A Response to Wretchard's Metropolis
Wretchard,
I enter this subject...cautiously...because I do not mean to pervert what you say, or ruffle any feathers of the faithful.
You write: "Totalitarianism is ultimately founded on an idea; the exact reverse of the notion that all men are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights."
The Aquinas 'natural law' argument is indeed a formidable one. The idea of a teleological universe and a divine law, has, I will admit, done absolute wonders for the spread of decency throughout the scope of human endeavors. A debate, as you know, between Hobbsian 'natural law as a rational flight from fear' and Aquinas' 'natural law as an incident of divine truth,' has been going on for centuries in the West, most notably in the Anglo-Saxon philosophical sphere, with Bentham's twist leading to utilitarianism and legal positivism. I will not enter this debate right now.
I am interested in your distinction between totalitarianism as an idea, and Aquinas' 'natural law' as a divine notion (if this is truly what you have said). But first, a caveat.
I do not want my function as a commenter to be the arrogant philosophy police, especially as I make no claims to expertise or exactitude. Philosophy, however, is a subject that interests me, and I truly believe vast consequences can flow from simple principles, once taken in and embraced. In many ways our conceptual universe can be understood in chaos theory, since its shape is imminently dependant on initial conditions.
It may be, and I claim no certainty either way, that the intellectual posture of our founding fathers--their embrace of Aquinas, Locke, Smith, Bacon, Acton, and Whiggism in general--is truly the best and only one to take, if one is to maximize decency, humanity, and happiness. The posture that looks to the divine for inspiration and guidance, in other words, may be the only one that has the right effect regardless of its factual truth. Perhaps mankind needs the idea of God more than it needs the truth, whatever that is. In fact, an empiricist would look on the success of such ideals and faiths as a posteriori evidence of its fitness.
Hayek warned about fiddling at the bottom without having something in mind to replace what you remove, and I agree. The examples of the 20th century are unambiguous in their warnings of that kind of danger.
And yet, I still pause, because it may be that fiddling at the bottom by moral and social theorists is the least of our worries. The empiricist and mechanist mindset, whether we would have it or not, is sweeping across the moral lattice of Western Civilization through the forward march of science. More and more generations have this mindset 'impressed' from an early age, and the language of Aquinas, Smith, and Jefferson becomes more and more foreign to a youth steeped in experiences that seem to be incompatible.
I am not searching for new 'oughts', for in a way I myself do not believe in them as a priori propositional truths. But I do believe in effects, and I refuse to disregard the evidence all around me of the fundamental decency of your divine notion. If it is the only way, and Western Civ. can only survive by a revival of 'natural law', then so be it and let's get started. But the language barrier, I'm afraid, will continue to grow if we refuse to engage Western Civilizational 'founding doctrine' on the level of ideas. In other words, we may have to advocate 'natural law' from a standpoint of empiricism.
Totalitarianism was a gross perversion of ideas by a cabal of power-worshipping intellectuals, and it was defeated by the spirit of Western morality and decency. It was perhaps our greatest victory. And yet, I am seriously worried that the determinism of 'natural law', while it has served us so well and guided our actions even in the darkest of nights, may leave us helpless against the new threat that even refuses to acknowledge its existence.
More and more Western children choose to follow the norms of Smith and the morality of Christ while rejecting the reasoning of each as it applies to first principles. This adherence to an ethic is due to intellectual inertia, the comfort of belonging, and a lack of intriquing alternatives. What happens when the entropy kicks in? What happens when we look down and discover that there's nothing there?
I enter this subject...cautiously...because I do not mean to pervert what you say, or ruffle any feathers of the faithful.
You write: "Totalitarianism is ultimately founded on an idea; the exact reverse of the notion that all men are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights."
The Aquinas 'natural law' argument is indeed a formidable one. The idea of a teleological universe and a divine law, has, I will admit, done absolute wonders for the spread of decency throughout the scope of human endeavors. A debate, as you know, between Hobbsian 'natural law as a rational flight from fear' and Aquinas' 'natural law as an incident of divine truth,' has been going on for centuries in the West, most notably in the Anglo-Saxon philosophical sphere, with Bentham's twist leading to utilitarianism and legal positivism. I will not enter this debate right now.
I am interested in your distinction between totalitarianism as an idea, and Aquinas' 'natural law' as a divine notion (if this is truly what you have said). But first, a caveat.
I do not want my function as a commenter to be the arrogant philosophy police, especially as I make no claims to expertise or exactitude. Philosophy, however, is a subject that interests me, and I truly believe vast consequences can flow from simple principles, once taken in and embraced. In many ways our conceptual universe can be understood in chaos theory, since its shape is imminently dependant on initial conditions.
It may be, and I claim no certainty either way, that the intellectual posture of our founding fathers--their embrace of Aquinas, Locke, Smith, Bacon, Acton, and Whiggism in general--is truly the best and only one to take, if one is to maximize decency, humanity, and happiness. The posture that looks to the divine for inspiration and guidance, in other words, may be the only one that has the right effect regardless of its factual truth. Perhaps mankind needs the idea of God more than it needs the truth, whatever that is. In fact, an empiricist would look on the success of such ideals and faiths as a posteriori evidence of its fitness.
Hayek warned about fiddling at the bottom without having something in mind to replace what you remove, and I agree. The examples of the 20th century are unambiguous in their warnings of that kind of danger.
And yet, I still pause, because it may be that fiddling at the bottom by moral and social theorists is the least of our worries. The empiricist and mechanist mindset, whether we would have it or not, is sweeping across the moral lattice of Western Civilization through the forward march of science. More and more generations have this mindset 'impressed' from an early age, and the language of Aquinas, Smith, and Jefferson becomes more and more foreign to a youth steeped in experiences that seem to be incompatible.
I am not searching for new 'oughts', for in a way I myself do not believe in them as a priori propositional truths. But I do believe in effects, and I refuse to disregard the evidence all around me of the fundamental decency of your divine notion. If it is the only way, and Western Civ. can only survive by a revival of 'natural law', then so be it and let's get started. But the language barrier, I'm afraid, will continue to grow if we refuse to engage Western Civilizational 'founding doctrine' on the level of ideas. In other words, we may have to advocate 'natural law' from a standpoint of empiricism.
Totalitarianism was a gross perversion of ideas by a cabal of power-worshipping intellectuals, and it was defeated by the spirit of Western morality and decency. It was perhaps our greatest victory. And yet, I am seriously worried that the determinism of 'natural law', while it has served us so well and guided our actions even in the darkest of nights, may leave us helpless against the new threat that even refuses to acknowledge its existence.
More and more Western children choose to follow the norms of Smith and the morality of Christ while rejecting the reasoning of each as it applies to first principles. This adherence to an ethic is due to intellectual inertia, the comfort of belonging, and a lack of intriquing alternatives. What happens when the entropy kicks in? What happens when we look down and discover that there's nothing there?
posted by John Aristides at 8:34 AM
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