Читать книгу Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, with Selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations - Christian Thomasius - Страница 14
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On the Interpretation of Divine Laws in General and on Practical Principles
§1. Every variety of jurisprudence teaches the interpretation and application of laws. For these are the means of introducing general tranquillity. And if jurisprudence neglected to teach the means of implementing the laws and remained content with saying what they are, it would not deserve the name of prudence.
§2. Interpretation must precede application, according to the rules of good teaching.
§3. Interpretation is the explanation of the will of another person when the intention is not clear. For the kind of interpretation that is called authentic is, properly speaking, no interpretation, but either a new law or a new agreement. That is not relevant here.
§4. This will is either that of a superior or that of an equal. Therefore, interpretation is either that of laws or of agreements, similarly of last wills, scholarly arguments, etc.
§5. Laws, however, are either inscribed in the hearts of men or are published through revelation. In the former case, interpretation uses demonstrations. In the latter, interpretation makes use of conjectures or probable arguments.
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§6. Either interpretation rests on certain rules and axioms, which are derived from first principles.
§7. First principles, however, are propositions formed by the intellect, beyond which the intellect cannot go in its reasoning.
§8. For since the intellect of man is finite, it cannot in its demonstrations ascend to the infinite, but is forced to stop at some point.
§9. According to the difference between theoretical and practical intellectual faculties [habitus], however, the first principles are divided into theoretical and practical.
§10. Many have written a lot on the theoretical principles. The practical have clearly been neglected, or taught in a confused fashion, or are even now sought for laboriously.
§11. Our only aim, after the glory of God, is the zeal for truth, and so we will contemplate the matter objectively, as it is, without looking for approval from anyone or flattering anyone, because we will not slavishly follow any particular author. Nor will we fear anybody’s hate, because we will not mention those we disagree with, nor will we fight with insults, but by reasoning.
§12. But we shall have to examine the matter in a little more depth. I presuppose (1) that the intellect, whichever way you define it, is one thing, and that the theoretical and practical intellects in reality are identical.
§13. (2) Our intellect either contemplates the essence of things, or their nature, character, accidents, or whatever you want to call this, or it contemplates the proper actions of humans.
§14. (3) All things are distinct from each other, but there are also shared characteristics, so that there is no being which does not have something in common with another in relation to a third term.
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§15. (4) When the intellect, therefore, contemplates the nature of things, it either contemplates their shared characteristics or their differences. Thus, every definition is based on this twofold concept, that is, of similarity in the genus and dissimilarity in the specific difference.
§16. (5) He who is able to draw out the similarities of things is said to have a powerful mind; he who accurately discerns differences has judgment.
§17. (6) Moreover, by contemplating the essence of things and their nature the intellect either conceives them as they really are or combines them with each other by some fiction, as they are not. And this act of the intellect is called imagination.
§18. By comparing all those things we have surveyed so far with each other we arrive at the supreme and first proposition, that is, the one to which all others can be referred, but which itself cannot be derived by means of demonstrative proof: anything either is or is not. Or, it is impossible for something to be and not to be at the same time. Or finally, mutually contradictory things cannot be true simultaneously. For these all mean the same. And this is generally called the first theoretical principle.
§19. Among those things, however, that are proper subjects for contemplation, man also finds himself. And when he contemplates his nature he sees that he was created not only for the sake of speculation, but for action as well.
§20. But when he compares his actions with his essence, he realizes that his nature does not allow him to be free of law and to regulate his actions without any norm.
§21. From this follows the definition of law. It also leads to the concept of a ruler and that of obligation since these are implied in the definition of law.
§22. When he finds that there are a variety of laws, he compares them with each other and looks for their differences. The upshot of these contemplations,
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or the conclusion, which is the first law and to which all others must be related, is called the first practical principle.
§23. From what has been said it is clear that the first practical principle is not the first in an absolute sense, but is subordinated to the first theoretical principle.
§24. For the first theoretical principle is the sum of all contemplations on the essences of things and nature. The practical is on the essence of one thing in particular, that of law. The species, however, is contained within the genus.
§25. The practical principle, therefore, already presupposes the knowledge of various things and above all of man and of human actions. And thus it also presupposes the theoretical principle.
§26. Thus they are mistaken who believe that the first practical principle is not subordinate to the theoretical.
§27. For it would follow that the theoretical principle would be false if there were anything in my mind which neither is nor is not.
§28. And so they who teach this deny in fact the first principle of the intellect.
§29. Or they make two distinct entities out of the human intellect.
§30. I will not mention that they themselves admit there is no point arguing against someone who denies first principles. We happily accept this in the case of the first theoretical principle. For nobody will readily deny this if he is human and no peasant.
§31. But if we assume the same in the first practical principle, we will not escape controversy, since the most erudite men disagree over this with each other, each of them surrounded by a crowd of his pupils.
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§32. If they all kept on contradicting each other, saying that there is no point arguing with someone who denies the first principles, except by resorting to physical violence, then a war would in fact break out, if not of all against all, certainly of most of the learned with each other.
§33. Therefore, the first practical principle must be demonstrated immediately from the theoretical.
§34. If I be permitted to do so, I can express this principle in a few words: “Obey him who has the power to command you.”
§35. I prove this first from the definition of him who commands. He who commands is one who has the power to bind another. If there were no need to obey him he would not have this power, but it is impossible for something to be and not to be at the same time.
§36. From the definition of law: Law is the command of a ruler binding subjects, etc. If there were no need to obey him who commands, the law would therefore not be law.
§37. From the definition of obligation: we have explained this above. There would be no obligation if there were no need to obey him who commands.
§38. This axiom deserves to be called a first practical principle because, for one thing, all particular laws must be related to it which can easily be proved through inductive argument from examples.
§39. It also deserves this name because it cannot itself be demonstrated using another law, since it follows from the definition of law in general.
§40. You could therefore call the principle the object of jurisprudence in general. For all forms of jurisprudence presuppose it.
§41. But since we have divided jurisprudence into divine and human, we must see what the first principle of divine jurisprudence is.
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§42. Its nature rests on the fact that all divine laws are referred to it, and that it itself is, however, demonstrated immediately from the first practical principle, mediately from the first theoretical principle.
§43. It will be the following: “Obey God.”
§44. The immediate proof is that this is true because God is a ruler.
§45. The mediate demonstration of this is that this is true because otherwise God would not be God.
§46. Either proof will be developed a little more fully since here it is simply supposed that there is a God and that he is a superior.
§47. Even the most barbarian nations have acknowledged and continue to acknowledge that there is a God. Many have even demonstrated it, especially those who wrote on natural theology or argued against the atheists.
§48. And here various arguments can be put forward. The most powerful is taken from the order of the causes of things. Whatever we see in this terraqueous globe does not exist out of itself, but is dependent on something else; yet we also see that those things on which they are dependent do not exist out of themselves, and so on. Thus we have to stop at some first cause, because the progress ad infinitum is repugnant to the intellect. This first cause is God.
§49. But our intellect cannot know perfectly what God is, even if it is assisted by the light of revelation, because of the infinite distance of human nature from the divine. The light of reason on its own is even less capable of understanding these mysteries.
§50. Thus, it is quite evident from what has been said about the existence of God that his essence is nobler than that of humans, who, as nature tells us, are in all other respects the most perfect among the sublunary creatures and are consequently longer lasting than those entities which
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we see around us, etc.; in one word, that he transcends our intellect, since our intellect can only understand what is equally or less perfect than ourselves.
§51. Yet there is a need for more subtle demonstrations if you want to prove from the light of nature that God is not one of the celestial bodies, since most humans do not know their changes, and I fear that even the most erudite would not be able to do so if they set aside revelation. When the Apostle, therefore, argues from the light of reason against the pagans, he attacks mainly those who regarded humans or beasts or inferior sublunary creatures as God, not those who worshipped the sun or celestial bodies.34
§52. Thus, at the same time, the wisdom of God is to be admired: among the nations that had ignored his most holy revelation, he allowed those who wanted to be considered the most rational to lapse into more absurd forms of idolatry than the barbarian nations. For these usually worshipped celestial bodies or invisible powers. But what is more absurd than the idolatry of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans?
§53. There will be the same difficulty if you want to argue on the basis of natural reason alone with those who say that nature or a soul of the world is God, or who defend the error that the world is eternal. For I do not believe that a pagan can be firmly held in check, even if you reply to him that he who asserts an eternal world denies that there is any cause of it, and so denies God. I can easily predict what he will say, namely, that this inference does not follow necessarily, for he who denies a cause of the world can declare that the world itself is God, or certainly that the world is coeternal with God since it is known that the pagans asserted two coeternal principles, God and prime matter.35
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§54. Thus I dislike the plan of the scholastic philosophers, who devote great efforts to investigating the divine attributes with the light of reason by two means, which they call those of perfection and of negation: the perfection which is in man they say is present eminently in God, and the imperfection which is in man is absent in God. For this is subject to infinite perplexities and qualifications. It is certainly not really suitable to be a proof, which is what they aim for, or at least should be aiming for in a theoretical discipline.
§55. To argue on the basis of perfection will be misleading if human perfection presupposes some imperfection; negation will also be misleading if the perfection opposed to human imperfection is at the same time joined with the imperfection, or if human moral imperfection is held to be such because of the physical imperfection of man.
§56. Thus, it is an imperfection of man that he cannot fly, but should you, like the pagans, invent a winged Mercury because of that?36 I do not think so. For this perfection of birds is combined with the imperfection that they are corporeal.
§57. How would you know that this imperfection (of a bodily nature) does not apply to God, if Scripture had not revealed that God is a spirit? For if among those who acknowledge sacred Scripture there are wise men who imagine that God is corporeal, it is not surprising that the Stoics, the wisest philosophers among the pagans, defended the same doctrine.
§58. So it is a moral imperfection in man if he rejoices over the pain of another, even if this person suffers deservedly, for he who rejoices in this fashion is called cruel. But God himself testifies that he wants to laugh at the misfortune of the godless. Do you, therefore, believe that God is cruel? Far from it! So what is the difference? It is that this moral imperfection in man presupposes a physical imperfection, and that even
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a human being distinguished by the greatest dignity is equal in essence to the lowest beggar. Yet in comparison to God all humans are only dust and shadows.
§59. Thus virtue is not the smallest among the human perfections, and among the virtues justice is preeminent. These virtues, however, cannot be conceived without imperfection. For virtue is the habit of living according to laws; justice is the habit of rendering everyone their due. I will not insist here that the term habit is not applicable to God, for there might be objections to that, but I do say that there is no law that is prescribed to God and that man has nothing which he could also attribute to God.
§60. Therefore, I would not dare to apply the title virtuous and just to divine majesty if I did not see that his infinite wisdom in the revealed word had not rejected these terms for our imperfect perfections. When I see this, however, I am filled with humble veneration because God decides to speak to me in human terms, and at the same time I confess most willingly that the genuine and most exact sense of these expressions exceeds my intellect and so pertains to the mysteries of faith.
§61. And so I believe I do better by freely confessing my ignorance than by concealing it, like the Scholastics, and pretending some sort of great wisdom and trying to cover my ignorance with a cloak of hollow clichés. For what, I ask, is this term eminently which they use? It is either the same as primarily, or they use it to describe that which is the case improperly. The first meaning pertains to what is analogous, the latter to what is equivocal.
§62. If, for example, they claim that virtue and justice are in God eminently, as in the most noble analogous case, they may be providing me with a definition of virtue and justice which can be applied primarily to divine justice and secondarily to human justice. Yet we will expect this in vain, for these two forms of justice do not differ in degree but, properly speaking, fundamentally and are as distant from each other as heaven and earth.
§63. And if they decide that divine and human perfections cannot be comprehended in a common definition, they thereby confess that they
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predicate these improperly of God. That is, they do not know how these properties can be predicated of God.
§64. What does philosophy gain from these trifles? Who would not laugh if someone tried to demonstrate the perfections of man from the perfections of the flea and asserted nothing other than that the perfections of the flea were present to an eminent degree in man. Yet the distance between man and God is greater than that between the flea and man.
§65. But those are the fruits of Gentile philosophy, or rather their abuse, that the Scholastics set about deriving mysteries of faith from philosophy and turned philosophy into the norm of theology, contrary to the precept of the Apostle, who warned the Colossians not to allow themselves to be deceived by philosophy and vain fallacy and, contrary to the aim of the Fathers, who sometimes used philosophy in theological matters, to reveal the absurdities of the pagan philosophers.37
§66. Among this abuse I reckon almost all of the Scholastics’ pneumatics, or their philosophy of spirits, such as God, angels, and the soul of man separate from the body. For everything they have taught on this matter and the arguments they have laboriously assembled will never convince a pagan, if revelation is set aside (with the exception of a few points concerning the existence and providence of God). But once you acknowledge Scripture, there is no need for all their ridiculous little books.
§67. Yet we believe there is a difference between God and the other classes of spirits in that the existence of God, as we have shown, can be investigated with the light of reason, but we cannot know (I say, “know”) anything about angels and the soul separate from the body, not even that they exist, without the word of God.
§68. This absurd plan of the Scholastics, however, bred all the more absurdities, so that they even applied place and time, which are used as physical
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measures of bodies, to spirits, although they cannot be measured, at least not in the way bodies can. The result is this golden, priceless mystery that, for example, the entire soul is in the entire body and is present in every part of the body in its entirety. If someone can prove this to me conclusively within a hundred years, may he carry away the prize of victory!
§69. Thus, you say, does reason show me nothing about God other than his existence and that he is the first being? It does certainly, but for the most part in a confused fashion: that he is independent, that he is omnipotent, etc. For he who calls God an independent being does not so much affirm something particular as deny his dependence. But he who calls God omnipotent does say that God can do everything, which does not involve a contradiction. Yet on the basis of the light of reason man only knows what is contradictory in an absolute sense, but not everything that implies a contradiction with respect to God, that is, that conflicts with his attributes as they are revealed in Scripture.
§70. Yet reason informs us clearly that God holds power over man and that God wants to exercise this power actually.
§71. God holds power over man because he is his creator.
§72. But I will demonstrate from the most solid proofs that God wants to exercise this power over man and that he wants at the same time to take care of the affairs of men. These proofs are all based in the first principle that it is impossible for something to be and not to be at the same time.
§73. (1) God is the creator of man. This assertion depends on the definition of God since we have demonstrated his existence above.
§74. (2) God therefore wanted man to be a rational animal. This is evident from the definition of man.
§75. (3) This means that God wanted man to live according to some norm, or law. This, again, flows from the definition of man, because it does not conform to the rational essence of man, to live without a law.
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§76. (4) Furthermore, God wanted man to act with love and fear according to a prescribed norm or law. I prove this from the definitions of law and obligation which I have provided above.
§77. Thus, God also wanted to take care of the affairs of humans. This flows from the definitions of love and fear, because someone who is not concerned with my affairs would be feared and loved in vain.
§78. I believe there can be no room for doubt here and there is no need for further explanation, since I have said that “a rational animal cannot live without a law.”
§79. Because beasts do not have a law, it does at first seem to contradict the excellence of man that he lives bound by a law, since it is inappropriate to restrict the freedom of a more excellent creature, but to concede liberty in every way to a less noble one.
§80. Yet the matter is obvious concerning beasts. They do live according to a norm infused into them by the supremely wise creator, but they cannot act according to an external norm because they are destitute of all liberty of action.
§81. Thus, when natural liberty is predicated of beasts, it does not denote a faculty of action implanted in them, but a part of the earth granted to them by nature and without consideration of human ownership, in which they exercise the locomotive powers of their bodies.
§82. Yet man has free will and is therefore able to direct his actions according to an external norm.
§83. But it is clear that he must put this ability into practice if he compares his nature with that of the other animals with respect to the body and the soul.
§84. Concerning the body he detects a greater weakness, when it comes to preserving himself without the help of other humans, than in brute
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animals. This weakness is so great that he would necessarily perish if other humans were not under an obligation to come to his help.
§85. Concerning the soul, insofar as he is corrupt in this state after the fall, he sees a greater depraved tendency to harm others. This is the result of several effects which are absent in beasts, even according to the opinion of the Peripatetics. If these people were not coerced by the fear of a greater evil, humankind would perish.
§86. But more than anything else, if man considers his soul, insofar as it is still right in this imperfect state, he will notice that he does not have a soul implanted in him only for the purpose of preserving the body (as are the souls of beasts), but one which consists of faculties that are stimuli to a fear of the Deity and to a social life. He notices that among humans there is a huge diversity of talents and inclinations which does not exist among beasts, and that this not only requires direction by a law to prevent the disturbance of peace by it, but that it [law] requires some sort of order and norm insofar as it helps to bring about peace and tranquillity among humans.
§87. Those who deny the principles that have so far been put forward concerning God are called theoretical atheists; you can divide these into crass and subtle. The former I call those who claim that there is no God. The latter are those who either claim that God does not care about the affairs of men or who say that he cares about them in such a way that they leave man no liberty of action, that is, who invent a sort of Stoic fate.
§88. For just as he who denies the existence of God destroys the foundation of all morality, so are all moral precepts similarly in vain if you accept those two last assertions.
§89. For if God does not take care of the affairs of humans, there is no ruler, and there will be nobody who must be obeyed.
§90. And if everything is directed by fate, there will be no obligation and no fear.
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§91. For if by fate we mean God himself, it is in vain that he is feared and loved if I cannot acquire his love or avoid his anger.
§92. If by fate we mean something other than God, he is feared and loved in vain because he cannot make me happy and cannot punish me.
