Let’s start this week with a little provocation. In Law and Liberty, F. H. Buckley explains the problem, as he sees it, with natural law theory:

American lawyers who seek to bootstrap their conservative beliefs are apt to describe themselves as natural lawyers. They’re more than right-wingers, you’re to understand. They’re also philosophers, in possession of an ostensibly accessible but actually secret code. Nor need they have read much of Aquinas. A mere profession of faith in natural law suffices.

They’re also unlikely to have read David Hume. Nearly 300 years ago, Hume demolished the pretended link between nature and goodness. From a statement about what is the case, he said, you can never derive a proposition about what ought to be the case. Some moralists write that some thing or other ‘is’ so, and that therefore you ‘ought’ to do it. They try to slip that in, but one thing doesn’t follow from the other. We have natural inclinations, to which attention must be paid, but they aren’t always worth following. So if something is natural, that doesn’t tell us whether we should yield to it. In Principia Ethica (1903), philosopher G.E. Moore gave a name to the attempt to define the good in terms of what is natural. He called this the ‘naturalistic fallacy.’

Like Hume, the skeptic is also permitted to question whether, from the congeries of virtues and vices that make up of character, we might discover an essential goodness. If all you mean by calling something natural is that it’s a good thing to do, I’d go along with it. In that case, however, labels like ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ are wheels that turn nothing. They’re shorthand for deeper beliefs about what’s good for us, and you could dispense with them and simply cut to what you think is good or bad.

More:

Natural law shorn of revealed law and the need for religious faith is Pelagianism, a fifth century heresy which held that the natural law is known to us and that we are able to live good lives without God’s grace. Milton was a Pelagian, and so were Locke and Kant. It’s also the heresy of our time, amongst liberals in particular. The political differences that divide us are often theological, not philosophical, as Eric Nelson pointed out in The Theology of Liberalism (2019), and the dividing line is between the Pelagian and Augustinian traditions.”

Also, speaking of G. E. Moore, Ray Monk writes about why most people don’t know who he is but should: “Debating whether the concept ‘good’ could or could not be defined began to seem something of a dead end, and moral philosophers shifted their attention to what looked like more fruitful areas, such as substantive ethical questions (like ‘Is war ever justified?’) and understanding ‘thick’ moral concepts (such as ‘courageous,’ ‘tactful,’ ‘cruel,’) rather than ‘thin’ general ones such as ‘the good.’ Intellectual fashions go in cycles, and recently some analytic philosophers have begun discussing Moore anew. But among contemporary novelists, artists and poets, and indeed among pretty well anyone outside the academy, there is now little interest in Principia Ethica. Whatever role Moore had in the world of ideas, it would seem, was not one that principally rested on the production of a book of enduring power.”

In other news: The New York Times has suspended its Travel and Sports sections in its Sunday edition. Instead, it is running a new section called “At Home.”

John Byron Kuhner reads Tolstoy’s children’s stories to his kids and immediately regrets it: “The Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy, also a gentleman farmer, operated an ancestral estate called Yasnaya Polyana that included a small school for the children of the peasants who labored there. Tolstoy was known to drop by from time to time and read stories that he wrote himself, which in his typical modesty, he predicted would be read by ‘thousands, even millions.’ In 1988, the children’s novelist and Russia expert James Riordan translated several of these for a collection called The Lion and the Puppy: And Other Stories for Children, published first by Henry Holt and Company. The cover has a nice picture of a lion and a puppy; the illustrations by Claus Sievert are lovely throughout. My children fell in love with that picture, and they wanted me to read them the book. My first thought was: Children’s stories by the author of the inspirational The Death of Ivan Ilyich? But pestilence has closed the schools and home reading was important. Tolstoy wrote them; they couldn’t be that bad. Now I sincerely wish I had never touched them.”

Dominic Green reviews Roberto Calasso’s The Celestial Hunter—an “exploration of what makes us modern, which is also the rediscovery of what made us ancient.”

David Skinner, family jokester, gets played: “I liked many things about working from home, but I had been feeling a little depressed. I missed my daily routines, like riding my bicycle to work and seeing those colleagues who over the years have become my friends. With nothing else to do at that moment, I reached over to the mailbox and removed the day’s letters. One had my name on it and no stamp. Had it been delivered by hand? Why didn’t they knock? I put down the other stuff, bills, statements, the usual blah, and opened the letter. It was from the office of the mayor and addressed to me personally. I happen to know the mayor, a nice guy about my age. Being mayor is not his full-time job. He works for Amtrak, in their information systems, he told me when we found ourselves talking over plastic cups of cheap wine at a fundraiser that Cynthia had dragged me to. The letter, however, was not friendly. ‘Dear Mr. Skinner,’ it started. ‘It has come to our attention from community and concerned neighbors’ reporting that you have been observed riding a bicycle in public spaces closer than the requisite six feet social distancing requirements. According to Commonwealth Order issued just yesterday, this activity is in violation.’”

Bill Meehan reviews The Winter Army: The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America’s Elite Alpine Warriors: “Two regiments of a uniquely trained division disembarked at Naples in December 1944 and a month later were about to face their first test against German forces in the Italian Apennines. They received specialized training, first at a temporary camp on Mount Rainier and later at the permanent Camp Hale in the Colorado Rockies. They perfected winter warfare tactics, which included, besides learning to kill, acquiring survival techniques and grasping the nuances of handling mules, all the while strengthening their prowess in skiing and climbing. The mission was to seize a vital German stronghold on Mount Belvedere, but they first had to deal with Mount Riva, a 4,672-foot peak. Commanding officer General (two stars) George B. Hays ordered a patrol to scout possible routes up the frozen cliff. Riva Ridge was too formidable, a lieutenant reported back. Hays believed otherwise. ‘This is a mountain division,’ he said. ‘Surely they can find how to climb up that ridge.’”

Photos: Florida

Poem: Sarah Ruden, “Peter”

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