Narrative, Nature, and the Natural Law: From Aquinas to International Human Rights

183 Pages·2010·3.23 MB·English

Narrative, Nature, and
the Natural Law
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
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SCIENCEANDTHEREVENGEOFNATURE:Marcuseand
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ASHESOFTHEMOON:EnvironmentandEvilintheAmazon
(anovel)
Narrative, Nature, and
the Natural Law
From Aquinas to International
Human Rights
C. Fred Alford
NARRATIVE,NATURE,ANDTHENATURALLAW
Copyright©C.FredAlford,2010
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-62279-1
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 978-1-349-38431-0 ISBN 978-0-230-10672-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230106727
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Alford,C.Fred.
Narrative,nature,andthenaturallaw:fromAquinastointernational
humanrights/C.FredAlford.
p. cm.
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
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
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),
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
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