Perhaps the most common gesture in the modern West is a shrug. When confronted with complex moral questions, people prefer to avoid answers in favor of apathetic non-judgmentalism. There is almost a fear of calling actions either right or wrong. The great writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned the West against this moral weakness after his escape from the Gulags of the Soviet Union. In 1975 he told an audience “it is almost a joke in the Western world to use words like ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ They have become old-fashioned concepts, yet they are very real and genuine.” His words should serve as a clarion call to the twenty-first century as well.
Indeed, the inability to determine and defend right over wrong represents the profound influence of moral relativism on our culture. This philosophy holds that enduring moral truths are an illusion. Instead, there exist ever-changing codes of conduct created by human beings.
Opposed to this view is the notion that an unchanging natural right can be discovered through reason. Revelation can also supplement natural right by providing insight that our human minds cannot fully understand. The Founding Fathers, perhaps more than any other men in history, implemented the doctrine of natural rights. In the Farmer Refuted, a young Alexander Hamilton proclaimed, “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” According to Hamilton and his fellow revolutionaries, moral laws exist whether or not a government or even a nation recognizes them. Thomas Jefferson famously echoed this sentiment when he wrote that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”
The debate over natural right, however, extends back much further than the Founding. Over two thousand years ago, the Greek philosophers vigorously defended and refined the notion of natural right against moral relativism. Plato’s Republic, for example, begins with a discussion about the nature of justice.
The main character, Socrates, debates- or rather questions- Thrasymachus about his theory of justice. According to Thrasymachus “justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger.” Thus, he rejects the notion that there is a natural order that humans discover. Rather, whatever powers that be determine right and wrong. After a careful analysis of his argument, Socrates forces Thrasymachus to admit that justice actually exists. However, he quickly proceeds to claim that injustice is better. Throughout the rest of the work, Socrates then attempts to show that justice is desirable in itself.
Aristotle, the student of Plato, also believed in the existence of natural right. According to him, all men have a natural telos or an end towards which they strive. The end which we obviously all seek to attain is happiness. According to Aristotle, happiness is not merely a warm feeling but an activity of our soul. Humans achieve their end (which is happiness) by performing rational activity in accordance with virtue. According to Aristotle, both our end and the way in which we achieve our end are prescribed by nature. Thus, despite their differences, the Founding Fathers, Plato, Aristotle, and the great heroes of Western philosophy held that a moral order exists outside of man. It is the job of governments and individuals to conform themselves to this order.
Modern philosophy sought to throw off the chains of a morality independent of man’s will. Machiavelli, the great Italian philosopher, rejected elements of classical philosophy in the early 16th century. In The Prince he endorsed brutal methods for establishing a state. According to the scholar Leo Strauss, Machiavelli held that “virtue exists exclusively for the sake of the commonwealth; political life proper is not subject to morality; morality is not possible outside of political society.” Indeed, because the state creates order, they must have no scruples when seizing power. Only after the state has been formed can morality be said to exist. Thus, morality is wholly dependent on man’s will.
Thomas Hobbes made this point even clearer in his Leviathan published in 1651. He claimed that morality doesn’t exist prior to the creation of a state. Rather, a sovereign must be created in order to establish codes of conduct.
Again in The Farmer Refuted, Alexander Hamilton excoriated this view stating that Hobbes believed “Moral obligation…is derived from the introduction of civil society; and there is no virtue but what is purely artificial, the mere contrivance of politicians for the maintenance of social intercourse. But the reason he ran into this absurd and impious doctrine was, that he disbelieved the existence of an intelligent, superintending principle, who is the governor, and will be the final judge, of the universe.”
In many ways, the contemporary West accepted Hobbes’ views while rejecting those of Hamilton. While people may still resist the government dictating their moral choices, they no longer believe in a natural right. Whereas Hobbes and Machiavelli thought that a sovereign creates morality, modern man believes that each sovereign individual creates his or her own morality. Thus, there is no standard by which we can criticize the actions of others, the government, or even ourselves. Our response to something wrong is merely “I don’t like that.” Lost is the language of moral logic that animated debates over the last 2,500 years.
Recovering moral sensibility requires regaining contact with the greatest parts of the Western tradition. Indeed, freedom itself necessitates a recognition that we are not free to build our own moral systems. Only by discovering right through the use of reason can we adequately describe the world in which we live, defend the rights we possess, and maintain our heritage.
