David Bentley Hart’s column “Is, Ought, and Nature’s Laws,” which appeared in our March issue, has sparked quite the online conversation over the past couple weeks. I’ve collected some responses and related posts for those interested in following along; if you know of any that I’ve missed, feel free to leave them in the comments.
National Review’s Michael Potemra says he found the article as “something like a drenching with ice-water.”
At the American Conservative, Rod Dreher applies Hart’s analysis to the same-sex marriage debate, Alan Jacobs ponders what we should do when natural law arguments fail to persuade our interlocutors, and Noah Millman asks what’s natural about natural law.
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry chimes in at the American Scene pointing out that while society’s rejection of the natural law is a problem for religious people, it’s a much larger problem for the secular Enlightenment project.
Finally, in a two part feature on Public Discourse, R. J. Snell argues that Hart and Potemra misunderstand natural law and concludes that natural law is neither useless nor dangerous.
March 1st, 2013 | 7:55 pm
Does Hart believe there is such a thing as depravity? If so, I can’t help but wonder by what objective standard he determines what is depraved and what is not.
It is hard to believe that the wisdom in refraining from killing, adultery, stealing, lying and letting oneself become obsessed with somehow obtaining one’s neighbor’s spouse or goods has not been available to most of humanity most of the time, and that this is so precisely because it is quite natural to eventually reach that conclusion. Yes, there are cultural aberrations where this wisdom is lost due to unnatural indoctrination, requiring the victims of which to simply believe first in order to understand. It was Augustine’s experience (and that of many others) that the understanding then comes. Many discover this wisdom from the negative consequences of rejecting it.
God, no doubt with the exasperation and disappointment that good parents sometime experience with their children, found it necessary to get the “believing first” going by sternly proclaiming the obvious from Mount Sinai amidst thunder and lightning. And knowing there would always be those who attempt to obfuscate what is really very simple and natural to grasp, He then, for our future reference, inscribed the obvious in stone using all small words.
March 2nd, 2013 | 6:09 am
It is unfortunate that David Bentley Hart does not identify the “self-described Thomists” he has in mind.
A century ago, Neo-Thomists did talk of a “natural order,” governed by Natural Law, consisting of truths accessible to unaided human reason, as something separate from the supernatural truths revealed in the Gospel. For them, “grace” was an addition to a human nature that was already complete and sufficient in itself and it was unrelated to any intrinsic human need. Their guiding principle, derived from a very questionable reading of Aristotle, was “the end of nature must be proportionate to nature” and that “natural desire cannot extend beyond natural capacity.”
In 1910, there was an exchange, in Maurice Blondel’s publication, L’Annales de philosophie chrétienne, between Maurras’s, Pedro Descoqs, the Jesuit defender of Charles Maurras and his movement, l’Action française and the Oratorian Lucien Laberthonnière, Descoqs, a follower of Suarez’s interpretation of St Thomas, had allowed the political sphere a wide degree of autonomy from religion. Laberthonnière accused Descoqs of being influenced by “a false theological notion of some state of pure nature and therefore imagined the state could be self-sufficient, in the sense that it could be properly independent of any specifically Christian sense of justice.” It was this rejection of the notion that the natural and the supernatural have utterly separate ends, in and of themselves that united such disparate thinkers as Blondel, Maréchal, the Dominicans, Chenu and Congar and the Jesuits, Lubac and Daniélou. The exchange was a fundamental moment for the Nouvelle Théologie, much as Keble’s Assize Sermon had been for the Oxford Movement.
March 2nd, 2013 | 12:02 pm
It is unfortunate that David Bentley Hart does not identify the “self-described Thomists” he has in mind.
Michael PS,
It seems clear Hart is talking about the New Natural Law theory and people like John Finnis and Robert George.
March 2nd, 2013 | 1:24 pm
It is hard to believe that the wisdom in refraining from killing, adultery, stealing, lying and letting oneself become obsessed with somehow obtaining one’s neighbor’s . . . .
harry,
You are overlooking what Hart says in his first paragraph:
The Fifth Commandment is more properly translated as “you shall not murder,” and yet it does not define murder. It has never been part of “mainstream” Jewish or Christian tradition that it is always wrong to kill. Can natural law answer the question of whether it is wrong to kill terrorists with drone strikes?
Adultery in the Old Testament (the Sixth Commandment) was understood as violating the rights of a husband. Consequently it was not adultery for a married man to have sex with an unmarried woman. The married man’s wife had no rights to be violated.
In the Catholic tradition, “stealing” to save one’s life or the life of one’s family (e.g., stealing food when you and your family are starving) is not wrong.
There is an ongoing debate as to whether it is permissible to lie if—to take the oft-used example—the Nazis knock on the door and ask if you are hiding Anne Frank. The first and second editions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church had different definitions of lying.
The most interpretation of “coveting” I have read was “plotting to acquire.”
March 2nd, 2013 | 7:04 pm
I have great respect for Dr. Hart, but I think that the Thomistic natural law principles could be used to deduce moral conclusions concerning contemporary moral issues, such as gay marriage. But I believe (I know I risk the great angelic doctor doing somersaults from his grave) that thomistic natural law can actually support gay marriage, and animal rights (but those are debates for another day).
March 3rd, 2013 | 12:29 am
You might add the reflections at Siris. I may not post a link but Google “On Hart’s Kantian (?) Argument”.
March 3rd, 2013 | 3:33 am
According to St Thomas, “even though by his nature man is inclined to his ultimate end, he cannot reach it by nature but only by grace, and this owing to the loftiness of that end.” [In Boethius de Trinitate, q. 6, a. 4 ad 5.] Also, “The nature that can attain perfect good, although it needs help from without in order to attain it, is of more noble condition than a nature which cannot attain perfect good, but attains some imperfect good, although it need no help from without in order to attain it.” [ST I-II, q. 5, a. 5 ad 2] This must be read in the light of his teaching that, “the beatitude of any rational creature whatsoever consists in seeing God by his essence” [In IV Sent, d. 49, q. 2, a. 7:] and that “one has not attained to one’s last end until the natural desire is at rest. Therefore the knowledge of any intelligible object is not enough for man’s happiness, which is his last end, unless he know God also, which knowledge terminates his natural desire, as his last end. Therefore this very knowledge of God is man’s last end.” [SCG III, c. 50.]
The Neo-Thomists showed a remarkable (and perverse) ingenuity in preserving their “natura pura,” in the teeth of St Thomas’s actual teaching. They argued that here St Thomas was speaking as a theologian and referring to the actual, concrete order of salvation history.
The New Natural Lawyers, notably Grisez, also depart from St Thomas on the final end of man.
March 3rd, 2013 | 5:38 pm
The quality of David Hart’s argument was surprisingly wobbly. Potemra’s, Dreher’s, and Jacobs’ less surprising. Snell dismantled it comprehensively. (Though it would be excellent to see Hart’s rebuttal.)
Hart’s problem is his brilliance. He dashed off a criticism of natural law with his usual flair, and his style is imposing enough to conceal flaws and intimidate dissent.
At the bottom of every rational inquiry one will eventually encounter a question-mark. Hart is skilled enough to locate his assertion of “self-evidence” (Snell) in a place where most critics will be led to think it more fundamental than the foundations of natural law, especially when those foundations are left general and undefined for rhetorical purposes. Snell clarified this when he named names, not just of theorists and more comprehensive arguments, but of first principles.
The irreducible kernel of all systems of knowledge is faith: we do not/cannot have infinite knowledge. Even the “self-evidence” Snell speaks of must be believed in and asserted, rather than proved rationally; it is acknowledged true rather than demonstrated true. At various depths, inquirers will hit the bedrock of their individual capacity for inquiry — even the “stupid” ones, in Potemra’s inelegant formulation — at which point the inquirer must say, “I hold these truths to be self-evident.” And we are all comparatively “stupid” against divinity and infinity. That God’s revelation confirms what we already find evident is the final proof of natural law, not a rival or contradictory source of knowledge.
Matt
March 4th, 2013 | 3:52 am
Matthew King
Pascal explained the nature of first principles very well. “We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them… For the knowledge of first principles, as space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those which we get from reasoning. And reason must trust this knowledge of the heart and of instinct, and must base every argument on them. The heart senses [Le cœur sent ]that there are three dimensions in space and that the numbers are infinite, and reason then shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double of the other. Principles are intuited, propositions are inferred, all with certainty, though in different ways.“
On the other hand, nature is no sort of divine seed, or immanent movement toward the supernatural, rather it is instilled with a desire for the supernatural, born out of its own poverty and existing as a privation. That is why the arguments, both of the Neo-Scholastics and the New Natural Lawyers breaks down.
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