How Natural Law Allows Reasonable Diversity (POSTLIB 3)

Against David Johnston’s Challenge to Classical Political Philosophy

My recent post on the philosopher David Johnston critiques contemporary liberal political philosophy for its promotion of moral relativism. But in his book, The Idea of a Liberal Theory, Johnston does make a valid point that needs to be addressed. He argues that classical political philosophy cramps human diversity by asserting a rigid conception of the “good life” and by giving the government the task of promoting the “good life.” In so doing, classical thought allegedly ignores the valid plurality of lifestyles and pursuits in an attempt to pound square pegs into round holes. Johnston holds that only liberal theories can accommodate pluralism and that attempts to specify objective moral norms improperly restrict people’s freedom to formulate and pursue their own values and goals.

This post argues that Johnston incorrect. While some versions of classical political thought have adopted a narrow and uncompromising view of what constitutes “the good life,” natural law theory allows for diverse lifestyles within the framework of an overarching set of objective moral norms. Postliberals are free to embrace the variety of human personalities and talents—yet without succumbing to moral relativism.

David Johnston’s Diversity Critique of Classical Political Philosophy

Johnston commitment to pluralism leads him to reject any political theory that defines the goals of human life in an overly narrow way. Accordingly, and perhaps surprisingly, he favors a political theory that yields only a moderate ordering of possible political systems along a spectrum of better to worse. A “strong” ordering ranks all political order “unambiguously” in a “rank-order” of worth “so that no two members occupy the same rank.”[1] “Moderate orderings,” which he favors, “rank the members of a set only loosely, enabling us to make some broad distinctions between better and worse members, but not necessarily providing a basis for identifying one member of the set as best” (30). A moderate ordering would not permit a moral comparison of two regimes if they are roughly equal in worth. Some people might prefer to live in one of these societies, while another person might just as legitimately prefer to live in another society.

Johnston preference for a moderate ordering of political societies derives from his value pluralism. “Liberal institutions allow and encourage the formulation of diverse projects, values, and conceptions of the good,” which in turn generates “diverse social worlds,” all of which are consistent with liberal principles (30). This “assumption of reasonable value pluralism” is based, in turn, on the “assumption that human beings are agents whose political and social institutions should reflect their nature as free and equal beings” (30). Political theory can give “a sense of direction” to social criticism, but some issues will not be resolvable by “appealing to a theory” or even by any “rational” means (31).

Classical Political Philosophy and the Best Regime

Ancient philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, sought to discover the “best regime.” The word “regime” here is being used in its truest sense to mean “form of government” or “political system,” understood to including cultural as well as strictly political elements. A regime is a way of life instantiated in a political society’s laws and values. Ancient and medieval thinkers took it as axiomatic that philosophy ought to use reason, not only to survey the variety of imperfect regimes actually existing in their world, but also to identify the elements that would constitute a (hypothetical) best regime. The concept of the best regime could then be used to rank and critique actually existing regimes.

The search for the best regime presupposed objective moral norms. Some activities and ways of life are better than others, and perhaps one activity is the best for human beings. This best activity or purpose is what the classical tradition refers to as the “highest good,” the ultimate goal which humans should pursue. Armed with this knowledge, they reasoned, we can rank societies on their ability to promote the true universal end or purpose of human life. The “best regime” is the political system that best promotes humans’ highest good.

Let us take an example. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, surveys a variety of possible “chief goods” that are the end or goal of human activity: “pleasure” (or “enjoyment”), “honor,” “virtue,” “wealth,” and the “contemplative live” (i.e. philosophy).[2] Which one is the highest good? One soon learns that, although a good life will need some rest and relaxation as well as a proper supply of necessary goods such as clothing and food, wealth and pleasure are not the highest good for humans. Wealth is “evidently not the good we are seeking,” since money is useful only as a means to (purchase) some further good, such as pleasure. Aristotle concedes that most people—including tyrants and many wealthy and powerful people—live for pleasure, but he curtly dismisses popular opinion on the grounds that “the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.”[3] A life devoted to pleasure apparently is unworthy and ultimately unfulfilling. A life of moral virtue is better, he says, but the “contemplative life” of the philosopher is best of all.

Of course, Aristotle’s argument takes many twists and turns, and raises many questions which we won’t answer here. The point is that Aristotle does not, like Johnston and liberals generally, value the “projects and values” of “agents” regardless of their content. He does not hold that whatever people want is good. Instead, he attempts to determine objective norms based on a rational analysis of human nature, and specifically on an analysis of the “function” of human beings. Aristotle believes that humans in general have a “function” or characteristic activity which defines what it means to be a “good” person. “For just as a flute-player, a sculptor, or any artist, and, in general, for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the ‘well’ is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem be for man, if he has a function.”[4] Since mankind is a “rational animal,” this function turns out to be “an activity of soul which follows or implies reason,” a category which encompasses both virtue and wisdom.[5] (His capacious list of moral virtues includes widely recognized virtues like justice and self-control but also more “social” virtues like wit and friendship.) For the classical tradition, a rational account of human nature leads to an objective account of human happiness and how one achieves it.  

Aristotle’s understanding of the highest human good controls his investigation into politics and the best regime. For Aristotle, ethics and politics are not distinct fields of knowledge but are interconnected, since “happiness or the highest human good … cannot fully be achieved except in a political community—a community of people who lead their individual lives as parts of a common project of living and well as a whole group.”[6] Thus, the best regime is the one that most encourages morally virtuous activity and philosophic activity—not the one that produces the most wealth, the largest population, or the most pious believers. Aristotle believes that an aristocracy of a certain sort is the regime most likely to fulfill this aim, but we needn’t concern ourselves with the details of his case. The larger point is that a rational understanding of the highest human good is politically relevant, since the best regime will attempt to foster the highest human good to the greatest possible extent.

One can see how the classical worldview led to a narrow conception of diversity. Recall that Aristotle dismisses the concerns of most people in determining the best life/regime. Elsewhere he states that many (if not most) people are unable to comprehend the human good, especially if they have not been brought up well when they were children. Many people will not appreciate the value of the “best regime” and may even oppose it in favor of a regime devoted to, say, pleasure. While Aristotle devoted several books in The Politics to such “lesser” regimes, he treated them as unfortunate but necessary concessions to an imperfect world. The classical view therefore has an elitist cast. The lives lived by ordinary people are not understood to be very valuable. Theoretically, one could produce what Johnston calls a “strong ordering” of regimes based on their capacity to produce those relatively rare souls who exhibit moral and intellectual virtue.

Natural Law Theory on Pluralism

But Johnston is wrong to assume that all theories founded on objective moral norms inevitably lead to a narrow conception of the good life and the good regime. In particular, natural law theory can accommodate a variety of different lifestyles and cultures without embracing value pluralism or denying that reason can tell us how to live.

Natural law theory appeals to what are called “basic goods” of human life. The “basic goods” can be defined as “objectives that humans are characteristically inclined to pursue and value for their own sake.”[7] Various thinkers generally include the following in their list of basic goods: life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability/friendship, practical reasonableness (i.e. prudence combined with self-control), and religion. Some would add or subtract from this list, but all would admit that basic goods exist.

There are several reasons to prefer this list of goods to Aristotle’s. First, it is more expansive than Aristotle’s, for whom there were only really two goods—moral virtue and intellectual virtue (i.e. wisdom)—with the latter having pride of place. Natural law thus perceives a greater variety of human “functions” or proper activities than does the classical tradition. Moreover, many of these activities are easier to achieve than moral or intellectual perfection. Some people are very artistic without being very philosophical. Some people excel in the social virtues of friendship. Finally, the natural law view dignifies even ordinary labor, since this labor serves the basic good of “life” by providing for the necessary things that human bodies need. Even a lowly worker with few natural abilities is cooperating to produce the preconditions that allow human life to continue in all its fullness. And busy married couples, who often feel that they are contributing nothing, are nevertheless performing a very important function: producing offspring so that the human community continues.

A dominant strand in most natural law theories holds that the “basic goods” are “incommensurable,” or incapable of being compared to each other. Each is worthy in its own way. They are “equally fundamental,” says John Finnis, and “there is no objective priority of value among them.”[8] From different perspectives or at different times, one good may seem like the most fundamental, but it isn’t. However, “each one of us can reasonably choose to treat one or some of the values as of more importance in his life.”[9] Different people may choose different basic goods to prioritize in accordance with their interests, capacities, and opportunities. The doctor may make preserving life his goal, the scholar may pursue truth, and the artist may prioritize aesthetic beauty. The only limitation is that no one may act to hinder or block any of the basic goods. So, for instance, no one may take actions that promote death, or ignorance.

Because each of the basic goods is equally valuable and fundamental, widely varying political regimes may be equally worthy. As long as a regime is pursuing truly basic goods, it does not matter which, or which combinations, of goods are produced. Perhaps one nation develops a world-class university system, while another trains more doctors. No government is obligated to produce specific “levels” of any of these goods.

Still, it would be advisable for governments to permit the full expression of all of basic goods. This is especially true if there are differences in skill or interest that draw different people to different basic goods—as there clearly are. There is no reason why the state should prevent people from specializing in scholarship, art, theology, or medicine, if they wish to do so. It should seek to harness the full power of its citizens by empowering them to produce the basic human goods in their own unique ways.

Conclusion

Everyone is different, and it’s nice when a political theory can accommodate that diversity. Liberals sometimes claim that value pluralism is the only way to acknowledge the differences between people. This post shows another way. By recognizing a plurality of equally fundamental basic goods, natural law theory enables the cultivation of different pursuits by different people—without abandoning the idea of objective moral norms. Actions which hinder a basic good are off-limits, but everyone is empowered to use their creativity and choice to determine a plan of life that pursues the good in their own unique way.

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[1] David Johnston, The Idea of a Liberal Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 29. All parenthetical quotations are to this book.

[2] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, chapter 5.

[3] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, chapter 5.

[4] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, chapter 7.

[5] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, chapter 7.

[6] John M. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2012), 74.

[7] Jonathan Crowe, Natural Law and the Nature of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 35.

[8] John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 93.

[9] Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 93.