3. Natural Law versus Positive Law

0:00CHAPTER III NATURAL LAW VERSUS POSITIVE LAW If, then, the natural law is discovered by reason from the basic inclinations of human nature—absolute, immutable, and of universal validity for all times and places— it follows that the natural law provides an objective set of ethical norms by which to gauge human actions at any time or place. The natural law is, in essence, a profoundly radical ethic, for it holds the existing status quo, which might grossly violate natural law, up to the unsparing and unyielding light of reason. In the realm of politics or state action, the natural law presents man with a set of norms which may well be radically critical of existing positive law imposed by the state.

0:57At this point, we need only stress that the very existence of a natural law discoverable by reason is a potentially powerful threat to the status quo and a standing reproach to the reign of blindly traditional custom or the arbitrary will of the state apparatus. In fact, the legal principles of any society can be established in three alternate ways. A. By following the traditional custom of the tribe or community. B. By obeying the arbitrary ad hoc will of those who rule the state apparatus. Or C. By the use of man's reason in discovering the natural law.

1:43In short, by slavish conformity to custom, by arbitrary whim, or by use of man's reason. These are essentially the only possible ways for establishing positive law. Here we may simply affirm that the latter method is at once the most appropriate for for Man at His Most Nobly and Fully Human, and the Most Potentially Revolutionary, vis-à-vis any given status quo. In our century, widespread ignorance of and scorn for the very existence of the natural law has limited people's advocacy of legal structures to A or B, or some blend of the two. This even holds for those who try to hew to a policy of individual liberty.

2:33Thus, there are those libertarians who would simply and uncritically adopt the common law, despite its many anti-libertarian flaws. Others, like Henry Hazlitt, would scrap all constitutional limitations on government to rely solely on the majority will as expressed by the legislature. Neither group seems to understand the concept of a structure of rational natural law to be used as a guidepost for shaping and reshaping whatever positive law may be in existence. While natural law theory has often been used erroneously in defense of the political status quo, its radical and revolutionary implications were brilliantly understood by the great Catholic libertarian historian, Lord Acton.

3:23Acton saw clearly that the deep flaw in the ancient Greek, and their later followers' conception of natural law political philosophy, was to identify politics and morals, and then to place the supreme social-moral agent in the state. From Plato and Aristotle, the state's proclaimed supremacy was founded in their view that morality was undistinguished from religion and politics from morals, and in religion, morality and politics there was only one legislator and one authority. Acton added that the Stoics developed the correct non-state principles of natural law political philosophy, which were then revived in the modern period by Grotius and his followers.

4:13From that time it became possible to make politics a matter of principle and of conscience. The reaction of the state to this theoretical development was horror. When Cumberland and Pufendorf unfolded the true significance of Grotius' doctrine, every settled authority, every triumphant interest, recoiled aghast. It was manifest that all persons who had learned that political science is an affair of conscience rather than of might and expediency, might regard their adversaries as men without principle. Acton saw clearly that any set of objective moral principles rooted in the nature of man must inevitably come into conflict with custom and with positive law.

5:02To Acton, such an irrepressible conflict was an essential attribute of classical liberalism. Liberalism wishes for what ought to be, irrespective of what is. As Himmelfarb writes of Acton's philosophy, the past was allowed no authority except as it happened to conform to morality. To take seriously this liberal theory of history, To give precedence to what ought to be over what is, was, he admitted, virtually to install a revolution in permanence. And so for Acton, the individual, armed with natural law moral principles, is then in a firm position from which to criticize existing regimes and institutions, to hold them up to the strong and harsh light of reason.

5:54Even the far less politically oriented John Wild has trenchantly described the inherently radical nature of natural law theory. The philosophy of natural law defends the rational dignity of the human individual and his right and duty to criticize by word and deed any existent institution or social structure in terms of those universal moral principles which can be apprehended by the individual intellect alone. If the very idea of natural law is essentially radical and deeply critical of existing political institutions, then how has natural law become generally classified as conservative?

6:40Professor Parthimus considers natural law to be conservative because its principles Principles are universal, fixed and immutable, and hence are absolute principles of justice. Very true, but how does fixity of principle imply conservatism? On the contrary, the fact that natural law theorists derive from the very nature of man a fixed structure of law independent of time and place, or of habit or authority or group of Arms, makes that law a mighty force for radical change. The only exception would be the surely rare case where the positive law happens to coincide in every aspect with the natural law, as discerned by human reason.