Jeff (or anyone else), a philosophical / political question (Read 382 times)

Scout, I'm in the middle of writing a paper on this. I don't have much time now, but briefly: the natural law philosophers were inspired by the advances of modern science and emboldened to discover in human nature what science was uncovering in physical nature: universal laws. The hope was that if these laws could be uncovered, then they could serve as the foundation of just political law. If the laws of politics mirrored the laws of human nature, then they would be legitimate and not coercive. The self-evident truths of the Declaration were taken to be statements of natural law, and the idea of democracy was founded on the idea of a state whose laws would be founded on human nature, instead of, say, divine right or coercive power. The question today is: is there such a thing as "universal man" or "human nature?" Many critics of the notion of natural law have shown that what the founders took to be natural principles were inherited from religious traditions like Christianity. It also seems clear that in a global and pluralistic society, very few principles hold true across the board, so looking to the universal characteristics of man may be a kind of fantasizing that keeps us from noticing important particular differences, like race, class, gender, etc. The universal man of the enlightenment has none of these characteristics and so tends to cover over political struggles based on these ideas. So, what I would say is that the move to natural law was an advance in that it began asking political questions in democratic ways; the just state responds to the way folks are: their human nature. However, it has its dangers, particularly when one conception of human nature (i.e. the dream of the autonomous rational man) comes to dominate over actual, living people, most of whom care about different things than being rational, autonomous, or a man.