As we celebrate once again the anniversary of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, we can rightfully take pride in its recognition that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words remind those in government, not just in this country but in all nations, of the limits of their power, a moral boundary that must never be violated if the government is to retain its legitimacy.
...I would suggest that the founding principles of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” can only be properly understood from the perspective of natural law. The natural law insists that rights are grounded in the reality of human nature. Human nature is a universal and unchanging reality which remains the same all over the world and throughout history. It is therefore an objective referent that can be discovered by reason anytime and anywhere. Only if we define rights as they are understood by the natural law can we be confident that there is reasoned agreement between citizens. Furthermore, we can also know that we are in agreement with the Founders who wrote the Declaration as well as all those generations who will inherit this nation from us. Thus, only through a natural law argument can an objective notion of rights be delineated. One may object that the founders were not directly influenced by St. Thomas and the Catholic natural law tradition; nevertheless, it is clear that the natural law permeated their thinking indirectly through the shared Christian culture and the heritage of British common law.
...In his seminal study The State in Catholic Thought, Heinrich Rommen defines a right as “that conformity to human social nature of social acts and relations between persons and between persons and things.” It is human nature itself, and in particular his social nature which implies necessary relations with other men, which determines what sorts of acts and relations are correct. Because they are grounded in human nature, these rights are not given by the state, much less dreamt up according to individual preference. Rather, they reflect what is necessary if a man is to realize everything of which human nature is capable, that is, to attain a correct relation with human nature itself. It is here in particular that I think some basic concepts from St. Thomas Aquinas can help to elucidate the meaning of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” as they relate to the reality of human nature.
...A fundamental doctrine of Thomas’s account of the natural world is that there is an essential relation between what something is and what that thing does.... And what is the activity to which human nature is directed? It is happiness. But happiness is the goal of human nature, common to all people, and so is an objective truth. Happiness most emphatically is not something that each person is free to define for himself. Just as an apple tree finds its perfection in growing apples, happiness as the perfection of human nature must be defined in terms of the distinctive powers that set humans apart from other natures: reason and free will. Accordingly, happiness is the activity of growing in wisdom and love, an activity that can only find completion in the Beatific Vision in which we know the Truth itself and love God who is goodness itself. Nevertheless, in this world man is called on to attain a limited happiness; and this fact is the source of human rights. Rights are derived from whatever is necessary for man to attain happiness in terms of wisdom and love.
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