Narrative, Nature, and the Natural Law: From Aquinas to International Human Rights PDF
Preview Narrative, Nature, and the Natural Law: From Aquinas to International Human Rights
Narrative, Nature, and the Natural Law February17,2010 15:47 MAC-US/ALFI Page-i 9780230622791_01_prex PreviousBooksbyC.FredAlford AFTERTHEHOLOCAUST:TheBookofJob,PrimoLevi,andthe PathtoAffliction PSYCHOLOGYANDTHENATURALLAWOFREPARATION RETHINKINGFREEDOM:WhyFreedomHasLostItsMeaning andWhatCanBeDonetoSaveIt LEVINAS,THEFRANKFURTSCHOOLAND PSYCHOANALYSIS WHISTLEBLOWERS:BrokenLivesandOrganizationalPower THINKNOEVIL:KoreanValuesintheAgeofGlobalization WHATEVILMEANSTOUS THEMANWHOCOULDN’TLIE:EssaysandStoriesaboutan AncientQuarrelbetweenPhilosophyandPoetry GROUPPSYCHOLOGYANDPOLITICALTHEORY THEPSYCHOANALYTICTHEORYOFGREEKTRAGEDY THESELFINSOCIALTHEORY:APsychoanalyticAccountofIts ConstructioninPlato,Hobbes,Locke,Rawls,andRousseau MELANIEKLEINANDCRITICALSOCIALTHEORY:An AccountofPolitics,Art,andReasonBasedonHerPsychoanalytic Theory NARCISSISM:Socrates,theFrankfurtSchool,andPsychoanalytic Theory SCIENCEANDTHEREVENGEOFNATURE:Marcuseand Habermas ASHESOFTHEMOON:EnvironmentandEvilintheAmazon (anovel) February17,2010 15:47 MAC-US/ALFI Page-ii 9780230622791_01_prex Narrative, Nature, and the Natural Law From Aquinas to International Human Rights C. Fred Alford February17,2010 15:47 MAC-US/ALFI Page-iii 9780230622791_01_prex NARRATIVE,NATURE,ANDTHENATURALLAW Copyright©C.FredAlford,2010 Allrightsreserved. Firstpublishedin2010byPALGRAVEMACMILLAN®inthe UnitedStates–adivisionofSt.Martin’sPressLLC,175FifthAvenue, NewYork,NY10010. WherethisbookisdistributedintheUK,Europeandtherestofthe world,thisisbyPalgraveMacmillan,adivisionofMacmillan PublishersLimited,registeredinEngland,companynumber785998, ofHoundmills,Basingstoke,HampshireRG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabove companiesandhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. Palgrave®andMacmillan®areregisteredtrademarksintheUnited States,theUnitedKingdom,Europeandothercountries. ISBN:978–0–230–62279–1 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Alford,C.Fred. Narrative,nature,andthenaturallaw:fromAquinastointernational humanrights/C.FredAlford. p. cm. ISBN978–0–230–62279–1(alk.paper) 1. Naturallaw. 2. Naturallaw—History. I. Title. K460.A442010 340(cid:2).112—dc22 2009035089 DesignbyIntegraSoftwareServices Firstedition:May2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica. February17,2010 15:47 MAC-US/ALFI Page-iv 9780230622791_01_prex Contents Preface vii 1 Introduction 1 2 SaintThomas:PuttingNatureintoNaturalLaw 21 3 MaritainandtheLovefortheNaturalLaw 49 4 TheNewNaturalLawandEvolutionaryNaturalLaw 83 5 InternationalHumanRights,NaturalLaw,andLocke 107 6 Conclusion:EvilandtheLimitsoftheNaturalLaw 135 Notes 149 References 159 Index 169 February17,2010 15:47 MAC-US/ALFI Page-v 9780230622791_01_prex This page intentionally left blank Preface Beginning with Saint Thomas Aquinas and ending with the latest developments in international human rights, I have sought to bring a fairly traditional interpretation of the natural law to some rather untraditional problems and areas. The term “traditional interpreta- tion”refersnottothereligiousorideologicalperspectiveofthebook, but rather to the view that natural law is “written on the heart.” Untraditional is the way my approach uses narrative theory to put feelingsintowords,andwordsintofeelings.Theresultisthatstories, rather than argument, become the basic unit of the natural law. I do notclaimthatthisistheonlywaytodonaturallaw;Idoclaimthatit isafruitfulway. More than any other book of mine, I have kept the question of the reader in mind. Who am I writing for, I kept asking myself? Not, Ithink,fortheusualaudienceoftheacademicmonograph:fellowpro- fessionals interested in the technical details of the subject. I am more interested in explaining natural law and its relevance today to those who might imagine that the natural law has something interesting to say,butcan’tquitefigureoutwhat.Thereaderwillrequiresomeback- groundinphilosophy,theology,orpoliticaltheory.Betteryetisafirm foundation in the liberal arts, though that is becoming a rare legacy. In any case, the reader who wants to do something with the natural law, rather than argue about this or that detail, would be my ideal reader. What can one do with the natural law? One can make sense of the properrelationshipbetweenmoralityandpubliclife.Onecanexplain a good deal of otherwise puzzling human behavior, particularly in groups.Evolutionarynaturallaw,thetopicofchapter4,isparticularly helpful in this regard. One can begin to understand when talk about internationalhumanrightshassomebasisinnaturallaw,andwhenitis justtalk.Ofcourse,it’salljusttalk,isn’tit?Yesandno.Fornaturallaw toaddsomethingtoourdiscussions,nature,includinghumannature, must be a meaningful category, not just a term of suspicion and con- tempt.Fortoolongnow,atleastsinceImmanuelKant(1724–1804), February17,2010 15:47 MAC-US/ALFI Page-vii 9780230622791_01_prex viii Preface ethics, including that ethical theory known as the “new natural law” (discussed in chapter 4), has tried to lift ethics out of nature, so that human autonomy, ethics, and freedom might coincide. The natural law challenges this direction in ethics, and yet it is a challenge about whichwemustbecareful.Naturedoesnotspeakforitself,butonlyin thestorieswetellaboutit,storiesthatareneverfreeofthedominion of fear, power, and desire—that is, society, economics, politics, and culture. The heroes of the natural law, in my book, are the unlikely com- bination of Jacques Maritain and John Locke. Maritain because his background in phenomenology, coupled with his love of poetry (and perhaps his love of love), enables him to make the most sense of that old saying that natural law is “written on the heart.” In other words, Maritain makes sense of the intuitive dimension of natural law: that weknowitevenbeforewecanexplainit. Lockeisvaluablebecausehehelpskeepusmodest.Locke’sabiding concernwiththe“mediocrity”ofmen’sminds,asheputsit,coupled with the overwhelming tendency of humans to confuse the historical and social concerns of the day with the natural law, led him to limit thenaturallawtothebasicsofwhattodaywecallinternationalhuman rights. By the term “basics,” I refer to the rights of life, liberty, and securityofperson.Withinthissphere,however,naturallawisabsolute, a duty, not just a right. In other words, individuals have rights not because individuals automatically have rights, but because individuals areallsubjecttothesamenaturallaw. My thesis (what I bring to the argument that I think is original) isanappreciationoftheconsequencesofseeinghumanrightsasnat- ural law: a humility that lets the other be, that recognizes a sacred boundarybetweenmycommunityandanotherthatwehaveadutyto respect, and to protect, with arms if need be. My inspiration for this idea comes from Reinhold Niebuhr, a Protestant theologian whose insightintothenaturallawiscoupledwithacorrespondingblindness. Niebuhr’sblindnessstems,ingoodmeasure,fromhisapparentigno- rance of the contribution of Jacques Maritain to the development of thenaturallaw. Parts of chapters 2 and 3, on Saint Thomas and Jacques Maritain, are at points fairly technical, having to do with the status of realism inThomas,andtheinfluenceofpersonalism,astheteachingiscalled, onMaritain.Understandingthenaturallawdoesnothavetobemade difficult. In some ways it is the easiest thing in the world because it is indeed natural. But the history of the natural law raises some philosophical and historical issues that are worth understanding if we February17,2010 15:47 MAC-US/ALFI Page-viii 9780230622791_01_prex Preface ix are to fully appreciate the claims natural law makes about the moral worldweshare. Nevertheless, there are a number of debates among scholars over thisorthataspectofThomas,Maritain,andLockethatIhavedeclined to address. For example, I argue that the state of nature in Locke representshisvisionoflifeunderthenaturallaw,apositionsimilarto oneheldbysomemembersoftheso-calledCambridgeSchool.Other scholarsdisagree,butthisisnotadisagreementthatwillbehelpfulto analyzeforthepurposesoftheargumentathand,whichistoshowthe continuedrelevance—andsomesurprisinglyradicalconsequences—of aratherold-fashionedwayoflookingatthenaturallaw. My thanks are reserved primarily for my students, graduate and undergraduate alike, who have forced me to understand what I was explaining to them about the natural law in classes in ancient, medieval,andmodernpoliticalphilosophy.Itisfromthiseffort,over anumberofyears,thatthisbookcamealmosttowriteitself. Do other professors ever have that awful feeling of talking or lec- turingaboutsometopic,onlytosilentlysaytothemselvessomething like,“NotonlydoInotunderstandwhatIamsaying,butIwouldn’t believemyselfforaminutewereIonthereceivingend”?It’sthefeel- ingIgetwhenIcanrecitealltherightwordsaboutatopic,definethe natural law perfectly, as Thomas defines it, for example, but have not yetmadethewordsmyown,generallybecauseIhavenotputthemin myowntermsandlanguage,andsocometoadecisionaboutwhether Ibelievethemornot. IcanteachsomethingIdon’tbelieve.IfIcouldn’t,Iwouldn’tbe ateacher,butapreacher.ButIfinditextraordinarilydifficulttoteach something that I don’t understand in my own terms, my own lan- guage,myownexamplesfromlife.Thisbookbeganasthatstruggle, evenasithascometotakeonsomethingofalifeofitsown.Forinthe end,abookmustaddressanaudience,notjusttheneedsofitsauthor. Earlier, I described the audience I imagine as reading this book. But perhapsIwillbesurprised. In thinking about narrative and the natural law, I owe an intel- lectual debt to a former colleague, Peter Levine, which is not fully capturedinthereferences.Levineiscurrentlyresearchdirectorofthe JonathanM.TischCollegeofCitizenshipandPublicServiceatTufts University. He would not likely agree with many of my conclusions aboutthenaturallaw. C.FredAlford YarmouthPort,MA February17,2010 15:47 MAC-US/ALFI Page-ix 9780230622791_01_prex
Description:The list of books you might like
