A right is something which is linked to a remedy under a bond of law. A natural right is one whose remedy is provided by nature itself. It would be unnatural for law to prevent recourse to this remedy- e.g. that of self defense.
Some natural rights- e.g. the right to own slaves, copulate with them and thus end up owning more slaves- may conflict with positive rights accorded to all human beings in a particular jurisdiction. But there is a natural right for those with power in a particular area to deny various natural rights, which they consider repugnant, to others who are weaker. That's what happened during the Civil War, when America lost more soldiers than in both World Wars put together.
Leo Strauss, speaking in 1949, suggested that (non Catholic) America had rejected natural rights in favor of German style historicist, relativist, positive rights. Obviously, he was not speaking of the natural right to lynch niggers or fuck up Commies or homos or to deport wetbacks. Nor did he mean the natural right to nuke gooks of various descriptions. This raises the question- did he mean anything at all? The answer, sadly, is 'no. He was just chattering away in a meaningless manner because that was what he was paid to do. The alternative hypothesis which squares with the facts was that he was as stupid as shit. '
To reject natural right is tantamount to saying that all right is positive right,
No it isn't. A natural right is one whose remedy is supplied by nature. A positive right is one whose remedy is supplied by a Court of Law or Public Institution concerned with the administration of Justice. The two types of rights may conflict. A mother has a natural right to her baby. The law, however, in a specific case, may take the baby away from the mother on the grounds that she is an unfit parent.
and this means primarily that what is right is defined exclusively by the legislatures and the courts of the various countries.
No. It is not defined in an intensional manner. It is clarified in an extensional manner though this clarification is defeasible.
Now it is obviously meaningful, and sometimes even necessary, to speak of unjust laws, or unjust decisions.
This merely means you want a different law or decision. One may equally say 'this coffee is undrinkable!' when everyone can see that it is perfectly potable. We understand that the demand here is for a different type of coffee- perhaps an 'Irish' coffee with plenty of whiskey in it.
In passing such judgments
we must actually be judges authorized to do so. Otherwise we are just talking is all. 'Passing judgment' is just a figure of speech.
we imply that there is a standard of right and wrong independent of positive right, and higher than positive right, a standard with reference to which we are able to judge of positive right.
Nonsense! I may say 'this coffee is undrinkable' when all I want is a bit of whiskey in it so as to get over the shakes. Once restored to sobriety, I will make no such stipulation. There may be some people who believe in 'higher' principles and standards and that a more ideal type of Society is realizable. On the other hand, some who speak in this way may be acting strategically.
Many people today hold the view that the standard in the question is in the best case nothing but the ideal or ideals of our society.
Only if their Society thinks people should have ideals.
But according to the same view, all societies have their ideals, cannibal societies no less than civilized ones.
Only if their Society makes that stipulation- which in fact Strauss's America did not. Cannibals said 'ooga-booga'. They didn't gas on in an Emersonian vein.
If principles are sufficiently justified by the fact that they are accepted as ideals by society, the principles of cannibalism are as legitimate as those of civilized life.
Only if the Society that stipulated that principles are justified by the fact that they are accepted as ideals also stipulated that Cannibals have principles and ideals and gas on in an Emersonian vein rather than just going 'ooga-booga' and biting chunks off each other.
If there is no standard higher than the ideals of one’s society, there exists no possibility of taking a critical distance from those ideals.
Unless one's Society stipulates for this possibility. Indeed, it may create a mechanism to ensure this outcome. Consider the Sanhedrin's rule against unanimity. This forced the Jewish lawmakers to get some 'critical distance' and reconsider the matter in cold blood.
But the mere fact that we can raise the question of the worth of the ideals of our society shows
exactly the same thing as the fact that we can raise the question of the worth of Newton's Laws- viz. bollocks can be talked about anything under, or above, the Sun.
that there is something in man that is not altogether enslaved to his society,
but there is nothing in man that is even somewhat enslaved to his Society- unless he is in fact a fucking slave
and therefore that we are able, and even obliged, to look for a standard with reference to which we can judge of the ideals of our society, as well as of any other society.
Will we get adequately paid to fulfil this obligation? If not, then this is enslavement and it can go fuck itself. Otherwise, it is simply something we do to earn a little money. But there is no point to it. We should just pretend to have found that standard rather than waste any time actually looking for it. There is no way to show we are acting fraudulently. The fact is, any standard adopted by an individual judges the ideals of all possible societies. This is the case even if no 'poset' or ranking over them is achieved. Ideals may be incommensurable or relevant facts may be inaccessible.
This standard cannot be found in the needs of the society concerned.
Yes it can. No doubt, an individual may argue otherwise. But Society can still collectively decide to overrule that objection. Either Societies are cohesive enough to do what Strauss said they do or this entire line of argument is bollocks.
So that one could reject cannibalism, for example, on the ground that it is not really needed for the societies that practice it,
But we do reject cannibalism for this reason. If we were stuck on a lifeboat, without other provisions, we probably would eat each other. But we don't do that if there's a McDonalds just down the road.
or that that practice is based on demonstrably erroneous beliefs, for society and man have many needs which frequently conflict with each other.
The existence of scarcity means that every single economic decision we make features a resolution of such conflicts. Even in speaking, we choose one word over another. This involves a trade off. We have to balance our need to call our boss a fucking cretin who probably eats dog shit with our greater need to keep our job. Speaking generally, we manage to resolve these conflicts well enough. We find a way to reply to our boss in a manner which appears obsequious to him but which lets everybody else in the office know that the cunt eats dog shit.
Leo Strauss took a different view-
The problem of priorities arises. Can one say that the bodily needs of the individual have first claim over against the spiritual props of society, over against beliefs, however erroneous?
Sure. Why not?
Are firmly held beliefs not much more important for getting an integrated culture in which man can find mental security than what modern medicine declares to be adequate satisfaction of bodily wants.
No. Fuck off.
Is there no support for the view that the interests which arise out of the bodily needs are divisive, whereas beliefs – agreements regarding fundamentals – have a unifying effect?
So what if there is? Divisiveness may be a good thing- it may drive innovation. The opposite may result in stagnation.
Needs do not supply us with a valid criterion for judging of the ideals of our own or any other society.
And yet everybody accepts that they are indeed a valid criterion. We may agree that, in an ideal society, nobody will fart or fornicate. Indeed, we may picture Heaven as a place free from farts and fornication. But we need to fart and we need to have sex otherwise we and Society will die out.
For this purpose we would have to know the true hierarchy – the natural hierarchy of needs.
We do know this hierarchy with respect to time. When it comes to shitting- when you gotta go, you gotta go. Sex can be postponed till shitting is completed. Settling scores with your ex must wait till a lot of sex has happened and she finally left you saying your dick is just too small. Only at this point do you write a sonnet describing the vast and echoing wastes of her twat.
We would have to possess, in other words, knowledge of natural right.
We do possess it. We know what remedies are provided by nature. No doubt, at the margin, there is a discovery process.
It would appear then that the rejection of natural right is bound to lead to disastrous consequences,
Only if anybody gave a tinker's fart for this type of talk
and it is obvious that disastrous consequences do follow from the contemporary rejection of natural right.
Fuck off. Disastrous consequences followed from France not having an offensive military doctrine both in 1914 and 1939. That's why De Gaulle got busy stealing nuclear tech to give France a force de frappe.
Our social science may make us very wise or clever as regards the means for any objectives we might choose. It admits being unable to help us in discriminating between legitimate and illegitimate, between just and unjust objectives.
That may have appeared the case then. Now, there is an evolutionary theory of morality which could be linked to work in mechanism design reflecting the 'folk theorem' of repeated games. Robert Aumann has found this type of game theory in the Talmud. Maths has clarified what shite Poli Sci thoroughly shat all over.
Such a science is essentially instrumental, and nothing but instrumental.
Anything may be an instrument. Mathematical methods have utility. The clarify useful concepts like Justice and Fairness. Straussian shite was an instrument of stupidity.
It is bound to be the handmaid of any powers or of any interests that be.
Strauss's oeuvre became the 'handmaid' to the neo-con fuckwits who gave currency to the phrase 'when America makes you its bitch, Democracy is the reach-around' in connection with Iraq.
What Machiavelli did apparently, our social science would actually do, if it did not prefer, God knows why – generous liberalism to consistency: namely, to give advice with equal competence and alacrity to tyrants as well as to free peoples.
All sciences did serve anyone who paid a little for their services.
According to our social science, we can be or become wise in all things of secondary importance, but we have to be resigned to utter ignorance in the most important respect.
No. We can be wise in things that matter. We are fools to shit higher than our arsehole. Strauss's own 'golden sentence'- 'The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only the surface of thing, is the heart of things'- is foolish because things don't have hearts unless they do in which case heart surgeons can get to their surface.
In ordinary life we understand by a sane man a man who knows what he is doing, a man who knows why he is doing what he does.
Nonsense! A sane man may wander around in a drunken stupor doing all sorts of crazy shite just for the hell of it.
If we cannot have any knowledge regarding the ultimate principles of our choices
then we can't know our own names. If we do know our own names then we have some knowledge regarding the ultimate principle guiding the choices of the bloke our name names.
– that is to say, regarding their soundness or unsoundness — we are in the position of men who are sane and sober when they are engaged in trivialities, and gamble like mad men when confronted with serious issues.
Sane men gamble. Mad men seldom do. It is a different matter that gambling may be addictive. But an addiction is not insanity.
Retail sanity and wholesale madness. In little things we may follow reason, and our choices may be judicious. In the most important things, we must be guided not by thought or light, but by blind choice.
No. We are guided by 'uncorrelated asymmetries'. In little things, I trust my own judgment or don't even bother to exercise it. In big things I find an 'uncorrelated asymmetry'- e.g. the fact that this guy is the best Surgeon, or best Pension Fund manager, etc- and outsource decision making to him.
If there is no natural right,
there will still be positive right
everything a man can afford to dare will be permitted,
Nope. Stuff that's against the Law won't be permitted.
and nothing a man can afford to dare will be forbidden. The rejection of natural right seems to lead to nihilism.
Only if you have shit for brains. Otherwise you will see that the Law provides remedies for rights violations even where Nature fails to do so.
Once we realize that our basic principles have no other support than our blind choice, we cannot as reasonable beings believe in them anymore.
But it is not reasonable to believe that we choose blindly- unless we do in fact do so in which case we are beyond the reach of any reasoned argument.
We cannot whole-heartedly act upon them anymore. We cannot live anymore as rational beings.
This is because we have turned into bunny rabbits.
To be able to live, it becomes necessary to silence the easily silenced voice of reason which tells us that our basic principles have no other support than our preference or blind choice, and hence are as good or as bad as any other principles.
To be able to live, most people have to get a job or find somebody to leach off. Silencing easily silenced voices won't help any.
The more we cultivate reason, the more we cultivate nihilism, the less are we able to be members of any integrated “culture.”
If by reason, talking stupid shite is meant then sure- but how many can make a living by it?
The inevitable practical consequence of nihilism is fanatical obscurantism.
Nonsense! There are plenty of nihilists who earn good money and aren't as boring as shit.
The bitter experience of this consequence has led to a renewed general interest in natural right, but this very fact must make us particularly cautious.
Why? You can't stop gobshites talking bollocks. Well, you can, but why bother?
It may be perfectly true that a rational life is impossible without natural right.
Either nature provides you a remedy against irrationality or it does not do so. In the latter case, there may be positive law such that a remedy is provided for you in a manner which mitigates the consequences of your deficit in this respect.
However, it must be the case that what the law commands can be supplied by some agent who does have the requisite 'natural right'.
It is therefore natural that we should become indignant about those who reject natural right.
Some have natural rights- i.e. their own nature provides the remedy- some don't. We may 'pool risk' or otherwise contract for a collective remedy just in case our condition deteriorates or so as to provide for the vulnerable.
But indignation is no argument. Our indignation proves at best that we are well-meaning; it does not prove that we are right. The seriousness of the need for natural right does not prove that that need can be satisfied. A wish is not a fact.
The Law is imperative, not alethic. Whether it is enforceable is a factual matter. Any type of Right or Obligation is imperative, not alethic. We may say, if the remedy is incentive compatible then, whether or not the right arises under a bond of law- i.e. whether it is 'natural' or 'positive'- it is effective.
By proving that a certain view is indispensable for living well,
But nobody has ever done so. The fact is, with regard to any given view, one could always point to plenty of people who were living well who were either ignorant of that view or thought it was fucked in the head.
one proves merely that the view in question is a most desirable myth; one does not prove it is true.
But imperative statements have no truth value. They may involve a 'normative tie to action' but then again they may not. Cheap talk has a very different function from Costly Signals.
Utility and truth are two entirely different things.
No. Utility is a truth we posit about behavior. It is just as alethic as 'Energy' or 'Force' or any other Tarskian primitive of a Scientific type.
Can we rashly exclude the possibility that the world is so ill contrived that man cannot live well but by sacrificing his reason?
Sure we can. Or the opposite. Or both simultaneously. We could also stipulate that man cannot live well save by chasing the bunny rabbit of his own neighbor's cat's horcrux's Nicaraguan heath while excluding some shite or the other.
That untruth or blind assent is a condition of a happy life? Certainly, the gravity of the issue imposes upon us the duty of a detached, theoretical, impartial discussion.
Fuck off! The gravity of this issue imposes upon us the duty to fart loudly in its face.
Since natural right is today a matter of recollection rather than of actual knowledge,
coz, back in 1949, Americans didn't know they had a natural right to wipe their own asses. They were constantly phoning Harry Truman to send Feds to do it for them.
this means that we are in need of historical studies which will familiarize us with the whole complexity of the issue.
What complexity? Some stupid cunts wrote stupid shite. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
We have to become, for some time, students of what is called “history of ideas,” but this will aggravate, rather than remove the difficulty of impartial treatment. To quote Lord Acton, “Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. Sharp definitions and unsparing analysis would displace the veil beneath which society dissembles its divisions, would make political disputes too violent for compromise, and political alliances too precarious for use, and would embitter politics with all the passions of social and religious strife.”
Was Acton right? Did England have a Civil War and start beheading Kings? No. So fuck him.
We can overcome this danger
what fucking danger? English politics became more, not less, peaceful. The Catholics didn't cause any problems. Labour came to power by purely legal means and quit office in a punctilious manner.
only by considering the fact that for every conscientious scholar the problem of natural right is not a partisan affair. At a superficial glance, 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 – to use this somewhat loose term; the other by the Catholic and non-Catholic disciples of Thomas Aquinas. But both armies, and in addition those who prefer to sit on the fence or to hide their heads in the sand, are, if I may heap metaphor on metaphor, in the same boat. They are all modern men. No matter how neutral we may be, we are all in the grip of the same dilemma. Natural right in its classic form, the only form in which it is defensible, 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. This teleological view of the universe, of which the teleological view of man forms a part, has been destroyed for all practical purposes by modern natural science. From the point of view of Aristotle—and who could dare to claim to be a better judge in this matter than Aristotle—the issue between the mechanical and teleological conception of the universe is decided by the manner in which the problem of the heavens and the heavenly bodies and their motion is settled. Now in this respect, which from Aristotle’s own point of view was the decisive one, the issue seems to have been decided finally in favor of the mechanical conception of the universe. Two opposite conclusions could be drawn from this momentous decision. First, the mechanical, or at any rate non-teleological conception of the universe, had to be accompanied by a non-teleological conception of human life. This “naturalistic solution” proves to be impossible.
Actually, by 1949, peeps like Gamow saw both the Universe and Life as evolving from a single event and towards a similar 'crunch'. We are more teleological than Aristotle because we know so much more about science. Sadly, Strauss had been wasting his time studying worthless shite. He missed out on every important intellectual development in the Twentieth Century.
It is impossible to banish ends from the social sciences, or what amounts to the same thing, to conceive of ends as derivative from desires or impulses. Therefore the alternative has prevailed: which means that we have had to accept a typically modern dualism of a non-teleological natural science and a teleological science of man.
Nope. We see both as analysable by similar mathematical methods and as arising spontaneously in a stochastic manner. But this means an Anthropic principle is at work. What the Universe can be is constrained by the uncorrelated asymmetry deducible from the fact that we exist. Thus the Life Sciences and Cosmology must have univalent foundations. There is no dualism here.
This is the position which the modern followers of Thomas Aquinas, among others, are forced to take, a position which implies a radical break with the thought of Aristotle, as well as that of Thomas Aquinas himself.
Vatican II released them from that bondage. Arguably this meant Aquinas became more himself.
The fundamental dilemma in whose grip we are, is the one caused by the success of modern natural science, a success which is presupposed rather than made doubtful by the so-called crisis in physics.
There was no such crisis.
An adequate solution to the problem of natural right cannot be found before this basic problem has been solved. Naturally, there is no scarcity of elegant solutions to that problem, but the experience of some centuries has shown that modern natural science always survives the elegant solutions of the problems created by and coeval with modern natural science.
Fuck off! Natural Science burgeons only in places where it more than pays for itself by generating cool new tech. Gobshites employed as child minders to adolescents, however, we will always have with us. They just won't get paid very much and their reputation will decline from decade to decade.
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