Responding to my recent post about Michael P's Commonweal essay on the possibility of a non-religious ground for the morality of human rights, Robert George kindly sent me a chapter -- which takes the form of an interview with him about natural law -- from a new volume, edited by Elizabeth Bucar and Barbara Barnett, Does Human Rights Need God? (Eerdman's 2005). Other contributors to the volume include Khaled Abou El Fadl, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Vigen Guroian, Louis Henkin, and David Novak (to name just a few). Looks great!
Here is a bit from George's chapter:
What is the role of religion and/or God in your understanding of natural law?
Most, but not all, natural law theorists are theists. They believe that the moral order, like every other order in human experience, is what it is because God creates and sustains it as such. In accounting for the intelligibility of the created order, they infer the existence of a free and creative intelligence—a personal God. Indeed, they typically argue that God’s creative free choice provides the only ultimately satisfactory account of the existence of the intelligibilities humans grasp in every domain of inquiry.
Natural law theorists do not deny that God can reveal moral truths and most believe that God has chosen to reveal many such truths. However, natural law theorists also affirm that many moral truths, including some that are revealed, can also be grasped by ethical reflection apart from revelation. They assert, with St. Paul, that there is a law “written on the hearts” even of the Gentiles who did not know the law of Moses. So the basic norms against murder and theft, though revealed in the Decalogue, are knowable even apart from God’s special revelation. The natural law can be known by us, and we can conform our conduct to its terms, by virtue of our natural human capacities for deliberation, judgment, and choice. The absence of a divine source of the natural law would be a puzzling thing, just as the absence of a divine source of any and every other intelligible order in human experience would be a puzzling thing. An atheist’s puzzlement might well cause him or her to re-consider the idea that there is no divine source of the order we perceive and understand in the universe. It is far less likely to cause him or her to conclude that our perception is illusory or that our understanding is a sham.
[C]an natural law provide the basis for an international human rights regime without consensus on the nature of God and the role of God in human affairs?
Anybody who acknowledges the human capacities for reason and freedom has good grounds for affirming human dignity and basic human rights. These grounds remain in place whether or not one adverts to the question: “Is there a divine source of the moral order whose tenets we discern in inquiry regarding natural law and natural rights?” I happen to think that the answer to this question is “yes,” and that we should be open to the possibility that God has revealed himself in ways that reinforce and supplement what can be known by unaided reason. But we do not need agreement on the answer, so long as we agree about the truths that give rise to the question, namely, that human beings, possessing the God-like powers of reason and freedom are possessors of a profound dignity that is protected by certain basic rights.
So, if there is a set of moral norms, including norms of justice and human rights, that can be known by rational inquiry, understanding, and judgment even apart from any special revelation, then these norms of natural law can provide the basis for an international regime of human rights. Of course, we should not expect consensus. There are moral skeptics who deny that there are moral truths. There are religious fideists who hold that moral truths cannot be known apart from God’s special revelation. And even among those who believe in natural law, there will be differences of opinion about its precise content and implications for certain issues. So it is, I believe, our permanent condition to discuss and debate these issues, both as a matter of abstract philosophy and as a matter of practical politics.
Michael P.'s important essay in the latest issue of Commonweal deserves more than a link. In the piece, Michael presents arguments upon which he has elaborated in his books, fleshing out and exploring the implications of the conclusion that there is no "nonreligious ground" for the morality of human rights. Here is an excerpt:
The morality of universal human rights is a precious achievement, but also an exceedingly fragile one.
If, as I suspect, there exists no plausible nonreligious ground for the morality of human rights, then the growing marginalization of religious belief in many societies that have taken human rights seriously-in particular, in many liberal democracies-has a profoundly worrisome consequence: it may leave those societies bereft of the intellectual resources to sustain the morality of human rights. His pleasure at this dilemma is what makes Nietzsche so ominous in retrospect; in his exhilarated snarl one hears an advance warning of the Holocaust. . . .
That there is a religious ground for the morality of human rights is clear; indeed, there are multiple religious grounds. The Christian ground will be familiar to readers of this magazine: each and every human being is the beloved child of God, created in the image of God, and perfects this created nature in loving his or her sisters and brothers. The revealed truth of Scripture teaches that Jesus called us to “love one another just as I have loved you” (John 13:34). As Canadian (and Catholic) philosopher Charles Taylor has argued, the “affirmation of universal human rights” that characterizes “modern liberal political culture” represents one of several “authentic developments of the gospel” in modern life.
It is far from clear, however, that there is a nonreligious ground-a secular ground-for the morality of human rights. Indeed, the claim that every human being has inherent dignity, and that we should live our lives accordingly, remains deeply problematic for many secular thinkers. Such a claim is difficult, perhaps nearly impossible, to align with one of secularism’s reigning intellectual convictions, what British philosopher Bernard Williams called “Nietzsche’s thought”: that “there is, not only no God, but no metaphysical order of any kind.”
I'm afraid I'm not competent to judge Michael's assessment, and rejection, of John Finnis's arguments for a "nonreligious ground," but I'm sure that many MOJ readers are. In any event, here is Michael's conclusion:
In those liberal democracies in which religious belief is growing increasingly marginalized, one wonders which will survive-Nietzsche’s thought, or the morality of human rights. Can the morality of human rights survive the death-or deconstruction-of God? Was it such a morality that Nietzsche saw in the coffin at God’s funeral?
Perhaps some who find religious ground implausible can remain confident in their conviction that every human being has inherent dignity and is inviolable. “I have reached bedrock,” Wittgenstein wrote, “and this is where my spade is turned.” Perhaps some will say they have no time to obsess about the ground of their conviction because they are too busy doing the important work of “changing the world.” But still, this question intrudes: How can secular thinkers reconcile the very idea of bedrock with their vision of a universe possessed of no underlying metaphysical order whatsoever? If their bedrock conviction holds that the Other possesses inherent dignity and truly is inviolable, then what else must be true; what must be true for it to be true that the Other has inherent dignity and is inviolable? Not an easy question, and one whose answer, believers know, is a mystery.
