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• Literature of Liberty a Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought
• Editorial Staff
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• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Henry B. Veatch, Natural Law: Dead Or Alive?
• I: Natural Law
• “nature” and “law” In Natural Law
• The Anatomy of Natural Rights
• Egoism and Rights
• The Is/ought Chimera
• Deriving “ought” From “is”
• Facts Vs. Value-laden Whims
• Is/ought and Probable Reasons
• Does Righteous Anger Imply Rights?
• Why Be Moral?
• Truth As an Objective Value
• Was the Revolution Objectively Necessary?
• Natural Law and State of Nature
• Natural Law and the State
• Natural Rights and Anarchism
• Dworkin On Rights
• Liberalism, Rights, and Abortion
• Rights and “mercy Killing”
• Rights and the “brain Drain”
• The Natural Law Right to Work
• Grotius: Contract and Natural Law
• Rights and Communication
• II: Autonomy, Privacy, and Authority
• Bureaucracy and “the Organization Man”
• Autonomy and Anarchism
• Autonomy and Taking Responsibility
• Autonomy, Motivation, and “buck-passing”
• Schooling For Conformity
• The Schoolroom Vs. Autonomy
• Obedience to Authority
• The Meaning of Privacy
• Privacy and Autonomy
• Privacy and Consent
• The Court and Privacy
• III: The Ambiguities of Liberty
• Clarifying Freedom
• Rehabilitating Mill's “harm Principle”
• Experiencing Freedom
• Do Offers Coerce Freedom?
• The Danger of “dangerousness”
• Freedom, Motivation, and Government Programs
• Freedom Vs. Determinism
• Negative Vs. Positive Freedom
• Smith and Utilitarian Economic Freedom
• Locke, Freedom, and Tacit Consent
• Religious Freedom
• Freedom, Existentialism, and Innocent Victims
• Does Censorship Harm Freedom?
• IV: Slavery
• Slavery, Ideology, and Subordination
• Slavery and Imperialist Ideology
• Enlightenment Liberalism Vs. Slavery
• The Anatomy of a Slave Revolt
• Colonial American Slave Law
• Jefferson On Slavery
• Slavery and the Poor
• V: Planning
• Regulation and the Warfare State
• Mail, Privacy, and Social Control
• Corporate State Capitalism: Coal
• French War “planification”: Chlorates
• Bureaucracy and British Regulation
• British Foreign Policy and Stagnation
• Political Decisions and the Economy
• Government, Labor, and Multinationals
• Black Markets Vs. Regulation
• Regulation Vs. Academic Autonomy
• Government Schools and Social Control
• The Economics of Charity
• International State Planning and Inflation
• Competition and Individual Knowledge

Natural Law and the State

Aldo Tassi

• Loyola College, Maryland

“Anarchism, Autonomy, and the Concept of the Common Good.” International Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1977): 273–283.

We may ground the state in a dual essence theory of human nature and in a conception of the common good which weds the twin truths that human beings are both sociable and metaphysically free.

Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), and Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974) have drawn attention to freedom and to the defects within both liberalism and modern ideas of government. However, Wolff's and Nozick's initial contrast between society and the individual, together with their concentration on problems of law and coercion, misunderstand autonomy and sociability. These authors wrongly believe that political authority is incompatible with human freedom.

Self-awareness and the aim to live a meaningful life distinguishes human existence. Political activities, however, generally represent one group's attempt to “live the lives of others.” Escaping this censure would be those minimal state activities derived from the right of self-defense.

Autonomy means the capacity both to shape the forces that act on humans (independence) and to act on these forces according to the self-chosen plan of one's life. This view of autonomy, as articulated in the writings of Jacques Maritain, is compatible with the concept of the common good. The process of achieving autonomy actually occurs in a social context. Individuals achieve their identity in a necessary relationship with other humans. Each must learn from others in order to master his freedom, i.e., to actively shape his life and actions. In making our actions intelligible to others, we make them intelligible to ourselves. Thus, the experience of individual autonomy necessarily refers to other humans and presupposes society.

An individual's proper good, is what he makes his own (good) by virtue of desiring it. If the individual is to understand what he is doing in pursuing his proper good, there must be some criterion by which he judges it worthy. The criterion must be a criterion for him-together-with-others. By its nature, the common good must be redistributed to individuals; if it exists, we must make it available to individuals so that they may pursue their proper good. Individuals presuppose the common good in order to function as autonomous beings, pursuing their proper good.

The public interest, on the other hand, is the good aimed at by cooperative tasks voluntarily undertaken. Achievement of the public interest benefits all; each individual pursues the public interest as his own proper good.

The autonomous person must be selfaware; he must also be aware of himself with-others. Since his being-with-others is also others-being-with-him, this state is a common one, and moreover, is a worthy state to be in for its own sake.

The political order addresses the autonomous individual in the context of being-with-others. The state functions to care for the common good, and from this function, it is argued, creates its legitimacy. The political order defines the way in which each individual should take responsibility for the common good. The common good, in turn, provides the standard for criticizing existing states.