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Even if one could exhaustively describe the elements of our nature, the additional claim that we are morally obliged to act in accord with them, or to prefer natural uses to unnatural, would still be adventitious to the whole ensemble of facts that this description would comprise.”

An ought can be derived from an is. Values are not intrinsic or subjective, but objective. An objective value requires answers to certain questions such as a value to whom and for what. The answers to these questions requires a valuer and a purpose. The purpose serves as the standard of value by which the valuer makes a value judgment by means of reason, based on facts of reality about whether or not something is good. The good accordingly, is not good in itself, or arbitrarily bases on feelings,but is good based on the combination of reason plus reality, and thus objective. Objects and actions are objectively good to man for the sake of reaching a specific goal.When man chooses life as the ultimate goal and the standard of value, then what is beneficial to life ought to be desired.

Then, if one starts with the basic axiom that one ought to desire what is really objectively good and only what is really objectively good, and then one is able to determine what is really objectively good based on reason, reality and one's standard of value, then one can conclude that one ought to desire it because it is objectively good.

His problem is using David Hume's ideas for his defense.

Hume believed that you could separate faith and reason, and pitch faith as far as you could throw it.

"Reason alone" is where people always get on the wrong train that leads them into a vast wilderness where they think they have no need for God or human nature.

That way of thinking gave us nihilism, communism and all the other "-isms" that have led to so much human misery and death.

Because of Hume's faulty thinking, he was never offered a professorship in philosophy. All of the other Scottish professors made sure of that.

It was Thomas Reid's reaction to Hume that created the Common Sense movement.

Hume wrote a history of England that even Thomas Jefferson rejected when he was gathering history books for his students at the University of Virginia and chose instead John Lingard's "History of England," who was a Jesuit.

I can't understand why anyone would still be fascinated with Hume.

Thanks for posting this, NYer. I have been following this discussion since Hart brought it up in First Things and have been fascinated. I have not decided yet which side I am on, but I tend more toward Hart and the notion of the insufficiency of natural law.

The defenders of natural law cite Rom 2:15, as Dr. Beckwith did, saying that the law is written on our hearts. But I think they are missing something. Here is Rom 2:14 and 15:

14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them

I may be splitting hairs here, but when I read those two verses I do not see that the specific content of the law is written on people's hearts, which would be required if natural law advocates are correct. In fact is specifically says that the Gentiles "do not have the law."

Instead, what I see is that the idea of law is written on people's hearts. What that means is that everyone has a sense of right and wrong, that some things are good and some things are evil. That does not say that everyone will agree with the specific content, or forms that sense may take. C.S. Lewis has an excellent analysis of this in the chapter entitled, "Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe," in his book, Mere Christianity.

Where Beckwith says that "the human mind is ordered toward the truth..." I would say merely that the human mind is ordered toward truth. Again, that seems to be nit-picking, but the insertion of "the" suggests that there is some positive (in the legal sense), knowable content. By removing "the" I am arguing that while all humans know that "truth" exists, no content is available to us through reason alone.

What natural law advocates seem to want to do is—as Beckwith accuses Hart of doing by stealth—to "derive an ought from an is (i.e.. nature)" to assist in establishing principles of law that all would have to agree were self-evident in nature. But nature does not cooperate with us in that task. Much of what we perceive as nature is a result of the Fall. But nature, as Tennyson famously reminded us, is "red in tooth and claw." (I accept that is a far too simplistic understanding of Beckwith's position.)

Even if nature were not corrupted by the Fall, our own reasoning is corrupted, and fundamental to the human condition is the idea that we are incapable of rightly perceiving good and evil without revelation—and in this case, I don't believe general revelation is sufficient, hence we have the Scriptures.

It is true that from necessity of nutrition does not follow that starving the farmers is wrong. For example, in order to repel an invasion the troops forage in the farmland and that might cause starvation of the farmers. Or, a natural famine might not be alleviated at any reasonable cost and the farmers starve through fault of no one.

However, this is not the only “is” producing the “ought”. Generally if there are two objective facts: (1) a good is destroyed and (2) an outside actor free to act differently destroys it, then we can say objectively that the actor ought not do that: he is violating a natural law. For example, if the Russian countryside were simply left alone in 1930’s, the Russian farmers would not starve and would have excess produce to feed the rest of the country. Therefore forced collectivization was a moral wrong, — not simply because the farmers starved but because if left alone no one would have starved.

In short, if a good is enjoyed solely through ownership of a resource, then such enjoyment is a right and freely chosen violation of that right is a violation of natural law.