Natural Law = ? January 4, 2012
Posted by cantueso in law, philo102.6 comments
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It is a very old concept and so it has become controversial.
The idea dates back to the Greeks and the Jews and later the Romans who formulated a basic belief in reason and legislation.
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Next came the Christians saying that God who gave us life also gave us reason to understand what he or our conscience is telling us.
Reason was considered a defining part of man’s “nature”, and that is why the law is called “natural”. –
!!! !! It follows that natural law is not the same as the laws of nature. It is bad terminology, but old and cannot be changed. The two aren’t even variants of the same thing, but opposites. The “laws of nature” are observations ascertained by experiment. “Natural law” is a mental construct subject to perpetual debate.
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The question is : where does the strength or the relevance of, for instance, the criminal code or the tax law come from?
Some would say: a law is strong if it is in line with what most people “naturally” consider right.
Others would say: a law is strong because it is backed by the State or by a ruler who is powerful enough to punish offenders.
In the West the debates on both of these positions have been going on for centuries. –
The same can be said of those “rights” that have been claimed for women or for all humans and also for (some) animals. Where would those “rights” come from?
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Ratzinger on Natural Law:
He says that Darwinism has “blunted” the Catholic concept of Natural Law. As a result now only its latest offspring is still around as a notion of “Human Rights”, but globally not acceptable either.
According to Ratzinger, natural law is based on a concept of nature “that went under with the victory of the theory of evolution.”
“…. At least this is what we are being told by the scientists, and what seems to us at present almost incontrovertible. “
So, the last remaining element of natural law is the notion of “human rights”, a right which is supposedly all based on reason.
The problem is that both Christianity and modern rationality see themselves as universally valid.
According to the Cardinal, this view has been giving rise to tensions all over the world.
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For more see The Ratzinger Habermas Debate at http://espliego.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/ratzinger-habermas-debate/
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The Westminster palace photo is by Diliff for Wikipedia, and the cathedral drawing is the cover of the Macauley book.
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