John Haas, Professor of Moral Theology
Despite its abandonment, the natural law tradition continues
to be the most useful methodology in a technological and pluralistic society
since it simply looks to the nature of the human person for the formulation of
moral propositions and is entirely open to any developments and insights within
the natural sciences. The natural law tradition believes in an objective moral
order and, consequently, holds that there are certain moral absolutes that
ought never to be violated if one hopes to obtain personal wholeness or
societal health. As Aristotle wrote: "There are some actions and emotions
whose very names connote baseness, e.g., spite, shamelessness, envy; and among
actions, adultery, theft, and murder. These and similar emotions and actions
imply by their very names that they are bad... It is, therefore, impossible
ever to do right in performing them: to perform them is always wrong. In cases
of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on
committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner,
but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong."
The same insight is evident in Abraham Lincoln's response to
Stephen Douglas in their famous debate on slavery: "When Judge Douglas
says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to
have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the
institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that
anybody has a right to do a wrong."
Within the natural law tradition, certain acts are wrong not because
they are forbidden, but because they are wrong - that is, because they do not
conform or serve the good of the human person.
In his debate with Douglas, Lincoln
had to appeal to the precedence of morality over law, since the law at that
time did not universally support his position against slavery. But where do these moral absolutes come from?
From the nature of the human person and his world.
The natural law tradition holds that the driving motivation
of human actions is not a Kantian sense of duty, but rather the pursuit of happiness,
a sense of well-being that results from one's becoming more fully human by
living in accord with one's own nature.
It finds this motivation impelling every human act.
That which is most characteristic of human nature is
rationality, the ability to see the purposefulness within one's own nature and
to choose actions that enable one to achieve the ends or goals for which one is
created. It might be argued that an
ethic based on the pursuit of happiness quickly degenerates into some form of
hedonism. However, the natural law tradition
insists that although certain actions may appear to bring happiness they will
ineluctably bring misery if they do not assist one in attaining those ends for
which he was created. It is the belief
in a created, intelligible order that prevents the natural law tradition from
degenerating into subjectivism.
Consequently, it is never enough simply to appeal to human
nature as such in the formulation of moral propositions within the natural law tradition. There must always be an appeal to human
nature as created, a nature created for happiness in this world and ultimately
in the world to come. If human nature is not created, it has no purposefulness,
no intelligible ends that may be reasonably sought in human behavior and
fostered through social legislation.
A thing has its nature bestowed upon it by its Creator. A
pen has a nature because it was created as such, and its nature can be
understood in terms of the purpose for which it was created. If there is to be a revitalization of the
natural law tradition to assist contemporary society in dealing with ever new moral
challenges, it must be one that is faithful to the tradition in its
fullness. This means acknowledging, as a
minimum, that there is a Creator who has bestowed both worth and meaning on
human creatures.
Since Communism was based on atheistic premises, it denied
that there was such a thing as human nature.
If Communism's premise was correct, then so was its conclusion - there
was no human nature. Consequently,
Communist countries themselves attempted to create man, the "Socialist
man," and were prepared to use any means at their disposal, since nothing
violated a non-existent human nature!
Without a human nature, there could be no such thing as human rights.
The logic is inexorable. The consequences are grotesque. In the same way, a
secularized technological society that ignores the natural law can be just as
dangerous to human flourishing as was any Communist regime.
The Sacredness of Life
At the center of the natural law tradition is the
inviolability of the individual person - created in the image and likeness of
God, from whom he receives his true worth.
It cannot be stated in strong enough terms, that a respect for the
inviolability of the person is the necessary starting-point for formulating
moral propositions to deal with current developments in medicine and
technology. One cannot formulate in advance
what moral positions ought to be constructed to deal with specific cases
presented by technological developments.
But the very nature of the individual person provides the source of
moral reflection. The right of the individual to personal integrity will lead
to the moral norms governing issues of privacy and confidentiality in an age of
electronic data gathering and storage.
The inherent nature of man and woman who each produce gametes of 23
chromosomes, the joining of which will give rise to a new human life of 46
chromosomes, provides what is necessary for formulating principles to order
human relationships, to govern the social institution of marriage, to regulate
the births of children, to overcome the problem of infertility, and to deal
with a host of other contemporary moral conundrums. The inviolability of the innocent person will
provide guidance for the formulation of policies dealing with "life issues"
ranging from feeding comatose patients to waging war and inflicting capital
punishment.
The moral dilemmas arising from the mind-boggling advances
in medicine and technology do not admit of easy, simplistic solutions. But they are not insoluble. We as a people have the cultural and moral
resources to address these questions in a humane and reasonable manner because
we draw on a tradition, a tradition of natural law that has served human goods
in vastly different cultural contexts successfully, precisely because it respects
humanity as a divine creation. As Americans, we are especially fortunate to
have it within our own national tradition.
In our own founding documents, we acknowledge the "laws of nature
and nature's God" and hold "these truths to be self evident: that all
men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This tradition stands ready to serve us as a
people if only we will draw upon it.
END
John Haas is the John Cardinal Krol Professor of Moral
Theology at St. Charles Borremeo Seminary in Philadelphia. This article first appeared in
"The Intercollegiate Review" (Fall 1992).
