Interview
Reason and Law

Outside the
bunker
Power is an ambiguous term, and right is even more so. And yet in the public debate their meanings are taken for granted, while the manipulators have free rein. But for JOHN FINNIS, a law professor at Oxford and Notre Dame, clarity is needed.

by Ubaldo Casotto

Our meeting with Professor John Finnis takes place in the lobby of a Milan hotel, before his participation in the encounter promoted by the Milan Cultural Center at the Catholic University of Milan. He is very generous with his time, as great teachers often are–after speaking with us, he will dedicate an hour and a half to answering questions for a small group of law students. An undisputed authority in the field of natural law, Finnis divides his teaching between the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Oxford and, like all true innovators, he defers to a greater figure: “All my philosophy of practical reason, of natural law, of justice, of positive law, and my works on natural theology deeply follow the line, as far as I can judge, of Saint Thomas Aquinas, whom I consider a founder of modern thought.”

Professor, the title of your talk is: “Power, law, democracy: How to recognize what is just.” Power is an ambiguous term, for which we generally have a negative perception, but in today’s world it is an unavoidable reality. In your works you speak of the need for authority. How can we get past this ambiguity?
I have reflected a great deal on the foundation of the relationship between authority and responsibility. Responsibility is a word with many meanings. I am responsible for what I did in the past or for what I say. Power is that type of responsibility that has to do with the duty to serve the common good. It is a responsibility in a general sense, which lays the foundations for law, and does not concern politics exclusively, but also the family and society.

Right is a nobler word than power, but today equally ambiguous. Human rights, above all, should be the principle that opposes power, but today we are witness to a strange phenomenon: only what power recognizes becomes a right.
The category of human rights has become a branch of the law, and has taken on the characteristics of positive law–law made of a code and of constitutions that create positive laws. In the mindset of the public and the elite, human rights are considered a part of the law but, instead, they should be considered a source of law and a potential foundation for the critique of laws. Certainly, they should be acknowledged and absorbed by the law, but at the same time they are above laws and against bad laws.

So then, can one say that the point of resistance to power is the person, with his or her rights and freedom?
Yes, if the concept of “person” is understood correctly, the person in his or her  ontological characteristic of body and soul, the person conceived as desire for satisfaction, which is a flowering, an understanding and fulfilling of the true goods of the person.

You are describing a “religious” concept of the person. In his speech at the Bundestag and, previously, at the United Nations in 2008, Benedict XVI linked the principle of laicity of law to the transcendental foundation of the person. Excuse the paradox, but to be truly secular, must one in some way be religious?
As the Pope said in Berlin, Christianity has never imposed a religious law, and in this sense has shown itself to be very “secular.” It has not relied on a revealed law, but on a law founded on “reason and nature,” where nature is not just the empiric nature of every society. Even the greatest philosophers, and I am speaking of Plato and Aristotle, understood that empirical nature opens to the transcendent. They had some degree of understanding of the transcendent, but they did not have a clear concept of creation and freedom. Revelation clarifies that initial comprehension of the person and of freedom oriented toward the transcendent. Reason needs clarification to understand the true nature of the human person.

Perhaps the problem of reason, above all in its rationalistic meaning, is its limitation to the spheres of logic and the sciences. The Pope insists on the need to “broaden” it, and at the Bundestag gave that example of the bunker in which modern thought is locked up: “The windows must be flung open again, we must see the wide world, the sky and the earth once more.” It seems that the first characteristic of this open reason is wonder. Do you agree?
The Pope calls us to a conception of reason that goes beyond positivistic and scientific reason, that rejects the dogma by which only science can enunciate just propositions, by which philosophy is reduced to slavishly following science, and cannot say anything beyond that. This is a catastrophic misunderstanding of the concept of reason.

Power and law are not an end unto themselves, but are subordinated to the end. In your works you define it as “human flowering.” Benedict XVI speaks of the “breadth of the human being.” What does this have to do with the desire for happiness that is in the heart of each person?
Happiness in English is a word that lends itself to misunderstandings, and can easily be understood in the hedonistic sense. This is why I prefer the words satisfaction or flowering, because they push our minds beyond the limited concept of our days and open us to ask ourselves what the satisfaction of the person is, what possibilities are open to us. The modern era views happiness as something we already know everything about, and about which we have no need to ask questions.

The Pope insists on saying that “today” it is more difficult to recognize what in and of itself should be evident: the good and the just. He denounces a positivistic and relativistic mentality whose consequences are new forms of slavery of the human person and the opportunity to manipulate it to the point of destroying it. Is the inevitable outcome of absolute relativism the absolutism of the law of the strongest?
Certainly, relativism and positivism, but the Pope also says that today there are new problems, genuinely new. Facing them is our toilsome task. As regards forms of absolutism: if we abandon the concept of the true source of responsibility and authority against arbitrary will, of small or large groups, and we do not have a source of true objectivity, we find no foothold against this power. The genuine source of resistance is natural law, a word that, unfortunately, we are ashamed of today. There is a truth of natural law, the truth of moral discernment, to which every inquiring intellect can appeal against the effect of powers and relations. Natural law is a source of criticism against the customs of the law, without need of revealed sources. As St. Paul says, those who do not have the law, have it written in their hearts. Not that it is a law independent of God, but there can be a discernment of good and evil to which one can appeal against evil, even without knowing the source of this law.

And religious freedom?
I defend the constitutional character of religious freedom. The truth about the human situation is that it does not live in a bunker without windows, but is in relationship with the divine. Having said this, there are problems about the character of religions. Some religions hide the face of God, others have practices and beliefs that are against reason and the public interest. Religious freedom, too, is full of ambiguities. The Pope says that the rights associated with religious freedom all need protection if one considers that they conflict with a prevalent secular ideology (for example, Communist China) or with religious majority positions (see the Arab world). We have to defend religious freedom but be extremely aware of the problems of relation between natural law and the genuine needs of the public sphere: peace, the rights of others, and public morality. Each of these elements must be understood in its true character as ratified by reason. Religion must absolutely not detach itself from reason.