Fine analysis, BMCDA, and not much to quibble with. Except I’m wondering why you seem to have such difficulty drawing conclusions from what appear to be your own premises.
You put your finger on the problem when you say that what system of morality gets translated into the laws of particular societies is “always” decided by powerful men. Everything you say clearly reveals that you think there may be something “wrong” with this, at least potentially. You suggest that the American system is a successful order because it has found institutional mechanisms to keep expressions of “the rule of men” at a practical minimum. You seem to suggest that totalitarian regimes are “bad” because they cannot restrain leaders who wish to impose their own system of “morality” in furtherance of their larger goals.
I’m with you so far! But if you and I both know that “rule of men” is “bad,” then who’s rule is “good?”
And why do we suppose the rule of men is “bad” in the first place? Do we know there is something better? If so, what? And how do we know it?
The thought has occurred to me that human beings by nature universally, somehow or other, seem to have some sort of in-built sense of justice that isn’t dependent on cultural conditioning or intellectual attainment. Natural law theory is premised in the idea that just and good laws satisfy the perennial requirements of human life, which are rooted in individual human nature and the life of specific communities in which individuals are rooted.
Thus, there appears to be something at the “bottom” of just and good laws that is not and cannot be the creation of a man or a group of men: It is ulterior to us, a something “given.” And it is given to us in such as way as somehow to be understandable by us.
Well, such questions make for an interesting speculation for those so inclined.
I’d just like to add, in closing, that our American system of justice is a great culmination of classical and Judeo-Christian thought and experience. And to further point out that, from these sources, has evolved a highly successful rule of law premised on the liberty, dignity, and sanctity of the human person. It should come as no surprise that all three of these great traditions regard man in his essential human nature as the image of God – which, when you boil it all down, is all that stands as the basis of the natural liberty, dignity, and sanctity of the human person.
The difficulty in speaking with macroevolutionists on such questions seems to consist in the fact that their theory is not conformable with the idea of a human nature that is relatively fixed over vast eons of time. So with them you cannot successfully argue that justice has anything to do with the requirements of universal human nature. Quite the contrary.
In the matter of justice, the logic of their position demands that “lawgivers” will always be the powerful men, the “fittest survivors” of the struggle for survival – of the species, of the “selfish gene,” of the libido dominandi – whatever it is that is supposedly trying to survive under their scenario….
On such a theory, it is to be quite reasonably expected that the humble and powerless would always be the victims and sacrifices…and so, the entire idea of Justice (let alone “equal justice under law”) is dead from the get-go.
At least, that’s what it all looks like to me. I’ll be happy to stand corrected, if I’m missing something here. Thanks again, BMCDA, for your thoughtful and provocative essay. Best, bb.
BB, my cyber darling. So now we're "macroevolutionists" I see. Anyway, I don't agree with the above paragraph. I think human nature is fairly fixed, regardless of future evolutionary changes. Were our species to evolve into something different -- which might occur if we settled various planetary systems and different populations were isolated for long (really long) periods -- I can't imagine a scenario where our current concepts of justice wouldn't be applicable to all the various offshoots of humanity. They still wouldn't like to be murdered, or have their property stolen, etc. If they had any kind of intelligence and a functioning society, they'd need the same morality as humans now require. (Of course, I don't see humans evolving into a termite-like species, so I don't need to consider the "morality" of such critters, if any.)
Further, it's not important who makes the laws or whether powerful men are the lawgivers or not. The problem is that those powerful men often enough think they are above the law which the common man is bound to. There are no laws that emanated from the brain of a powerful man I can think of which approve of murder, theft, rape or other behaviour of this calibre. So if peasant A murdered peasant B (or stole something from him) then he was punished (at least in those societies where the law inforcement was still intact).
So it's only natural that those in power want the societies they rule to function. The only difference between a totalitarian regime and a democracy is that there are no exceptions for those in power i.e. they are also bound to the rules they create.
The difficulty in speaking with macroevolutionists on such questions seems to consist in the fact that their theory is not conformable with the idea of a human nature that is relatively fixed over vast eons of time. So with them you cannot successfully argue that justice has anything to do with the requirements of universal human nature. Quite the contrary.
One thing to remember: A successful, wide ranging species tends to vastly slow down its evolution. It's a side effect of the mathematics of population genetics: It takes far longer for a mutation to take over a large gene pool than a small one.
This is one reason why Punctuated Equilibrium makes so much sense. But it also helps explain why Homo sapiens sapiens hasn't changed (anatomically at least) for, what is it, 50k-100k years? So it seems that once H. sapiens settled down into what is now our own species, it has indeed become a relatively stable biological platform, implying a stable human nature.
The classic loaded question, although I'm sure it was inadvertent. (And you mean "whose." :)) The usual contrast is between the rule of men and the rule of law.