Philosopher and Apologist

The Holocaust and Natural Law

THE HOLOCAUST AND NATURAL LAW

Another state has recently passed legislation to teach about the holocaust. The Nazis killed around 20 million people during World War II as part of their murderous campaign against those who they saw as unwanted. Not even children or women were spared. At least 6 million of these people were Jewish. The people who proposed these laws to kill the handicapped and other ‘useless eaters’ in the German society were moral Darwinists.

Prisoners in Auschwitz

There are many important lessons instructors can draw from the evil of the holocaust. I’d like to highlight the natural law theory as the preeminent moral theory to answer this evil.

Natural law says that there is a moral law that is a standard of good (or right) and evil (or wrong) that reaches to every person. A person’s genetics, culture, and education does not determine good and evil. The natural moral law is the standard by which every culture and person can be judged.

The natural aspect of this law is a reference to the distinctive part of humanity that sets them apart from any other animal. The natural for mankind is a reference to reason. When humans act in accordance with reason their actions are good and right. When they act against reason their actions are evil and wrong. All humans have a human nature, which is why we can call them humans. Your nature is with you in every culture, time, and place. People also have this nature even if they do not necessarily express it. You have your rational nature from the moment of conception and keep it when sleeping, knocked out, in a coma, and even if we removed your brain.

As humans we judge things to be good and evil. When talking about judging, the term often has negative connotations. A judgment is simply an assessment of whether something is good or bad. Judging is unavoidable, so we should want to make a right judgment (as Jesus instructs in Jn. 7:24). How do we judge anything to be good? The only way this is done is to know what it is for (i.e., its purpose). A good knife, its purpose, is a knife that cuts well. This purpose is its end.

How do we judge humans? One has to know the purpose of humanity to make this assessment. Those that reflect even a short time will realize that the only reason they act one way rather than another is because they think it will bring them happiness or flourishing.  This is the proper end of man.

Keep this in mind as we compare the lives of two different men. One man is an alcoholic. This person often can’t remember some of what occurred the night before due to being so drunk. Most of his friendships are superficial and he has broken many of his relationships due to his alcoholism. His work also suffers due to his drinking alcohol to excess. He lives for the pleasure of the next drink and nothing more. His health has also started to suffer as a result and has developed problems with his liver. Now consider a second man. This person is happily married with children. He loves his job and is good at it. He has some deep meaningful friendships that he regularly cultivates. He also gets to invest healthy doses of quality time every weekend building into his family. Which man has the better life? It doesn’t take a deep philosophical analysis to realize the second man’s life is better.

What about genetic factors as it relates to the morality of the two men? It would be the case that the second man’s life is better even if the first man were genetically predisposed to alcoholism. The mere fact he is genetically predisposed to love alcohol wouldn’t make alcoholism suddenly good. Alcoholism also doesn’t become good even if he gets pleasure from drinking, is taught that it is so, or even if the entire culture thinks it is. Alcoholism is objectively bad independent of these other things.  

There are three really evident reasons for this. First, alcoholism impairs reason. Remember that reason is what sets man apart from all other animals. A person’s rational nature is the one aspect of mankind that makes him uniquely valuable and able to pursue goods beyond what is merely physical. Second, alcoholism also helps destroy not just a person’s reason, but also his body.  Destroying yourself is an evident evil. Third, alcoholism keeps a person from operating as they ought to throughout life in a way that allows them to flourish. This means it keeps a person from attaining their proper end.

How does this relate to the holocaust? The dominant moral philosophy today is that of relativism. Relativism teaches that there are no standards of good or evil that all humans answer to. Good and evil are just the names that a person’s culture or education attaches to certain acts. Relativism says an action in one culture can’t be judged by any other culture. If relativism is true it means those in cultures outside of Nazi Germany can’t condemn the Holocaust. Surely relativism is absurd!

The implications of relativism are many. Let me highlight two of the most repugnant. First, a relativist can find no objective way to say Hitler is worse than Mother Theresa. Hitler was simply carrying out what some in his culture wanted. Mother Theresa, on the other hand, went against the culture in India by caring for the sick and poor. She’d be worse than Hitler if the relativist is correct. Second, if relativism is true there is no difference between opposites. This means there is no difference between bringing someone a nice meal and chopping them into bits.

It should be evident the problems this brings to the discussion of the holocaust. The main defense of the Nazis during the Nuremberg trials, where they were being tried for war crimes, was based in the philosophy of moral relativism. This closely tied in with the legal philosophy called legal positivism. Legal positivism says that the state government determines right and wrong, good and evil. The Nazis said they did nothing illegal. They assumed that whatever is legally right is also morally right.

Nazis on Trial at Nuremberg

Those opposing the Nazis during the Nuremberg trials leveraged their prosecution using natural law as their basis for ‘crimes against humanity’ which should never be done. The Nazis had killed millions of people. The prosecution’s case was built upon the fact that there is a moral law to which even the government answers. This higher natural law judges the laws of a nation.

One popular display of this moral law is found in the play, “A Man For All Seasons,” which depicts the trial of Sir Thomas More. More refused to consent to the decision that the King is the head of the church. More states that, “Some men think the earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it?”  More makes the case that just as a command of the King can’t change the physical reality about the shape of the earth, so too the King’s command cannot change the moral laws that operate over all of mankind. Good and evil are just what they are even if the King himself opposes and makes laws contrary to them.  

Let us take every opportunity to make ourselves and our culture better. It is not enough to simply recognize the evil in our midst. We must stand and fight against it.  There is much truth in the saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This is something that we should not only be teaching our children, but living before them as bearers of light in the darkness.

A Quick Refutation of Relativism

    • Markus Johannes Jesgarz on November 3, 2021 at 2:48 pm

    Reply

    My opinion is:
    The existential Thomism is a reasonable metaphysics.
    1.
    In the article of Wikipedia it says under “Jacques Maritain” and “Ethics” at the beginning:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Maritain#Ethics
    Maritain was a strong defender of a natural law ethics. He viewed ethical norms as being rooted in human nature. For Maritain the natural law is known primarily, not through philosophical argument and demonstration, but rather through “Connaturality”. Connatural knowledge is a kind of knowledge by acquaintance. We know the natural law through our direct acquaintance with it in our human experience. Of central importance, is Maritain’s argument that natural rights are rooted in the natural law. This was key to his involvement in the drafting of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
    Another important aspect of his ethics was his insistence upon the need for moral philosophy to be conducted in a theological context. While a Christian could engage in speculative thought about nature or metaphysics in a purely rational manner and develop an adequate philosophy of nature of metaphysics, this is not possible with ethics. Moral philosophy must address the actual state of the human person, and this is a person in a state of grace. Thus, “moral philosophy adequately considered” must take into account properly theological truths. It would be impossible, for instance, to develop an adequate moral philosophy without giving consideration to properly theological facts such as original sin and the supernatural end of the human person in beatitude. Any moral philosophy that does not take into account these realities that are only known through faith would be fundamentally incomplete.
    https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/aeocp00.htm
    2.
    https://www.facebook.com/SouthernEvangelicalSeminary/posts/4336629326414233?comment_id=4343827755694390

    • Markus Jesgarz on November 14, 2021 at 11:32 pm

    Reply

    This is a comment on the statement starting in the fourth to last paragraph:
    It should be evident the problems this brings to the discussion of the holocaust. The main defense of the Nazis during the Nuremberg trials, where they were being tried for war crimes, was based in the philosophy of moral relativism. This closely tied in with the legal philosophy called legal positivism. Legal positivism says that the state government determines right and wrong, good and evil. The Nazis said they did nothing illegal. They assumed that whatever is legally right is also morally right.
    Those opposing the Nazis during the Nuremberg trials leveraged their prosecution using natural law as their basis for ‘crimes against humanity’ which should never be done. The Nazis had killed millions of people. The prosecution’s case was built upon the fact that there is a moral law to which even the government answers. This higher natural law judges the laws of a nation.
    My opinion is:
    Natural Law is an important concept.
    In the article:
    Human rights and natural law
    https://en.unesco.org/courier/2018-4/human-rights-and-natural-law
    by “UNESCO” it says under “Natural law and positive legislation”:
    Lastly, a reasonable concept of natural law allows us to understand the intrinsic differences distinguishing natural law as such, the law of nations, and positive legislation. We then see that any declaration of human rights necessarily involves a concatenation of rights differing in degree, of which some meet an absolute requirement of the natural law, such as the right to existence or the right to profess, without interference by the State, the religion one believes true (liberty of conscience), others responding to a need of the law of nations, based on natural law, but modified in application by human law and the requirements of ‘common use’ or the common good, such as the right to own property or the right to work – others again meeting an aspiration or desire of the natural law confirmed by positive law, but with the limitations required by the common good, such as the liberty of the press or more generally liberty of expression, freedom of exposition, and freedom of association. These last types of liberty cannot be erected into absolute rights, but constitute rights (conditioned by the common good) which any society that has attained a condition of political justice is required to recognize. It is modern liberalism’s misfortune to have made that distinction impossible for itself, and thus to have been obliged either to contradict itself or to have recourse to hypocrisy, in order to limit the practical exercise of rights which it has confused with the fundamental natural rights and which theoretically it proclaimed as absolute and sacrosanct.
    The concept of natural law has been so much abused, so much pulled about, distorted, or hypertrophied that it is hardly surprising if, in our age, many minds declare themselves weary of the whole idea. Yet they must admit that since Hippias and Alcidamas, the history of human rights and the history of the natural law are one, and that the discredit into which positivism for a period brought the concept of natural law (cf. Heinrich A. Rommen,
    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rommen
    Die Ewige Wiederkehr des Naturrechts, Leipzig, Germany, 1936; English translation: The Natural Law, St. Louis, United States, 1947)
    http://files.libertyfund.org/files/676/Rommen_0017.pdf
    inevitably involved similar discredit for the concept of human rights. Certainly, as Mr Laserson wrote recently: “The doctrines of natural law must not be confused with natural law itself. The doctrines of natural law, like any other political and legal doctrines, may propound various arguments or theories in order to substantiate or justify natural law, but the overthrow of these theories cannot signify the overthrow of natural law itself, just as the overthrow of some theory or philosophy of law does not lead to the overthrow of law itself. The victory of juridical positivism in the nineteenth century over the doctrine of natural law did not signify the death of natural law itself, but only the victory of the conservative historical school over the revolutionary rationalistic school, called for by the general historical conditions in the first part of the nineteenth century. The best proof of this is the fact that at the end of that century the so-called “renaissance of natural law” was proclaimed.”
    It remains true that a positivist philosophy based on observed facts alone, or an idealistic or materialistic philosophy of absolute Immanence is powerless to establish the existence of rights inhering by nature in the human being, antecedent and superior to written laws and agreements between governments, which the civil community is required, not to grant, but to recognize and enforce as universally valid, and whose abolition or infringement no consideration of social utility can even for a moment authorize. Such a concept cannot logically seem other than a superstition to these philosophies. It is valid and rationally defensible only if the rule of nature as an aggregate of facts and events includes and invents a rule of nature in the form of Being transcending facts and events, and is itself based on an Absolute greater than this world. If there be no God, the only reasonable policy is that “the end justifies the means”; and, to create a society where man shall finally enjoy his full rights, it is today permissible to violate any right of any man if this be necessary for the purpose in hand. It is an irony stained with blood to think that, for the revolutionary proletariat, the atheist ideology is a heritage from the most “bourgeois” representatives of the bourgeoisie, who, after calling on the God of the Deists that they might base their own demands on the natural law, rejected that God and the God of the Christians alike when they were come to power and sought to free the all-embracing exercise of proprietary rights from the shackles of the natural law, and to close their ears to the cry of the poor.

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