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Thread: Is Natural Law Sufficient to Defend the Founding?

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    Is Natural Law Sufficient to Defend the Founding?

    Is Natural Law Sufficient to Defend the Founding? is a review of America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding by Robert R. Reilly.

    It is a well-written treatise on natural law philosophy and theology that led to the founding of America. It is a defense of both.

    ...Mr. Reilly starts at the beginning, “before philosophy discovered the order of nature and the role of reason,” “before the book of Genesis,” before Athens produced the great philosophers, particularly Aristotle and Socrates, who are his foundations for developing natural law. Before them, tribes, city-states, and empires were cosmological, uniform, habitual, making no distinctions socially between secular and sacred, nesting all values in the social order. Individuals thought communally, not considering themselves independent of their culture. Indeed, nothing was outside, including the gods of the cities and empires, by which communities defined all reality.

    ...Aristotle further rationalized this natural order with a first cause and the nature of ensuing causes, effects and ends, where all “nature ever seeks an end” and “does nothing without purpose or uselessly.” The end state is “the reason for what it is.”...

    ...Israel likewise broke from cosmological uniformity when revelation came from a single God who was prior to and outside nature and who commanded humanity to follow certain laws but allowed freedom to disobey. Thus, God even bound Himself as well as his people by a covenant between them. The Greek idea of first cause evolved into one of a personal and loving God who cared about his creatures and established rules derived from an objective natural moral law that, if heeded, would lead to spiritual fulfillment.

    ...European Christianity created an order that attempted to harmonize Greek rationalism and Jewish revelation, that over time produced an even more sophisticated medieval natural law rationalism, culminating in the works of Thomas Aquinas and the relative prosperity, limits, and order of the high Middle Ages.

    Indeed, medieval universities so emphasized rationalism that reason itself turned against the Christian order; William of Ockham even undermined the fundamental natural law idea of essences. Rather than essences of reality with set moral ends, Platonic ideals were merely names we apply to them. Rather than having rational essences of unchanging natural laws set by God, He could change ends as He willed—an idea which abandons the certainty of reason and natural law for mere probability. Luther made the ultimate step against natural law with the belief that only faith mattered, which undermined the tenants of reason that had justified a European order developed over centuries. The result was many opposing moral justifications, the wars of religion, the end of Christendom, and the rise of the European Divine Right of Kings.

    ...
    As far as I read of the book so far so will stop there.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Natural law is an interesting theory and it IS a good political foundation with which to build a free society. It is also a good theory by which a social contract and civil and criminal laws can built, so yes I think it was enough of a platform for the founders to run with and we've done pretty well with it. It IS a human construct, but one that the US has spread out nice and evenly over the generations, making each person responsible for his or her conduct around others and under the law such a foundation serves us well. We went to great lengths to omit at great cost The Divine right of Kings leaving said divine "rights" over there with all the others, equal under the law.
    Last edited by jet57; 12-02-2020 at 06:55 PM.

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    Positive law is a human construct.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Robert R. Reilly contrasts natural law as that following reason with positive law as that following will, will to power as it first manifests itself in the Divine Right of Kings to will whatever they desired because they had the power.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    Positive law is a human construct.
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/n.../#NatLawDivPro

    ‘Natural law theory’ is a label that has been applied to theories of ethics, theories of politics, theories of civil law, and theories of religious morality. We will be concerned only with natural law theories of ethics: while such views arguably have some interesting implications for law, politics, and religious morality, these implications will not be our focus here.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jet57 View Post

    The question is what is natural law, not what is natural law theory.

    Natural law is not a human construct. Positive law is.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    The question is what is natural law, not what is natural law theory.

    Natural law is not a human construct. Positive law is.
    We were discussing natural law as it applied to a reason for the founders. The natural law theory IS what natural law is: a human construct for behavior and principals of a free society to which I agreed. It sounds now like you’re changing the subject...

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    Quote Originally Posted by jet57 View Post
    We were discussing natural law as it applied to a reason for the founders. The natural law theory IS what natural law is: a human construct for behavior and principals of a free society to which I agreed. It sounds now like you’re changing the subject...
    To my understanding, natural law doesn't need to be explained. Positive law however, has lots of explanations in the forms of codes, statutes, ordinances etc defining exactly what they govern.

    Natural law seems more akin to UPB by Stefan Molyneux from freedomain. In a nutshell it goes rape is wrong because if it were preferable people wouldn't be upset by it. Or something to that effect.
    "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

    Ephesians 6:12

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cthulhu View Post
    To my understanding, natural law doesn't need to be explained. Positive law however, has lots of explanations in the forms of codes, statutes, ordinances etc defining exactly what they govern.

    Natural law seems more akin to UPB by Stefan Molyneux from freedomain. In a nutshell it goes rape is wrong because if it were preferable people wouldn't be upset by it. Or something to that effect.

    Natural law is reasonable, even commonsensical; positive law willful.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cthulhu View Post
    To my understanding, natural law doesn't need to be explained. Positive law however, has lots of explanations in the forms of codes, statutes, ordinances etc defining exactly what they govern.

    Natural law seems more akin to UPB by Stefan Molyneux from freedomain. In a nutshell it goes rape is wrong because if it were preferable people wouldn't be upset by it. Or something to that effect.
    Yeah, the whole thing really is just base on The Golden Rule. People have argued over it vs positive law since Aristotle. Said to based on nature and justice, yet in articulation can only be formed as a theory.

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