Théodore Simon Jouffroy’s Cours de droit naturel is only an introduction to a planned larger work covering all of natural right. As becomes clear from the first words, the book is based on a series of lectures, which was a part of a larger course of lectures concerning the end of individual humans, human communities and the whole of humankind. This larger lecture course had begun with the question what is the end of humans in the current life. Answering this question had required the investigation of the nature of human beings and of the conditions of present life that worked as obstacles for the attainment of the absolute end of human beings. This had led Jouffroy to the second question: what is the end of human beings before and after this life. His answer had been, firstly, that there was no time before the current life, but secondly, that this life was inexplicable without assuming future life, where human beings could fulfil their absolute end.
The question Jouffroy sets for himself at the beginning of this work is that when the end of human beings is known, what are the rules of proper human conduct. He defines natural right as the study of this question, including also the study of historical customs and laws paralleling the absolutely true rules of proper human conduct.
In one sense, Jouffroy says, there is really only one rule and duty, that is, to fulfil the absolute end of human beings, but, he adds, this duty can be divided according to relations human beings have to other things. The first of these divisions is personal morality that studies the rules of the conduct of humans toward themselves. Indeed, Jouffroy thinks it is the most important part of natural right, since everything else depends on it.
The second part, according to Jouffroy, involves the relation of human beings to things, to which he includes all animate and inanimate creatures, except human beings. He suggests assuming a Robinsonian condition, where a human being is living without any connection to other human beings. The question of this part is whether this human being has the right to use other things and in what limits and whether these limits are different for animate and inanimate things.
The most multifarious part in Jouffroy’s plan is the one concerning relations between human beings, which he notes is often taken solely as natural right. The complexity of this part is shown in that this part has subdivisions of its own. First of these subdivisions, Jouffroy says, concern the state where humans had not joined in civil societies. He notes that even in such a state there were human communities, namely, families. Thus, Jouffroy concludes, state of nature involves two subdivisions, firstly, right of humanity, concerning relations between any individual human beings in a state of nature, and right of family, concerning relations between family members.
The introduction of civil societies modifies the relations studied in the right of humanity and the right of family, Jouffroy says, thus, these modified relations must be investigated by a third subdivision or private right. Furthermore, new kinds of relations are introduced, in other words, those of human beings toward the civil society and its rule, studied by the fourth subdivision or public right. Jouffroy calls private and public right together social right. He also emphasises that the study of social right need not mean the study of laws and customs of a particular civil society, but can be derived from the general nature of all civil societies. The final subdivision or the right of nations involves the study of relations between civil societies.
The highest pinnacle of the natural right, in Jouffroy’s opinion, is to study the relation between human beings and God. This study is, he says, a part of natural religion, but not all of it, since natural religion also includes questions about the nature of God and of the final fate of human beings.
As already implied, Jouffroy never really gets to fill this division with content. Instead, the whole work concentrates on a necessary preliminary question whether there are any duties or obligations at all. Some philosophers, he says, have suggested that duty or obligation is simply an impossibility. Others have insisted that although obligation might be possible, they have never discovered any. Finally, some accept the notion of obligation, but understand it in a false manner.
Before refuting these various systems, Jouffroy suggests studying the nature of human beings. All entities, he says, are organised in different manners and therefore have different ends, fulfilling of which is in their nature to. This means, Jouffroy thinks, that nature must have given them tools for actualising these ends. First of these tools are drives directing all entities to their ends. Thus, Jouffroy concludes, even humans must share some common primitive tendencies or passions, which work as the force moving us from our birth onwards. The second tool is then constituted by the various faculties that are at first moved by the passions.
A human being is born with passions and faculties, Jouffroy states, but a third component of human being is developed, when the faculties meet obstacles. Such obstacles, he thinks, spur human beings to concentrate their forces, for instance, when understanding tries to clear obscurities. This concentration is the first sign of volition, but it is fatiguing, which leads to a constant variation of natural and voluntary states.
Jouffroy notes that human passions aim for real goods, that is, to various ways of fulfilling the human end. As sensitive beings, humans experience gaining these real goods as pleasure. Such a sensible good, Jouffroy emphasises, is not real good, but only a consequence of and a sign for such. Still, he notes, pleasure and the opposed feeling of pain lead us to a secondary set of passions that are explicitly related to some objects that can cause pleasure and pain, which lead to notions of useful and injurious.
The primitive state of human beings, Jouffroy says, is controlled by passions. The passions often conflict with one another, and what happens to be strongest at the moment directs the human. The volition is then active, but not yet properly free. It is made free, Jouffroy suggests, when the fourth aspect of human beings or reason is introduced. He defines reason as the faculty of comprehension, which differs from the faculty of knowledge, since even animals know, but do not comprehend anything.
What reason does, Jouffroy thinks, is that it replaces impulses of passions with motives. Through reason humans understand that all the passions and faculties seek a common end, which the reason designates as good. It differentiates the notion of good from what serves good – useful – and what we sensibly experience as a sign of good – pleasure. It also designates happiness as the confluence of good, useful, and pleasurable.
Reason understands, Jouffroy thinks, that self-control is a necessary condition for attaining greatest possible satisfaction of the nature of an individual, because mere passions cannot regulate themselves and often lead us to great evils. Thus, the volition that was formerly ruled by passions becomes free and finds self-interest as the principle of action. Jouffroy explains that free volition or will does not mean removal of passion, and indeed, self-interest has a passion of its own. Still, instinctive passions remain active, and reason and will find themselves often in conflict with them, which leads to oscillation between following impulses and self-interest. Yet, Jouffroy notes, self-interest is not opposed to the fulfilment of even the primitive passions, but instead means a reasonable fulfilment of passions.
Jouffroy calls this new phase in human development a selfish state. Children in a primitive state, he explains, are not yet selfish, since they still do not have reason for seeking their own interest. Furthermore, Jouffroy adds, the selfish state does not yet have obligations, because we cannot be said to be obligated to seek for our own interest. Indeed, he adds, obligations are found only at the final or moral state, which requires a move from selfish to universal and absolute ideas. Reason is not satisfied with individual good, Jouffroy thinks, but rises to the notion of the absolute good of a universal order covering all individual goods. Thus, a human being understands that the good of others is as sacred as our own. The idea of order, Jouffroy explains, is then the source of all duties, obligations and rules of morality.
The moral state brings with itself a new notion of goodness or moral good, by which Joffroy means compliance of will with an obligation. Moral good, he thinks, is dependent on real good – the absolute end of everything – and it also produces its own sensible good or pleasure. Then again, Jouffroy admits, all human beings will never feel this moral pleasure, since they never advance to the moral state, and indeed, some might even be left in the primitive state of passions.
The moral state, Jouffroy suggests, involves a conflict of obligations or duties with self-interest. Yet, he adds at once, moral obligations do not completely refute primitive passions or self-interest. Some of our passions, Jouffrey thinks, involve sympathy for others, thus, even our self-interest must involve interest for others. Still, although moral duties can guide us to the same actions as self-love and passion, he emphasises, only morality can obligate and command these actions and thus leads to the ideas of esteem and blame or merits and demerits. In any case, morality does not contradict our own good, but fulfils it by connecting it to the highest good.
Jouffroy notes that order is still not the highest notion reason can attain, because it can step further to the concept of God as the creator of universal order. This concept, he suggests, gives the idea of order a religious aspect, although this idea has moral meaning independently of religion. Jouffroy also points out that long before human beings have reason, they feel sympathy for beauty. He suggests that beauty can be analysed to be the material symbol and confused expression of order. Similarly, Jouffroy thinks, the absolute truth is the same order conceived by God. Truth, beauty and good are then for Jouffrey order understood from different viewpoints.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti