Monday again – student letter day. To answer the writer’s question, I’ve borrowed from my chapter “The Strange Second Life of Confessional States,” in Paul R. Dehart and Carson Holloway, Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order: Political Philosophy and the Claims of Faith (2014).
Still, it bothers me that natural law theory is so religious. You talk about God "ordaining" the natural law.
Funny that you should say that. All too often natural law thinkers are accused of not being religious enough.
Why?
Maybe natural law doesn't spell the end of democracy, but surely it spells the end of tolerance.
What do you mean?
Just what I said. If there really is a natural moral law, then tolerance goes out the window.
You think everyone ought to be tolerant, is that it?
Passed on by a friend, and used by permission of the writer, with my thanks. Here's the book.
I don't like the sound of this. If there really is a natural moral law, then democracy is over with.
Why?
Because there would be no decisions left for legislators to make. If they did try to make any, judges would just say "The natural law says" and overrule them.
Mondays are reserved for student letters. This student writes from Latin America.
Question:
“With all of you men out there who think that having a thousand different ladies is pretty cool, I have learned in my life I've found out that having one woman a thousand different times is much more satisfying.” -- Wilt Chamberlain, 1999 interview with Al Meltzer
Maybe we make up right and wrong. Maybe human nature doesn't have any inbuilt meaning; maybe the way of life I choose has moral meaning just because I choose it.
