THE ONTOLOGICAL BASIS OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Raymond Dennehy

University of San Francisco

San Francisco, California

THE FOCUS OF this essay is not the topic of human rights itself but instead what is preliminary to it: whether there is a real, i. e., ontological, basis in man for the claim that he is the subject of inalienable rights; whether rights are due him in virtue of his very nature rather than because society or the state chooses to confer them upon him? Looked at from another angle, the focus can be formulated thus: whether man ultimately exists totally for society or exists in some significant sense for himself?

What prompts the formulation of this problematic is the contemporary concern for what is called " the quality of life." This concern has become the occasion for the most recent and, perhaps, serious challenge yet to the doctrine of natural right. For example, the wealthy nations fear that the present growth of world population, especially in the poor nations, threatens the future of the human species,¹ while progress in the field of genetics enlivens the hope of eradicating hereditary defects through " genetic engineering " and, hence, of halting the " pollution of the gene pool."² These two visions lead, in the minds of some,³ to the inescapable conclusion that the doctrine of inviolable, i.e., natural, rights is incompatible with the good of society as a whole and is, therefore, to be repudiated as erroneous

¹ Sir Julian Huxley, " The Impending Crisis," The Population Crisis. Edited by Larry K. Y. Ng. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1970; p. 27. For response to this view of the world problem, see my article, " The Social Encyclicals and the ' Population Problem '," Social Justice Review, Oct., 1972.

² For a perceptive discussion of the moral problems involved in genetic engineering, cf. Paul Ramsey, Fabricated Man: The Ethics of Genetic Control. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.

³ " A New Ethic For Medicine and Society," California Medicine, Vol. 113 # 3, September, 1970; pp. 67-68.

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or at least made subservient to the exigencies of social survival. The latter seems to be the position taken by B. F. Skinner: " Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are basic rights. But they are the rights of the individual and were listed as such at a time when the literatures of freedom and dignity were concerned with the aggrandizement of the individual. They have only a minor bearing on the survival of a culture."⁴ This position derives its force from an appeal to the principle, ' the good of society (in some sense of the word ' good ') has precedence over the good of the individual (in some sense of the word ' good '),' which appeal seems to carry with it the implicit rider that all human rights are social rather than natural in origin. If this position is accepted, then the inference is automatic that, since even the right to life is conferred by society, it too may be rescinded in order to preserve the greater good of the community. What is at stake here is not simply the question of society's authority to execute convicted murderers and the like but the innocent as well; e. g., those who are deformed, retarded, carriers of hereditary diseases, or whose existence is adjudged " meaningless " or " devoid of value." One cannot help asking, for example, whether Professor Garrett Hardin, in his proposal that the freedom to procreate be rescinded,⁵ grasps the full import of his plea that we deny the validity of the United Nations' Declaration of Rights. Specifically, one wonders why, if, in the name of social survival, we can properly deny the freedom to procreate, can we not also deny, in the name of social survival, the freedom to exist.

To be sure, the defensibility of the doctrine of natural right presupposes the doctrine's compatibility with the good of the social body. But the requirements of compatibility are, in this case, reciprocal, for the question of what constitutes the good of society is inextricably bound up with the fundamental question

⁴ B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972; p. 180.

⁵ Garrett Hardin, " The Tragedy of the Commons," Science, December 13, 1968, pp. 1243-1248.

of rights, i. e., with the question of the liberties to which the individual member of society is entitled. If, for example, it is accepted that rights are social in origin, there is no escaping the conclusion that the human being exists ultimately for society. This is the basis of totalitarianism, as the name itself implies. If, on the other hand, it is accepted that rights, such as the right to life, are natural in origin, i. e., that they follow from what a human being is by nature, then the conclusion must be drawn that he exists, in some significant sense, for his own sake, as well as for society. This is the foundation for democratic society. The first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence asserts that all men possess, as " God-given " and " inalienable," rights, such as " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that it is for the protection of these rights that governments are formed and dissolved; Article One of the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights reaffirms this claim by stating that rights are conferred by human nature, not by the State.⁶ And at Nuremberg the Allies tried and convicted the Nazis of " crimes against mankind " for their wholesale extermination of Jews and non-Aryans, despite the fact that the laws of Germany permitted and even demanded genocide.⁷

Thus, whether they realize it or not, those who see the abrogation of human rights as a condition for the preservation of the quality of life challenge the foundations of democratic theory. Admittedly, the dependence of democratic theory on the doctrine of natural right does not in itself justify this doctrine, any more than the inference of totalitarian theory from the doctrine of the social origin of rights justifies it by a reductio ad absurdum. All that follows is that democratic theory presupposes the doctrine of natural right. The question, therefore, is whether there is any basis in reality for the claim that man does not exist totally for society, whether alongside his very considerable

⁶ A copy of the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights appears as an appendix to Maurice Cranston's book, What Are Human Rights? New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc., 1973.

⁷ R. W. Cooper, The Nuremberg Trials. Middlesex & New York: Penguin Books, 1947; p. 39.

social obligations he has natural title to autonomy over certain areas of his life, areas over which society has no legitimate control? In other words, what is it about a human being which supposedly entitles him to natural, i. e., inalienable rights?

* * * *

This essay purports to furnish answers to the above questions. The answers are set forth in three major parts. The first and most important part consists in the attempt to show that man's capacities for knowing and choosing reveal him to be by nature a self-perfecting, autonomous being, which is to say, a whole. Accordingly, any treatment of him as a mere part of society is a violation of the natural order and an outrage against reason. Here a word must be said about the attention given in this essay to man's cognitive operations, lest the reader begin to wonder, as he proceeds through its first part, what epistemology has to do with the ontological basis of rights. That such a question should arise at all must be attributed to modern philosophy's severance of epistemology from metaphysics, of knowing from being. The unhappy results of this severance are reflected in the question now regarded as fundamental to epistemology, " How does the mind get its ideas? " Not only does this formulation reduce knowing to a mere perception and consideration of ideas or representations, thereby cutting the intellect off from extramental reality, it cannot fail to regard the intellect as an instrument rather than as a power of man's essence, so that he loses all claim to being essentially different from sub-rational beings. Denied a unique interiority, he is, therefore, externalized and regarded as no more than another part, a sophisticated part, to be sure, of the natural environment. As such, man must submit to manipulation along with the rest of the environment.^7a In contrast, it is argued below, that knowing isˇ a becoming, a way of being, and, hence, that the fundamental epistemological question is ' How does man become a knower? ' Insofar as we learn what a being is through a knowledge of what it does, the

^7a Skinner, op. cit., pp. 24-25, 58-59, and esp. p. 202.

justification for the " epistemological " approach is that it enables us to answer the question, ' What is it about a human being which supposedly entitles him to natural, i. e., inalienable, rights? ' Yet, just because of the exigencies of this topic, no attempt is made to provide anything more than a general discussion of human knowing.

The second part of this essay addresses itself to the so-called " naturalistic fallacy " by demonstrating the bridge by which reason proceeds from the consideration of what things are to the consideration of how they ought to be treated. For the objection is sure to be raised that, no matter what man naturally is, we cannot legitimately pass from " an is to an ought," from facts to values.⁸ The third part concentrates on the relationship that obtains between what man is and the right to life. For, although a discussion of the topic of rights itself is outside the scope of this essay, the completion of the latter undertaking demands that the relationship between ontology and rights be made explicit, particularly with regard to the distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable homicide, mercy-killing and suicide.

I

In the writings of Thomas Aquinas, one finds two principles that pertain to the topic of this essay. The first has to do with immanence: "... the higher a nature, the more intimate to that nature is the activity that flows from it."⁹ The second has to do with extensiveness: "... the higher a power is, the more universal is the object to which it extends."¹⁰ Far from being disparate or mutually exclusive, these two principles complement each other; indeed, a proportion exists between them: the more immanent a being is, the more extensive are its powers.¹¹ As argued below, the acts of knowing and choosing testify to

⁸ David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Bk. Ill, I, 1.

⁹ Thomas Aquinas, C. G. IV, 11.

¹⁰ Thomas Aquinas, S. Theol., I, Q. 71, a. 1.

¹¹ Pierre Rousselot, The Intellectualism of St. Thomas. Tr. by James E. O'Mahony. New York: Sheed and Ward, Inc., 1935; pp. 28-29.

man's intrinsic superiority over brute animals and all material nature, for such acts originate only in a self, an I, in a unique center of conscious being. That is why he is properly said to be a whole.¹² He is present in all his parts, gathering them up and unifying in a unique selfhood his entire being; he thereby possesses his being in and through his self. Yet the intimacy and personalness of his activities stretch outwards to the whole universe. Through the act of knowing, he unifies in his unique self a fragmented external world; through the exercise of his will, he reshapes the material world, as well as his own being, in the image and likeness of the highest ideals. Now, although immanence and extensiveness cannot be separated, the one from the other, it is immanence that is primary; extensiveness follows from it. All man's activities and operations originate in his unique selfhood and terminate there. Hence, it is correct to say that man is a being who exists not only in himself but for himself.¹³

A. Knowing

That knowing is a self-perfecting operation--i. e., an operation that originates and terminates in the knower and for the fulfilment of the knower--can be verified by the following observations.

In order to know anything, I must enter into a subject-object relationship; for when I know, I know something. Knowing, then, has two components: an object that is known and a subject who knows. But it is a relationship in which the knowing subject (a) becomes the object, the thing known; and in which the subject (b) dominates and possesses the object. If either of these conditions were lacking, knowledge would be impossible.

(a) The claim that knowing is a becoming, a way of being, rather than a mere apprehension of ideas or representations, follows

¹² Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good. Tr. by John J. Fitzgerald. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966 (paperback); p. 49, n. 28.

¹³ Aquinas, S. Theol., I, Q. 65, a. 2.

from the veridical character of knowledge. Although we do not attain a complete and perfect knowledge of anything, and although we often entertain as true judgments which are in fact false, we nevertheless can, and do, attain a true and objective knowledge of things in the universe. For example, we know the real essence of man, of brute animals, and of plants, i.e., we know what they are, for we grasp the essential differences among them. The latter point has its confirmation on the practical level in the fundamentally different ways in which we treat them. But a true and objective knowledge of things would be out of the question if any third thing intruded itself between the knower and the thing known. For then the intellect would apprehend what is at best a representation of the thing which, instead of providing a true and objective knowledge of it, would provide only a knowledge of the representation itself. Indeed, as Thomas Aquinas observes,¹⁴ if knowledge consisted of knowing mere representations of things, then contradictories would be simultaneously true, since in each case one's knowledge would conform to its object, namely, the mere representation. Thus, the concept that the intellect forms of the thing's essence cannot stand between the knower and the known as some third thing which serves as a representation of the known, as a picture of one's wife, say, is an image-sign of her. Because the objectivity of knowledge is a self-proclaiming fact, our knowledge of things can be accounted for only by the inference that nothing, not even an accurate picture or representation of the known, stands between the latter and the intellect. This is the warrant for the claim that the intellect becomes the known in the act of knowing it.¹⁵

But since the objectivity of knowledge demands that the subject know the object as other, the identification between knower and known must be formal rather than material or absolute. This demand inspired Aristotle's brilliant theory of abstraction: ¹⁶ the intellect seizes the intelligible structure, the

¹⁴ Ibid., I, Q. 85, a. 2.

¹⁵ Aristotle, De Anima, Bk. III, Ch. 4.

¹⁶ Ibid., 429b 10-23.

essence, of the concrete existent perceived by the senses. By deindividualizing and, therefore, universalizing it, the intellect proportions it to its own immaterial nature, thereby apprehending it under the aspect of its whatness or knowability.¹⁷ Since, in knowing, the intellect actually becomes the thing's essence, it must be said that the intellect actually becomes the thing known, for it thereby possesses its interior form, possesses that by which the thing is what it is.¹⁸

Thus, while the thing as known and the thing as it exists in extramental reality are identical in essence, they differ in existence, the former having intentional or cognitional existence, the latter having physical existence.¹⁹ Nevertheless, it is correct to say that the intellect becomes the thing it knows, but it does so by raising it to its own level, the level of spiritual existence. For what we know are not essences themselves but things, existents. The completion of the act of knowing is in the operation of judgment whereby the intellect restores the abstracted essence to the material image of sensation. And since this image is the product of the perceptions of the external senses, which faculties are in direct contact with the existent, judgment-- e. g., ' This creature approaching me is a man '--is the vehicle by and through which the subject knows the object in its actual existence. Indeed, a mutual interaction occurs between the apprehension of essence and judgment. For we cannot know what a thing is without simultaneously, though implicitly, knowing that it is, either as an actual or a possible being. As Thomas Aquinas says,²⁰ all concepts are reducible to the concept of being.

¹⁷ Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism. Tr. by Mabelle L. and J. Gordon Andison. New York: Philosophical Library, 1955; pp. 156-158.

¹⁸ Cf. Josef Pieper, Reality and the Good, Tr. by Stella Lange. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1967; pp. 30-31.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Aquinas, De Veritate, I, 1; Joseph Owens, An Interpretation of Existence. Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1968 (paperback), Ch. II; Maritain, Existence and the Existent, Tr. by Lewis Galantiere and Gerald P. Phelan. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1957 (paperback); pp. 35-37, n. 13.

Thus, not only does the intellect become the essence of the thing known, it also, and at the same time, duplicates, on the level of intentionality, the thing's existence; in a true sense, the knower becomes the thing known.

It now remains to establish claim b), that in the subject-object relationship which characterizes the knowing operation, the subject possesses and dominates the object, the known. The first of the two principles attributed to Thomas Aquinas at the outset of this section is appropriately reiterated here: ". . . the higher a nature, the more intimate to that nature is the activity that flows from it." It was said above that this principle pertains to immanence and that immanent activity, such as knowing, originates only in a self, in a unique center of conscious being. Such uniqueness is implied throughout the above discussion insofar as knowledge consists in the subject knowing the other as other. But this is possible only by virtue of the intellect's capacity to proportion the thing known to itself, to raise it to its own level of existence, which it accomplishes by freeing the essence of the thing from its materiality. It is impossible to separate the uniqueness of the knowing subject from the capacity to possess and dominate the thing known. The intimacy of the ties that bind these two realities together emerges quite clearly from the following consideration.

Without the knower's knowledge of himself as the subject who knows the object, there could be no knowledge. For to know the thing as object, i. e., as other, it is necessary that the knower simultaneously know himself as the subject who is knowing. Consider, for example, expressions such as ' I know that . . .' Again: I have an explicit consciousness of myself which gives birth to such observations as " Here I sit writing about my self-consciousness." But this is not the only kind of consciousness involved in knowing; for it is not a knowledge of myself as subject but as object. It is a reflexive knowledge by means of which the intellect turns back upon itself, producing a concept of itself. Hence, the self that I know in such observations as the above is myself as object.

But to know anything, it is also necessary for me to have another kind of consciousness, what Maritain calls²¹ the " concomitant consciousness." If knowing is more than the blind assimilation of data--as occurs when information is put into a computer--, I must, in knowing something, simultaneously know myself as the subject who knows. Indeed, even reflexive consciousness presupposes concomitant consciousness, for to reflect upon myself in the act of thinking or working is to enter into a subject-object relationship: to know myself reflexively, as an object, is to be conscious of myself as the knowing subject, even though the latter is, in this case, myself. Since concomitant consciousness is a knowledge of myself as subject, rather than object, it is not a conceptual knowledge; it is a knowledge of the self not as known but as knower. For, insofar as conceptual knowledge requires the abstraction of the intelligible form from the material image of the concrete existent, it presupposes the subject-object relationship. But, as demonstrated above, this relationship presupposes also that the subject knows himself as the knower of the object. Concomitant consciousness, then, is not explicit or reflexive consciousness but is implicit in explicit consciousness and embedded in all conceptual knowledge.

* * * *

The self-perfecting character of knowing follows from the fact that it is an immanent rather than a transitive activity. For the latter kind of activity perfects not the agent but the object on which the agent acts; e. g., surgical activity benefits the patient, not the surgeon. Unlike transitive activity, where the agent's activity is externalized, passing to some object outside the agent, knowing is internalized, perfecting the agent insofar as to know is to become the thing known.²² Such would not be the case if the thing absorbed the knowing self. But, owing to the immanence of its act, the self retains possession of itself: it knows itself as a unique center of conscious being, while at the same time existing as the thing known.

²¹ Maritain, " The Immortality of Man," Review of Politics, Vol. 3, 1941, pp. 415-416; cf. also Epictetus, Discourses, Bk. I, Ch. XX.

²² Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. IX, Ch. 8 1050a 24-1050b 1.

That knowing is, by virtue of its immanence, a higher form of possession of another than is transitive activity may be demonstrated by the following observation. Our dominion over the material world, although increasingly stupendous, is never complete. We successfully bend material being to our will only by manipulating and changing it, as when we extract nourishment from the ingestion of meat or get building materials by felling trees, crushing rock, and, in the case of plastics, by rearranging the molecular structure of natural materials, Yet the inner being of matter always resists even our most violent efforts to dominate and possess it completely. Our bodies can assimilate only certain elements of what we eat; wood rots and concrete cracks and crumbles. Therapeutic drugs have undesirable side-effects and we must confront problems of atmospheric pollution caused by fuels obtained by the conversion of natural resources. But, in the act of knowing, on the other hand, we dominate material beings completely without doing violence to them, insofar as we thereby possess them as other.²³ For, as noted above, the intellect possesses the thing known in the latter's essential being. All of which, it may be observed in passing, attests to the superiority of intellectualism over voluntarism. It is clearly better to possess a thing worthy of possession than merely to exert one's will over it, i. e., to have a merely external relation to it.²⁴

The possessive or dominative aspect of knowing brings us to a consideration of the second of the two principles cited at the outset of this section: "... the higher a power, the greater the number of objects to which it extends." Extensiveness and immanence are related as effect to cause. It is just because of its immanence that a power is a knowing power, for in virtue of its perfect reflexivity--its consciousness of itself as a subject--, it knows other beings as other,, and accordingly has the capacity to enter into the subject-object relationship that characterizes the knowing operation. But, as shown above, knowing

²³ Rousselot, pp. 25-26.

²⁴ Ibid., pp. 20-21.

is a becoming. Man, therefore, becomes other beings, albeit on the level of intentionality.

Per impossibile, the desire in a sub-rational being to become another being would be tantamount to desiring its own destruction. The donkey, for example, could not become a lion without annihilating itself.²⁵ But this is not so with regard to rational beings. Since a thing is knowable insofar as it is, i. e., insofar as it has being (the formal object of the intellect is being), rational beings have the capacity to know all that is; and since to know is to become the other as other, they have the capacity to be all that is. By interiorizing external being, through knowing, an imperfect subject of a rational nature, although limited in its natural being, can become, on the level of intentional being, everything that exists and, in that manner, can transcend the limitations of its own nature while retaining possession of its unique selfhood. For, as argued above, the act and fulfillment of the intellect consist not in the apprehension of essences or the knowledge of mere concepts but in the attainment of existence, i.e., the attainment of the act of existing of the thing known, by duplicating it through the act of judgment. The knower thereby dominates external reality in a most perfect way, since he becomes and thus possesses it as it is in its essential being--as other. It is true possession because it is the self, or /, which becomes it without being absorbed by it. Thus, to know is not to make or to receive anything but, rather, to exist in a way that is superior to the mere fact of existing as an independent substance.²⁶

B. Choosing

Insofar as choice is consequent upon deliberation and deliberation is consequent upon knowledge, it is clear that choice is consequent upon reason. Hence, choice, i. e., practical reason,

²⁵ Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight; A Study of Human Understanding. New York: Philosophical Library, 1957; p. 266; and Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics. Transl. ed. by Mortimer J. Adler. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1960 (paperback); p. 130.

²⁶ Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, p. 113; Rousselot, pp. 20-21, 25-26.

is an extension of intellection, i. e., theoretical or speculative reason.²⁷ Like the act of knowing, then, the act of choosing originates in an /, in a unique center of conscious being.²⁸

The immanence of the act of choice is revealed, also, in the fact that it is a self-perfecting act, whether exercised out of self-interest or out of interest in the well-being of others. Even when one acts altruistically, one inevitably acts for one's own fulfilment, insofar as the decision to perform any act follows from a realization, however inexplicit and deeply submerged in other objectives, that the action will have a bearing on one's sense of self, self-respect, integrity, etc. Like all choices, an altruistic choice implies a desire for one's own fulfilment and happiness. Is it not true that the altruist finds his fulfilment in working for the good of others? Even the masochist, in his own twisted way, seeks happiness through his pain and degradation.

It would be quite mistaken to suppose that the question of personal fulfilment is purely or primarily a matter of attitude and, as such, is the preserve of psychology. Indeed, for an immanent being--a being who is aware of himself as a unique self--it is impossible to act at all without acting for his own self-perfection just because his very being is to be a self. It is an ontological necessity that all his actions originate in a unique center of conscious being and terminate there.

* * * *

The principles set down above with regard to knowing and choosing undergird the correlation between a being's dignity, or degree of ontological perfection, and its capacity for immanence. The more perfect a being, the more completely is it an intellectual substance; the more completely it is an intellectual substance, the more autonomous and self-perfecting it is; in other words, the more completely does it exist for its own sake. From plants to animals to human beings, material nature presents a spectrum of beings possessed of the capacity to move

²⁷ Pieper, op. cit., p. 49.

²⁸ Maritain, Existence and the Existent, Ch. 2, and Neuf Leçons sur les Notions Premières de la Philosophie Morale. Paris: Pierre Téqui, 1951; pp. 31 & 165.

themselves by a vital interior principle. Only at the level of man, however, is this interior principle truly immanent and, therefore, truly intimate to the activity which flows from it. The activities of sub-rational beings--growth, assimilation, propagation--, although originating in a principle that is increasingly interiorized in proportion to the increase in sensory and neurological complexity, are the products of blind reflexive or, at best, instinctual powers, and for that reason are more characteristic of the species than of the individual member. ' Intimate ' in this context refers primarily not to what comes from within, where the word ' within ' is taken in a spatial sense, but rather to what is singular, or better yet, unique in the individual agent. Of the three categories of living being enumerated above, man alone acts from a genuinely unified center of unique being, the self. As a knower, he can judge the proportion between means and ends and thereby take responsibility for his actions. Just as, on the level of knowing, it is the I, the unique self, who knows, so, on the level of practical activity, it is the unique self who chooses specific means for specific ends. Yet not even man's actions flow entirely from a unique interiority, for, as a member of the human species, each individual man is to a large degree governed by inclinations and drives which are common to his species. In other words, an individual human being's conduct is governed largely by his essence. Not even his intellect and will are identical to his unique self, since they are characteristic of the human species.²⁹ Man is not fully self-perfecting because he is not fully autonomous. Perfect autonomy belongs to God alone because, as the Absolutely Perfect Being, He is completely and perfectly an intellectual substance. Consequently, His activity is perfectly immanent and, accordingly, flows entirely from His unique selfhood.³⁰

To appreciate this, it is necessary to recall that immateriality is the basis of knowledge: a thing is knowable to the extent

²⁹ Maritain, " Spontanéité et Indépendence," Mediaeval Studies, Vol. 4, 1942; Aquinas, Contra Gentiles, IV, Ch. 11.

³⁰ Aquinas, loc. cit., and S. Theol., I, Q. 18, a. 3.

that it is free from matter. Since matter contracts and limits, human knowledge depends on the previously discussed process of abstraction, whereby the intellect universalizes and, hence, actualizes the intelligibility of the concrete particular. The freer a being is from matter, therefore, the more intelligible it is, and if that being is a substance, its capacity to know will be the greater. As the most perfect being, God cannot be limited; but since matter constricts and limits, He must be immaterial. Now to be a completely and perfectly immaterial substance is to be the complete and perfect intellectual substance, and since knowing is a self-perfecting act in which the knower, the self, becomes the known, God must be the absolutely personal being, the perfect Self. Accordingly, He operates by no principles which do not flow from His own uniqueness. The absolute perfection of God demands, moreover, that He not be dependent on anything outside Himself, which is to say that He knows all things by knowing Himself.³¹ It is, on the other hand, man's imperfection and finitude which account for his dependence on things external to himself for his knowledge. He is an imperfect intellectual substance. But he overcomes his fragmented, limited existence through knowing and choosing beings external to himself. As noted above, however, knowing is the more perfect form of possession of another thing, for knowing consists in becoming the other as other. Whereas in choosing the will achieves only an external possession of the thing, in knowing the intellect achieves possession of the thing's interior form, or essence.³²

^{* * * *}

In summary: The above analysis of knowing and choosing demonstrates that man, in the words of Thomas Aquinas, " stands on the horizon between two worlds."³³ On the one hand, he shares the world of material beings; he is an imperfect intellectual substance insofar as his essence and self are not

³¹ Aquinas, S. Theol., I, Q. 14, a. 4.

³² Ibid., Q. 82, a. 5.

³³ Aquinas, C G., II,  68.

identical with each other. He is, therefore, largely dominated by the structures and inclinations of his human nature. He does not, consequently, possess a perfect life and being. To the extent of this limitation, he is a part of the human species, which means that, in a very important sense, he is subordinate to society, exists for the benefit of the whole. For to the extent that he is not a unique center of conscious being and autonomous activity, his nature is common to the species, i. e., he is the same as all men. Simply on the basis of this sameness, there is no warrant in the real order of things for ascribing to an individual human being spheres of life and endeavor which transcend the life of the social group and the environment. For of several things among which no significant difference may be found, the value of the many over the individual follows from the sheer fact of superior numbers.

On the other hand, this same analysis reveals each human being as one who shares the world of intellectual substances; he is a being who, by virtue of his capacity to know, performs an act of perfect immanence, a self-perfecting act. For, in becoming, on the level of intentionality, the thing known, he becomes that thing as other, while retaining his unique selfhood; hence, he perfects himself. To the extent that he is an intellectual substance, he is a unique center of conscious being. Similarly, his capacity to choose establishes him as an autonomous being, a self-determining agent, who freely pursues goals for his fulfilment as a unique self and takes personal responsibility for his choices. This immanence, this unique interiority, is the basis in the real, i. e., the ontological, order for ascribing to each human being spheres of life and endeavor which transcend the life of the social group.

In contrast, sub-rational beings do not exist in any significant sense for their own sakes and, on that account, they are expendable for the good of the species. This is not to suggest that they have no value in themselves. Insofar as they exist, they have ontological value, but whatever their value, it is subordinate to the good of the species. Thus, while there is something

intuitively immoral in wantonly crumpling a rose or killing an animal, it is the insight into the ontological difference between rational and sub-rational beings which underlies our readiness to prune a rose for the vigor of the rose bush and kill animals for food or to kill diseased animals to prevent them from infecting other members of their species or to preserve the balance of nature, etc., but which, at the same time, produces moral revulsion in us at the thought of killing human beings for eugenic purposes or using involuntary patients to further medical science. The Nuremberg Trials and the United Nations' condemnation of genocide testify to the reality of that moral revulsion. To commit murder, to interfere with a man's freedom of conscience, to obstruct his freedom to seek the truth, etc., all this is to violate the natural order and, consequently, to outrage reason. For such actions use a being who is an end in himself as a mere means to an end, as a mere object of scientific or social purpose. In other words, the claim that certain rights, such as the right to life, are natural follows from the conclusion that they are due to a human being because of what he is naturally, i. e., by essence, and not because of what society chooses to allow him.

II

It is time to face the objection that rights cannot be grounded in reality because it is impossible to derive an ought from an is. The realm of value, the objection maintains,³⁴ is quite apart from the realm of fact.

The doctrine of the dichotomy between fact and value, which today enjoys widespread acceptance, particularly in Anglo-American philosophical circles,³⁵ represents the outlook of Nominalism. This is clearly the reason for D. J. O'Connor's rejection of Thomas Aquinas's view that morality is grounded in

³⁴ Hume, loc. cit.

³⁵ E. g., P. H. Nowell-Smith, Ethics. Marmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1954 (paperback), and Charles L. Stevenson, Ethics and Language. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.

objective reality and is accessible as such to human intellect.³⁶ The influence of Nominalism also evinces itself in psychology, as is clear from the writings³⁷ of B. F. Skinner whose rejection of the reality of what he calls the " autonomous man " is rooted in a Positivism which prevents him from admitting anything in man that distinguishes him from the rest of material nature. The essences of things are not to be found under the scrutiny of a method which can apprehend only what is measurable-- sensible properties of things. Hence, because the dignity and freedom of man are grounded in his essence as a self-perfecting being, Skinner is led to shift the locus of human activity from within man himself to the natural and social environments. Like sub-rational beings, then, man is to be treated as a mere part of the environment rather than as a whole or a self.

If things did not have essences or if, at least, we could not know what they really were, then, in order to establish the position that rights are naturally due man, it would be necessary, as the nominalists correctly maintain, to show that the basis of any right is some property in him. But, just as it is erroneous to suppose that goodness is identifiable with any natural property--to follow G. E. Moore's line of criticism³⁸--, so is it erroneous to suppose that rights are so identifiable. However, this essay, as is clear from its first section, rejects the claims of Nominalism. As argued above, things do have essences and, depending on the degree of freedom they enjoy from the domination of matter, we know, in varying degrees, their essences, including the essence of man. From his perceptible activities, we know him to be by nature a rational animal, and, hence, a self-perfecting being. Now to appreciate the legitimacy of the transition from fact to value and a fortiori the legitimacy of the transition from the conclusion that man is a self-perfecting being to the conclusion that he is naturally entitled to

³⁶ D. J. O'Connor, Aquinas and Natural Law. London: Macmillan, 1967 (paperback), pp. 16, 24, & 35.

³⁷ Skinner, op. cit., pp. 24-25, 58-59, 193-196.

³⁸ G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Ch. II.

rights, it is necessary to state explicitly what has been implicit throughout this essay: the dependence of ethics upon metaphysics, upon the intellect's capacity to go beyond the sensible properties of things to an apprehension of their intelligible structures.

Consider, to begin with, the real, rather than merely logical, distinction between essence and existence. Regarded in itself, essence, or what a thing is, belongs to the realm of potency. In itself it does not exist but is only a possible existence. Existence, on the other hand, belongs to the realm of actuality, or to what really is; in fact, existence is the primary reality, for nothing is real except that it exists. That the distinction between essence and existence is real, rather than merely logical, is supported by the impossibility of inferring the one from the other. From our knowledge of what a thing is, we cannot infer that it exists, nor from the mere knowledge that a thing exists can we infer what it is.³⁹

Now each existent is a composite of essence and existence (each finite existent, that is) ; its essence specifies its existence, determines it to be a this or a that, while its act of existing makes the essence real, i. e., actualizes its potency to be. But the fact that a thing exists does not mean that its existence signals the complete actualization of its essence. Nature is dynamic. Things stretch forth to the actualization of the possibilities contained in their essences, possibilities the actualization of which is demanded for each existent's fulfilment: the acorn stretches forth to become an oak tree, the larva to become a caterpillar and finally a butterfly, and the child to become a man.⁴⁰ Looked at from another angle, essence belongs to the realm of necessity, existence to the realm of contingency. Given a certain essence, a specific intelligible determination, that essence expresses unchanging necessities: the interior angles of a triangle are equal to the sum of two right angles and man is a rational animal. These will always and necessarily be true; each

³⁹ Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers. Toronto, 1952; pp. 168-172.

⁴⁰ Cf. Henry B. Veatch, " Non-Cognitivism in Ethics: A Modest Proposal For Its Diagnosis and Cure," Ethics, January, 1966; pp. 102-116.

is what it is. But whether there shall be triangles or human beings is not to be determined by the intelligible necessities of their respective essences. Indeed, the realm of existence is the realm of contingency, within which things are beset by the vicissitudes of material forces. To enter the realm of material existence is to enter the world of the unpredictable and the adventurous.⁴¹ Existents are engaged in a constant struggle to complete the striving of their essences. Lacking the proper soil and temperature, the acorn will decay and, even under optimum conditions, it may be snatched by a squirrel for winter food; the child born of stupid parents, into a backward community, with few educational opportunities and rudimentary public health facilities may be a genius or possess robust health, while the child born of intelligent parents, into a culturally sophisticated environment with advanced public health facilities may be stupid or die of pneumonia before reaching adulthood.

Yet, despite the myriad contingencies of this existence, man, the knower, perceives what things are, eventually coming to an understanding of their ideal type of fulfilment. Consider, for example, the farmer whose experience with crops enables him to distinguish good crops from bad. This ability presupposes his understanding, however inexplicit and bound up with practical tasks it may be, of the essence of corn, barley, oats, etc. Similarly, from an understanding of man's essence, we grasp its finalities, and it is from this grasp that we infer what conduct befits him and what does not. For the striving, the stretching forth, of things towards the increasing actualization of their essences reveals to the intellect the intelligibility of nature. Perceiving the ideal type that is grounded in the actuality of things, reason concludes that it is good, i. e., desirable, that each existent attain the fulfilment of its essence. Perceiving that man is a rational and, hence, a self-perfecting being, reason concludes that it is good, i. e., desirable, that he actualize the potencies of his essence. His essence demands for its completion that he be free to exercise his self-perfecting activities, for to obstruct this

⁴¹ Aristotle, Physics, Bk. II, Chs. 4-6.

exercise would be to violate the integrity of his being--an outrage of reason. As noted above, it is immoral to wantonly destroy a rose bloom or an animal. This is a violation of their being. But their being is not self-perfecting; they do not exist for their own sake; hence, they may be used--killed or manipulated--for some higher good. Man presents a different case. Just because of what he is, he may not be used as a mere means to any end.

Thus, the objection that an ought cannot be derived from an is rests upon a philosophy which fails to understand that ought-ness, far from inhabiting a realm beyond things, has its ground in being. For what ought to be is what the intellect perceives to be intended, i.e., stretched towards, or called for, by the existent's essence. Now it is desirable that a thing attain the fulfilment of its being. And since the desirable is what is good, it follows that the good ought to be.⁴² Goodness, like Truth, Unity, and Beauty, is coterminous with Being in that it is Being perceived under the aspect of its desirability. In other words, being, that which is, is desirable. It is desirable that a dog, for example, possess all that belongs to the fullness or completeness of its being, which fullness or completeness is dictated by the exigencies of its essence; acute hearing, say. The absence of this acuteness is an evil, for it frustrates the completion, i. e., the actualization, of its being. By the same principle, the absence of the capacity to know intellectually in a dog is not an evil, since that capacity is not demanded by the dog's essence; hence, the actualization of that capacity is not a condition of the completion of the dog's specific being. But, with man, not only is the capacity to know intellectually a necessary constituent of his essence, so that it is desirable, which is to say, good, that he exercise that capacity, so that, accordingly, he ought to exercise it and ought to be permitted to exercise it; it is also, for the same essential reason, desirable that he be allowed to exercise his autonomy. In virtue of what man actually is--a rational being

⁴² Heinrich Rommen, The Natural Law. Tr. by Thomas Hanley. St. Louis & London: B. Herder Book Co., 1947; Ch. 8.

possessed of free choice--, it is desirable and thus, good, that he pursue his self-perfection. Hence, he ought to be permitted to do so.

Ill

As stipulated by the opening sentence of this essay, the focus has been the real, or ontological, basis of human rights, not the topic of rights itself. Consequently, no attempt has been made to enumerate the specific rights that naturally belong to a self-perfecting being, such as man, or to discuss political, social, and economic rights.⁴³ Topics such as these exceed the scope of this essay. Nevertheless, the very task of demonstrating the ontological basis of rights requires a preliminary discussion of fundamental human rights or moral rights, i. e., of those rights which do not belong to a man by virtue of a particular station or position in life but which belong to every man simply because he is a man, rights which are entailed by the conclusion that he is a self-perfecting being. Otherwise, the bridge between the ontological basis of rights and natural rights themselves will remain problematic. For, as we have already seen, an essential part of such a preliminary discussion is a response to those who maintain that the attempt to ground rights in nature inevitably falls victim to the fallacy of going from an is to an ought.

The fundamental human rights that immediately and obviously follow from the conclusion that man is a self-perfecting being are those such as the right to life, to personal freedom, the right to pursue one's own perfection as a rational and moral being, etc.⁴⁴ As the right to life is the primary right, a discussion of it alone should be sufficient to illustrate the connection between rights and man's ontological structure.

Mere existence is, perhaps, an ambiguous value. But insofar as a man must exist in order to exercise his capacity for self-perfection, the right to life is of primary value; all other rights

⁴³ Cranston, op. cit., p. 24.

⁴⁴ Maritain, The Rights of Man and Natural Law. Tr. by Doris C. Anson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943; pp. 71-72.

are secondary to it in importance, for they presuppose it. Accordingly, the direct killing of an innocent man, i. e., murder, is the most blatant violation of man's essence as a self-perfecting or rational being. It is the extreme example of using him as a mere means to an end; it is the act which completely and finally frustrates the striving of his being and, consequently, which unequivocally denies the truth that he exists, in some significant sense, for his own sake. Because his capacity for self-perfection has its basis in his very essence as a being possessed of immanent powers, such as knowing and choosing, it can justifiably be deduced that the right to life does not depend on the presence in man of qualities which are accidental to that essence, such as degree of intelligence, health or wholeness of body, skin color or external factors, such as socio-economic circumstances.⁴⁵ To think so is to subscribe to a biologism which regards man's higher faculties as no more than sophisticated manifestations of biological instincts and, consequently, to evaluate human life according to standards of animal vitality. On the epistemological level, .such a valorization of accidental qualities rests on a positivistic philosophy in that it excludes all considerations about the worth of human life, confining itself instead to what are amenable to the methodology of the sciences: sensible, measurable properties. According to these perspectives, a seriously deformed or crippled human being possesses little worth because worth is determined on the basis of either his capacity to " produce " for society or his capacity to participate in a hedonistic or egotistical way of life. The same assessments are made with regard to a terminal patient suffering great pain. Yet, even under such extreme circumstances, human beings are capable of achieving depths of self-realization that are impossible under more benign circumstances.⁴⁶ For, as a rational being, man attains his self-perfection

⁴⁵ Yves Simon, The Philosophy of Democratic Government. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1966 (paperback) ; p. 203.

⁴⁶ Johannes Messner, Social Ethics. Tr. by J. J. Doherty. Revised Edition. St. Louis & London: B. Herder Book Co., 1965; p. 27.

by transcending the limitations of his finite, temporal self. Through the immanence of knowing, he achieves ever higher levels of reality as he identifies himself ontologically with Being and its facets, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and ultimately with the fullness of Being, God; and all the while he retains his own unique selfhood. To be sure, man is not always free to choose his circumstances, but he is free to determine how he shall respond to them.⁴⁷ Hence, owing to the transcendent and, therefore, pervasive reality of the aforesaid desiderata, the deformed, the moribund, and the pain-ridden can attain their self-perfection by choosing to respond to their circumstances in accordance with their desire to possess Being, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty in their lives.

It will doubtless be objected that, even granting this conception of human value, it does not cover the seriously retarded, the hopelessly comatose, and the unborn, for, being incapable of functioning as rational beings, they cannot be regarded as self-perfecting. But herein lies a fallacious equivocation which may well have its roots in the Cartesian conception of man as a thinking being. It is correct to say that those suffering extensive brain damage, as well as the prenatal child whose development is incomplete, lack the capacity for rational and even conscious activity. But what is meant by this use of " capacity " is that, owing to some neuro-physiological impediment, or lack of development, such people cannot exercise their natural capacities for rational activity or consciousness. Only because man by nature possesses the capacity for such activities does it make sense to say of a given man that he lacks the " capacity." Properly speaking, we do not say this of a particular brute animal or inanimate being but of the whole species. Hence, the correct conception of man is not that of Descartes but rather that of Aristotle: man is a " rational animal." The superiority of such a conception is that it defines man in terms of his essence or nature, not in terms of capacities which properly belong to that essence. Because man is a rational animal, he

⁴⁷ Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Bk. Ill 1109b 30-1110a 30.

has the capacity to know; but until that capacity is actualized in particular acts of knowing, it remains in a state of potency. Yet it would be absurd to suppose that man is rational or a knower only when he is engaged in the act of knowing or only so long as his neurocortical faculties are unimpaired. Similarly, the prenatal child cannot be said to be less than a human being simply because these faculties are yet in anascent or inchoate stage, for these faculties and their potency for development are proper to the essence man.

It is, therefore, as much a violation of man's essence as a self-perfecting being directly to kill the retarded and the unborn as it is directly to kill the physically and mentally whole. For, in terms of man's essence, considerations such as degree of physical health, degree of intelligence, stage of neurocortical development, etc., are irrelevant to the question of whether he is a human being. The ontological basis for the right to life is the essence man as it is embodied in this and that existent human being.⁴⁸

^{* * * *}

The assertion that the right to life has an ontological basis is bound to provoke questions about the validity of the distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable homicide. If it is justifiable to kill an unjust aggressor and for the state to execute a condemned criminal, this cannot be because, in virtue of performing unjust actions, they have suffered an ontological transmutation. The question arises, therefore: if it is wrong to kill the innocent because man is by nature a self-perfecting being, then why is it not equally wrong to kill unjust aggressors in self-defense and condemned criminals?

This question does not constitute a fatal objection to the argument of this essay. From the position that certain rights, such as the right to life, are due man because of what he is by nature, it does not follow that these rights cannot justifiably be suspended or abrogated in specific cases. For the outrage

⁴⁸ Simon, loc. cit.

of murder does not consist merely in the killing of a human being but in the unjust killing of him. It is in his being killed unjustly that the victim is used as a mere means to an end. As Kant insisted,⁴⁹ to execute a condemned criminal is to treat him as an end in himself--as an autonomous agent--in that the execution holds him accountable for his crime. The justification for such killings lies in the appeal to justice. So, too, in the case of unjust aggression. The right to life surely implies the right to protect one's life. Having exhausted all other means of protecting himself against his attacker, the intended victim may justifiably kill him. A distinction might be drawn here between the possession of a right and the exercise of that right.⁵⁰ The criminal does not lose possession of his right to life; that right is inalienable for the simple reason that his essence is inalienable. But in the name of justice he forfeits the right to exercise that right.

Conversely, induced abortion, mercy-killing, eugenic killings, killing the innocent, whether for personal reasons or for the good of the state, etc., are all examples of murder--i. e., morally unjustifiable killing--in that each uses a human being as a mere means to an end. The position, presented at the outset of this essay, that society has the right to decide who shall live and who shall die, who shall be allowed to have children, etc., in order to ensure " the quality of life," seeks its justification in society's obligation to protect itself from the moral and political chaos that accompany overpopulation, famine, pollution of the natural environment, etc. But the error of this position is two-fold. First, the members of a teeming population cannot reasonably be accused of injustice simply because they are members of a population whose rapid growth exceeds the capacity of the economy or natural environment to accommodate such increase. They have not, therefore, forfeited the right to exercise their

⁴⁹ I. Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Justice. Tr. by John Ladd. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965 (paperback); pp. 99-106.

⁵⁰ Maritain, Man and the State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956; p. 102.

right to life. Second, the position rests on a faulty conception of the common good and ultimately on a faulty conception of man. Since each man, woman, and child is a self-perfecting being, the common good cannot be realized at the expense of any innocent human being. Society constitutes a reality but only in a secondary sense, for it is a collective whole; individual human beings are the primary realities inasmuch as each constitutes a substance with its own natural principle of unity. The collective whole called ' society ' exists for the sake of these primary substances insofar as it derives its rationale and organization from their needs. Because each member of society is a self-perfecting being, the common good is realized only in laws, institutions, and policies which offer him the social, economic, political, cultural, and moral conditions for his fulfilment. Among sub-rational groups, as we have seen in the first part of this essay, no common good is possible. Lacking the capacity for truly immanent activity and hence, for self-perfecting activity, each member of the bee-hive, say, exists totally for the good of the hive; each is a mere part of the whole, and since, by definition, the good of the whole is the good of each of its parts, the good of each bee is realized in its being sacrificed for the sake of the hive.⁵¹

But the deliberate killing of innocent human beings, even for the noblest of ends--the survival of the species, for example-- cannot contribute to the common good, let alone to human progress, for each man is a whole within the social whole, not a mere part of it. Such a procedure is, therefore, intrinsically immoral, as it subverts man's essence by treating him as a mere part. Far from furthering the common good, it destroys it. The survival of the human species is in itself an ambiguous achievement. What was said above with regard to human existence applies also to the species; mere survival is nugatory. Survival derives its proper and full value from the fact that it enables a human being to perfect himself.

⁵¹ Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, Ch. IV.

A word about suicide must be said in connection with the validity of the distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable homicide. Some suppose that suicide is not an intrinsically immoral act because it is his own life that the suicide voluntarily terminates. Implicit in this supposition lies the failure to understand that the immorality of directly destroying human life follows from the objective structure and finalities of the human essence and from the intrinsic end of the act itself. The question of whether the suicide was committed freely, like the question of the suicide's motive, pertains to a consideration of moral guilt and personal responsibility but not to any consideration of the objective morality or immorality of the act. For the same reason that the direct killing of an innocent man is immoral, so is suicide immoral: the suicide treats himself as a mere means to an end, in this case, as a mere means to his personal ends. Nevertheless, he thereby subverts his essence as a self-perfecting and self-determining being. Just as others are bound to treat him with justice, so is he bound to treat himself with justice.

Conclusion

The thrust of this essay has been to establish the claim, underlying the doctrine of natural right, that rights are due man in virtue of what he naturally and really is and not in virtue of social prerogative. That what man is can be rationally grounded and explicated only through a metaphysical approach is doubtless a scandal to some and a perplexity to others. For, despite its astounding scientific and technological achievements, ours is an age of intellectual darkness, an age of metaphysical blindness. The influences of Nominalism, Positivism, and Irrationalism conspire to persuade modern man that the intellect, far from having the capacity to know what things are, is confined to a knowledge of their sensible properties or, at least, to a knowledge of our measurements of them. But, if their essences are unknowable, then the things that confront us in the world must remain unintelligible and the " dignity of man " can be no more than a high-sounding phrase lacking all basis in reality.

Man must appear a material being essentially no different from sub-rational beings.

The reason for this devastating egalitarianism is clear. The denial of the intelligibility of things is also the denial of the immaterial, for, as argued above, a thing is knowable to the extent that it is free from the constrictions and opaqueness of matter. The essence of a material thing is not material--though being the intelligible formula of the thing, it is its formal cause, i. e., it accounts for the kind and order of its material properties. Thus, the denial of the intellect's capacity to know anything but sensible properties or impressions reduces all of Nature, including man, to so much material to be manipulated and expended by the will of society. It is no coincidence that the rise of the totalitarian state and with it a gigantic technology, rendered monstrous for want of a guiding vision and which increasingly debases man, should parallel the decay of faith in the intellect and the emergence of an anti-metaphysical outlook. As Collingwood has maintained,⁵² the decline of metaphysics signals the decline of civilization.

Yet, men everywhere, whether educated or not, have understood--at least with a practical knowledge and in varying degrees--the special dignity of man. The universality of this insight is confirmed, if nowhere else, in the growing demand of peoples throughout the world for freedom and national identity. It is to the credit of Thomistic philosophy that it shares with this common sense knowledge an understanding of the proportion that exists between intellect and reality and, hence, of the intellect's natural capacity to know the essences of things. Growing out of the very soil of common sense, the doctrines of Thomism express the systematic development of speculative intellect's purifying reflections upon it. Thus, rather than being an exotic doctrine imported a priori to justify the rights of man, the metaphysical argument for that doctrine represents the natural movement of the intellect from the data of our perceptions

⁵² R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957; pp. 234 & 343.

of the sensible world to the ontological principles underlying them. Remaining steadfast in its claims on behalf of intellect and of the intelligibility of Nature in the midst of the chaos spawned by philosophical agnosticism and irrationalism, Thomistic philosophy offers a rational, ontologically grounded, defense of the rights and dignity of man.