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PARTISAN REVIEW
If ...
the truth may be defined as the system of my (intellectual) limi–
tations, what gives it objectivity is the fact that I find my fellowman to
a greater or less extent (never wholly) subject to the same
Can't Helps.
If
I think I am sitting at a table I find that the other persons present
agree with me; so if I say that the sum of the angles of a triangle is
equal to two right angles.
If
I am in a minority of one they send for
a doctor or lock me up; and I am so far able to transcend the to me
convincing testimony of my senses or my reason as to recognize that if
I am alone probably something is wrong with my works.
And also when he continues:
The jurists who believe in natural law seem to me to be in that naive
state of mind that accepts what has been familiar and accepted by
them and their neighbors as something that must be accepted by all
men everywhere.
9.
((Lay not that flattering unction to your soul."
In certain
parts of theology Niebuhr may repair to the Hegelian dialectic too
quickly and in others he may find it extremely difficult to beat a
clear logical path to the world, but one cannot accuse him of the
same sort of logical magic in discussing natural law. On that subject
his view is deep and admirable, and he sees the anti-democratic po–
tentialities of the doctrine even though it has been used by ardent
democrats. Niebuhr decries Catholic as well as liberal confidence in
natural law and shows the extent to which the doctrine can be twisted
into special pleading and hypocritical justification of self-interest–
especially when an institutional authority is set up as the custodian of
morals. On this point Niebuhr's humility is encouraging even to
those who cannot accept his theology. Niebuhr manages to give up
"essentialism" in his theory of morality even though he maintains
it in his discussion of original sin. After seeing the defects of the
philosophy of natural law, it is but a short step to giving up the
whole effort to distill the essence of man. Yet Niebuhr fails to take
it. For that reason the various Augustinan inevitabilities remain to
plague Niebuhr even after the Thomistic necessities have departed.
By returning to Aquinas and Lippmann, we can see what
Niebuhr means about natural law. Aquinas, as we have seen, says
that some self-evident propositions are self-evident only to the wise,
and Lippmann speaks of the principles of natural law as those which
