end. Or it may refer to the end, in opposition to the beginning. Or it may mean the process between beginning and end, ab ovo usque ad mala, from the egg of the to the apples, from the apéritif to the digestif. Thus the natural law may be considerably affected by this opposition of beginning and end.

In the case of a creature as complex as man, who develops not only individually but also within society, the natural law is operative in a primitive society with primitive social institutions, and is also present in the civilized society with developed conventions and institutions, the latter of which have their basis in this developmental aspect of man's nature. That is to say, the natural law recognizes that, in man, the state of primitive, incipient nature will be supplemented by man's arts and crafts, his sciences and technique, his traditions and his customs, his institutions and beliefs. Thus, at least in man, the "the condition that nature is striving toward is not brought about by nature alone but requires such causes as understanding, crafts, sciences, and above all good will and wisdom." In some sense, there is opposition between nature and convention. In another sense, nature expects to be supplemented by convention, since it is part of man's nature to make for himself conventions. Does this create a certain ambiguity in the use of "nature" in the context of man? Sure it does.

All the dynamism of nature would be missed if our language did not remind us of the relation between the initial and the terminal, the rudimentary and the accomplished, the natural in the sense of that which is just given by nature antecedently to knowledge, craft, and wisdom, and the natural as that which implies the works of intelligence, experience, good will, wisdom, society.

Simon, 53. The primitive of Rousseau is not any more "natural," than the periwigged gentleman of 17th century France. It is expected that man will develop, and developed man is no less in his "natural" state than undeveloped man. Nature anticipates and encompasses this development. What is native, most primitive, most savage is not necessarily any more natural than that which is developed, more complex, or most refined. Man in his alleged "state of nature" should not be pitted against man in his "state of civilization," because it is part of man's nature to live in a civilized state.

The Disfigured Face: Ontological Morality and Human Rights

THE "NATURE" OF ARISTOTLE AND OF AQUINAS which is the source of the natural law is different from the denuded, one dimensional, materialistic "nature" of the modern day sciences. If the "nature" as understood by Aristotle and Aquinas were an apple, the "nature" as understood by the modern scientist is but a peel. The modern notion of "nature" is lacking both fruit and seed. It is tasteless, fruitless. It is bland of value, composed only of empirical fact. There is no "ought" in it; there is only "is" in it. The Aristotelian/Thomistic concept of nature had and element of design, but not the design of some complex watch, but the design of a quasi-living organism, as it had an inner entelechy, a desire, a yearning toward the God that had brought it out of nothing and that constantly preserved it in being. The entire cosmos, after all, even its raw matter, the chaotic matter over which the Spirit hovered, was a creature of God. God did not act arbitrarily, without reason in creation ex nihilo. It followed that nature had a purpose, a goal, an end, a telos (from the Greek word τέλος, a word meaning "purpose," or "goal," or "end"). Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas (and, for that matter, the entirety of the perennial tradition in between them and after them until this notion was rejected as part of the Enlightenment, Liberal, and Modernist project) was teleological. In this regard, Cortest quotes Ernest Fortin:

The heart of the Aristotelian enterprise is the well-known and now almost universally contested thesis that nature acts for an end.

This teleological view of nature of Aristotle was shared by St. Thomas; however, he nestled it into his unique metaphysics or ontology, which distinguished essence from existence, and which found that existence was the preeminent good, in fact the source of both the true and the good, of perfection. In St. Thomas's view, good and being are exchangeable terms. If a thing is good, it subsists in the fullness of its being (existence); that is, it conforms entirely to its nature which is informed by its end. To the extent that it fails to abide by its being (existence), to the extent that it misses the mark that is its end and which is defined by its nature, it suffers (or does, if the creature has free will and knowledge) evil. St. Thomas, it hardly need be said, also recognized the truths of revelation, particularly those that related to the dignity of man as a creature of God and as a result of his ultimate calling (union with God in the beatific vision). His understanding of the end of nature was informed by the Evangelical revelation.

Aristotle had no inkling of the Gospel. It is for this reason that, "[a]lthough both Aristotle and Aquinas construct ethical and moral systems on metaphysical principles, they have entirely different conceptions of the value of human life." Cortest, 18. So different is that conception, that Aristotle and St. Thomas stand apart each other by a great divide. It is the philosophical analogue of the historical divide between B.C. and A.D. The Lord had not walked among us when Aristotle did his thinking. Aristotle promoted (or at least excused) the killing of deformed children and human chattel slavery, something unthinkable to St. Thomas. So massive is the difference the Gospel made to the Aristotelian underlayment of St. Thomas Aquinas, that if Aristotle alone was relied upon to build a natural law, he would be unable to provide us with a workable morality. "I would argue," says Cortest, "that no credible doctrine of human rights can be based exclusively on an Aristotelian anthropology, since nature shows no compassion for the weak, the innocent, or the 'deformed.'" Cortest, 19. Cortest is right. As great as Aristotle was, he lived without Gospel light, and his teaching is, next to the sublime values of the Gospel, barbaric in some aspects. To return to raw Aristotelianism without the temper of the Gospel would be a giant leap backwards in human development.

While indisputably St. Thomas had a high view of human dignity, it would be a mistake to attribute to him, as some scholars do (John Finnis or Brian Tierney come readily to mind), the modern notion of "human rights." The most fundamental chasm exists between St. Thomas's traditional notions and the modern notions of human right. That chasm arises out of the excessive individualism of modernity, an individualism so excessive that it advances rights that are idiosyncratic, even against human nature and inimical to communal life. St. Thomas always saw rights ensconced within the greater good of the community, and never apart from duty to God and neighbor. He never saw rights as something inhering in free-standing, atomic and autonomous individuals. "In Thomas's system, ius or right is understood in terms of justice, which is itself always understood of others." Cortest, 21. In short, St. Thomas saw ius (right) as coming out of an I-Thou and I-You relationship, one of responsibility to God and to fellow humans. Moderns, on the other hand, see right as coming from the seagull philosophy in Pixar's (Disney's) movie Finding Nemo: "Mine, mine, mine, mine . . . ." I rather think that St. Thomas would have been impatient with the modern advocates of human rights, who now claim things like the right to abortion, the right to homosexual marriage, among a whole slew of rather questionable "rights." Like Nigel in Finding Nemo, he would have told the incessant advocates of autonomy to shut up. To claim St. Thomas as a sort of precursor to the modern notion of rights is not fair to St. Thomas's thought.

The "Seagull Philosophy" of Modern Right: Mine, mine, mine . . .

Three things are without question shared between St. Thomas and Aristotle: (1) a teleological view of nature, (2) a notion that positive laws, or laws particular to the city-state, are distinct from universal or natural law, and, finally, (3) that this natural or universal law is not to be separated from the notion of a natural or universal justice. Cortest, 14, 22.

From St. Thomas, Cortest jumps to the Dominicans at the School of Salamanca, focusing on the works of Francisco Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, and Domingo Bañez. These men were devoted followers of their fellow Dominican, Thomas Aquinas. Cortest also rejects the effort to recruit the Dominicans at the School of Salamanca as advocates of modern, individualistic human rights. "For them, individual or human rights are always understood within the more general context of justice." Cortest, 22. It seems that Brian Tierney is at the forefront of recruiting the Salamancans as advocates of modern human rights. But it would seem that Tierney is not recruiting, but impressing or shanghaiing the Salamancans who would probably be unwilling advocates of the modern, liberal, individualistic vision of human rights that are not based on any notion of nature or reason.

Domingo de Soto of the School of Salamanca

The Salamancans distinguished between the notions ius or right and dominium or lordship or power. De Soto's De iusticia et jure posits a distinction between the two:

Ius is the same as what is just (as Isidore says in Book V). It is the object of justice, the equity which justice establishes between men, dominium is the facultas of a lord (as its name implies) in servants or objects which he can use has he likes for his own benefit. Ius must therefore not be confused with domininium, as it is superior to it, and of wider reference.

Ius namque idem est (ut ait lib. 5 Isid.) quod iustum. Est enim objectum iustitiae: puta aequitas quam iustitia inter homines constituit: dominium autem facultas est domini (uti nomen sonat) in servos vel in res, quibus suo arbitratu, ob suumque commodum utitur. Fit ergo, ut ius no converatur cum dominio, sed sit illi superius et latius patens.

(quoted in Cortest, 23).

The Salamancan jurists, Vitoria, Soto, and, most famously, Bartolomé de las Casas, were very critical of the Spanish Conquista of the New World, and the Conquistadores' treatment, in some cases virtual enslavement, of the indigenous populations. It would seem, then, that the Salamancans were advocating some sort of inherent human rights of the Indian that were being violated. Brian Tierney seizes on the Salamancan notion of dominium or lordship as the source of the Salamancan advocacy of modern human rights. Dominium, Tierney suggests, is nothing but right under another name. Cortest, I think properly, criticizes Tierney's use of dominium as the source of individualistic rights. "[T]he difference between the traditional notions of dominium as Vitoria [and the Salamancans] understood it and a doctrine of 'natural rights' is vast." Cortest, 23. To equate the two would be to wrest the Thomistic objective foundation inherent in the Salamancans' thought and carry it into a subjective realm. It would be analogous to taking the Thomistic intellectual cathedral and moving it from a foundation of rock onto a foundation of sand, watch the cathedral collapse into a pile of rubble, and call the two situations the same. The underlying basis of modern rights theory and Thomistic and Salamancan natural law are simply different. Moreover, as Cortest correctly points out, the notion of dominium related to self-governance of a people, not to a subjective, individual right over one's possessions, and certainly not a subjective, individual right over one's own person against others. Cortest, 24. The Salamancans were not defending the rights of the Indians, but were defending the natural right of the Indian communities to exist and to govern themselves. Cortest, 25.

The only "right" found among the Salamancans that may be said to be an individual right in the strict sense would be the right to self-preservation. "Soto comes closest to defending a notion of personal rights in his treatment of self defense," which builds upon the right to self-preservation. Cortest, 25. But even this right must be understood within the more general framework of justice and the common good, something that is entirely absent from the modern concept of rights, which seem to be, in fact, independent of notions of justice to the entirety, and seem to be pitted against the demands of the common good or the good of the community. Certainly, many of the advocates of modern so-called "human rights" espouse values that are contrary to the very nature of man. Most uncontroversially, the claim to the "right" to procure an abortion is against human nature; indeed, it is foul, not fair, to nature's teaching. A tree, like a legal theory, is known by its fruits. Classical natural law and modern natural rights are two different species.

Now what is true for the Salamancans is not necessarily true for Suárez according to Cortest. In Cortest's view, Suárez appears to hover a bit closer to the modern notion of personal, positive human rights. Cortest, for example, cites to the definition of ius or right in Suárez's De Legibus, ac Deo Legislatore as more attuned to the modern understanding of human rights: According to Suárez, ius is "a certain moral power which ever man has, either over his own property or with respect to that which is due to him . . . . Accordingly, this right to claim (actio), or moral power, which every man possesses with rspect to his own property or with respect to a thing which in some way pertains to him, is called ius, and appears to be the true object of justice." [ius vocari facultas quaedam moralis, quam unusquisque habet, vel circa rem suam, vel ad rem sibi debitam . . . . Illa ergo actio, seu moralis facultas, quam unusquisque habet ad rem suam, vel ad rem ad se aliquo modo pertinentem vocatur ius, et illud proprie videtur esse obiectum iustitiae.] Cortest, 26 (citing Trac. de Leg. ac Deo Leg., I.2.5]

While Suárez may arguably be the source, or at least the harbinger, of modern notion of right, it would stem from his failure to "follow the strict Thomistic line of legal theory followed by the Dominicans at Salamanca." Cortest, 27.

But, in fact, the source of modern human right is more likely to be one who came after Suárez, but who relied heavily upon him: the Dutch Protestant jurist Hugo Grotius. In his De Iure Belli, Grotius seems well on his way to understanding right as a subjective right, positive, rather than negative, in tone:

A legal right (facultas) is called by the jurists the right to one's own (suum); after this we shall call it a legal right properly or strictly so called. Under it are included power, now over oneself, which is called freedom, now over others, as that of the father (patria potestas) and that of the master over slaves; ownership, either absolute, or less than absolute, as usufruct and the right of pledge; and contractual rights, to which on the opposite side contractual obligations correspond.

(quoted in Cortest, 27) While Grotius still bore traces of Aristotelianism, this language of "power . . . over oneself . . . which is called freedom" is recognizable as something new. Here we have a kernel of modern rights theory, one based on alleged autonomy or freedom from restrictions of any kind, including eventually, nature and, what is the same thing since nature contains within it the law of God, even God. Some of Grotius's notions, particularly when seasoned by the Hobbesian notions of nature and right which were wholly outside the pale of the Aristotelian/Thomist tradition, may be the source of modern theories of human right. But by the time one gets to Hobbes and his Leviathan one is clearly outside any notion of morality having an ontological or metaphysical foundation. In Hobbes, right is no longer tied to being, or, for that matter, Being.

The Disfigured Face of Natural Law: Introduction

WE SHALL FOCUS THE NEXT SIX OR SO POSTINGS on a book by Professor Luis Cortest entitled The Disfigured Face: Traditional Natural Law and its Encounter with Modernity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). Professor Cortest is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Oklahoma University. It is apparent that his interests in the Spanish writers of the 16th century, the so-called Siglo de Oro, or the "Golden Age," of Spanish literature introduced him to the principles of the natural law which were so prevalent in that age. In earlier postings, we reviewed at some depth the auto sacramental authored by the great 17th century Spanish playwright, Pedro Calderón de la Barca entitled A Dios por razón de estado, To God by Reason of the State. For the Spanish of the Siglo de Oro, the doctrine of natural law was as prevalent and as alive in the minds and hearts of thinkers and artists as feelings of democracy, human rights, and relativism are today. Central to the thesis of Professor's Cortest book is that the great synthesis of the natural law found in St. Thomas Aquinas is based upon a certain ontology or philosophy of being, and a certain teleological or purposeful view of nature (nature has an end, a purpose, a telos, which is Greek for "end," "goal," or "purpose."). The underlying Aristotelian/Thomist ontological and teleological assumptions, central to an authentic Thomist natural law theory, have been progressively dismantled by the philosophical and scientific presuppositions stemming from the Enlightenment and Modernism. By and large, Enlightenment and Modern thought have rejected the Aristotelian/Thomist ontology and teleological view of nature. This is true--alas--of even advocates of the so-called "modern" natural law theories of Finnis, Grisez, O'Boyle, and George (what is sometimes referred to as the "Integration" natural law theories, see our previous posting By Nature Equal: Human Equality and the Natural Law, Last Possible Ally Fails where this theory is briefly discussed.) The necessity of a certain view of being (ontology) and nature (teleology) as part of a classical treatment of natural law has been also the topic of a posting on the Jesuit thinker, John Courtney Murray. See The Four Requirements of a Classical Natural Law Theory.


Professor Cortest's book has four chapters: Thomistic Ontology, Ontological Morality and Human Rights, The War of the Philosophers, The Modern Way, Pope Leo XIII and His Legacy, and The Survival of Tradition. We intend to devote one posting for each chapter.