Books - "The Line Through the Heart - Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction". by J. Budziszewski

“The Goodness and Humanity of God”

by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

The sub-title of J. Budziszewski’s 2009 book, The Line Through the Heart, reads as follows: “Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction.” 

The initial dedicatory citation in the book, from which the book derives its title, is a memorable one from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It reads: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” 

Needless to say, this sentence is soul-wrenching. It compels us all to stop blaming external causes and systems for the conditions of our souls and of our society. 

This insight is but a graphic adaption of Plato’s affirmation that the disorders of our polities are first found in the disorders of our own souls. 

These disorders are not our subjective “feelings” about what ought to be if we were given what we wanted but standards first found in the reality of things that remain valid and have their defined consequences whether we ignore them or not.

What particularly struck me in reading Budziszewski’s book, however, was his attention to natural law as itself a sign of contradiction. 

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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com

The Scandal of Natural Law

An Interview with J. Budziszewski, author ofThe Line Through the Heart

Carl E. Olson, the editor of Ignatius Insight, recently interviewed Dr. Budziszewski about The Line Through the Heart, the importance of natural law, and the intolerance of liberalism. 

Ignatius Insight: What is a pithy, less-than-three-sentences definition of natural law? 

Budziszewski: The expression "natural law" refers to the basic principles of right and wrong that are true for everyone because they are rooted in the very nature of the created human person, and knowable to everyone because we are endowed with conscience and the power to deliberate.

In principle, the natural law provides a point of contact, a common ground, among people of every culture -- although, as I've written, it is a slippery one.

Ignatius Insight: You point out throughout The Line Through the Heart that there are many misconceptions about and misrepresentations of natural law. What are some of most common of those misconceptions and misrepresentations? Where or who do they tend to come from?

Budziszewski: Some of these misconceptions concern nature in general: We may think that nothing in created reality has any value or significance except as "stuff" for the powerful to work their wills upon. Others concern human nature in particular: We may imagine that we aren't "persons" but only thinking meat, and that we have no "nature" but are only a meaningless and purposeless result of a process that did not have us in mind. Still others concern conscience: We may be taken in by the idea that conscience is completely arbitrary, that it is merely a leftover from the way we happen to have been socialized, and that right and wrong are for each person to decide for himself. 

A final sort of misconception concerns history: We may confuse natural law with a particular theory of natural law that happens to be gravely deficient, for example the view of early modern social contract thinkers who began from a non-existent "state of nature."

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J. Budziszewski, who holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of several books, including The Revenge of Conscience and How to Stay Christian in College. A new edition of his book, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide, will be published by Ignatius Press in 2011. His most recent book is The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction (ISI, 2009), which has been praised by Peter Kreeft as "a powerful, convincing, high-level yet commonsensical piece of philosophizing" and as "clear, analytical, persuasive" by the late Ralph McInerny. 

Read more: www.ignatiusinsight.com