Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Jefferson's Blend of Natural Rights and Natural Law

“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” is Thomas Jefferson’s triad he took from Natural Rights and from Natural Law.  

The Natural Rights of life and liberty he appropriated from John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, leaving out Locke’s third element of “property.”  Looking to the Natural Law aspect of political philosophy, he inserted “The Pursuit of Happiness.” There are two sources for this short and misunderstood phrase; one source is that of the Swiss jurist Emerich de Vattel and his work The Law of Nations and the other is that of John Locke’s Concerning Human Understanding.

As to the notion of Natural Law, Jefferson noted de Vattel’s work The Law of Nations and was familiar with the idea that happiness was promoted as the people were active in forming a good government.  That is, a pursuit of happiness was a work towards the civic good.  See The Laws of Nations in chapter 1.3.28 – 29, it’s worth reading.  It’s online too at http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/vattel/vatt-103.htm.   De Vattel taught that a good constitution is the foundation of a nation’s “preservation, safety, perfection, and happiness.”

From Locke he knew of the passage in Concerning Human Understanding 21.52, another section worth reading at http://enlightenment.supersaturated.com/johnlocke/BOOKIIChapterXXI.html.

Locke tried to show how “true happiness” is the foundation of liberty, provided one is able to “suspend the satisfaction of … desires in particular cases.”  That is, as he noted in a later section, the need of the governance of one’s passions.

Much has been written about this wonderful blend of Natural Rights and Natural Law, and for that you might want to begin here, http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/46460, and see where the reading takes you.

Living the Good Life

Gordon Graham's Living the Good Life: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy is a fine presentation to Ethics that presents six projects on the subject.  For those who desire a hard-copy textbook then this is what I would use for an Ethics course.  The body of the text is less 200 pages and he offers chapters on Egoism, Hedonism, Existentialism, Deontology, Utilitarianism, and Divine Command.    It is out of print and while the author contemplates revising it, you may find it at many online sellers such as Addall books and Alibris at a very low price.

The Surgeon's Dilemma

The surgeon has a dilemma before her.  

She may either take out the brain of someone and so demonstrate that this individual will no longer think,

or,

she may not take it out and the person will still think that the mind is the ghost in the machine.

Either she will demonstrate that an individual needs the brain to think and it will kill the person or she will not demonstrate it and the person will live.

What is right and what is wrong with this dilemma?

Philosophy, Religion, and Science

Philosophy is not Religion, Religion is not Science, and Science is not Philosophy.
 

This is the short version, and now the long version.
 

Many students confuse these enterprises of human thought and imagination and see them as similar.  I suppose in some ways they are similar in that each one of them provides tools as to how one can understand the world. 
 

The contrasts appear weightier, however.
 

Philosophy

Philosophy presents the task of scrutinizing by asking questions and in that sense is skeptical in its essence.  By “skeptical” I do not mean asking for the sake of doing so or even doubting before one is certain.  
 

Instead, the skeptical approach, taken from Sextus Empiricus, is one of seeking, scrutinizing, and suspending judgement.  Rational and phenomenological means are often the tools here.  Questioning is the essential act of the philosopher.
 

Verification and falsifiability may not play much of a part since the questions may be those that do not as yet offer a proof or have standards of disproof.
 

As others have noted, however, when there is an answer to a philosophical question, it then becomes a field of Science.
 

Religion

Does Religion employ such a view?  This may be a part of the religious view, one may scrutinize any belief, but much of the religious approach is about relating to the supernatural world.  The re-ligio of the Latin term, the “re-tying” oneself to an otherworldly reality, however construed, is essential.  
 

This may involve a number of actions whether prayer, ritual, or spontaneous acts of devotion.  The devotional act is the work of the religious person.
 

In this case, one may employ intuitive means and some rational attitude to understand it.  There may even be an empirical view of sorts to it but that is restricted to anecdotal evidence.
 

Theologians, usually in Western religions, may offer various proofs of their belief but these lack empirical testing and either are tautologies or are non-falsifiable.  The ontological proof, for instance, builds upon a tautology.  
 

Science

Science is closer to the philosophical view but takes in a more empirical approach.  The “scientific method” does engage rational means of preparation but, ultimately, it must pass the empirical test.  
 

The scientific experiment is likely the essence of this approach.  If the experiment fails repeatedly, then that is a disproof of whatever hypothesis was the catalyst for it.  
 

Where one encounters the problem of non-falsifiability is in theoretical discussion of a scientific field.  There is some overlap though with rational discussion through mathematical means.  For instance, in the history of modern physics a mathematical model preceded the experimental finding of the phenomenon.
 

Two instances that come to mind are the examples of relativity and anti-matter.  In both instances a physicist, whether Einstein or Dirac, followed where the math was leading and discovered that, mathematically, relativity or anti-matter were a part of the world. 
 

Concluding Comparison

The work of Philosophy is to question values, and a skeptical view is its approach.  Religion has the task of affirming the value of a relation to a supernatural world, and devotion is its venue.  Science presents the instruments to test values, and experimentation is its main tool.
 

In this light, it is intriguing that people try to put all of these endeavors in the same arena, as if a philosopher, a priest, and a scientist go about similar tasks when they are not even aiming at the same goal. 
 

A philosopher, a priest, and a scientist walk into a bar.  The philosopher asked, “Why are we here?”  The scientist stated, “Because we are thirsty.”  The priest replied, “Praise the Lord!”

Marcel Duchamp and the Ethics of Empathy

Marcel Duchamp, 1887-1968

In a way, I wonder if the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp had it right by empathy?  To use Duchamp as an example of moral action may be surreal in itself, but as far as I know human beings do have the capability of empathy.  I think some other animals have that as well, but perhaps we have it to a greater degree and have the consciousness to act upon it.  If this is so, then that would be an act that is unique to humanity.

This is where Duchamp comes into the discussion.  He stated a variation on the Golden Rule and revised it as “Do unto others as they wish, but with imagination.”  The creative employment of ethics is something rarely discussed, but to do it imaginatively may be uniquely human.

Darwin and the Golden Rule

I thought my students might be interested in this quotation from Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, chapter 4:

Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.   We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, &c., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals. They are also capable of some inherited improvement, as we see in the domestic dog compared with the wolf or jackal. If it could be proved that certain high mental powers, such as the formation of general concepts, self-consciousness, &c., were absolutely peculiar to man, which seems extremely doubtful, it is not improbable that these qualities are merely the incidental results of other highly-advanced intellectual faculties; and these again mainly the result of the continued use of a perfect language.

At what age does the new-born infant possess the power of abstraction, or become self-conscious, and reflect on its own existence? We cannot answer; nor can we answer in regard to the ascending organic scale. The half-art, half-instinct of language still bears the stamp of its gradual evolution. The ennobling belief in God is not universal with man; and the belief in spiritual agencies naturally follows from other mental powers. The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals; but I need say nothing on this head, as I have so lately endeavoured to shew that the social instincts,- the prime principle of man's moral constitution* - with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule, "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye to them likewise"; and this lies at the foundation of morality.

  * Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Bk. V, sect. 55.

The Euthyphro Dilemma...Still Going Strong After 2500 Years

I think this is always a good question to ask religious followers, including myself: is an act right because the gods say it is so, or is it right because it is right in itself?  This does make a person pursue the inquiry further.

If one says that there is no need to justify the command because the divinity is good, then one has to figure out how to justify whether the divinity is good.

All it does is push the question back one more step.

If another claims that there is rational justification for the command as good, then one could ground it in the rational justification and there would be no need for the command. 

The underlying theme here, however, is one of responsibility.  Did Euthyphro own up to his actions or did he fall back on how he understood the godly guide? 

*   *   *

Most Middle East monotheist apologists emphasize that the dilemma is a false dichotomy, and insofar as any dilemma may be a false dichotomy then that may be the case.  But, then again, it does not remove the dilemma entirely for the logic presented previously.

Long ago in an on-campus classroom, I remember one student pointed out that if the gods are intrinsically good then if they say something is so then one can presume reasonably that it is also good.  

As it turns out, this is the position of most Jewish or Christian apologists; i.e., the divinity would not command what is bad since their gods do not change; i.e., they would not be led by caprice.  But what is the evidence for that beyond apologetic assertion?  

Anyway, I thought the problem was that it also means that one has to determine if the gods are good regardless of the divine recommendation.  And how does one do that?

This student also noted that maybe human beings need the divine recommendation so they know what is good.  That is something to consider too but then the problem becomes how is one sure that the recommendation is good or divine etc.

Later, an individual wrote to me claiming that monotheism takes care of the problem since, then, there are no gods or no competition among them. 

At first, that might be the case but then we still have the problem that we have to decide what the One Deity commands is good.

And while we do away with the burden of competition among gods and their various commands, we still need to consider the change over time.

For those following a Western religion the issue is one of a change over time.  Why was it good to command families to stone a rebellious child (Deut. 13, 21) and now very few people—Jews as well as Christians--would agree to that?

A Christian might say because now we are in the New Covenant it is different, but nothing in the NT speaks to this directly (though from the Sermon on the Mount one might infer that it would be unacceptable). 

Another Christian may claim that Jesus fulfilled the OT prophecies in his advent as the Messiah.

That's fine, but how is that relevant to particular commands of behavior?

A Jewish person might say that until the Temple is restored one cannot live by all 613 mitzvot (“commandments”), but does this mean that such a command would be good then?

And even in one covenant there are changes.  One example is Passover.  There are six, if not more, changes from Exodus to Deuteronomy as to how the Israelites were to observe it regarding the place, the food, the cooking method, when to offer it, whether it was separate from the feast of unleavened bread, and the participants.  

What was good for Passover in Exodus apparently was not good for Passover in Deuteronomy.  Naturally, one gives leeway to development in any religion as well as understanding that the religious community will work out a solution to this.  

To the proverbial Man from Mars, however, it does appear that there has been a change. 

The Euthyphro dilemma is still a weighty problem for any religious follower.