It seems that from time to time we hear politicians call
other politicians all matters of derogatory terms but at the bottom is when the
call them immoral. I suspect that none have the slightest clue what the term
moral means. Frankly neither do I, but at least I will admit it.
I examined my files to see how many documents contained the
term moral. More than 4,000 files and when I checked the word was even used in
an employee manual. I wondered what would have happened if we ever had to litigate
that phrase.
As noted by de Tocqueville in commenting on his experience
in America he states:
Amongst these documents we shall notice, as especially
characteristic, the code of laws promulgated by the little State of Connecticut
in 1650. The legislators of Connecticut begin with the penal laws, and, strange
to say, they borrow their provisions from the text of Holy Writ.
"Whosoever shall worship any other God than the Lord," says the
preamble of the Code, "shall surely be put to death." This is
followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the
books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and
rape were punished with death; an outrage offered by a son to his parents was
to be expiated by the same penalty. The legislation of a rude and
half-civilized people was thus applied to an enlightened and moral community.
The consequence was that the punishment of death was never more frequently
prescribed by the statute, and never more rarely enforced towards the guilty.
It seems that in this context the world moral came from what
was considered as such from the then accepted translation of the Bible. Thus
for a Protestant regime, Holy Writ, the Calvinistic document, was deemed the
basis of all laws. In a sense it is very much akin to what one sees in the
demands for Sharia Law in certain countries today. de Tocqueville continues[1]:
The chief care of the legislators, in this body of penal
laws, was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the
community: they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was
scarcely a sin which was not subject to magisterial censure. The reader is
aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery;
intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge
was empowered to inflict a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage on the
misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be
believed, prosecutions of this kind were not unfrequent. We find a sentence
bearing date the first of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young
woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be
kissed.
Now one can assume that in Connecticut today these types of
laws based upon a well-accepted moral code are neither extant nor if still on
the books, enforced. However the newer laws have become profligate in
controlling human behavior. Drug laws, gun laws, speech laws,
"equality" laws, "privacy" laws all have exploded to name
just a few. What was deemed immoral at the beginning is now protected behavior,
and what was allowed before is often deemed illegal.
Thus if the basis of the first set of laws was morality as
deemed as such by Holy Writ, what is the basis of the new laws?
Thus one should examine the meaning of "moral".
For if all of our politicians are accusing others of immoral acts, are they
speaking of those of 1660 or of the present day. What is basis of these moral
acts? From whence does a moral act get defined as well as its opposite. Is it
fair to say that murder is not moral but speaking askance to Congress, setting
aside truth or falsity, is somehow classed in an equal manner?
We have the "Ten Commandments" A short list of dos
and don'ts. I can't murder, can't steal, can't lie, can't honor a false god and
can't do a bunch of other things. Then there are a few things I must do, such
as honor the Sabbath. A simple list, easy to remember, fits well on two stone
tablets even. I don't need all that Leviticus stuff, just the tablets. Seems
good for three major religions but somehow we seemed to expand these.
Thus one may ask: What is the basis of moral law? A similar
question could be: What is the basis of Natural Law? Finally: Are Moral Law and
Natural Law the same, similar, independent of one another?
Pope John Paul II wrote[2]:
Although times change and knowledge increases, it is
possible to discern a core of philosophical insight within the history of
thought as a whole. Consider, for example, the principles of non-contradiction,
finality and causality, as well as the concept of the person as a free and
intelligent subject, with the capacity to know God, truth and goodness. Consider
as well certain fundamental moral norms which are shared by all. These are
among the indications that, beyond different schools of thought, there exists a
body of knowledge which may be judged a kind of spiritual heritage of
humanity. It is as if we had come upon an implicit philosophy, as a result
of which all feel that they possess these principles, albeit in a general and
unreflective way. Precisely because it is shared in some measure by all, this
knowledge should serve as a kind of reference-point for the different
philosophical schools. Once reason successfully intuits and formulates the
first universal principles of being and correctly draws from them conclusions
which are coherent both logically and ethically, then it may be called right
reason or, as the ancients called it, orthós logos, recta ratio.
He asserts that there is a set of universally accepted moral
norms. But if there exists such norms, and if all accept, even those who do not
accept or even reject Holy Writ, then whence do these norms arrive and how can
we find them. For if we were to assert the lack of moral behavior in a person,
again what is our basis?
Now consider an interesting exchange between Copleston and
Russell on the BBC[3]:
C: Well, I brought in moral obligation because I think
that one can approach the question of God's existence in that way. The vast
majority of the human race will make, and always have made, some distinction
between right and wrong. The vast majority I think has some consciousness of an
obligation in the moral sphere. It's my opinion that the perception of values
and the consciousness of moral law and obligation are best explained through
the hypothesis of a transcendent ground of value and of an author of the moral
law. I do mean by "author of the moral law" an arbitrary author of
the moral law. I think, in fact, that those modern atheists who have argued in
a converse way "there is no God; therefore, there are no absolute values
and no absolute law," are quite logical.
R: I don't like the word "absolute." I don't
think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is
always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost
everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.
C: Well, I don't see that differences in particular moral
judgments are any conclusive argument against the universality of the moral
law. Let's assume for the moment that there are absolute moral values, even on
that hypothesis it's only to be expected that different individuals and
different groups should enjoy varying degrees of insight into those values.
R: I'm inclined to think that "ought," the
feeling that one has about "ought" is an echo of what has been told
one by one's parents or one's nurses.
C: Well, I wonder if you can explain away the idea of the
"ought" merely in terms of nurses and parents. I really don't see how
it can be conveyed to anybody in other terms than itself. It seems to be that
if there is a moral order bearing upon the human conscience, that that moral
order is unintelligible apart from the existence of God.
R: Then you have to say one or other of two things.
Either God only speaks to a very small percentage of mankind -- which happens
to include yourself -- or He deliberately says things are not true in talking
to the consciences of savages.
Copleston the Jesuit and Russell the atheist truly reached
no conclusion. But Russell's argument has merit, for it feeds the temporal-spatial
argument of morals. They seem to change from time to time and from place to
place. For example, does China follow the dictate of "thou shall not
steal"? Well it all depends. Does our Congress follow the mandate of "Thou
shall not lie" or is it a pandemic characteristic of a politician. Thus
space as well as time often dictates what is right or wrong. Should we than
accuse someone of being immoral?
Now to Natural Law. Is Natural Law truly existent and if so
what is its basis? I will avoid any Kantian argument here and try to relate a
more scientific bent. Tierney in his work on Natural Rights and Ockham noted as
follows[4]:
Suarez and Grotius distinguished a subjective meaning of
ius from other connotations of the word. It was left for Hobbes to insist that
the subjective meaning was the only proper one:
"The RIGHT OF NATURE which writers commonly call
jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will
himself, for the preservation of his own nature.... A LAW OF NATURE, lex
naturalis, is a precept or general rule found out by reason, by which a man is
forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life ... law, and right,
differ as much, as obligation and liberty... ,"
Later he explained that the sphere of liberty was defined
by "the silence of the law"; where laws did not command or forbid, a
person was free to act as he wished. Hobbes seems to deviate from the preceding
tradition, not only in giving an exclusively subjective definition of ius, but
also in excluding the idea of moral rightness from his definition. (For Suarez
and Grotius ius was a moral power, a moral quality.) But later authors
developed Hobbes's distinction between natural rights and natural law in ways
that restored the moral content of a natural right.
Perhaps the most clear and coherent account of natural
laws and natural rights in a fully developed, eighteenth-century Enlightenment
form of the doctrine is that given by Christian Wolff. For Wolff, law (lex) is
a rule that obliges us. Natural law, law inherent in the rational nature of
man, obliges each person to seek self-perfection. But the fulfillment of moral
obligation requires a certain freedom of action; and, Wolff declared, “This
faculty or moral power of acting is called a right (ius)"
Carrying the argument further, Wolff explained that
"What the law of nature obliges to as an end, ius gives as a means."
He gave as an obvious example the right to food as a means of
self-preservation. Wolff also held that, besides commanding and prohibiting,
natural law could be merely permissive, indicating behavior that was licit but
not obligatory; natural rights existed in this area of permissive natural law.
One is reminded again objective right are clearly distinguishable, but in
medieval discourse the word ius could oscillate easily between the two
meanings.
Thus there seems to be a basis for Natural Law, existing
pervasively, but without basis. But perhaps as we better understand man and his
genetic structure we can assert a basis, a commonality. I would posit looking
towards the human limbic system, the amalgam of hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus
and hypothalamus, that region of the brain where we see the impact of emotions,
aggressiveness, sexuality and the like. There may very well be a fundamental
genetic basis for what we see as Natural Law and Natural Rights, and that the
moral law, or morals is nothing more than a reflection of this complex and yet not
well understood portion of the human brain. But I digress.
Why should one call another immoral? What basis does that
person have, what religious belief is being promulgated? Or perhaps we should
just ask; what is wrong with their limbic system? Just a thought.
Posts
