Is Politics Insoluble?

The Case for the Minimal State I 59
human action. But this is something quite different from "nat-
ural laws'* that are supposed to prescribe how men should con-
duct themselves.
A Nebulous Concept
The central difficulty with Natural Law is that no two of
its votaries seem to have been able to agree regarding pre-
cisely what it enjoins. For Aristotle it sanctioned the subordi-
nation of women to men and of slaves to Athenian citizens.
For the Stoics it prescribed equalitarianism. For many it
meant the plain dictates of "right reason," though nobody
could quite agree regarding what right reason prescribed. For
others it meant the "divine will," with even more disagree-
ment regarding what this commanded. Still others derived
Natural Law from the law that existed in a "state of nature."
But for some this meant savagery and for others a sort of Gar-
den of Eden. According to the Declaration of Independence
"the Laws of Nature" made certain "unalienable" rights "self-
evident."
Finally, Jeremy Bentham, toward the end of the
eighteenth century, was moved to exclaim that Natural Law
was "nonsense on stilts." In his Principles of Morals and Leg-
islation (1780), he wrote (Chapter 2):
A great multitude of people are continually talking
of the Law of Nature; and then they go on giving you
their sentiments about what is right and what is
wrong: and these sentiments, you are to understand,
are so many chapters and sections of the Law of
Nature.
This is not too unfair a description of those who are trying
to revive the doctrine of Natural Law even today They try to