Natural Law, Conscienceand Human Nature

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Eoghan

Puritan Board Senior
I was fascinated to learn that the founding fathers used the term natures law as code for conscience. Classical Greece had a well developed concept of natures law albeit lacking the refinement that Paul brought to the concept. Paul of course was able to explain the phenomenon as being a God given conscience.

Reading VDH's book "The death of Homer" I am struck by the way classical Greece had a definite view of human nature as tragic and flawed (p13) which resonates with the Christian view of human nature as fallen. Now society has a view of human nature as evolving and becoming more moral and leaving behind the caveman. I have sat in meetings at school where a psychologist lectured us on this "primitive" impulse as a residue of our ape ancestry. This forms the background for defunding the police and other impulses of the left. Human nature is a social construct, improve the environment and don't provoke (policing) and we will all get along nicely!

The view of human nature to a large extent shared with classical Greece was to exercise self-control. Having bad impulses but controlling them is what it means to be civilised. In contrast the left sees human nature as a wax nose which can be easily shaped. Designing a society in which we have no bad impulses is what it means to be civilised. If you acknowledge you have flaws you have to master you are castigated and shunned. Hence when a male interviewer famously said, "We all feel that, we just exercise self-control." There were calls for his firing from feminists who could not acknowledge the self-control and only saw what had to be controlled.
 
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