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The Philosophy Of Natural Right
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- The Good With A Capital G
The Philosophy Of Natural RightA major theme of Enlightenment political philosophy is the idea that there is a transcendent realm of moral values, from which is obtained the idea that all people are created with certain rights which no government can legitimately deny. In fact, however, it is not simply “rights” which are included in the notion of ‘natural right” (also called natural law). All moral values are believed to proceed from the facts we know about normal human behavior, both ethical and political. Leo Strauss believed that these norms could be discovered through reason and history, and that they applied equally to all cultures and historical periods. While relativists maintained that values, ethics, and morals were contingent upon the historical and local context of any given people, Strauss believed that the difference in values only proved the need for some overriding standard of natural right. The idea that there was no standard, simply because different people had different views, struck him as absurd. He argued that no one would take seriously, for example, a claim that, since different cultures had different beliefs as to the nature of the universe, that this somehow negated the idea that there was a specific set of physical laws which governed the universe. Similarly, if one culture believes the world is round and another culture thinks the world is flat, this doesn’t result in the conclusion that the world is neither round nor flat, nor does it mean that both sides are correct; what it means is that one culture is correct and the other incorrect But how is this determination made? Strauss answered simply that we determine these things by reason, by critical investigation. It was proven by science that the world is round, and thus it is infinitely more reasonable to believe in the roundness of the world as opposed to flatness. In the same respect, it can be shown by reason that humans ought not to kill one another, ought not to steal from one another, ought to obey their political leaders, ought not behave in destructive ways, and so on. To Strauss, these are not merely conventions; the reason they are conventions is that they have real applicability; they are “good.” The Good With A Capital GTo conservative political and ethical theorists, the denial of a transcendent good which ‘governs” the universe, whether based upon religion or reason (most theorists hold it to be founded upon reason) is both politically destructive and philosophically unsound. It is destructive because it results in an unhealthy pluralism, an entrenched division between peoples which only results in conflict and the decay of society’s strongest institutions. But denial of the Good is also unsound. Strauss pointed out that all political philosophy implicitly searches for the Good. There may be philosophies of radicalism which say things need to change; Strauss asserted that such philosophies are implicitly ‘Good-oriented” in that they say that things need to change for the better, with the assumption that some states of affairs are better than others. Conservative philosophies, on the other hand, try to prevent change from occurring, and Strauss reasoned that these philosophies too urge an implicit notion that the Good exists now. In either case, if we can believe some political arrangements are “better” than others, this inevitably means there is a standard of Goodness by which such states of affairs are measured. This becomes especially important when social scientists and political philosophers deny that they are using value-judgments in their thinking. Strauss thought this was both absurd and dangerous. It was absurd because, as is pointed out above, value judgments inevitably make their way into political analysis. In fact, he argued, if value judgments are not explicitly acknowledged, they “slip in through the back door.” A social scientist analyzing the threats to democracy implicitly acknowledges that democracy is “good,’ and this becomes obvious in his or her recommendations or interpretations. The denial of value-laden analysis is also dangerous in that it treats political questions as strictly scientific, when, in fact, we are dealing with the most important issues facing citizens. Such importance means we should not hide the fact that we care about these issues. We may find that critical characteristics of a good society slip through our fingers when we pretend they are not as sacred to us as they really are. According to Strauss, relativism (also called “historicism” when referring to historical relativism) is flawed in two important ways. First, it is logically flawed. Relativists make an “absolute” claim that no absolutes are possible. If no absolutes are possible, then the statement “no absolutes are possible” is not possible. Apart from the logically flawed nature of relativism’s underlying claim, there is another reason why it should be philosophically rejected: According to Strauss, there are simply no positive reasons given to validate the position. Relativism bases itself on the failure of various absolutist claims to themselves be valid; this constitutes a fallacy known as “appeal to ignorance.” In other words, the simple claim that no absolute has been proven to be true does not itself prove that no absolutes are true, just as failure to prove God’s existence does not constitute a proof “against” God. In the case of absolute morals, it may simply be that we have not yet found irrefutable proofs. This does not mean they are logically impossible. Finally, there is a reason to hold morals to be absolute independent of the logic debate: Without the majority of people holding to absolute values, Strauss warns, society will deteriorate. Commonalties between groups will give way to tension and conflict. Young people will have no motivation to behave themselves. We will no longer be concerned with electing virtuous leaders. Strauss believes that we should teach morals “as absolute” even if they cannot always be proven to be so. 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