Natural Law and Its Critics

The review (Summer 1987) of Henry Veatch’s Human Rights: Fact or Fancy? (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986) contained a criticism by John N. Gray of Aristotelian naturalist ethics from his book Liberalism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986). This criticism does not really undermine natural-law ethics.

Gray thinks a paradox arises from the broad meta-ethics of natural law: “Let us suppose we are in a position (one we may well occupy in the middle future, given the possibilities of genetic engineering) to alter the content of man’s nature or essence: how could the natural law ethic of realizing man’s distinctive powers help us here?”

Natural-law theories are concerned with the agent’s realization of his or her distinctive essence (or nature, as I prefer putting it). The “paradox” rests on a misunderstanding of what it means to realize one’s distinctive essence as a human being. Gray equivocates between one’s choosing to realize one’s distinctive essence as a human being in one’s own case and choosing to bring about the realization of the distinctive human essence as a separate project (e.g., in some other being). But clearly no natural-law ethics has ever advocated that we ought to run around trying to make a lot of human beings that have their distinctive essences realized. No one is responsible from the standpoint of natural-law ethics to manufacture other self-realized persons. Accordingly, there is no problem with the case that Gray cites—each of us should indeed realize his or her human essence, and when we find ourselves faced with the choice to splice genes or not to splice genes so as to turn something into a human or nonhuman being, then we have to see whether doing or not doing so is what most fully realizes our distinctive human nature. The problem is no different from any other choice, which of course does not mean it is a simple one; it certainly cannot be solved generally, beyond referring to human flourishing and to some very general moral principles or virtues. Human nature includes the individuality of a person, which itself leaves room for extensive, nonconflicting differences (that is, differences that do not generate moral dilemmas) concerning what human beings ought to do. (David Norton offers a similar response in his review of Gray’s book in Reason Papers, [12] Spring 1987.)

Another point that the critics of natural law forget is that the self that is to be enhanced according to self-enhancement or self-flourishing ethics is a rational agent’s self! And they fail to see that when such an agent enters the life of human community a condition that ought to become evident to him or her is that others may demand respect for personal autonomy. Indeed, the price of admission is just this respect, which is how egoism can justify natural rights.

Actually, however, Veatch’s approach can meet this and many other points raised in the review, including whether one can derive natural rights from self-enhancement ethics. (Professor Eric Mack argued the point well in his seminal piece “Egoism and Rights,” The Personalist, Vol. 54 [1973]; see also my Human Rights and Human Liberties [Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1975].)

Tibor R. Machan teaches in the department of philosophy at Auburn University.