Nature and Natural Law, Classically Understood
Nature, in classical philosophy, had a meaning similar to essence or spirit, in that it referred to the innate potentials of things that made them what they are. Thus, it was possible to speak of human nature, what it was to have a humanness, and what the essence of being human was. At the same time, there was a nature to everything, such that there could be understood to be a Whole of nature, which was the compendium of these natures.
As time went on, this classical conception of nature was largely forsaken in favor of a more mechanically-reductive consideration of nature. To be clear, mechanics had always been a consideration of natural philosophy. What was new was not the mechanics itself, but the reductionism, which tended more and more to reduce the natures of things to the effects that can be had from them rather than from their own causes.
You see, Aristotle, who had become the staple of classical philosophy as looked back upon from the Middle Ages, had taught that there were four causes, or reasons that things happen. These included efficient causation, which was the causation of mechanics, such as when one exerts force onto an object, and which would become the major focus of mechanical conceptions of nature, as well as final causation, or purposefulness and goal-directed behavior, which had been an important consideration well into the Middle Ages and corresponded to the inner natures of living things. Along with these were material causation, or the stuff that composes a thing, and formal causation, or the shapes that the stuff can be made to take on. Thus, for Aristotle, a table’s material cause is its wood and its formal cause is its platform structure, but its efficient cause was the mechanical effort of the craftsman, and its final cause the craftsman’s goal. [1] It is important to note that the final cause here is imposed upon the table through the craftsman’s goal and his use of efficient causation, but that this is because of the lifeless nature of the table. The craftsman himself, suggests Aristotle, as a living being, is distinctly self-determined, unlike the table, and his efficient causation springs from his own muscle and his final causation from his own vision, which sort of emanates from a telos, or finality. To do good was to do things in accordance with the final cause, and to do right was to use efficient causation proficiently to achieve that which is good.
Nature and Natural Law, Scholastically Understood
Come the time of the Middle Ages, the Scholastics had been reintroduced to Aristotle, especially by way of the Islamic Golden Age, which had preserved Ancient Greek works past the fall of the Roman Empire. Whereas Aristotle’s work was largely a statement about the innate natures of things and the need for them to be free in order to satisfy those natures, it did contain some authoritarian moments, [2] and the Scholastics took this to the extreme, using Aristotle to justify rigid religious and political hierarchies and social control that he would not himself had advocated for.
The reaction to this was largely to reject Aristotle outright and to fend against teleology as an attack on the individual. This was, of course, an absurdity, because Aristotle used teleology to describe the reasons for individual behaviors, and the Scholastic attempt to control society through teleological claims was an effort to make of society a table, one might say, to treat the final ends of society as those of the Scholastics, compelled from outside.
Naturally, then, even those who held self-directing sentiments in common with Aristotle, but whose access was limited to commentaries by the Scholastics, such as Giordano Bruno, would reject Aristotle and teleology on basically Aristotlean grounds, that what the Scholastics were preaching as final causation was not self-direction. Had Bruno made the connection that this is not what Aristotle was teaching, but that Aristotle was describing self-direction in nature, Bruno may not have rejected Aristotle so fully, even if still preferring another look at cosmology.
Nature and Natural Law, Mechanically Understood
The mechanistic philosophy, on the other hand, would come to increasingly reject Aristotle’s notions of telos and of innate essences or natures to things outside of their material properties.
While Aristotle’s ideas would be retained in sentiments and reinvented forms in the vitalistic organicism of the radicals of the Scientific Revolution and during the Radical Enlightenment, as with Giordano Bruno and Baruch Spinoza, the Moderate Enlightenment and the mainline Scientific Revolution, following people such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Renes Descartes, and Isaac Newton would come to reject teleology altogether, including what of it remained in Bruno’s reinvented vitalism. This meant rejecting human nature and purposefulness, whether in Aristotle’s predestination or Bruno’s open Universe.
Still, from out of inductive, mechanistic reductionism, a component of empiricist and scientist philosophy, came a vast understanding of material and efficient causation, which did much to contribute to the field of mechanical engineering. From out of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment came a progressive march in technology leading up to modernity.
Nature and Natural Law, Legally Understood
The change in worldviews toward mechanical reductionism correlated also to an understanding of “law” as it applies in the legal setting, and would see a shift away from classically-understood natural law toward legal positivism divorced from natural law.
Classical conceptions of law, known as the tradition of natural law, hold that humans are naturally constrained by the existence of universally-recognized moral duties that, while physically able to be neglected, surrounding individuals have the right to enforce upon them. This natural law arises from within human nature, and in particular the human conscience, which informs individuals of the moral value of a given situation. According to this view, laws must be understood through Reason, and are only laws if they are consistent with enforcement by a guiltless conscience. By this conception of law, law must be established upon righteousness.
The postclassical conceptions of law, known as legal positivism, and especially when misunderstood as divorced from natural law, hold that laws are merely human creations that need not correspond to any notions of morality, but merely depend upon successful dominance on the part of the law-maker. By this view, laws are the dictates of humans and the reflection of the whims of the rulers. By this conception of law, law is merely a matter of might.
At its foundation, however, it was an outgrowth of natural law as it applied to associations’ capacities as they arise from mutual aid. But this natural foundation and its purpose was forgotten, and emphasis placed instead on brute force. This will ultimately serve to undermine the integrity of the association from which the legal power emanates.
Nature and Natural Law, Brutally Understood
Clearly, we can see that classical conceptions of natural law correspond to classical conceptions of Nature, where each entity has a nature of its own, including, for humans, a conscience with which to judge actions. The law, by this view, arises from the conscientious attempt to preserve the wellbeing of living things and to ensure their flourishing. In contradiction, we can see that postclassical conceptions of legal positivism correspond to mechanically reductive conceptions of nature, where everything is governed by mechanical forces from the outside, without necessary regard for their being able to thrive or not.
Mechanically-reductionistic, legal positivism is basically the philosophy of might makes right, the idea that if one has the power to do something, and cannot be stopped, that alone makes it the right thing to do. Whereas this is not an appeal to natural law, as understood classically, it is nonetheless an appeal to natural laws, or the laws that govern the Universe. Indeed, it was the great mechanists such as those named who would establish the mechanical understanding that was needed to get us to where we are technologically. Legal positivism, while not based in natural, moral law, is nonetheless founded upon conceptions of natural, physical laws.
Natural law, classically understood, is the philosophy of right makes might, the idea that something that is the right thing to do should have force put behind it. Importantly, conceptions of natural law have always contained a positivistic component, and have traditionally contained the notion that natural rights— that which one can do according to natural law— must be protected and enforced in order not to be nullified. So, once again—and as with the mechanical philosophy not offering anything new, but instead being a reduction away from teleology—, we find a materially- and mechanically-reductionistic tendency in legal positivism, which does not add to an organic, vital comprehension, but instead takes away from it and focuses heavily on materialism and mechanism.
Nature and Natural Law, Dialectically Understood
It is possible to infer a cycle from the organic, dialectical process that these two must engage in. This process, in many ways, reflects the cycle of life and death in the organism, the Summer and Winter of our planet, and of syntropy and entropy in the Universe, and so might be considered a sampling of sempiternity in our temporal condition.
Where the line begins might be arbitrarily placed, but if we consider the beginning to be with the species Homo sapiens, then we know that the beginning is much more like right makes might than the other way around, as primitive hunter-gatherers were stateless, acephalous people, lacking rigid hierarchies of control. Of course, if we place our beginning before this, amongst the Great Apes, we see a world of might making right, as Great Ape harem societies are dominated by alpha males, whether dominating unilaterally or in multimale coalitions.
Polybius, the great Roman historian and philosopher, described an anacyclosis, or political cycle, whereby virtuous and vicious forms of state rotate. This would have taken place after the break from original, hunter-gatherer egalitarianism that we experienced in our break from the Great Apes, but the same logic can apply retrospectively. According to this cycle, society begins in an ochlocracy, a corrupt form of democracy, or control by the mob. From out of this mob rule, an influential figure emerges from the power of his own virtue, and establishes a monarchy. Unlike the original monarch, however, who had the virtue to claim his position, his descendants, who merely inherit his power and not his virtue, devolve his kingdom into a tyranny. A group of leading citizens of virtue then establish an aristocracy, with which to rule over the tyrant, but the aristocracy too forgets to remain virtuous, and declines into an oligarchy. In response, the people gain in their own virtues, and establish a democracy, with which to rule over the oligarchy, only to then decline into an ochlocracy, and to start the process anew.
If we apply the concept of anacyclosis to ideas about natural law and legal positivism, it seems clear natural law is a component of the virtuous part of the cycle, which may be thought of as the life, Summer, and syntropy in it. Legal positivism, however— already present like the carbon in the brown leaves of Autumn is in the green leaves of Spring—, is the lifelessness of the law, the law stripped of an innate reason for being. As with the leaf, which falls to the ground due to its lack of life making it unable to hang on, legal positivism is the decadence of societal ligamentation, the rigor mortis of society’s sinews.
Nature and Natural Law, Pathologically Understood
If we may reconstruct the great insights of Polybius, we might consider that society goes through processes whereby virtuous people—people who act according to classical notions of natural law— are also capable of wielding positive power, or natural laws, physically-understood, the likes of which are then inherited or learned by others who have not put the same effort into learning the moral foundations. This represents a shift from right makes might to might makes right, and it is a shift of decadence and corruption, a form of pathos. During this time, it is pathos, or sadness, because what is right is being neglected by might senselessly wielded. But this is a driver for those who are morally right to catch up mechanically, and to align the natural, physical laws with the natural law, morally understood. When this occurs, right has arranged might, which can then be wielded again for good purposes, those of defending the right of self-direction in pursuit of one’s ends.
Coincidentally, this also resolves the age old conflict between natural law and natural laws, or morality and physics, which has emerged, at least partially, as a result of Scholastic absurdities. What we find, is that, when classical conceptions of nature are done away with in favor of a nature reduced to matter and mechanics, corruption and decadence are the result, which have appeared in the form of legal positivism. Once more, the reconciliation of the natural laws is this. Natural law, as in conscientious action, is the righteousness required to establish and give life to powers capable of exerting might. That is, natural law is the foundation for “right makes might.” Might is already a consideration of natural law, but perhaps a secondary one, because legal positivism takes advantage of natural law’s moral emphases and exploits gaps in its understanding of the other natural laws, in plural here referring to the laws of physics. This transitions power to the wielders of natural laws divorced from natural law, and this “might makes right” is a corrupting, decadent force of pathos or sadness. This inspires a greater embrace of natural law, however, and a greater understanding of natural laws among its advocates, who may then reconfirm the natural law.
Instead of legal positivism’s corruption and decadence being understood as “unnatural,” it is better to understand it as natural and inevitable consequences of ignorance of Nature. Humans are a part of Nature, and when Nature is self-understood through humans, humans live their best lives. But when humans do not understand their place within Nature, and forget or forsake their own nature, they folly and fail, and that, too, is a part of Nature.
Nature and Natural Law, Anarchically Understood
This bleeds into discussions in anarchism regarding the apparent conflict between natural rights, such as that espoused by Lysander Spooner, and irrational egoism, such as that espoused by Max Stirner, who promoted a philosophy of unenlightened self-interest, a sort of legal positivism of individuals, a true egotism.
These discussions clearly miss the alternative of rational egoism, especially such as that of Baruch Spinoza and his philosophy of enlightened self-interest, which supports individuals considering themselves and their interests within the context of other individuals and their interests. Spinoza had made arguments from both sides of the aisle, [3] such that they may be considered to be largely or wholly reconciled.
As with the classical natural law tradition of Aristotle, Spinoza recognizes a natural will to continue on with existence, which he calls “conatus.” From this conatus is inferred judgements of good and bad and matters of right and wrong, with those in power having the privilege of their will being done. Spinoza argues as a matter of informed conscience that a natural right is that which one has the power to accomplish, and so falls into the might makes right tradition, while also acknowledging as a small-d democrat the power of the majority to organize according to their own conatus and for the purpose of protecting freedom, declaring likewise that right makes might. In this way, Spinoza finds a way to bridge the two camps, or to make more clear how legal positivism is already a consideration of natural law.
While Spinoza did not espouse a strictly anarchist philosophy, he has been identified by some as a philosophical anarchist or proto-anarchist anticipating others such as William Godwin, and his argument can just as well be put to use by mutualists who would prefer an agro-industrial confederation to a directly-democratic state. Spinoza would likely be sympathetic to anarchist distinctions between aggression and defense, and might see them through a lens of rational vs. passion-driven uses of violence, such that Spinoza would most likely have been a leading anarchist, instead of a small-d democrat, if alive during the time of Lysander Spooner instead of centuries before.
Notes
[1]Clearly, there is some correspondence between efficient causation and material causation and between final causation and formal causation
[2]“Aristiotle” is actually most likely a collection of authors who were led by a man named Aristotle, the tradition of the time being for the teacher to place his name on the works of his students. This may be the reason for some of the contradictions that can be found in Aristotle.
[3]This is a flawed metaphor, because natural law contains positivistic concerns, and so these are not a true dichotomy