The Relativism at the Basis of European Policy*
by Janne Haaland-Matlary
(University of Oslo)

[16] However, in the field of values or norms, natural law thinking has persisted, especially in Catholic philosophy and in the Church itself. In previous chapters in this book I have spent much space showing the absurdity of a totally relativist position, and it is easy to refute such a position. As we have seen, both human rights and democracy are upheld by relativists as ethically right and good, thus making for the paradox that the West proclaims relativism in all things ethical but not in the area of political governance. The contradiction in terms that is evident in the area of human rights is clear: human rights cannot exist as a concept, even less as a reality, if they are based on a relativist position.
The defining characteristic of the human being is ratio, and as the Pope points out, Christianity is the religion of the Logos, of ratio. All things concerning ethics can therefore be discerned by what is often referred to as ‘right reason’, that is, uncorrupted reason. Natural law, which is the term St. Thomas Aquinas uses for the ethics of man’s life in the city, of political life, is entirely accessible to the human mind. Faith as such is even accessible by reason, as evidenced in his logical proofs of the existence of God. Today such proofs are less popular and esteemed, but I mention them simply to underline how far human reason is credited in the Catholic tradition.
St. Thomas took his knowledge and inspiration directly from Aristotle, via the long ‘detour’ of Arab philosophy. If we look at the Aristotelian notion of man, we find the word ousia which means ‘substrate’, something which is in and of itself; underlying all things that change. In Latin, this term is rendered substantia, substance. Essentia, essence, is another expression of this. Genus and other characteristics are ‘accidents’, accidental, but human being is essence, primary and universal.
The definition of the human being as being is therefore that it is an entity that is not derived from anything else; it is the most primary substance, along with other natural creatures such as animals. Aristotle is an empiricist in the sense that he proceeds by observation and classification based on this: he therefore observes that both men and animals are social beings, but that only man is a rational being even if animals also have language, as stated above.
This classical postulate, the definition of the human being by his ration faculty, was adopted by philosophers and theologicans in the early Middle Ages and later, as said, rediscovered by St. Thomas. For instance, Boethius in the 6th century states that man is a ‘rationalis naturae individua substantia’, ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’ [17] and the Stoics of the later Stoa in Rome all postulated the rational ability of man in ethical matters as the important characteristic. The ability to discern and to do the right things was termed ‘virtue’, the Latin for manly, strong, derived as it is from the word for man, vir. The cardinal virtues were known and practiced throughout antiquity, from Socrates’ quest for justice in the Platonic dialogues to Marcus Aurelius’ commentaries on how to practice fortitude and temperance in the governing of the Roma empire.
The human being, then, is created with rationality, and indeed this quality is what distinguishes him from animals. The virtues are the characteristics of human nature that allow man to develop; and the corresponding vices are the ways to become less human, to de-humanize oneself. In Aristotelian ontology all beings have a purpose, a telos, and the purpose of the human being is to perfect the virtues and combat the vices. This is so crucial that it is intrinsic to him in the sense that being itself is ‘more or less’ according to how virtuous a person is. A vile person has less reality or being than a virtuous man, and we recognize a remnant of this in the expression ‘de-humanization’ which we use for someone who is really vile. To the relativist this language cannot logically make sense, as virtue and vice are but subjective preferences. Yet people still realize what de-humanization means; someone who is ‘less than’ human.
The telos of man is eudemonia, happiness, but this is not in the sense of pleasures and indulgences, but in the sense of self-disipline, justice, prudence, and temperance. Only the person who fully masters himself is happy, according to the ancient precept. It is told that emperor Marcus Aurelius lived an ascetic and frugal life, a Spartan existence, in order to conquer his passions – among which sexual passion is probably the least important. The ingredients in ethical living were known very precisely: the virtues were all interconnected; parameters whereby one would navigate in everyday life; and vices could only combatted through strength, i.e. virtue. In the Stoic universe detachment from life’s vicissitudes and temptations played a key role, as did the practice of being ready for death. “Death frees the soul from its envelope”, Marcus Aurelius said. Not fearing death gave strength, perspective on life, and the ability to appreciate the here and now in real terms.
When we look at Christian teaching, we redisover the same elements, this time with an addition of supernatural virtue – the theological ones of faith, hope, and charity. In Christianity the ancient programme of character formation continues: one must acquire natural virtues before one can aspire to attain the super-natural ones. In the famous dictum of St. Thomas, «faith builds on nature and perfects it». There is no point in trying to be a good Christian unless one is prepared to be a good human being; it is simply an impossibility, for divine virtue cannot be attained by a vile person. Forgiveness can of course be dispensed at the discretion of the Lord, but virtue is like an edifice built stone one stone.
What happened to the classical scheme of character formation? Why did people stop believing in the objective truth of virtue and vice, and in human nature itself? This is of course the long story of refutations of metaphysics since the late Renaissance, but it is in many ways a story that is correct and progressive regarding natural science, but which is not so regarding ethics. As professor Ratzinger points out, the old precepts of natural law with regard to natural science have been refuted and justly discarded; but this development is not correct with regard to ethics. There has been no Copernican revolution with regard to progress in defining human nature; only a long row of skeptical philosophers who have dispensed with the concept altogether:

4. Why do we think that human nature cannot be defined?
While natural science progressed, human science, or the Geisteswissenschaften, did not. However, the classical definition of the human being and his nature, and the formative need for cultivating virtue, was upheld as the essence of European Bildung for many centuries. In the words of Italian philosophy professor Enrico Berti, «…it remained the basis of global culture, not only Christian but also Jewish and Muslim, both ancient, mediaeval, and modern, that is of the entire culture which Aristotelian tradition has influenced; indeed, we find it irrelevant variations in Augustine, John Damascene, Richard of St. Victor, Thomas Acquinas, leibnitz, Rosmini, Maritain and several other thinkers» .
[18] But with the advent of natural science followed a ‘spill-over’ to metaphysics: From the time of John Locke we see that his notion of the person cannot yield natural law, although he writes in the natural law tradition. For Locke, the human being cannot be known or defined because it cannot be arrived at through direct sense experience. The human being is something else than mere sensation, Locke thinks, but because he cannot sense it or observe it, it must remain unknown. This line of thought is developed further by Berkeley who argues that ‘being is preception’ (esse est percipi) and reaches it high point (or low point, as it were) in the empiricism of David Hume:
Hume does away with metaphysics altogether, but he also does away with physics: His skepticism is such that not even observations of causation count as causation: If we see a ball hitting another ball, all that we observe are two sequential occurrences – and that observation does not allow us to infer that the first ball caused the other to roll when hitting it. Hume argues that since we have seen this before, we expect the first ball to make the other roll, but this is simply a habit of ours. Since we can never observe the concept of cause, we can never know anything about it! On this ontology, there is no ontology, even less human nature that can be known – all that exists, is a series of sense experiences. Since we cannot observe ourselves, only notice our own behaviour, we have no substance or identity, all that we can know about ourselves is a series of disconnected sense experiences. In justice to Hume I should mention that he found his own philosophy entirely dissatisfactory ,[19] but declared that science could not help.
At this point we are faced with the delineation of the concept of science and also rationality to natural science alone. Only that which can be empirically observed and proven, can exist scientifically. While this is true for natural science; it has however never been true for the human sciences. The reductionism of science to natural science leaves metaphysics dead and philosophy ill at ease; now condemned to dealing with lesser questions than ontology and epistemology. It no longer makes sense to study the major questions of ethics when one cannot deal with the premises of ethics by meaningfully asking what human nature is like and how it can fulfill its goals.
Immanuel Kant tries to ‘rescue’ objective human nature by postulating it a priori, like an axiom of mathematics. The human being is a rational being endowed with dignity, he postulates, and therefore should not be treated as an object, a means, but as an end in itself. But praiseworthy as this may be; Kant’s postulate remains but a postulate since nothing about human nature can be known. The ethics, or moral imperative, is necessary because otherwise men would become utilitarian beasts.
Later, in the 19th century, Hegel and Fichte destroy the notion of metaphysics further, denying that essences can exist and be known: all is idea, nothing is real. And after that we find that the concept of different cultures replace human nature: the person is a ‘product’ of culture and society in both Marxism and modern anthropology. Relativism has become the very premise.
The impossibility of objective reality – sometimes dubbed essentialism – is further developed by analytical language philosophy which argues that reality cannot exist apart from language itself, it is in fact constituted by language. This school of thought is today present in the pervasive approach called constructivism in the social and human sciences: political reality, especially norms, are socially constructed. Likewise, the positivist turn in legal philosophy which underlies most European legal thought denies that there is any reality to the concept of justice: the law is what the letter of the law says.
However, given this, there is now a turn back to metaphysics in important schools of philosophy: In the Oxford and Cambridge schools of ordinary language philosophy there is a return to the classical concept of the person .[20] The American philosopher W. O. Quine argues, in his famous book Word and Object (1960) that language must refer to objects that in turn give meaning to language – i.e. it is the objects that exist independently and language that describes them, not the other way round, as constructivism and analytic language philosophy would have it.
Also in the continental tradition we find very significant objections to the death of metaphysics in personalism and hermeneutics. Personalist philosophers like Jonas, Mounier, Ricoeur, and the late Pope John Paul II have emphasised that the experience of the other provides the basis for knowledge of human nature and ethics. Mounier himself states that the classical concept of person «is the best candidate to sustain legal, political, economic and social battles in defence of human rights» . [21] The reason for this is entirely simple and logical: if equality is the central notion of law and politics, then this implies that there is something knowable about the human person that is the same everywhere and always. This is also the central point of my argument that human rights are a natural law concept – they demand and presuppose one common human nature in terms of the same dignity and the same equality.

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