abstract: |

Skip Navigation

by John Fielding

The One and the Many issue has been played out in the history of "natural rights." Prior to Machiavelli and Hobbes, an older concept of "natural law," developed from Greek philosophy, held sway. Leo Strauss remarks that "[t]raditional natural law is primarily and mainly an objective 'rule and measure,' a binding order prior to, and independent of, the human will."1 Consequently, as Scott Stripling pointed out:

Clearly, if, as the old natural law tradition believed, the ground of obligation and virtue is an objective order, existing prior to and independently of the human will, one must inquire into that order to discern as well as one can the basis of virtue of political justice. According to the great tradition from which Locke departed, the objective order was understood to be with nature, or the revealed word of God. God did not reveal His Law to all mankind, but only to some; but, according to the Thomistic tradition, there are laws, knowable as such, which are binding upon all human beings simply as rational. These laws are apprehended by the conscience, and are apprehended as imposing obligations, without any special assistance from revelation.2

This formulation of natural law had its genesis in Socrates' and Plato's reaction to the corrosive nominalism of the early Sophists. The predominant Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, favored an "organically based conception of political life, rooted in ideas of natural law, or what is 'right' by nature."3 Daniel Elazar explains:

Simply put, the organic model views civil society as the product of a kind of organic evolution from families, clans, tribes, and villages in which larger political institutions, constitutional relationships, and power alignments emerge in response to past precedents and changing circumstances, usually with a minimum of constitutional choices. For the Greeks, constitutional choices leading to the creation of virtuous regimes were extraordinary, generally improbable, occurrences. The end result of the evolution is an organically unified entity which, being more than the simple sum of its parts, possesses a life of its own. Such a polity is not construed as an "artificial" association entered into voluntarily by compact, but as a higher, more comprehensive organism rooted in the apparent structure of nature.4

Without recourse to God's revelation, man has sought to define the basic structure of the world in terms of either one aspect (Plato and Aristotle) or of many aspects (Sophists and Epicureans).

1. The early Greek philosophers: Monists, Pluralists, and Sophists. Pre-Socratic philosophers were divided into two groups: monists and pluralists. Monists believed that reality had its origin in one principle. As Gordon Clark put it, "[I]f the universe and all its phenomena are to be explained by one stuff, the original stuff must be capable of transforming itself into the visible things of common experience."5 Thales believed that principle to be water: water seemed to produce life; water was alternatively gas, liquid, and solid; water seemed to produce fire through lightning. Anaximander believed water to be on a par with the other three elements: fire, earth, and air. He posited an element he termed the "indeterminate boundless."6 Anaximenes thought that such stuff was a little ill-defined. Anaximenes thought the stuff had to be empirically perceived, and water needed to be supported, as did earth. Air, on the other hand, always stayed put. Condensation and rarefaction were adequate mechanical explanations of the generation of qualities.7 Heraclitus is responsible for the idea that since a river is constantly changing, can we claim that we have stepped into the same river twice? Heraclitus chose fire because it seemed to be the element that most easily explained motion. We do not exist, not as a person, but as a series of moments.8 As Rushdoony comments:

   Reality is thus a perpetual becoming, energy in motion.... Fire "steers the universe." Change is the harmonious interaction of opposites as a closed circle, a continuing and continuous dialectic: "God is day-night, winter-summer, war-peace, satiety-famine...." Thus, a dialectical tension and a kind of relativity are basic to Heraclitus. Chaos and order are necessary, one to another, and male to female: this is the tension and motion which constitutes reality.9

   Parmenides opposed the constant flux of Heraclitus' approach, claiming "being" or "unity" was the basis of reality. Ross A. Foster comments:

   Whereas Heraclitus said that everything changes, Parmenides claimed, "Whatever is, is." Becoming is, then, illusory, as is all change. Motion and change are inconceivable to Parmenides, and if sense perception suggests to us that things change, then our senses are deceiving us. Reason shows that there is not, nor will there ever be, anything apart from being. Parmenides' view of reality challenged the concept of Heraclitus' changing cosmos. Parmenides rejected the evidence of the senses and relied on his abstract premises and reason, which show us there is no change, motion, and no creation.10

   The dispute between Parmenides and Heraclitus is a conflict between One and Many, form and matter (brute factuality), rationality and irrationality (will), and "nature" and "convention" that has been replayed numerous times in history. Nevertheless, Heraclitus deserves credit as the first Western philosopher that conceived of a natural law "standing behind" human laws and "from which all human laws draw their force."11 This notion would re-emerge in Plato, who reacted strongly against the idea that the law was merely conventional with no overarching notion of natural right or justice.

   The Sophists, however, came down decidedly on the side of convention, which is to say that positive law simply has its source in the convenience of the men who are powerful enough to put them into effect. Thus, the only source is the will of man, rather than conguence with natural law as discerned by reason. The views of the Sophists mostly exist in fragments and in quotations and representations in Plato's writings, not the most objective of sources. For example, during a discussion of the abstract concept of justice in the Republic, Thrasymachus states "that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger."12 Sabine comments that Callicles similarly argues in the Gorgias "that natural justice is the right of the strong man and that legal justice is merely the barrier which the multitude of weaklings puts up to save itself."13 Antiphon asserts that "all law is merely conventional and hence contrary to nature."14 Thus, "for Antiphon, 'nature' is simply egoism or self-interest."15 Finally, Glaucon proposes an early form of social contract whereby men contract together to pass laws for mutual convenience and protection.16

   Rommen remarks that in all of this, the Sophists are seen as the progenitors of the natural rights theories of the Enlightenment, especially that of Rosseau.17 As we shall see later, the modern theory of natural rights reasserted the conventionalist understanding of society whereby a group of individuals in a state of nature yielded pre-existent rights to form a civil society. This understanding of "individual rights" was unknown to Plato and Aristotle. As Zane remarks, among the Greeks, "there was no end of rhetorical writing about liberty itself, but the writers are referring to the independence of the state. The citizen is unprotected from the state, and the individual counts for nothing."18

2. Plato. Plato, Aristotle's teacher, viewed natural law as the unchanging world of forms which emanated from Absolute Good and which the present world merely shadowed. Consequently, the ideal state for Plato consisted of Philosopher-Kings who, through their education, were prepared "to know the Good through rational insight and embody its ideals by ruling directly over the social order."19

   Thus, since knowledge was virtue, it followed that those who were the most knowledgeable were the most virtuous. It also followed, contra the Sophists, that "there is an objective good to be known and that it can be known by rational or logical investigation.... The good is objectively real, whatever anybody thinks about it, and it ought to be realized not because men want it but because it is good."20

   This principle for Plato has wide application. If knowledge is virtue, people are therefore ranked in society according to knowledge or natural aptitude and occupy callings that are suitable not only to the person but also to the needs of society. Thus there is no such thing as individual rights for Plato. Any rights possessed are possessed by the social position in which a particular man might find himself. Thus, "society is to be conceived as a system of services in which every member both gives and receives."21 Therefore,

   men figure in such a system as the performance of a needed task and their social importance depends on the value of the work they do. What the individual possesses, therefore, is first and foremost a status in which he is privileged to act and the freedom which the state secures him is not so much for the exercise of his free will as for the practice of his calling.22

   Plato rejects the alternatives that Antiphon and Glaucon raise because a social contract, resting as it does on the will of men "can never show that justice is intrinsically a virtue."23 Justice for Plato is derived from every person honoring and being honored in his respective position in society.

   One of the key points to be gleaned from all of this is the natural sociability of man. Men naturally seek their own place in society and contribute and receive according to that place. The philosopher-king merely fulfills his role by arranging society in the most advantageous manner possible. Thus, rights and duties are a concomitant of societal place and status, not of individuals as individuals. Consequently the law is that regulation of society that reflects the wisdom of the philosopher-king. As Sabine comments, "In the state of the Laws, wisdom is crystallized--perhaps one might even say frozen--in the law."24 Unfortunately, such a system placed everything in society in the hands of the philosopher-kings to be managed for society's benefit. This included the education of children and the ownership of property. Thus, another other key point is that Plato's "ideal" society is organic, hierarchical, totalitarian, and communistic.

3. Aristotle. Aristotle, by contrast, combined the changeless principles ("essences") with the changing embodiments of those essences. Thus, Rommen states:

   Plato had totally separated the world of sense perception from the world of pure ideas, the objects of scientific, necessary, and true knowledge (universalia ante rem). Aristotle transferred the idea as the form which determines the formless matter into the individual (universalia in re). This "becomes" through the union of the form (or the essence or the true whatness) with the matter (or the potency or the possibility) and thus gives actuality to the individual. The archetype for Aristotle was human artistic activity: the architect who constructs a house according to the plan in his mind; the sculptor who molds a statue in accordance with his artistic conception; even organic nature which causes the plant to grow from the actualizing essential form that exists in the seed in an incorporeal manner. Aristotle wished to comprehend motion, development, becoming. To him, therefore, the essence, and the perfect expression of it in the individual, is also the telos, or end. The form is thus the efficient and the final cause at one and the same time. Applied to the domain of ethics, however, this means that pure being or the pure essential form is likewise the goal of becoming for the man who is to be fashioned by education into a good citizen. From the essential being results an oughtness for the individual man. In this way, from the content of the primary norm, "strive after the good," arises the norm, "realize what is humanly good," as it appears in the essential form of man. The supreme norm of morality is accordingly this: Realize your essential form, your nature. The natural is the ethical, and the essence is unchangeable.25

   For Aristotle, society or the polis "was a complex natural whole,"26 which contained within it the principles of law, as opposed to Plato who held to an "idea of the good so [transcendent over] individual phenomena that it leaves practical life without a guide." Of course, the Sophists relativized law to the individual so that any laws became purely conventional, positivistic, and based upon power. As a practical matter, Aristotle believed that Plato's view of law had to necessarily reduce to that understanding as well.27

   It is Aristotle's view of the purpose of society and how to achieve it that forms the basis of his Nicomachean Ethics and, derivatively, his Politics. As Harry Jaffa states: "The conditions of happiness are seldom if ever within the ability of one man to control. Only good men can be happy (although they may not be), but good laws make good men, and good government makes good laws."28 Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, describes the highest good for men (the Summum Bonum) as "happiness."29 The remainder of the Ethics is devoted to laying out a system of ethics describing the method by which men best achieve happiness. Furthermore, since it was inconceivable by Aristotle that happiness could be achieved by man in isolation (since happiness consisted in the best fit between man, society [the polis], and the proper form of government suited to the polis), his Politics was written as an extension of the Ethics. Thus, the Ethics and the Politics are devoted to two halves of the same subject: "the philosophy of human affairs"30 or "practical wisdom."31

   While there is a closer connection between Plato and Aristotle than supposed by many, Aristotle is concerned in these works with laying out the method of attaining betterment of action calculated to produce the greatest happiness for individuals as well as society. To this end, his books are not intended to be a method of analysis of causes and principles so much as to "articulate the phenomena of human action...through a...refinement of men's opinions concerning those phenomena."32 This is not a speculative or abstract exercise. Smith explains that in the Ethics Aristotle shows what goodness or virtue is, and how it is to be reached; however,

   By itself it does not enable us to become, or to help others to become, good. For this it is necessary to bring into play the great force of the Political Community or State, of which the main instrument is Law. Hence arises the demand for the necessary complement to the Ethics, i.e., a treatise devoted to the questions which centre round the enquiry; by what organisation of social or political forces, by what laws or institutions can we best secure the greatest amount of character.

   We must, however, remember that the production of good character is not the end of either individual or state action; that is the aim of the one and the other because good character is the indispensable condition and chief determinant of happiness, itself the goal of all human doing.33

   Thus, "practical wisdom" or "practical science" (or "prudence") is divided into three branches: ethics, economics (or "domestic management"), and the science of "governing."34 The object of any leader is to use practical wisdom to discern the best regime for enabling all in the society to achieve their full potential, i.e., happiness. Leo Strauss states:

   In order to reach his highest stature, man must live in the best kind of society, in the kind of society that is most conducive to human excellence. The classics called the best society the best politeia. By this expression they indicated, first of all, that, in order to be good, society must be civil or political society, a society in which there exists government of men and not merely administration of things.... Yet politeia is not a legal phenomenon. The classics used politeia in contradistinction to "laws." The politeia is more fundamental than any laws; it is the source of all laws....

   The American Constitution is not the same thing as the American way of life. Politeia means the way of life or a society rather than its constitution.... The thought of connecting "way of life of a society" and "form of government" can be provisionally stated as follows: The character, or tone of a society depends on what the society regards as most respectable or most worthy of admiration. But by regarding certain habits or attitudes as most respectable, a society admits the superiority, the superior dignity, of those human beings who most embody the habits or attitudes in question.35

   In turn, the society produces those that may guide the society to this goal by educating the participants in moral virtue so that the practical wisdom may be inculcated in the citizenry.

   Aristotle's major disagreement with Plato is that in Plato, the state is everything: family, educator, political apparatus, and religious order. Aristotle was not comfortable with the state being such a unity. He especially was not comfortable with Plato's communistic position on property. He felt the need for more pluralism so as to "further the desired self-sufficiency." However, as stated earlier, there is ultimately nothing outside of the state or transcendent to it, since man is a political animal and the highest authority is the highest, best, and most virtuous philosopher/leaders. Thus, "[f]or the Greeks, the state was the highest order of being and man's truest life."37

   While Aristotle may have some criticisms of Plato on the ground of impracticality, he appears to agree that an individual enjoys no rights that belong to him intrinsically. In his discussion of the city-state, Aristotle points out that any attempt to absolutize a claim on the part of an individual will be met by the rejoinder that what can be claimed for an individual can be claimed for many. As Jaffa states, "This... means an argument which, if pushed too far, will justify the claims of the few or the one against the many no less than it will justify the argument for the many. As each rival claims moderates his claim, in light of the awareness that it can be turned against him the idea of a common good in which the rival claims are harmonized emerges,"38 the "Aristotelian mean."39 Thus, "polity is a kind of virtuous mean between the two vicious extremes constituted by the claims of wealth and poverty."40 Rommen comments:

   The polis or city-state was the great pedagogue, against which, strictly speaking, no natural subjective right of the citizen could be admitted. [Plato and Aristotle] acknowledged no goal of man that transcends the ideal polis.41

   Rushdoony states that "Aristotle was philosophically committed to the ultimacy of the one; he hoped pragmatically to provide a place for the many."

Conclusion. It is clear that beginning with the major Greek philosophers, the organic and hierarchical model of society won out. With Plato, society's leaders, the philosopher/kings are "plugged in" to the Good, the world of Being, and use that knowledge to govern the world of Becoming, represented by the polis . The only "rights" are the rights of privilege and class; entitlements that belong to society as a whole.

Aristotle is only an improvement if one prefers totalitarian non-communistic regimes to communistic ones. Any rights that are possessed are completely part of one's place in society. The state is the most perfect development of society, and man is made to be in it in his proper place. There are no rights apart from society. Instead of separating the natural law from the law, as in Plato, Aristotle permeates society with it. Thus, society, as Elazar points out above, is an organic outgrowth of natural law. The rights of individuals do not exist.

John Fielding (M.A., M.Div., J.D.) is the president of the National Reform Association. He is active in politics and practices law in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at fielding@talon.net.

Endnotes

1. Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963), vii.

2. Scott R. Stripling, Capitalism, Democracy and Morality (Acton, MA: Copley, 1994), p. 67.

3. Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant & Commonwealth, in The Covenant Tradition in Politics, Vol. 2 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1996), p. 39.

4. Ibid., p. 40.

5. Gordon H. Clark, Thales to Dewey: A History of Philosophy (Twin Brooks Series; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), p. 9.

6. W. Andrew Hoffecker, ed., Building a Christian World View (2 vols.; Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1986-1988), p. 2:24; Clark, Thales, p. 9.

7. Clark, Thales, pp. 12-13.

8. Ibid., pp. 17-18.

9. Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy (n. p.: Craig, 1971), pp. 74-75.

10. Hoffecker, Christian World View, p. 2:27.

11. Heinrich A. Rommen, The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy, rev. ed., Thomas R. Hanley, trans. [1947] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), pp. 14-15.

12. Plato, The Republic, in The Dialogues of Plato, (Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 7, Robert Maynard Hutchins, editor-in-chief; Benjamin Jowett, trans.; Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittannica, Inc., 1952), p. 338, 7:301.

13. George H. Sabine and Thomas L. Thorson, A History of Political Philosophy (4th ed.; Hinsdale, IL: Dryden, 1973), p. 44; cf. Plato, Gorgias in The Dialogues of Plato, (Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 7, Robert Maynard Hutchins, editor-in-chief; Benjamin Jowett, trans.; Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittannica, Inc., 1952), pp. 483-484, 7:271-272.

14. Sabine, Political Philosophy, p. 43.

15. Idem.

16. Plato, The Republic, in The Dialogues of Plato, pp. 358-359, 7:311.

17. Rommen, The Natural Law, p. 7.

18. John Maxwell Zane, The Story of Law ([1927]; Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), p. 136.

19. W. Andrew Hoffecker, "Plato's Republic: A Rational Society," in Building a Christian World View, W. Andrew Hoffecker, ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1988), 2:132.

20. Sabine, Political Philosophy, p. 53.

21. Ibid., p. 60.

22. Idem.

23. Idem.

24. Ibid., p. 84.

25. Rommen, The Natural Law, pp. 14-15.

26. Harry V. Jaffa, "What is Politics?" The Conditions of Freedom (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1975), p. 38.

27. Ibid., pp. 18-19.

28. Ibid., p. 17.

29. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, in The Works of Aristotle, Vol. 2 (Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 9, Robert Maynard Hutchins, editor-in-chief; Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittannica, Inc., 1952), 1:3:1095a:4, 9:340.

30. J. A. Smith, "Introduction," The Ethics of Aristotle, Ernest Rhys, ed., D.P. Chase, trans. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1911), p. vii.

31. Carnes Lord, "Aristotle," in History of Political Philosophy, Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., Third edition (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987), p. 119.

32. Ibid., pp. 119-120.

33. Smith, "Introduction," pp. viii-ix.

34. The Ethics of Aristotle, 6:8:1142a, 139.

35. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Phoenix Books; Chicago: University of Chicago, 1965), pp. 135-137. See also The Ethics of Aristotle, 10:9:1181a, 260-261; Aristotle, The Politics, World's Classics, Ernest Barker, trans. (New York: Oxford, 1995), 2:2:1273a, 79; 3:6:1278b, 97; 3:17:1288a, 131; 4:2:1289a, 135; 4:5:1292b, 146-147; 4:11:1295a-1295b, 157-158; 4:13:1297a, 163.

36. Charles Vereker, The Development of Political Theory (Harper Colophon; New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 36-37; Aristotle, The Politics, 7.1-17; 8.1-7; 251-317.

37. Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many, p. 87.

38. Jaffa, "What is Politics?", p. 58.

39. Cornelius Van Til, Christian Theistic Ethics, in In Defense of the Faith (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), pp. 68-69.

40. Jaffa, "What is Politics?," p. 61.

41. Rommen, Natural Law, p. 17.

back to top