Ryan T. Anderson reviews Natural Law Liberalism

Printed in the April 16, 2007 issue of National Review

About Rights

RYAN T. ANDERSON

Pick your fight: the “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West, or the “clash of orthodoxies” between secular liberals and religious believers. To read much these days is to be assured that never has the world been more divided, or our nation so polarized.

Central to Western political liberalism is the notion that disagreement can be resolved through common deliberation — and that representative constitutional democracy is the best institution for such deliberation. This makes us think that any kind of clash can be solved through rational discussion of the truths we share. At the same time, however, our modern system is founded on skepticism about the ability of people and their governments to define and enforce a universal vision of the good life. This makes us think that there aren’t any real truths to be shared.

It is in response to such worries that Christopher Wolfe has written his new book, Natural Law Liberalism. Wolfe is a Marquette University political scientist who focused his early work on constitutional interpretation and judicial activism. He founded the American Public Philosophy Institute to support the efforts of such thinkers as Robert P. George, Russell Hittinger, and Hadley Arkes, who have been working to rearticulate the natural-law foundations of political life. Natural Law Liberalism is Wolfe’s contribution to the effort.

By liberalism, Wolfe means the whole range of modern political thought, from the early Enlightenment through the American Founding — the philosophical theory of government that emphasizes human equality, personal liberty, individual rights, participatory government, and the rule of law. And natural law, as Wolfe conceives it, is the long Western tradition of reflection on the nature of human flourishing and the rational principles that can guide human action and choice. His thesis is simple: If political liberalism is to justify itself at home and abroad, it must return to the classical tradition of Western thought and embrace natural-law theory as the account of its foundations.

The book’s argument has three parts. Wolfe begins by exposing the weaknesses of modern theories grounded in skepticism about the good life or in personal autonomy. Then he traces the historical development of liberalism and natural-law theory, showing how these traditions are compatible and mutually reinforcing. He ends with a brief sketch of natural-law liberalism, concluding that liberals should “ground their liberalism in natural-law philosophy,” while “natural lawyers should be liberals.”

Wolfe aims his criticism at several contemporary liberal theorists: John Rawls, Stephen Macedo, Amy Gutmann, Ronald Dworkin, and Joseph Raz. Some of these thinkers argue that there are purely political values that justify liberal democracy. These can be shared by all citizens, whatever their distinctive views about the good life, and the state must remain neutral between more comprehensive competing theories of human flourishing.

The other liberal theorists are — like natural-law thinkers — willing to ground political liberalism in direct appeals to the nature of human flourishing, but they define that flourishing in terms of autonomy and self-determination. Accordingly, they believe that the role of government is to secure the conditions for people to choose whatever they consider good. Think of the Supreme Court’s infamous 1992 “mystery” passage in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Wolfe contends that both of these approaches fail. He argues, for instance, that liberal professions of neutrality smuggle in question-begging assumptions that favor left-wing policy on contested moral issues — in other words, “neutrality liberalism” loads the dice by covertly appealing to the liberals’ own preferred conceptions of public reason, and therefore of human nature. In such questions as, e.g., the value of unborn human life or the public recognition of same-sex unions, the appeal to political neutrality results in an affirmation of the partisan liberal view.

But perhaps most damning is Wolfe’s demonstration that none of these theorists could persuade an outsider to embrace Western classical liberalism. They cannot provide a defense of liberal ideals, institutions, or procedures that would be satisfactory to someone who didn’t already accept them. Contemporary liberals propound rules of engagement and procedures for preserving reciprocity, fairness, and “full and equal citizenship” without ever defending the value of these principles in the first place. Who besides committed liberals will find this convincing? How will this convert someone on the other side of the “clash of civilizations” to become a political liberal? And how do these theories provide a framework for settling the issues at stake in the “clash of orthodoxies”?

This is where Wolfe believes a liberalism grounded in the natural law can make significant contributions. He identifies the centrality of human reason and its ability to know the truth as foundational principles for natural-law philosophy. The objectivity of justice and value is grounded in the intellect’s ability to perceive the goods of human nature as reasons for action that direct one toward real fulfillment. It is within this framework that liberalism’s core principles are most compelling.

Political equality, for example, is most securely based on the natural-law understanding of human beings as free and rational. Despite variations of skill and strength, our basic capacity to act on reasons is the foundation for treating all humans with equal respect. There are no natural superiors or inferiors, there is no ruling class or ruled class — it is because citizens can grasp reasons for action and constitute themselves by free choice that justice requires the consent and participation of the governed.

Natural-law philosophy also provides a foundation for human rights, when rights are understood as protecting basic human well-being. So, for example, the right to speech is best understood as protecting the goods enabled by honest communication — goods such as knowledge, friendship, and health. This conception of rights also provides the framework for determining which forms of speech truly fall within the protections of the right: Deceptive speech and hate speech, for example, serve no goods and thus don’t deserve protection (though prudence may demand that we limit the power of government to suppress even these types of speech). Indeed, the natural-law tradition supports strong government in order to provide the necessary conditions for flourishing — while also demanding limited government to respect the primacy of individuals and their communities in determining themselves.

Besides offering stronger foundations for liberalism, natural law provides important correctives to modern thought. Most important, Wolfe believes, is a proper understanding of the state’s role in shaping citizens’ lives: Modern liberal claims notwithstanding, the polis inevitably teaches and forms the character of its citizens. Given that the goods of human nature are rationally knowable, the state should do what it can, in a limited and subsidiary fashion, to promote its citizens’ flourishing. Other natural-law correctives to bad modern theories include the importance of religion as an aspect of human well-being and the role of the family as the pre-political society that gives rise to political community.

Natural Law Liberalism is a scholarly discussion of intricate philosophical theories of government — not quite for the casual reader. As for specialists in the field, they are likely to find the book dated. Its first half comprises articles published during the 1990s. (Did we really need another critique of Rawls’s now well-known shortcomings?) The second half of the book is a general overview of liberalism and natural law, adding little to the work of John Finnis’s Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980) and Robert P. George’s Making Men Moral (1993).

The book will, however, make a good introduction for students of political philosophy who are unsatisfied with mainstream liberalism’s responses to the clashes of our time — and who wish to explore alternative conceptions more solidly founded on reason and human flourishing.

Mr. Anderson is a junior fellow at First Things. He is also the assistant director of the Program on Bioethics and Human Dignity at the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, N.J.