The following article deserves to be read in full. I've just put up the first part, the introduction to the concept that the law ought not to be divorced from morality.
Read More: Truth and the Law: Legal Should Also Mean Moral ~ Catholic Culture
Secularists assert that religion is a 'private matter', for they are radical individualists. Moreover, they assume that everyone is naturally an atheist, that they represent what is normal. This secularist illusion gets to us, particularly through the media, and we may even absorb that false assumption.
But anyone who makes a stopover on a flight to Europe can enter cultures where life is communal and religion is normal. If you observe the world beyond our narrow horizons, assertive individualism and atheism find no place in the lives of most of the people who inhabit this planet.
At the heart of the 16th Century, in the England of Henry VIII, two Christian lawyers rose to the highest office in the land and both of them ended up on the scaffold at the Tower — Sir Thomas More and Sir Thomas Cromwell. In the Catholic tradition, the former is revered as a canonised saint, the patron of the noble legal profession, while the latter is reviled as a toady and plunderer of monasteries.
But Thomas Cromwell was no monster. A flawed but brilliant man, he also died courageously and prayerfully. Yet he represents something else that, I would argue, undermines truth in the practice of the Law. He is one of the remote fathers of legal positivism. By acceding to the dictates of a tyrant, he divorced morality from law.
St Thomas More remained faithful to an older and richer tradition, to the Natural Law. The Judaeo-Christian ethic rests on this Natural Law: that good is to be done and evil avoided, that there are objective moral standards, moral truths. Throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, in the highest literature and the best popular culture, we find a fascination with the human struggle to discern right from wrong, to identify good and evil, questions requiring a moral judgement we call 'conscience'.
The Natural Law posits that these realities are knowable through reason, indeed written into the very nature of the human person. Hence the making and application of good laws is assured by remaining true to the higher principles of an ethic grounded in our very nature as moral beings, derived from what may be called 'the truth of the person'.
Legal positivism, by contrast, separates morality from law. There are many ways of attempting to define this dualism, this self-verifying theory of law. The autonomy of law was articulated by the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, an atheist, who in my world-view, represents the shadowy side of the Enlightenment.
Read More: Truth and the Law: Legal Should Also Mean Moral ~ Catholic Culture
Last Saturday Kim Hill interviewed recently retired Law Lord Bingham.
ReplyDeleteThe interview is titled "what is law" and Hill even asks at one point "can the law be immoral or wrong" and curiously Bingham didn't offer an opinion.
Interview here:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
Secularists assert that religion is a 'private matter', for they are radical individualists. Moreover, they assume that everyone is naturally an atheist, that they represent what is normal.
ReplyDeleteI gotta say I didn't even get to the second paragraph.
1. Although I am a 'secularist' I am not a 'rugged individualist'. Many (arguably most) people who support secularism are of the social democrat persuasion, their beliefs are the opposite of rugged individualism.
2. I don't think that everyone is 'naturally an atheist' - if people were naturally atheists then 'primitive' societies would all be atheistic - obviously they're not, they're all highly religious.
So that's two clearly false straw men in the two opening sentences. Not a good start.
Maybe you are just unusual, Danyl.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you look carefully, you'll see he said "radical individualists" not "rugged individualists".
"I don't think that everyone is 'naturally an atheist'"
ReplyDeleteThis doesn't even make sense. The writer is saying that "radical individualists" (which you are not) assume that everyone is an athiest, not you Danyl. In fact, even the assumption of the "radical individualists" is wrong itself, for the reason that Danyl gave. That's the whole point: the writer is saying that "everyone is 'naturally an atheist'" is a straw man. Or are you asserting that religion is a private matter?
"their beliefs are the opposite of rugged individualism"
Now I disagree with that. The whole homosexual or "pro-choice" movements, as examples, are full of individualism - that I want to do what I think is right. That's the whole foundation of the post-modern worldview - that truth is found by each person individually, rather than subscribing to some external moral code, like the Bible.
That's the whole foundation of the post-modern worldview - that truth is found by each person individually, rather than subscribing to some external moral code, like the Bible.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with 'external moral codes' like the Bible is that everybody reads it individually and finds their own truth in it that's different from everybody elses.
Not everyone, Danyl. While I consider the Holy Bible to be divinely inspired, as a Catholic, I do not use it as my sole moral code, (even though I could do so, I might not properly understand it and therefore create my own interpretation, as people are prone to do).
ReplyDeleteWhile I consider the Holy Bible to be divinely inspired, as a Catholic, I do not use it as my sole moral code
ReplyDeleteMaybe you are just unusual?
You see what I did there?
Danyl, I think you need to explain it to me. Because it just looks like you don't understand the (quite major) differences between Catholics and Protestants.
ReplyDeleteEasily explained: Danyl held himself up as an example; you suggested he was perhaps simply a poor example. A couple of posts later, you've held yourself up as an example and he's enjoyed an appropriate revenge. No Catholics vs Protestants knowledge required.
ReplyDeletePM, all he's done on this post is make a smart-alec comparison that has very little relevance to the actual topic on hand, which he admits he's not even read. But I think also, he's not understood the term "radical individualist" and is trying to distract everyone from noticing that.
ReplyDeleteTo that end, I'll add a few articles on what a "radical individualist" might be:
Radical Individualism
I am indeed a Radical Individualist
Albert Jay Nock: A Gifted Pen for Radical Individualism
Noxious Nitschke
The international euthanasia movement's first principle is radical individualism. The idea is that we each own our own body and hence should be able to do what we choose with our physical self — including destroy it. Not only that, but if we want to die, liberty dictates that we should have ready access to a "good death," a demise that is peaceful and pain-free.
I wonder if Danyl agrees with the above statement? Because the more I read about radical individualism, the more I can see it is a set of ideas that are not necessarily political, but that can be expressed politically (most like the Libertarians). But economics aside, Libertarians and Social Democrats appear to have pretty similar views on personal liberty. Danyl's desire to take drugs because they are "fun" (for him personally), for instance.
Anyway, I'm sure he doesn't need you to talk for him, PM.
Wow, this little side-track into radical individualism has been really interesting! Look what I found:
ReplyDeleteLike Garbo, Swedes just want to be alone
Book rejects nation of collectivists; they're 'hyperindividualists' - really
A recently published and widely discussed book, provocatively titled "Is the Swede a Human Being?" ("Ar svensken manniska?"), contends that Swedes are the opposite of collectivists: they are deeply individualistic.
The authors, Lars Tragardh and Henrik Berggren, both historians, argue that Swedes are more individualistic even than Americans, those notional world champions of rugged, swaggering individualism. The welfare state, they say, is the prime proof of this.
"The main purpose of the Swedish system has been to maximize the individual's independence," Tragardh, who has spent most of his life in the United States, said in an interview. "The picture of a collectivist animal is completely wrong; the modern Swede is a hyperindividualist."
[...]
What seems to have caught the imagination of many readers is how the book manages to bring together two apparently contradictory pictures of what makes a Swede.
One is of what the authors call "people who love their country's stones" - a nation of shy nature lovers, ill at ease in the company of others, happiest when wandering alone in one of Sweden's many vast, dark forests.
The other is of a people who, despite this anti-social streak, have an incomparably high trust in the biggest collective of all: the state. The people of no other nation are prepared to give up as much in taxes - more than 50 percent of GDP, according to the OECD - as the Swedes.
This trust has shocked quite a few visitors to Sweden. In 1971, the American journalist and historian Roland Huntford argued that Swedes had given up their freedom in exchange for soulless material well being. "Modern Sweden has fulfilled Huxley's specifications for the new totalitarianism," he wrote. "A centralized administration rules people who love their servitude."
What Tragardh and Berggren say is that these two pictures are in fact intimately connected. The shyness is at heart the expression of a fundamental longing for individual autonomy and a desire not to depend on or be indebted to anyone, particularly not in intimate relationships - what the authors call "the Swedish theory of love."
"This means that an ideal relationship between two people is based on mutual independence," Tragardh says. "In comparative terms, this is rather spectacular. In most other cultures, the opposite - mutual dependence - is seen as the very stuff of love."
Politically, this "moral logic," as it is called in the book, has evolved into a bargain between the Swedish individual and the state, where the Swede leaves more in the hands of the state than an American, a German or an Italian would ever dream of. Swedish family policy, especially, is extreme in international terms, with state-subsidized infant care, strictly individual taxation after marriage, and no legal obligations toward parents when they grow old.
In return, the Swede gains liberation from relations of dependency - on the family, on the church, on private charities. (As the authors point out, American individualism is more a matter of anti-statism than this Swedish striving for intrapersonal independence).
Just fascinating. Looks like the Bishop knew what he was talking about, after all!
I wasn't really intending to speak for Danyl, since I'd had the same reaction as him: if your man makes two obviously and demonstrably wrong statements about secularists in his opening paragraph, it's unlikely I'm going to find the rest of it a font of wisdom.
ReplyDeleteAs turned out to be the case. He's making the case that the law should be on the side of good rather than evil. So far, so unremarkable; however, he then gets to the idea that "good" is a matter of Natural Law innate to humans. There certainly do seem to be some features of human morality that fit this description, eg there aren't likely to be any legal systems with no sanctions against murder, rape etc. But once you get past those no-brainers, agreement on what constitutes "Natural Law" is largely absent - including, and perhaps even especially, among the non-secular.
Your man's problem is that he's conflating "morality" with "directives of my organisational heirarchy," which leaves him with a hard persuasive row to hoe.
PM
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell else is he supposed to do? what kind of a ninny statement is that?
OF COURSE he conflates morality with "the directives of his organisational heirachy" - he would be a moron if he didn't. Any moral organisation that doesn't base its structure or actions upon its decided moral code is bound to fail. NOTE: that is distinct from the ACTIONS of individuals.
If the Police, whose moral code is to serve and protect, stood by and watched a murder happen, then everyone would be rightfully pissed off. But that doesn't make the cops bad - it makes THOSE cops bad, but the code is still intact.
And Lucyna's right about Danyl - he doesn't even care, he's too busy sucking up to Farrar at Kiwiblog.
PM,
ReplyDeleteobviously and demonstrably wrong statements about secularists in his opening paragraph, it's unlikely I'm going to find the rest of it a font of wisdom.
That in itself is wrong. Danyl said that he isn't a rugged individualist when in fact his followup comment indicated that he was, and thought it was a good idea. He also originally states that even though he isn't a rugged individualist he doesn't think that all people are naturally athiests, which means that his viewpoint isn't even in the parameters of the writer's opinion.
His false arguments then prevent him from reading onwards. Talk about closing your eyes on this occasion.
I guess it depends on your definition of 'radical individualism'. Typically this is thought to refer to the libertarian 'there is no such thing as society' doctrines, which I don't adhere to and neither does any other 'secularist' I've ever met.
ReplyDeleteMatthews examples of 'radical individualism' addresses gays and pro-choice abortionists; he seems to define radical individualism as people who want to live their lives differently to how he wants them to live. Fair enough I guess, although that means that you're defining almost everyone in the world as a 'radical individualist, including Matthew certainly wants to live his life differently to how I think he should.
his viewpoint isn't even in the parameters of the writer's opinion.
That's the whole point! The writer claims 'all secularists believe x'. I then point out that I am a secularist and do not believe x. Incidentally, neither does milt, so you now have 100% of all 'secularists' (whatever that word even means) thus far sampled pointing out that the first points in the essay - which are about us! - are not accurate.
Change the "all" to "some" or "many" and read on...
ReplyDeleteThat's right. There is no "all" in the article. Normally when there is not an all, I take it to mean "in general", because you can always find someone who doesn't fit in the box - or think they don't.
ReplyDeleteOkay, let's trot out the ol' analogy (this always confuses Lucyna).
ReplyDeleteIf you read an article that began:
Christians assert that the world is flat, for they are anti-science luddites
Would you cheerfully assume that this only refers to SOME Christians and is therefore a valid statement?
And what always confuses Danyl is clearly written statements that he doesn't read properly.
ReplyDeleteSuch as the phrase "in general", which means "most", not "some".