GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SOVEREIGNTY AND NATURAL RIGHTS 547
what was good and bad, right and wrong! in a society by
reasoning from general premises about the nature and
purpose of man and the State. 1 It is from this point of
view that Burke criticises the doctrine of Natural Rights.
He charged it with being a purely abstract conception
owning no relation to reality. This criticism entailed a criticism
of the Social Contract theory, for, if there were no
rights, it was nonsense to suppose that men had formed society
in order to preserve them. Again, if there were no rights,
it was nonsense to suppose that the duty of obedience in
a society was based on a far-fetched deduction, explicit
or implicit, to the effect that, since society existed to
preserve rights, and since, in order that it might do so,
it must be permitted to function smoothly, and since the
smooth functioning of society entailed an obedience on
the part of its members to its laws, it followed that citizens
must obey the laws.
Society does, however, it is obvious, exist and man
has a duty to obey it. Why, then, does it exist and what,
on Burke's view, is the basis of this duty? Burke's answer
broadly is, because God so ordained it. "The awful author
of our being/' he wrote in his Appeal from the New to tht
Old Whigs, "is the author of our place in the order of
existence; and that, having disposed and marshalled us
by a divine tactic, not according to our will, but according
to his, he has, in and by that disposition, virtually ' sub-
jected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned
to us. We have obligations to mankind at large which are
not in consequence of any special voluntary pact. They
arise from the relations of man to man; and the relations
of man to God, which relations are not matters of pact.
On the contrary, the force of all the pacts which we enter
into with any particular person, or number of persons
amongst mankind, depends upon these prior obligations."
In other words we have a relation to God who created
us, and we also have relations to other men, since God
1 Sec pp. 55^-560 below for a development of this criticism of the
undue abttractneu of some political theories.