Maritain: Natural law, the gnoseological element

NATURAL LAW is not a law written by men. Men know it with greater or less difficulty, and in different degrees, running the risk of error here as elsewhere. The only practical knowledge all men have naturally and infallibly in common, as a self-evident principle intellectually perceived by virtue of the concepts involved, is that we must do good and avoid evil. This is the preamble and the principle of natural law; it is not the law itself. Natural law is the ensemble of things to do and not to do which follow therefrom in a necessary fashion. That every sort of error and deviation is possible in the determination of these things merely proves that our sight is weak, our nature course, and that innumerable accidents can corrupt our judgment. Montaigne remarked that, among certain peoples, incest and thievery were considered virtuous acts. Pascal was scandalized by this. All this proves nothing against the natural law, any more than a mistake in addition proves anything against arithmetic [or, the mistakes of certain primitive peoples, for whom the stars were holes in the tent which covered the world, prove anything against astronomy].

By the very fact that the Natural law is an unwritten law, man’s knowledge of it has increased little by little as man’s moral conscience has developed. The latter was at first in a twilight state. Anthropologists have taught us within what structures of tribal life and in the midst of what magic this knowledge of the natural law was awakened, and how it was primitively formed. This shows simply that the knowledge men have had of the unwritten law has passed through more diverse forms and stages than certain philosophers or theologians have believed. At the same time, we become aware of the fact that the knowledge which our own moral conscience has of this law is doubtless still imperfect, and very likely it will continue to develop and to become more refined as long as humanity exists. Only when the Gospel has penetrated to the very depth of human substance will natural law appear in its flower and its perfection.

[So the law and the knowledge of the law are two different things.] Yet the law has force of law only when it is promulgated. It is only insofar as it is known and expressed in assertions of practical reason that the natural law has force of law. The gnoseological element is therefore fundamental in natural law.

It is important to recognize that human reason does not discover the regulations of natural law in an abstract and theoretical manner, as a series of geometrical theorems. Moreover, it does not discover them through the conceptual exercise of the intellect, or by way of rational knowledge. I think the teaching of St Thomas here should be understood in a much deeper and more precise fashion than is usual. When he says that human reason discovers the regulations of natural law through the guidance of the inclinations of human nature, he means that the very mode or manner in which human reason knows natural law is not rational knowledge, but knowledge through inclination.

Saint Thomas largely developed this notion of knowledge by inclination, but elsewhere—in the Summa theologiae, II-II, 45, 2. Knowledge by inclination or by connaturality is a kind of knowledge that is not clear, like that obtained through concepts and conceptual judgments. It is obscure, unsystematic, vital knowledge, by means of instinct or sympathy, and in which the intellect, in order to make its judgments, consults the inner leanings of the subject—and listens to the melody produced by the vibration of deep-seated tendencies made present in the subject. All this leads to a judgment—not to a judgment based on concepts, but to a judgment which expresses simply the conformity of reason to tendencies to which it is inclined. […]

~Jacques Maritain: from Natural Law: Reflections On Theory & Practice.

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