While Adam Seagrave offers a provocative and original reading of Locke, his assumptions about the self and ownership are deeply problematic.

A Caution against Compatibility: 

On Natural Rights and Natural Law

by Christopher O. Tollefsen

Adam Seagrave should be a familiar figure to readers of Public Discourse: he has produced a number of essays for PD, some of which have invited response and debate of high quality. Those readers will not be surprised to learn that his new book, The Foundations of Natural Morality: On the Compatibility of Natural Rights and the Natural Law, is likewise of significant merit. Its account of the foundations of natural law and natural rights do not strike me as ultimately persuasive, but that should be expected of a book that self-consciously takes aim (though always charitably) at the so-called “New Natural Law” theory.

A brief review of some of the areas that I find problematic will be helpful given the ongoing debate over the grounds of natural law and the relationship of natural law to natural rights.

Natural Rights vs. Natural Law

Seagrave’s book proceeds in four stages. The introduction lays out the conflict between natural law and natural right approaches. What is the relationship between the two?

Seagrave notes that thinkers such as Jacques Maritain and John Finnis have argued that the idea of natural rights emerges organically from natural law thought. While Finnis notes that rights talk often refers to rights as subjective powers that individuals possess, he argues that the best way of thinking about rights articulates the demands of justice for the common good from the standpoint of those who will be benefited by just action. Thus, natural rights are both continuous and compatible with the natural law that establishes the order of justice. In this view, “absolute” human rights reflect absolute demands made by the natural law: e.g., never to intentionally kill an innocent, never to rape, to enslave, and so on. For each of these we may identify a natural, absolute, inviolable right.

By contrast, thinkers such as Leo Strauss have argued that the modern era of natural rights sharply breaks with the ancient and medieval intellectual framework. The latter emphasized the community; the former, the individual. The latter framed the law as under the command of a divine lawgiver; the former saw rights as emergent from and protective of the free and autonomous nature of the individual. From this standpoint, doctrines of natural rights neither emerge from nor fit comfortably with doctrines of natural law. The first stage of Seagrave’s book establishes this dilemma: continuous and compatible or not?

The Case for a Third Way ...
Humanity and Reason’s Commands ...
Dealing with Controversial Moral Questions ...
Self-Making, Self-Ownership, and Human Goods ...

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