I have trouble with the use of the term "natural law" as conveying how things ought to be. What is natural is not necessary "good" for humans, for other animals or even plants. A hurricane is natural. A tornado is natural. Disease is natural. Conflict between humans that results in injury or death to ourselves and others is natrural. Thus, the laws of nature are descriptive of "what is". When we ask "ought" questions, we are applying our moral sense of right and wrong to what we humans are in a position to influence.
Natural law is the innate justice that belongs to all human relations and to the nature of society. It is not law in the modern scientific sense of the laws of physics, or the Newtonian law of gravity. There is a transposition of the meaning of ‘law’ in this modern scientific sense. But natural law belongs to jurisprudence.
The natural law that George frequently refers to is the moral law of justice that every person already knows and recognises. This understanding of law has a very long history, going back to the Presocratic philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, the Stoic philosophers such as Seneca and the senator and lawyer Cicero. It is present in the law code Justinian draw up, and it was gathered into the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville in the seventh century, the Decretum of Gratian in the twelfth century, and a full treatise on Natural law in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae in the thirteenth century. It continued in the Salamanca School in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, followed by Pufendorf and Grotius in the seventeenth century.
Until the eighteenth century it remained the basis of European jurisprudence alongside positive law, and is called upon by Blackstone as an authority of English Common law dating back before Roman law.
The natural law distinguishes between what is just by nature, and what is just by legal convention. In both cases it is prescriptive. It prescribes actions that should be done and forbids actions that should not be done. For example, the natural law says that any commercial exchange should be beneficial to both parties and for society as a whole, and that no one should loose in any exchange. Exchange in this just and lawful sense brings a general increase. That natural law prescribes against theft or murder. The natural law prescribes that no man may be a slave to another. Legal convention, on the other hand, prescribes actions that must be performed through agreement and consent or convention, such as driving on one side of the road, or drafting the obligations of a contract.
This is the natural law tradition to which George frequently refers, often paraphrasing Cicero’s Republica. It is the law that says the land cannot be made private property, or that one cannot take another’s labour from them. It is the basis of his arguments against Herbert Spencer’s defence of compensation for ‘legally’ owned land in his A Perplexed Philosopher, or in when he cites Aquinas in The Condition of Labour, reminding Pope Leo XIII of the natural law he claims to be speaking for.
So natural law is the sphere of justice and society. It must not be confused with the laws of the modern natural sciences. In modern jurisprudence there are debates about the relation of positive law, meaning the codified laws of nations, and the natural law which is universal and unwritten. For example, the concept of ‘crimes against humanity’ was called upon to bring to trial war criminals after World War II. This was a revival of natural law in a realm where positive law had no jurisdiction. That is how it was argued at the time.
There is a further aspect of natural law, which again George calls upon: that any positive law that is contrary to the natural law is not actually ‘law’ at all. It is a principle stated many times down the ages. Sadly, the natural law tradition is now largely forgotten. And this happened in economics in part by reducing economics to mathematical models and removing it entirely from ethics.
Thank you, Joseph, for taking the time to provide the historical origins of the use of the phrase "natural law." Despite this, I believe George would have made a clearer statement of principle if he had made clear to readers that the objective of moral philosophy was to come up with rules of conduct that conformed to an objective test of just relations. Is it natural or unnatural that humans mistreat one another, mistreat other animals and mistreat the planet? Such behavior may be immoral, may be unethical, may be self-destructive, but these are behaviors that our part of our nature. Our objective as persons with a moral sense of right and wrong is to rise above those natural instincts that are harmful and destructive.
If we look at how George speaks of ‘nature’ or the ‘natural’ it is clear to him that what is just is what is natural. He does not mean mechanical nature as Bacon and Hobbes conceived it, as essentially morally lawless. He means nature as the proper constitution and order of things. The traditional analogy is that of health. A healthy body is its natural state. Likewise a healthy society is its natural state. Disease is unnatural, just as immoral behaviour is unnatural. It is not ‘natural instinct’ that make a person do harm to another, but action contrary to nature. From this analogy of health, the lawmaker is like the physician to society.
Moral action is action in relation to others. Nature has ordered things so that society is mutually beneficial, just as the organs of the body are mutually beneficial. To act contrary to this natural order is to act contrary to human nature itself. For George nature is just, and it follows that the natural order of society is also just. Injustice is a departure from this natural condition. This has objective effects, such as inequality, poverty, slavery, climate change and so forth. These are effects of ignoring the natural law, or of openly defying it.
In George’s time this way of seeing things was still part of the Western Christian culture. This is why George’s books and speeches appealed to so many. But that self-evident truth of nature’s moral order was soon displaced – by utilitarianism, by Spencer’s social theory, and by Darwinism, all of which George opposed. In other words ‘nature’ no longer indicated the just, harmonious, measured order of things. Instead it now meant chance and accident, blind forces of ‘matter and motion’ and the ‘struggle for survival’. Hobbes’s notion of ‘war of all against all’ as that natural condition of nature became normalised.
This meant that ‘morality’ had to be invented and rules laid down for all human conduct. It is a mark of a declining society. The story of ethical philosophy since that time has been a search for such ‘rules’ to be imposed on society. A most recent version is the moral theory of Rawls. At the opposite extreme is the existentialist idea of freedom from all moral restraint, of ‘inventing oneself’, such as propounded by Sartre. All these theories deny any inherent moral knowledge in the human agent, as well as any natural moral order in nature as a whole. In short, they deny fundamental moral responsibility as part of human free will. That is wholly contrary to the historical natural tradition, and to how George understood human responsibility. We have innate knowledge of justice. Even children know it. All good laws spring from this, and only then are they recognised as just. Justice is a knowledge of the right order of nature. Since George is calling for a restoration of the natural moral order of things, which he claims to have always existed, even in primitive societies, and that there is no ‘evolution of justice’ as Spencer claimed, then no alternative ethical reading of his thesis is required. Either his insight springs from observation of the ethics inherent in nature or it does not.
In my view we still have this innate knowledge of justice, but we live in an age in which it is compromised and confused by sophistry. So we are morally schizophrenic, knowing justice but largely unable to act according it. Through forgetting the natural law, injustice is legalised in positive law. That is what George argues in A Perplexed Philosopher. That is what the land question comes down to. Here I think we have common ground for agreement.
Joseph writes: "The human species is characterised by reflecting on the nature of things. It is this that distinguishes it from all other species." Related to this is that we are the only species that has the capacity to contemplate the results of our actions before we act, to visualize the anticipated outcome and then decide on a course of action.
Yes, I agree. This is implied in the capcirty to reflect which includes the capacity to consider the future and act for the common good. The capcirty to reflect makes us moral beings by nature. We are therefor implicated in our actions whether we think so or not. This is the real basis of the free will. Free will is a moral capcity.
I have trouble with the use of the term "natural law" as conveying how things ought to be. What is natural is not necessary "good" for humans, for other animals or even plants. A hurricane is natural. A tornado is natural. Disease is natural. Conflict between humans that results in injury or death to ourselves and others is natrural. Thus, the laws of nature are descriptive of "what is". When we ask "ought" questions, we are applying our moral sense of right and wrong to what we humans are in a position to influence.
Natural law is the innate justice that belongs to all human relations and to the nature of society. It is not law in the modern scientific sense of the laws of physics, or the Newtonian law of gravity. There is a transposition of the meaning of ‘law’ in this modern scientific sense. But natural law belongs to jurisprudence.
The natural law that George frequently refers to is the moral law of justice that every person already knows and recognises. This understanding of law has a very long history, going back to the Presocratic philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, the Stoic philosophers such as Seneca and the senator and lawyer Cicero. It is present in the law code Justinian draw up, and it was gathered into the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville in the seventh century, the Decretum of Gratian in the twelfth century, and a full treatise on Natural law in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae in the thirteenth century. It continued in the Salamanca School in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, followed by Pufendorf and Grotius in the seventeenth century.
Until the eighteenth century it remained the basis of European jurisprudence alongside positive law, and is called upon by Blackstone as an authority of English Common law dating back before Roman law.
The natural law distinguishes between what is just by nature, and what is just by legal convention. In both cases it is prescriptive. It prescribes actions that should be done and forbids actions that should not be done. For example, the natural law says that any commercial exchange should be beneficial to both parties and for society as a whole, and that no one should loose in any exchange. Exchange in this just and lawful sense brings a general increase. That natural law prescribes against theft or murder. The natural law prescribes that no man may be a slave to another. Legal convention, on the other hand, prescribes actions that must be performed through agreement and consent or convention, such as driving on one side of the road, or drafting the obligations of a contract.
This is the natural law tradition to which George frequently refers, often paraphrasing Cicero’s Republica. It is the law that says the land cannot be made private property, or that one cannot take another’s labour from them. It is the basis of his arguments against Herbert Spencer’s defence of compensation for ‘legally’ owned land in his A Perplexed Philosopher, or in when he cites Aquinas in The Condition of Labour, reminding Pope Leo XIII of the natural law he claims to be speaking for.
So natural law is the sphere of justice and society. It must not be confused with the laws of the modern natural sciences. In modern jurisprudence there are debates about the relation of positive law, meaning the codified laws of nations, and the natural law which is universal and unwritten. For example, the concept of ‘crimes against humanity’ was called upon to bring to trial war criminals after World War II. This was a revival of natural law in a realm where positive law had no jurisdiction. That is how it was argued at the time.
There is a further aspect of natural law, which again George calls upon: that any positive law that is contrary to the natural law is not actually ‘law’ at all. It is a principle stated many times down the ages. Sadly, the natural law tradition is now largely forgotten. And this happened in economics in part by reducing economics to mathematical models and removing it entirely from ethics.
Thank you, Joseph, for taking the time to provide the historical origins of the use of the phrase "natural law." Despite this, I believe George would have made a clearer statement of principle if he had made clear to readers that the objective of moral philosophy was to come up with rules of conduct that conformed to an objective test of just relations. Is it natural or unnatural that humans mistreat one another, mistreat other animals and mistreat the planet? Such behavior may be immoral, may be unethical, may be self-destructive, but these are behaviors that our part of our nature. Our objective as persons with a moral sense of right and wrong is to rise above those natural instincts that are harmful and destructive.
If we look at how George speaks of ‘nature’ or the ‘natural’ it is clear to him that what is just is what is natural. He does not mean mechanical nature as Bacon and Hobbes conceived it, as essentially morally lawless. He means nature as the proper constitution and order of things. The traditional analogy is that of health. A healthy body is its natural state. Likewise a healthy society is its natural state. Disease is unnatural, just as immoral behaviour is unnatural. It is not ‘natural instinct’ that make a person do harm to another, but action contrary to nature. From this analogy of health, the lawmaker is like the physician to society.
Moral action is action in relation to others. Nature has ordered things so that society is mutually beneficial, just as the organs of the body are mutually beneficial. To act contrary to this natural order is to act contrary to human nature itself. For George nature is just, and it follows that the natural order of society is also just. Injustice is a departure from this natural condition. This has objective effects, such as inequality, poverty, slavery, climate change and so forth. These are effects of ignoring the natural law, or of openly defying it.
In George’s time this way of seeing things was still part of the Western Christian culture. This is why George’s books and speeches appealed to so many. But that self-evident truth of nature’s moral order was soon displaced – by utilitarianism, by Spencer’s social theory, and by Darwinism, all of which George opposed. In other words ‘nature’ no longer indicated the just, harmonious, measured order of things. Instead it now meant chance and accident, blind forces of ‘matter and motion’ and the ‘struggle for survival’. Hobbes’s notion of ‘war of all against all’ as that natural condition of nature became normalised.
This meant that ‘morality’ had to be invented and rules laid down for all human conduct. It is a mark of a declining society. The story of ethical philosophy since that time has been a search for such ‘rules’ to be imposed on society. A most recent version is the moral theory of Rawls. At the opposite extreme is the existentialist idea of freedom from all moral restraint, of ‘inventing oneself’, such as propounded by Sartre. All these theories deny any inherent moral knowledge in the human agent, as well as any natural moral order in nature as a whole. In short, they deny fundamental moral responsibility as part of human free will. That is wholly contrary to the historical natural tradition, and to how George understood human responsibility. We have innate knowledge of justice. Even children know it. All good laws spring from this, and only then are they recognised as just. Justice is a knowledge of the right order of nature. Since George is calling for a restoration of the natural moral order of things, which he claims to have always existed, even in primitive societies, and that there is no ‘evolution of justice’ as Spencer claimed, then no alternative ethical reading of his thesis is required. Either his insight springs from observation of the ethics inherent in nature or it does not.
In my view we still have this innate knowledge of justice, but we live in an age in which it is compromised and confused by sophistry. So we are morally schizophrenic, knowing justice but largely unable to act according it. Through forgetting the natural law, injustice is legalised in positive law. That is what George argues in A Perplexed Philosopher. That is what the land question comes down to. Here I think we have common ground for agreement.
Joseph writes: "The human species is characterised by reflecting on the nature of things. It is this that distinguishes it from all other species." Related to this is that we are the only species that has the capacity to contemplate the results of our actions before we act, to visualize the anticipated outcome and then decide on a course of action.
Yes, I agree. This is implied in the capcirty to reflect which includes the capacity to consider the future and act for the common good. The capcirty to reflect makes us moral beings by nature. We are therefor implicated in our actions whether we think so or not. This is the real basis of the free will. Free will is a moral capcity.