The scene is set with an essay from Benedict XVI, originally written as part of a debate with Jürgen Habermas. It argued, with typical clarity and balance, various themes familiar from his papacy: the need for religion and reason to engage continually in mutual purification; the dangers of political and biotechnological power untrammelled by a respectful and truthful understanding of humanity; the need to develop traditional Western understandings of natural law. Most strikingly, the then Ratzinger argued that the Christian tradition needs to be in dialogue with not only secular rationality but also other world faiths and cultural traditions: the search for what is truly ‘natural law’ is only just beginning. It is a pity that none of the essays in the volume takes up that particular challenge.
Of all the contributors, it is J. Budziszewski who most directly responds to Benedict's particular vision, with his forceful and incisive analysis of the way in which natural law functions as ‘fact, theory and sign of contradiction’. He is disconcertingly persuasive in his account of the way in which those who refuse to acknowledge the clear evidence of moral truth suffer increasing moral blindness and intellectual incoherence. This is ‘normal’, Budziszewski argues, ‘in the sense that fever is the normal response to infection’. Thus he gives his largely Thomist analysis a distinctly Augustinian colouring, and also lines up with a growing philosophical interest in the way in which moral formation shapes the capacity for moral understanding, something assumed, of course, by the ancients. There are both parallels and contrasts to be drawn with the post-modernist project of historicising moral reasoning. Francis Slade, meanwhile, recounts the history of the European rejection of the truths of natural law. He draws a sharp contrast between the pre-modern political tradition, in which the polis or res publica is seen as existing in some sense by nature, and that beginning with Machiavelli, in which the state of nature is chaotic and formless, and political form is imposed by human will.
Two other essays focus on the basic nature of natural law. Robert Sokolowski analyses what natural law is by showing, how, for example we experience the difference between individual wishes and some ‘deeper’ sense of obligation, or between our own code of law and another. Reason can recognise natural law because natural ends exist distinctly from human purposes; the ‘deletion’ of this belief marks the beginning of modern thought. The essay ends with the intriguing suggestion that rights are a secondary issue, which come into play only in (often very limited) contexts of contention. David Oderberg insists on the need for natural law to be grounded in metaphysics, more precisely in an understanding of the universe as ordered and of the natures within it as possessing identifiable essences. Thus human morality is integrated within a greater whole. He goes on to criticise Grisez, Finnis and their followers for basing their version of natural law on subjective criteria.
While nearly all natural law theories give important roles to reason, nature, law and God, different theorists emphasise these to different degrees. Sokolowski had argued for the importance of allowing natural reason the space to do its own work without being preempted by appeal to revealed divine law. Budziszewski and Oderberg stress the law and God, the former arguing from the experience of conscience that a lawgiver exists, and the latter from the idea of sufficient reason that the cosmos must have an external orderer.
A couple of essays link natural law to professional practice. Nelson Lund surveys the recent rejection of a Texan statute criminalizing sodomy and Montesquieu's analysis of the English legal system, en route to arguing that the Supreme Court should not be trusted with the task of making common law conform to natural law. This task should be left rather to the gradual and discreet moderation of state legislatures. Luke Gormally elegantly employs a teleological understanding of human nature to provide a precise definition of the nature of health and the proper goals of medicine. He steers a course between a value-free account of health as statistically typical bodily function and a subjectivist account in terms of preferences. The role of medical professionals is to preserve or restore the natural human good of bodily health, or to control disabling symptoms; he deliberately sets aside mental illness with no physical component. This definition, Gormally shows, has clear practical consequences.
John Rist provides a refreshingly Platonist complement to a volume largely inspired by the Aristotelian tradition. His historical survey of aesthetic theories shows how Platonism gave Christians from Origen onwards the resources to integrate beauty into their understanding of God and of the created order, and indeed to enrich the account of beauty they inherited by equating it with the personal, trinitarian, God. Rist takes his story on through Kant to Postmodernism, arguing that once created beauty is no longer seen as grounded in the beauty of God, it is only to be expected that art will descend into ugliness or banality. Where great art is produced, however, impersonal or individualistic theories of art will not suffice to explain it. Art that is no longer inspired by divine beauty will no longer itself be a source of genuine inspiration.
A minority of the essays in this substantial volume are rather narrowly specialist or over-concerned with the author's position within a subtle academic debate. The contrast between these and the essay by the then Cardinal Ratzinger is particularly striking: perhaps religion can purify ‘reason’ also in terms of academic topics and style!
