Autor: Strauss, Leo

Buch: Natural Right and History

Titel: Natural Right and History

Stichwort: Naturrecht: Ursprung; Räuberstaat; Konventionalismus (Argument: Stadt); Gerechtigkeit - Eigennutz

Kurzinhalt: The so-called "justice" of robbers is in the service of manifest injustice. But is not exactly the same true of the city? ... By nature everyone seeks his own good and nothing but his own good. Justice, however, ...

Textausschnitt: 105a How adequate this account of justice is, is said to appear from the fact that it "saves the phenomena" of justice; it is said to make intelligible those simple experiences regarding right and wrong which are at the bottom of the natural right doctrines. In those experiences, justice is understood as the habit of refraining from hurting others or as the habit of helping others or as the habit of subordinating the good of a part (the good of the individual or of a section) to the good of the whole. Justice thus understood is indeed necessary for the preservation of the city. But it is unfortunate for the defenders of justice that it is also required for the preservation of a gang of robbers: the gang could not last a single day if its members did not refrain from hurting one another, if they did not help one another, or if each member did not subordinate his own good to the good of the gang. To this the objection is made that the justice practiced by robbers is not genuine justice or that it is precisely justice which distinguishes the city from a gang of robbers. The so-called "justice" of robbers is in the service of manifest injustice. But is not exactly the same true of the city? If the city is not a genuine whole, what is called the "good of the whole," or the just, in opposition to the unjust or selfish, is, in fact, merely the demand of collective selfishness; and there is no reason why collective selfishness should claim to be more respectable than the selfishness of the individual. In other words, the robbers are said to practice justice only among themselves, whereas the city is said to practice justice also toward those who do not belong to the city or toward other cities. But is this true? Are the maxims of foreign policy essentially different from the maxims on which gangs of robbers act? Can they be different? Are cities not compelled to use force and fraud or to take away from other cities what belong to the latter, if they are to prosper? Do they not come into being by usurping a part of the earth's surface which by nature belongs equally to all others?1 (Fs) (notabene)

106a It is, of course, possible for the city to refrain from hurting other cities or to be resigned to poverty, just as the individual can live justly if he wants to. But the question is whether in acting thus men would live according to nature or merely follow convention. Experience shows that only few individuals and hardly any cities act justly except when they are compelled to do so. Experience shows that justice by itself is ineffectual. This merely confirms what was shown before, that justice has no basis in nature. The common good proved to be the selfish interest of a collective. The selfish interest of the collective is derived from the selfish interest of the only natural elements of the collective, namely, of the individuals. By nature everyone seeks his own good and nothing but his own good. Justice, however, tells us to seek other men's good. What justice demands from us is then against nature. The natural good, the good which does not depend on the whims and follies of man, this substantial good appears to be the very opposite of that shadowy good called "right" or "justice." It is the natural good which is one's own good toward which everyone is drawn by nature, whereas right or justice becomes attractive only through compulsion and ultimately through convention. Even those who assert that right is natural have to admit that justice consists in a kind of reciprocity; men are bidden to do to others what they desire to have done to themselves. Men are compelled to benefit others because they desire to be benefited by others: in order to receive kindness, one must show kindness. Justice appears to be derivative from selfishness and subservient to it. This amounts to an admission that by nature everyone seeks only his own good. To be good at seeking one's own good is prudence or wisdom. Prudence or wisdom is therefore incompatible with justice proper. The man who is truly just is unwise or a fool-a man duped by convention.1 (Fs)

107a Conventionalism claims, then, to be perfectly compatible with the admission that the city and right are useful for the individual: the individual is too weak to live, or to live well, without the assistance of others. Everyone is better off in civil society than in a condition of solitude and savagery. Yet the fact that something is useful does not prove that it is natural. Crutches are useful for a man who has lost a leg; is wearing crutches according to nature? Or, to express this more adequately, can things that exist exclusively because calculation has found out that they would be useful be said to be natural to man? Can one say of things which are desired exclusively on the basis of calculation or which are not desired spontaneously or for their own sake that they are natural to man? The city and right are no doubt advantageous; but are they free from great disadvantages? Therefore, the conflict between the self-interest of the individual and the demands of the city or of right is inevitable. The city cannot settle this conflict except by declaring that the city or right is of higher dignity than the self-interest of the individual or that it is sacred. But this claim, which is of the essence of the city and of right, is essentially fictitious.1 (Fs)

107b The nerve of the conventionalist argument, then, is this: right is conventional because right belongs essentially to the city1 and the city is conventional. Contrary to our first impression, conventionalism does not assert that the meaning of right or justice is altogether arbitrary or that there is no universal agreement of any kind in regard to right or justice. On the contrary, conventionalism presupposes that all men understand by justice fundamentally the same thing: to be just means not to hurt others, or it means to help others or to be concerned with the common good. Conventionalism rejects natural right on these grounds: (1) justice stands in an inescapable tension with everyone's natural desire, which is directed solely toward his own good; (2) as far as justice has a foundation in nature--as far as it is, generally speaking, advantageous to the individual--its demands are limited to the members of the city, i.e., of a conventional unit; what is called "natural right" consists of certain rough rules of social expediency which are valid only for the members of the particular group and which, in addition, lack universal validity even in intra-group relations; (3) what is universally meant by "right" or "justice" leaves wholly undetermined the precise meaning of "helping" or "hurting" or "the common good"; it is only through specification that these terms become truly meaningful, and every specification is conventional. The variety of notions of justice confirms rather than proves the conventional character of justice. (Fs) (notabene)