Illustrations of the Tao

To forestall the inevitable tedium of repeating what should be a well known idea among all literate men, allow me to quote some examples of what philosopher’s call Natural Law, or Objective Morality.

The examples here are not being used to prove the maxims given. It is not being argued, for example, that merely because all literate races of man extol generosity and excoriate adultery that generosity is good and adultery is bad.

The examples are merely offered to establish the phenomenon to be explained, namely, that men of every culture and age agree on the moral principles, even if they disagree on how those principles are to be applied.

If morality were manmade, as positive law is, or as writing systems are, then they were differ as positive law codes differ, or differ as much as cuneiform differs from runes or hieroglyphs or ideographs or alphabets. But what we have here is a collection of statements, some originally written in runes or alphabets or hieroglyphs or ideograms, which all express the same few moral imperatives in different words. That indicates that this part of the moral law of man is not manmade but natural. Hence it is called Natural Law.

Myself, I would argue that the moral laws exists in the human heart due to the intention of the supernatural creator of man, who also has the authority to command obedience to them, and the power to disseminate these laws instantaneously at creation into every rational spirit. However, other theories can be argued as well. What cannot be argued is that there is no phenomenon to be explained by any theory, no agreement on the natural moral code.

The words below are those of CS Lewis.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.