Reconciling Natural Law and Utilitarianism

            When it comes to the foundations of human morality and justice, there are three major foundations suggested: divine revelation, natural law, and utilitarianism. Divine revelationists believe in an omniscient and omnipotent deity that can communicate his codes of morality and justice to humans through revelation. These ‘revealed’ codes then become the basis on which human codes of morality and justice should be based. However, because I don’t believe in such a deity, I will not elaborate on this foundation, which for that reason is not convincing to me. Natural law theorists, whether theist or atheist, believe that there is a set of rules of justice that, because they are suited to the 'nature' of humans, should be followed by humans. These general rules must be ‘discovered’ by the use of human reason. Because they are ‘natural’ to humans, they will also appear reasonable to the human mind. Once discovered, these general principles should be used as the foundations of more complex and situation-specific codes of justice and morality. Natural law theorists point to the striking similarity of basic legal principles across different civilizations, such as injunctions not to murder without cause or steal property, as evidence that the natural law exists, and that these basic principles are part of it. Of course, the natural law theorist does not argue that all law codes adhere to the natural law, and these law codes are criticized when they diverge from the natural law discovered by reason.

            

            Utilitarians, since Jeremy Bentham called the natural law “nonsense on stilts”, have tended to set themselves in opposition to natural law theorists. Benthamite utilitarians argue that any political measure is to be praised if it results in the “greatest happiness for the greatest number”, and derided if it does not. To render their principles more ‘scientific’, they tried in vain to find a way to measure happiness, or ‘utility’, so as to render their dictum more operational. A more refined version of utilitarianism has been dubbed ‘rule utilitism’ by Henry Hazlitt. Rule utilitists such as Hazlitt and Ludwig von Mises argue that since utility cannot be measured or compared across different people, the Benthamite dictum is liable to be used for all kinds of wild plans. They suggest that what is necessary is for general rules to be formulated that human reason suggests would lead to a situation in which, in the long-term, the most people’s utilities can be optimized. The preservation of society through recognizing self-ownership and private property as general rules are put forward as such by Mises and Hazlitt, because without a society based on private property, it is evident through the use of reason that less people could achieve their respective ends, both material and psychic.

            

           However, formulated this way, the rule utilitist version of utilitarianism and natural law, to my eyes at least, do not seem so far apart after all. Both say that there are general rules that must be formulated (or ‘discovered’, same thing in practice) by the use of human reason that will result in the social order that is most expedient for the pursuit of the various ends that humans hold. Bentham’s and Mises’s objection to natural law was that it was being used to justify all kinds of divergent political schemes. No one could agree on what the natural law was, and hence they just claimed that their views of justice accorded with the natural law, and everyone else was an impostor, thus introducing dogma and fundamentalism into political philosophy. But the natural law theorist could just argue that divergent natural laws came about because some were better at logical reasoning than others, and that there was still one natural law that could be revealed as the correct one through proper logical reasoning. Also, they could turn it back on the utilitarians, and point out that utilitarians had vastly divergent views themselves on what would bring “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”. Murray Rothbard, a natural law theorist, criticized utilitarianism on the ground that since utilities are subjective and cannot be measured interpersonally, the utilitarian cannot possibly know what measures, or even general rules, would maximize utility. Thus, if someone did not care about the preservation of society in the long-run and just wanted to loot and kill people in the short-run, there is nothing the utilitarian can say, without making illegitimate interpersonal comparisons of utility and value judgements about what time horizons humans should hold, that would condemn this valuation and acting on this valuation. But, this objection could be turned around on the natural law theorist. For what if the same person rejected the natural law theorist’s argument that ‘reason’ and ‘nature’ proscribed a particular course, when the ‘nature’ of this particular person was to brutally massacre people and his ‘reason’ told him that he did not care about the long-term consequences? 

           Thus, it would seem that both natural law theorists and utilitarians just have to recognize that most people care about material prosperity and freedom to pursue their own ends, and that while agreeing on general rules of self-ownership and private property in order to preserve a social arrangement that makes these goods possible and imposing this agreement on crazies who just want to rob and kill people for the fun of it is a tiny bit majoritarian, this little, reasonable bit of majoritarianism is worth it and is necessary.  

            

           Thus, rightly understood, natural law and rule utilitist utilitarianism are really quite similar, both enjoining using human reason to come up with general rules that will underpin a social arrangement that will maximize humans’ ability to pursue their own ends, material and psychic. The objections levied against one can be levied against the other as well, and both must recognize that a tiny, eminently reasonable bit of majoritarian compulsion is necessary to enforce these general rules against unreasonable, destructive people. Thus, let the controversy end, and let efforts to elucidate, elaborate, and disseminate the relevant general rules necessary for a peaceful and prosperous society be redoubled, whether you call yourself a natural law theorist or a utilitarian.