Doctor Mama Amon
Platinum Member
- Mar 30, 2018
- 2,311
- 3,490
INTRODUCTION
Dear President Samia, the saying that "actions speak louder than words" means that a person's behavior and actions are a more reliable indicator of their true intentions and feelings than what they say.
The wisdom of this saying fully applies to your government's actions between 2015 and 2025, when you were occupying either of two highest political offices in this country.
They specifically include abductions, tortures, state linked disappearances of government critiques, unlawful detentions, arbitrary deregistration of CSO's such as "Bishop Gwajima's Church", extra-judicial killings, and violating the citizen's right to effectively participate in state governance by serially rigging elections.
Every and each of these actions is violative of constitutionally protected underogable and indefeasible fundamental rights.
Dear President Samia, these actions are overtly offensive to our constitutionally defined vision of building a nation that aspires to become a vibrant kingdom that maximally respects, protects and promotes human goods, human rights and social justice, to an extent that the unacceptability of these offenses scarcely needs demonstration from any body.
Yet, in this analysis, in order to show you the political gravity of the matter at hand, I have chosen to show why they are wrong.
As I will demonstrate, in the eyes of our state constitution, they are all based on, what I propose to call, "The Blunder of Using Good Ends to Justify Bogus Means,” while, as a matter of fact, the excellence of an end does not abolish the natural moral disorder that results when a human person achieves an end by using evil means.
Dear President Samia, as you may know, in a liberal, democratic and republican state, as opposed to totalitarian states, which include chiefdoms, sultanates, monarchies, and military states, the government is employed by the people to work for the people; to an extent that, there is a principal-agent relationship between the two parties, where the people are the collective principal and the government is their collective agent.
It is called a democratic state because there is self-government through popular sovereignty, based on the principle of majority rule, where political authority legitimacy is determined by what more than half of the people who have reached majority age want.
This means that, the role of the citizen in republics that also espouse democracy, popular elections and constitutional law give the public significant influence over governmental development, since they are empowered to join political groups and to influence the development of laws and policies through the election of public leaders.
However, in many democratic nations, the existence of a powerful political party or a dominant civil society group, prevents competition from opposing political groups and curtails the public's role in selecting and approving leaders, hence dominating the government.
It is called a republican state because there is a form of government that derives legitimate authority from a free, informed and deliberate consent of the governed people, where representative leaders are elected by the people, rather than inheriting power or seizing power by force or fraud, so as to make laws that serve the interests of the people and advance the common good of all the people in the country, not just of a few people.
As a rule, the republican system was originally intended to reverse the power structure typical of the monarchy system, in which inherited leaders possess all of the political power.
In the republican system, leaders are chosen to represent the people's interests with terms of office created in such a way that new leaders must be chosen at regular intervals, thereby preventing a single leader or political entity from dominating the populace.
In practice, then, popular power in a republic depends on preventing a political monopoly from becoming powerful enough to alter the laws of the country to suit the needs of a certain group rather than the whole.
And it is called a liberal state because there is the citizens enjoy positive claim rights, negative claim rights, positive liberty rights, and negative liberty rights, which are defined and confined in the state constitution, which has supremacy over the government, the parliament and the judiciary.
On this view, a liberal, republican and democratic government must serve the people by protecting and promoting their derogable rights and underogable rights, while the people pay salaries and other fringe benefits to the government for doing that job over a specific period of time.
To this end, the people give a job description to the government, called the Constitution, for both confining and defining the government's power in the performance of that job.
Since a job description is above an employee, it follows that, the domestic constitution and the related international treaties to which the state is a party are above the government, in that, they limit the government's power.
Dear President Samia, one way of limiting government's power is by defining underogable and and indefeasible rights at a constitutional level.
They are exceptionless negative moral norms, framed in such phrases as: you shall not enslave others, you shall not subject other nations to colonialism, you shall not torture others, you shall not engage in extra-judicial killing, you shall not engage in extra-legal operations, you shall not engage in extra-constitutional operations, you shall not engage in election rigging, and the like, all of which are the ligaments of any proper conception of a good society.
These underogable and and indefeasible human rights are fundamental human rights that cannot be suspended or restricted by government under any circumstances, even during states of emergency or war.
These rights are considered essential for upholding human dignity and ensuring the most basic protections for individuals.
The logic behind underogable rights is to establish a floor below which human rights cannot fall, providing a safeguard against the potential for abuse of power during times of crisis.
Dear President Samia, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the United Republic of Tanzania is a party to, specifically outlines underogable and and indefeasible rights in article 4(2).
Within the limits of the constitution and the treaties to which we are parties, these underogable and and indefeasible rights include:
- The right to life;
- The right to Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment;
- The right to Freedom from medical or scientific experimentation without consent;
- The right to Freedom from slavery and servitude;
- The right to Freedom from imprisonment for inability to fulfil a contractual obligation;
- The right to Freedom from retrospective operation of criminal laws;
- Right to equality before the law;
- The right to presumption of innocence until when proved guilty by a competent authority;
- The right to Freedom of thought;
- The right to Freedom of conscience;
- The right to Freedom of religion; and
- The right to participate in state governance.
But, the "Gwajima Church Saga," where, the people's underogable and and indefeasible right to worship their freely chosen God is being violated by the government, since 02 June 2025, reveals that, your government does not practically accept the above stated constitutional truth about the demarcation between derogable and underogable rights.
In the eyes of the Government Job Description, this is gross compliance failure which is un-Tanzanian and unacceptable to the Tanzanian people who are your employer, and which should have disciplinary consequences attached to it, meaning that it should not pass without a deserving negative sanction from the employer to you, their the employee, unless you show remorse for your misdeeds by making a public apology for the same.
Dear President Samia, in light of the above said, this is an open letter to you concerning an urgent need for the Sixth Phase Government of Tanzania to recognize, respect, protect and promote all underogable and and indefeasible rights, including the right to freedom of religion, country-wide, consistent with a list of recommended actions (do's) and prohibited actions (don'ts) as clearly defined in the "Government Job Description," which is premised on the state constitution and the international treaties to which Tanzania is a party.
PROBLEM STATEMENT, SCOPING AND DELIMITATION
Dear President Samia, the state constitution, under which you took an oath of presidential office on 17th March in 2021, is a set of fundamental social, political, economic and legal norms that:
- Determine the rights and duties of citizens;
- Define and confine the power of every institution in the state, including the government, the parliament and the judiciary;
- Specify the structure and operation of government, parliamentary and judiciary institutions;
- Have legitimacy which derive from widespread public authorship and endorsement;
- Do not easily admit of changes, meaning that it is harder to change than changing ordinary laws, since its change is based on at least, a two-thirds majority vote or or a referendum; and
- Minimally meet the internationally recognized criteria for a democratic system in terms of representation and human rights.
- establishment of fundamental rights,
- Drawing a distinction between derogable and underogable fundamental rights,
- Introducing separation of powers between different pillars of the state,
- enumerating governmental powers by defining the scope of governmental authority,
- defining checks and balances between different pillars of the state,
- Emphasising the rule of law, and
- Allowing Judicial Reviews.
But we are now shocked by what your government is doing, as a result of which we ask: Are there underogable and and indefeasible rights in Tanzania?
Dear President Samia, your personal utterances and your government's practices seem to provide a negative answer to this question. On your view, it appears that, the Tanzanian Constitution does not recognize the existence of any absolute rights.
The conduct of your government suggests that, the above listed underogable and indefeasible rights are subject to limitations, meaning they can be restricted by law under certain circumstances, say, under general limitations through general laws passed by Parliament, provided they are deemed necessary for public interest; or under the state of emergency as may be announced by the President.
Dear President Samia, since we the people, who are your employer, assert and you, the employee, practically deny the existence of underogable and and indefeasible rights in the Government Job Description, the following questions, and their common answer, are meant to draw your attention to the limits of government power in relation to the said underogable and and indefeasible rights, within the context of the state constitution and the international treaties to which Tanzania is a party:
One, is it the case that, the sixth phase government calls into question the position according to which, there exists a solid demarcation line that separates derogable rights from underogable rights, where the latter includes the right to life, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom from slavery, freedom from colonialism, equality before the law, and the right to participate in government, meaning that it is a poor fit to the Government Job Description? If the answer is affirmative why should you stay in office for another term after October 2025?
Two, is it the case that, the sixth phase government frustrates parental power to oversee the moral education of their children in conformity with their own religious convictions, meaning that it is a poor match to the Government Job Description? If the answer is affirmative why should you stay in office for another term after October 2025?
Three, is it the case that, the sixth phase government derogates the right of citizens to conscientiously seek, embrace and manifest religious truth by their private and public ways of life, meaning that it is an incompetent match with the Government Job Description? If the answer is affirmative why should you stay in office for another term after October 2025?
Four, is it the case that, the sixth phase government uses both covert and overt extra-legal and extra-judicial operations, so as to silence dissenting citizens, by either abducting them, detaining them, torturing them, killing them, deregistering their societies, freezing their businesses, frustrating their employments, paralyzing their political activism, or by obstructing them from enjoying their constitutionally protected rights, such as the right to worship, meaning that it is incompatible with the Government Job Description? If the answer is affirmative why should you stay in office for another term after October 2025?
Five, is it the case that, the sixth phase government ignores promoting the common good of a nation by acting in ways that harm the well-being of a nation as a whole, prioritizing personal or group interests over the collective good, undermining shared values, engaging in self-serving actions, embracing corruption and dishonesty, allowing environmental harms to go unchecked, and violating the principles of social justice by treating similar cases differently and attending different cases similarly, meaning that it is a wrong fit to the Government Job Description? If the answer is affirmative why should you stay in office for another term after October 2025?
Six, is it the case that, the sixth phase government brushes aside the long global history of the struggle for the right to enjoy underogable and and indefeasible human rights, as fought for 300 years, between the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, meaning that it is incompatible with the Government Job Description? If the answer is affirmative why should you stay in office for another term after October 2025?
And seven, is it the case that, most Diplomats, Ministers, Parliamentarians, RC's, RAS's, DC's, DAS's, DED's and other public servants working in various government MDA's, under the sixth phase government, have failed to protect and promote the citizens' underogable and and indefeasible rights, by overtly cooperating to repudiate the position according to which there is a principal-agent, which is an employer-employee relationship between citizens and their government, meaning that it is a poor fits to the Government Job Description? If the answer is affirmative why should any of them stay in office for another term after October 2025?
Dear President Samia, in order to answer these questions with a view of showing you where your government is deviating from her Job Description, in the eyes of critical stakeholders of the state, I shall present my argument under the following headings:
- The natural law ethics of human rights and duties is our constitutionally warranted moral national language
- Our vision of a good society is deeply grounded in the personalistic norm
- Good human actions are triggered by the attractiveness of basic and instrumental human goods
- Better understanding of the common good of our nation informs better government performance
- Our human rights are derived from the goods of human person's nature
- The logical structure of human rights
- The right to religious freedom is a fruit of a long historical struggle
- State actions against Gwajima church is a wake up call to all of us
- The deregistration of Gwajima church is violative of basic human goods
- Our constitutional and statutory framework for protection of religious liberty is vague
- Call to action by the stakeholders of the state
THE NATURAL LAW ETHICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND DUTIES IS OUR CONSTITUTIONALLY WARRANTED MORAL NATIONAL LANGUAGE
Dear President Samia, the common answer to all the above questions is that, in our liberal and democratic republic, your government has proved to be a poorest fit to the Government Job Description, because it theoretically rejects and practically repudiates, either partially or totally, underogable and and indefeasible human rights, as opposed to derogable and suspendable human rights, both of which are defined under the natural law language of human rights and duties.
Dear President Samia, specifically, articles 12-32, under Part Three, of Chapter One, in the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania (Cap. 2, 1977), as illuminated by articles 3(1) and 9(f), overtly declare that, a "secular" natural law theory of "human rights and duties," is the universal moral language of our nation which is constitutionally warranted.
Specifically, articles 12 in the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania (Cap. 2, 1977), states that, "all human beings are born free and are all equal" in "dignity," which is, necessarily, premised on a set of genetically determined natural inclinations to the ultimate fulfillment of key potentialities which are specific to the all human species.
Accordingly, the derivative universality of natural moral language can be globally understood and accepted in a pluralistic society, regardless of the prevailing different cultural, religious and philosophical backgrounds.
It proposes a “philosophy of life” or a “worldview” which includes a background metaphysical understanding of the universe and humanity’s place within it; a theory of human nature in the more specific sense of a distinctive set of claims about human beings, human society, and the human condition; a diagnosis of some typical defect, what tends to go wrong in human life and society; and a prescription for correcting what goes wrong and an ideal for how human life should best be lived.
It entails a naturalistic “philosophy of life” whose universality across cultures is superior to rival “philosophies of life,” which are premised on broad belief systems such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Kantianism, Marxism, Sartrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Freudianism, Darwinism, and Feminism.
As a rule, each of these “philosophies of life” is a system of beliefs about the world and human nature that is held by some set of people, not in a purely academic or scientific way, but generally as a conceptual framework for justifying the way of life of the social group, hence an “ideology.” This analysis argues for the ideology of naturalism.
Dear President Samia, there are two possible ways the phrase “natural law” can be interpreted. Either, it refers to "the natural law of might makes right" which is often contrasted with "the natural law of human inclination to pursue the good and combat evil."
Dear President Samia, the phrase "might makes right" describes a situation where the powerful dictate what is right or wrong, and their actions are considered just simply because they possess the power to enforce them.
It suggests that physical or social strength is the ultimate basis for determining what is acceptable behavior, rather than any objective moral standard.
It means that nature proclaims the fact that it is right for the better to take advantage of the worse, the abler to take advantage of the feebler, the faster to take advantage of the lower.
It is obvious in many natural cases that this is so, not only in the animal world, but also in the human world, where right has been decided to consist in the sway and advantage of the stronger states and races over the weaker states and races.
So, while we humans, although equipped with reason, are still part of the animal world, and the basic natural law in the animal world, that is, we still employ the principle which admits of, the right of the strongest to impose their will on the weaker ones.
On this view, right, as the natural world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the stronger do what they can and the weaker suffer what they must.
This is sometimes summed up in the words, “might makes right.” It is a norm which promotes the “advantage of the stronger over the weaker.”
It identifies the “good” with the strong, the powerful, and the noble, while identifying the “bad” with the weak, the cowardly, the petty, and the timid.
In the field of contemporary political philosophy, a government by the stronger or a government based purely on military or police force is called kratocracy, whose slogan is “Where might is, the right is.” Kratocracy, war, colonialism and slave trade are based on this conception of “natural law.”
Dear President Samia, the concept of "the natural law of human inclination to pursue the good and combat evil" refers to the idea that humans are inherently driven to seek what is good and avoid what is harmful.
This idea is central to a moral theory which posits that there are universal moral principles discoverable by reason and inherent in human nature.
It suggests that humans have a built-in inclination, often described as a "primitive spiritual instinct," to do good and avoid evil. And it means that, true law is right reason in agreement with human nature.
This conception of natural law, whose first principle is that, good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided and combated, applies only to rational beings. This is the sense in which the phrase "natural law" will be used in this analysis.
From a derivationist approach, natural law ethics is based on the concept of teleology; the idea that every natural thing has a nature which directs it towards its good end.
The idea of telos refers to a natural thing’s behavioural inclination towards its good end due to its nature.
The nature of a thing determines the behaviours that are natural to it. An acorn naturally grows into an oak tree, because of the way its inherent nature is constituted.
Birds fly south in winter, because of their natural instincts. Natural law ethics claims that human beings are also born with an inherent nature, including the power of reason.
On this view, the "derivationist approach" within natural law theory focuses on how moral principles and obligations are derived from inherent human nature and the natural order of things.
It posits that humans possess certain natural inclinations or tendencies that guide them towards fulfilling their potential and achieving what is considered good.
The derivationist approach is contrasted with other approaches to natural law theory including the divine commands approach and the basic goods approach
Dear President Samia, in a liberal and democratic republican constitution, which is the official Government's Job Description, a government which overtly and serially violates underogable and indefeasible human rights, loses constitutional legitimacy, even if it may have wonderfully performed in the protection and promotion of derogable and suspendable human rights through the construction of economic and social infrastructures for facilitating the provision of wonderful public services.
In order to drive home this position, t is hereby proposed that, based on our state constitution, under Part Two of Chapter One, which talks about "Human Rights and Duties," the Tanzanian version of the natural law framework of human rights and duties, to which your government is necessarily expected to subscribe, is a doctrine which can be summarized in seven theses.
Specifically, the ten theses of the Tanzanian natural law ethics of human rights and duties, as I conceive it, are the following:
- Naturalism versus supernaturalism thesis
- Natural versus acquired inclinations thesis,
- Rationality humanizes natural inclinations thesis,
- Human nature grounds human goods thesis,
- Human goods ground human rights thesis,
- Instrumental goods are oriented to basic goods thesis,
- Derogable rights are subordinate to underogable rights thesis,
- Natural moral law grounds positive laws thesis,
- Natural moral law qualifies customary laws thesis, and
- Good society is a kingdom of human goods thesis.
- The naturalism versus supernaturalism thesis is a claim about the logical separability between natural explanations and supernatural explanations concerning the relationship between individual humans, the society and their natural environment.
- The natural versus acquired inclinations thesis is a claim about the human attributes which are congenital as opposed to acquired or imposed human attributes.
- The rationality humanizes natural inclinations thesis is a claim about what is a human person and who counts as one, across time, space and cultures, and how human reason, freedom and natural inclinations relate;
- The human nature grounds human goods thesis is a claim that human nature provides a ground for what is valuable and what is not valuable, that is, what is good, what is bad and what is neutral;
- The human goods ground human rights thesis, is a claim that human goods provide a ground for what is and is not permissible, that is what is right, what is wrong, what is forbidden, and what is allowed;
- The basic goods versus instrumental goods thesis is a claim about what is absolutely good and absolutely bad, and what is relatively good and relatively bad; and
- The derogable rights are subordinate to underogable rights thesis is a claim about what is absolutely right and absolutely wrong, and what is relatively right and relatively wrong.
- Natural moral law grounds positive laws thesis is a claim which posits that positive laws are validated by the natural moral law,
- Natural moral law qualifies customary laws thesis is a claim which posits that cultural laws are validated by the natural moral law, and
- The good society is a kingdom of human goods thesis is a claim about certain forms of life that are inherently good for humans given their nature and the relationship between these forms of life to the nature and purpose of economic, social, political, and legal institutions.
Naturalism versus supernaturalism thesis
The naturalism versus supernaturalism thesis places humans at the center of the universe, emphasizing human reason and experience as the primary sources for determining natural law principles.
It suggests that humans, through their inherent capacity for reason and observation of the natural world, can discern the fundamental principles of right and wrong that govern human behavior and social life.
It is an anthropocentric approach which contrasts with theocentric approach that grounds natural law in divine commands or a broader cosmic order.
It prioritizes human reason and rationality as the primary tools for understanding and applying natural law. It often relies on observing human nature and social phenomena to derive moral principles.
While not necessarily denying the existence of God, it tends to minimize or exclude divine revelation or commands as direct sources of natural law.
This approach paves the way for a secular understanding of morality, where ethical guidelines are derived from human experience rather than religious doctrines.
It holds that, "nature" means the physical world of space and time in which we live, the laws which govern actions and interactions in this world, human nature which refers to human person’s physical body plus transcendent human mind, and the world of natural signs as interpreted by using the human mind.
On this view, "nature" refers to the factual order and the level of significant relations between causes and effects which imply objective values.
In this sense, the logical meaning of "natural law" as that law which is found in creation.
From this it follows that "natural laws," including the laws of “natural morality,” can and should be understood on the basis of empirical evidence which is available to, if not seen by, all right minded humans.
As such, everything real can be explained by natural causes as found in the spatial and temporal world in which we are immersed, this being the world we learn about either directly or indirectly through observation through sense experience.
Naturalism essentially equates reality with nature, often, suggesting that there may be no realm beyond the natural spatio-temporal world, a position which renders supernatural explanations of human unnecessary.
On this view, natural facts and properties are facts and properties that we can learn about solely through the assistance of our sensory organs. This, roughly, is the "empirical criterion" of the natural.
On this criterion, ethical naturalists take it that ethical properties, and all substantive basic ethical facts, are properties and facts we could learn about solely through sense experience.
So, ethical naturalism aims to defend the thesis that ethical facts are natural facts which are grounded in human inclinations. On this view, there is an objective natural moral law that determines right actions from wrong actions, whether or not everyone can currently identify it.
On this view, nature in humans can be understood in two ways. First, insofar as intellect and will are the chief constituents of human nature, for it is by reason of them that humans are constituted as a species.
From this point of view, the pleasures humans experience in regard to their intellect can be called natural. Thus it is natural for humans to delight in the contemplation of truth, for example.
In another sense, nature in humans can be understood as what differs from reason, that is, what humans have in common with other beings and above all what is not subject to reason.
In this way, those things relating to the preservation of the body, such as food, drink and sleep, and those related to the preservation of the species, such as sexual activity, may be said to give humans natural pleasure.
The natural versus acquired inclinations thesis
Natural law is a combination of natural reason and the natural inclinations of human towards a fulfilled human life.
Natural law and human life goals are given in the very nature of man. There are goals in human life and the inclinations lead man to them. The goals are recognized naturally as good by practical reason , without any other aid.
The inclinations point to the goals that lead to fulfillment in life. And knowledge of good and evil follows the order of the inclinations.
By natural inclinations, I mean the natural drives, directedness, or orientations, within natural agents that determine them toward action.
That is, a natural inclination is an instinctive preference or tendency that comes from one's inherent nature. It's a feeling or a likelihood to do something that isn't based on a rational decision but rather on your basic disposition or inherent traits.
These inclinations can range from basic drives, like seeking shelter, to more complex desires, like forming friendships and a sense of justice.
They are natural because they are genetically determined, meaning that, they follow from, and are an intrinsic part of, a being's genetic nature.
So, by natural inclination I don’t mean tendencies that that are merely habitual in human beings. And by natural inclinations, I don’t mean tendencies that human beings are always conscious of or wish to pursue based on their desires.
In other words, by natural inclinations, I mean the way that a human faculty, such as sexual organs, brain, the heart, lungs, liver and kidney, can of its nature “aim at” or be “directed toward” some end or goal whether or not an individual realizes it or wants to pursue that end. It is another name for teleology, directedness, orientation.
Thus, a human natural inclination is any telos inherent in human nature. It is the finality of the operation (finis operis) also referred to as "the end of the work."
It refers to the inherent purpose or goal embedded within an action or object itself, regardless of the intention of the individual performing the action. For example, the telos of a knife is to cut, and the telos of the watch is to time keeping.
The finality of the operation (finis operis) is an alternative to the the finality of the operator (finis operantis) also referred to as "the end of the worker," "the end of the doer," or "the end of the agent."
It refers to the individual's intention or purpose in performing an action. For example, the end of the doer who is a knife-maker could be to make money, and the end of the doer who is a watch-maker could be to make money too.
These concepts are particularly relevant to natural law theory, which posits that there are objective moral principles that can be discerned through reason and are inherent in the natural order.
Natural inclinations are seen as a starting point for understanding natural law, as they point towards what is good for human beings.
However, natural law also requires practical reason to discern the proper fulfillment of those inclinations and to avoid actions that contradict them.
Specifically, in every human person’s nature there are natural inclinations that are the origin of our moral choices and actions, as opposed to our immoral choices and actions, namely:
- Natural inclination to the good as opposed to an aversion to the evil,
- Natural inclination to preserve life as opposed to an aversion to death,
- Natural inclination to preserve health as opposed to an aversion to sickness,
- Natural inclination to copulation as opposed to an aversion to pedication,
- Natural inclination to marriage as opposed to an aversion to celibacy,
- Natural inclination to knowledge of truth as opposed to an aversion to ignorance,
- Natural inclination to live in society as opposed to an aversion to solitude,
- Natural inclination to self-integration as opposed to an aversion to self-disintegration,
- Natural inclination to ownership as opposed to an aversion to material poverty,
- Natural inclination to technology as opposed to an aversion to technological aversion,
- Natural inclination to personal self-determination as opposed to an aversion to subjugation,
- Natural inclination to order as opposed to an aversion to chaos,
- Natural inclination to peace as opposed to an aversion to violence,
- Natural inclination to coherence as opposed to an aversion to incoherence,
- Natural inclination to culture,
- Natural inclination to the common good as opposed to an aversion to the common evil, and
- Natural inclination to knowledge of religious truth as opposed to an aversion to religious ignorance.
The natural inclination to the good means that humans are naturally attracted to what is good and repulsed by what is bad or evil.
It insinuates that, all those things towards which the human being has a natural inclination are naturally and non-inferentially apprehended as good by practical intelligence, as ends-to-be-pursued by action.
According to this view, basic goods are not only items we have a natural tendency to pursue but more fundamentally, they are items that provide actions within that tendency with practical intelligibility.
According to this view, a given goal is a human good if and only if the mere fact of pursuing, protecting or promoting it can be cited as an ultimate reason for a course of intentional action.
Alternatively, a given goal is a human good if and only if a given goal makes our actions immediately intelligible from the practical point of view, without having to appeal to the pursuit or avoidance of a further goal.
A question about the good of anything arises only when one considers that thing as an entity of a certain kind with its appropriate potentialities more or less fully realized.
Something which can be a more or less perfect entity of a kind while remaining of that kind will be considered more or less good depending upon the extent to which it has its appropriate fulfillment and is open to whatever additional fulfillment is possible for entities of the kind to which it belongs.
However, not every realization of potentialities is good. An organism has a potentiality for sickness and death, for example. The realization of such potentialities is destructive of the organism as such.
But an organism also has potentialities for such functions as growth, nutrition, and reproduction.
An appropriate realization of these potentialities means that the organism is living and is open to the more abundant life possible for organisms of its kind.
The idea is that in acting we always pursue what we take to be good in some way or other. Goodness is attractive because it stirs up things like love, joy, and happiness in the human heart.
The attraction of the good is universally expressed in the first principle of practical reason, that is reason oriented to action, namely: Good is to be done and pursued and evil is to be avoided and combatted.
However, this principle does not primarily signify a moral obligation to do the good. It is merely descriptive. It lays the foundation from which all the rights and obligations can be deductively derived.
In short, the inclination toward the good gives each person the right and instills in us the duty to search for the good and reject and combat what is evil.
The natural inclination to the good is also referred to as natural inclination to happiness. It means that humans have a natural inclination towards happiness.
This concept suggests that pursuing happiness is not merely a choice but a fundamental aspect of human nature.
In short, humans naturally strive for what is good for them. This striving leads to a sense of well-being and fulfillment which culminates into happiness.
On this view, the highest form of happiness is found in the "the kingdom of human goods," to which the principal natural inclinations point.
Namely: the good, self-preservation, sociality, reproduction, knowledge of truth, living in society, self-integration, ownership, and technology. Together, they are the very source of human fulfilment.
The natural inclination to preserve life is a natural inclination which drives us to defend our existence and seek to provide ourselves with the basic necessities of life.
We instinctually know that to exist is good and that we ought to do the things that ensure our continued existence.
However, this inclination extends beyond mere existence and compels us to seek the things that make us thrive and live more fully, and to turn away from the things that stifle our existence and flourishing.
The inclination to preserve our being comes with a natural attitude of self-love, but also extends to the love of others as we recognize and want the existence and thriving of our neighbor.
The love of others entails such negative precepts as no stealing, no killing of the innocent, and no harm to other people.
As a negative precept, the inclination to preserve life can be expressed in the following form: "You shall not kill an innocent human being", which inculcates respect for the life of another.
It founds the right to protect one's life and to obtain whatever is necessary to ensure a fitting existence. It also imposes on each of us, as a natural obligation, that we care for our physical and moral health.
Differently stated, the word "life" refers to the capacity inherent in an entity, the capacity which medical officers, safety officers and sanitation officers seek to preserve, the capacity which killers destroy; and the capacity which death terminates. This is a biological capacity called life.
It signifies every aspect of the vitality which puts a human being in good shape for self-determination.
It is the capacity of an entity to manifest some or all of the following behavioral attributes: Movement, Excretion, Respiration, Reproduction, Yielding to death, Irritability, Nutrition, and Growth.
These attributes can be remembered by the help of an acronym "MERRYING." Yet, one does not need all eight characteristics of life to be considered a living person. Some persons are considered living even if they have only a few characteristics.
For example, growth is a contingent property for elders who no longer grow, and reproduction is a contingent property for sterile couples and pre-puberty children who cannot reproduce. Thus understood, life is the fundamental good of biological existence, which grounds all other human goods.
The the good of life is an opposite of the evil of death. On this view, yielding to death is a process of dying which leads to death. It is an aptitude to vanish, meaning that, life has the predisposition to vanish, rendering a living being dead.
Death can come about due to injury, disease, hunger, aging, poison, attacks by external agents, or other causes. So we can say that, given an entity which is a biological organism, it dies at a given time, if and only if it permanently ceases to be alive at that time, where, at that time, bodily internal changes occur that make it physically impossible for it ever to live again. In this definition of death, there are four key concepts.
They are finality, non-functionality, universality and causality. Finality (irreversibility) is the understanding that death is a permanent condition and cannot be prevented or undone.
Non-functionality is the understanding that death involves the cessation of all biological and psychological life processes, such as breathing, movement, sensation, and thought.
Universality is the understanding that death inevitably happens to all human beings. And causality is the understanding that death is an effect that can be brought about by internal and external causes that are not unique to individuals but apply to all living things.
So, the word "life" here does not mean the whole course of a person's existence, that is, what one's resume reveals, that whose meaning philosophers seek to explain, and that which is revealed in biographer's account, which is one's social life.
Natural inclination to preserve health, as opposed to sickness, is a fundamental idea in natural law theory, suggesting that humans have an inherent drive to maintain their well-being. This inclination is seen as a basic instinct, similar to the drive for self-preservation, and it leads individuals to seek out things that promote health and avoid things that are harmful.
This inclination manifests in various ways, such as seeking food and shelter, avoiding danger, and pursuing medical care when needed.
For this reason, in 1948, the UN promulgated the UDHR, Article 25 of which states that everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
The goal of the proposed list as enshrined in the UDHR is to provide the normative conditions under which humans can flourish.
Nearly 20 years later, the UN adopted the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the treaty to implement the economic, social, and cultural rights enumerated in the UDHR.
ICESCR Article 12 states that, the States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
However, the UN member states agreed about the rights listed in the declaration but on condition that no one asks why they should be accepted. The UN’s purpose was to achieve consensus and find a general common ground of ideas that were both practical and pragmatic.
Thus, the pending task is to outline a rigorous philosophical foundation upon which human right to health, and human rights too, such as those enumerated in the UDHR, may be justified even in the face of disagreement or blatant lack of recognition of such rights by individual nations.
If, as will be our focus in this part, a human right to health and health care can be established in this fashion, then nations which have not fully embraced and enacted this right in its laws and policies, can be rightly criticized for moral failure.
In light of the dominant opinion, any rational justification of the idea of human rights, as of the idea of law in general, demands that we should premise it on the idea of natural law in its true metaphysical connotations, its realistic dynamism and its relation with nature and experience.
We are then able to understand how a certain ideal order, rooted in the nature of man and of human society, can impose moral demands valid throughout the world of experience, history and fact, and can establish, for the conscience as for the written law, the permanent principle and the elementary and universal criteria of rights and duties.
This is to say that, the same natural law which lays down our most fundamental duties, and by virtue of which every law is binding, is the very law which assigns to us our fundamental rights.
And at this point, the challenge that faces us is to develop a global language and a global strategy that can help improve the health of all world’s citizens.
According to the derivationist model of the natural law, which is endorsed in this letter, the fundamental “good” for human beings consists in our flourishing, which is the fulfillment of the potentialities found in our shared nature.
Human nature is defined by a set of capacities relative to our existence as living, sentient, social, and rational animals.
And human flourishing involves actualizing these definitive capacities of the human species, such that each of us becomes the most perfect—that is, most complete or fully actualized—human being we can be.
To achieve this end, the natural law theory claims that all human beings have a set of natural inclinations to pursue whatever we perceive to be good—that is, what is desirable to us and will help actualize our definitive capacities.
The natural law thus includes a set of principles which, if followed, will satisfy a human being’s natural inclinations and thus lead to her perfection according to her nature as a human being.
So, a key question for natural law and other universal rights theorists concerns the conception of “human nature” upon which various rights and duties are supposed to be founded.
It is believed that one advantage of the derivationist account of natural law is that it is premised upon a relatively basic conception of human nature in which the main common features identified are embodiment, biological life, sentience, sociability, and rationality.
Each of these features must be defined and such definitions, as they become more specific, may be controversial.
But a high degree of specification is not required to define certain general natural law precepts.
For example, sentience is generally understood to refer to human beings’ capacity to sense their environment and respond to it, along with the correlative experiences of pleasure and pain.
One can then deduce that depriving a person of any of her senses, say, by blinding her, or causing her unwarranted pain would be bad for her.
Hence, there is an obligation to avoid intentionally or negligently depriving a person of her senses or causing her undue pain. On the positive side, restoring a blind person’s sight, should she desire it or causing a pleasurable experience would be good and thus worth pursuing.
It is possible to render what aspects count as proper specifications of “good” and “evil” relative to these basic features of human nature.
For example, every human being desires to know what is true even if we vehemently disagree about what we take to be true or what epistemic methodology we ought to adopt in order to discover what is true. That is, we generally do not enjoy being deceived or otherwise believing in falsehoods.
Again for example, everything that exists is governed by the principle of noncontradiction.
It states that the same thing, whether it is a substance, action, or event, cannot both be and not be at the same time, in the same place, in the same respect.
Hence, for example, it cannot be both raining in this very spot at this very moment and not raining in this very spot at this very moment.
Everyone acts, for example, on the principle of noncontradiction, even if they had never seen it formulated before reading the above paragraph.
The derivationist natural law thus formulates the first fundamental principle of natural law that is understood by the human mind, namely: Good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided and combatted.
It then contends that, upon this are founded all other principles of natural law; such that everything which practical reason naturally apprehends to be good or evil for human beings belongs to the natural law principles to be done or avoided.
Hence, natural law mandates us to use our reasoning capacity to determine what is good in accordance with our nature as rational animals and go after it, thereby entailing certain positive obligations, and avoid whatever we determine to be evil because it is opposed to our flourishing as human beings—thereby entailing certain negative obligations.
Therefore, natural law is nothing other than a concept naturally instilled in a human being by which he is directed toward acting in accord with his proper actions; whether they are suitable to him from his generic nature, such as to procreate, to eat, and the like, or from his specific nature, such as to reason and the like.
The derivationist natural law proposes the following goods with respect to our shared nature toward which human beings are naturally inclined: life, sexual reproduction, education of offsprings, pursuing immanent and transcendental truths, living in society, and many more.
It acknowledges that this list is not complete and exhorts the prudent use of practical reason to determine the set of goods and evils relative to human nature and then to define the principles of natural law that promote the goods while avoiding the evils.
For example, since human beings are social by nature, it is good for us to live in communities. Fulfilling this good requires that we be honest with one another and keep our promises, avoid deception, as well as respect others’ property and not injure one another.
In addition to the human goods and correlative natural law principles discussed above, contemporary natural law theorists have cited more goods and principles.
They include, life, food, shelter, proper medical treatment, affection, support, a fairly clear role in society, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, friendly sociability, practical reasonableness, religion, and many more.
The basic good of life signifies every aspect of the vitality which puts a human being in good shape for self-determination.
Hence, life here includes bodily and mental health, and freedom from the pain that betokens organic malfunctioning or injury.
On this view, health is good bodily functioning and is the perfection of our being alive just as animals. Being alive is not only a necessary condition for pursuing other goods but is part of the personal reality of a human being.
This means that life and health are intrinsically good; that is, whenever an action in view promotes or protects life or health, that action is so far forth choice-worthy; that is protects or enhances life or health provides a reason sufficient for doing it, though not necessarily a reason that morally justifies doing it.
On this view, disease and disability, both physical and mental, are construed as adverse departures from or impairments of species-typical normal functioning.
The point here is that, health care is necessary for individuals because of the positive effect it can have on alleviating diseases and others maladies that impact a person’s range of opportunities in life, and thus hopefully returning the affected individual to a level of normal functioning.
In short, when we talk about human rights in international law, therefore, we are necessarily talking about universal human rights grounded in some conception of universal human nature.
Generally, human rights are grounded in a minimalist human nature. This basic human nature is constituted by our shared physical needs, social needs and moral potentiality.
The idea of human rights assumes at the very least the existence of a human subject who is conscious and able to make and justify moral choices.
As such, if we are looking for the source of a concept of human rights that are truly universal and inalienable, then we should look for ontological roots that are broadly human but not a human creation.
This assertion refers to the existence of universal and inalienable human rights, just as the natural law, according to the derivationist model, exists independently of human fiat.
Nevertheless, the exercise of such rights, as he derivationist model of natural law states concerning human law, must consider many things, as according to persons, matters, and times.
And rights founded upon the natural law entail both negative and positive obligations.
So, we may safely speak of rights wherever a basic principle or requirement of practical reasonableness or a rule derived therefrom, gives to A, and to each and every other member of a class to which A belongs, the benefit of a positive or negative requirement, as an obligation, imposed upon B.
Specifically, the right to health, like all human rights, imposes three types or levels of obligations on States parties: the obligations to respect, protect and fulfil.
In turn, the obligation to fulfil contains obligations to facilitate, provide and promote.
The obligation to respect requires States to refrain from interfering directly or indirectly with the enjoyment of the right to health.
The obligation to protect requires States to take measures that prevent third parties from interfering with article 12 guarantees.
Finally, the obligation to fulfil requires States to adopt appropriate legislative, administrative, budgetary, judicial, promotional, and other measures towards the full realization of the right to health.
This statement asserts both negative and positive obligations on the part of each member nation to ensure full realization of the right to health.
In conclusion, we have seen that, a fundamental human right to health exists in international law and philosophical tradition, and governments are thus obligated to realize this right through fair and just implementation.
The natural inclination to copulation: Natural inclination to copulation refers to the biological drive and behavior to engage in penis-in-vagina sex.
Copulation is necessary for successful insemination in internally fertilizing species, since it is causally linked reproduction and the continuation of the human species.
This inclination encompasses the behavioral sequence of pre-copulatory, copulatory, and post-copulatory activities and is fueled by various biological factors that encourage mating and gamete delivery.
This natural drive is also intertwined with pleasure, personal commitment, and emotional expression, and can be influenced by cultural norms and personal choice.
It is a natural inclination which finds its roots in our sexual nature as sexual persons, having an inherent sexual orientation to the other.
Our inherent sexual orientation can be androsexual in most women and gynosexual in most men, while in some it is asexual.
Accordingly, pace eunuchs and homo-affective persons, in most men and most women, we get androsexual-gynosexual bonds that make hetero-affective sexual pairs.
Biologically speaking, regular sexual acts of copulation, as opposed to non-copulative sexual acts such as hetero-genital anal sex, hetero-genital oral sex, hetero-genital armpit sex, and hetero-genital thigh sex, have three possible diachronic unitive consequences. That is, copulation is diachronically unitive in three senses.
One, copulation can be intra-personally unitive at the psycho-somatic level in each member of the copulating pair, meaning that, it promote body-self integration, and prevents body-self disintegration, through a sexual response cycle that often terminates in orgasm.
Two, copulation can be inter-personally unitive at the socio-sexual level of the copulating pair, by reason of the bonding hormone called oxytocin and the related sex after-glow.
Sexual interpersonal unity means that, while we have an instinct to procreate, we also have an instinct to share a unique bond of sexual affection with one other person over any other relationship.
And three, copulation can be parentally unitive as a result of physiological processes that characterize the sexual reproduction phenomenon, provided that the copulating pair is fertile and engages in uncontracepted copulation.
Moreover, beyond simple sexual union, we desire to commune and finally live in a family with as parents and children, creating an individual community of love, nurturing one another, and learning about life.
To this extent, a family of father, mother and their biological children is a composite of two societies, namely, a coital society and a parental society. So understood, family life is the foundation of a wider society.
Thus, sexual inclination is something that humans share in common with all living beings, but it exists in humans in a more perfect way.
It comes to fulfillment in marriage, which unites a man and a women for life. It is not solely biological, even though this component is a characteristic feature of it. It engages the entire personality through the bonds of affection.
It is also clear that the other inclinations develop within the context of the family. The family is where the first experiences of life occur. It is where we learn about love and happiness, make our first concrete judgments concerning good and evil, and receive our first moral education.
The family is where we acquire a: sense of existence and confidence in life. It is where we make our first cognitive discoveries and learn our mother tongue; where we discover the differences between the sexes and between personalities. Its diversity of relationships makes the family the model and primary unit of society.
The sexual inclination must be regulated if it is to develop rightly. In religious context, three of the Ten Commandments address it: the fourth, which prescribes respect for one's parents; the sixth, which ties intercourse to marriage; the ninth, which forbids lust.
This inclination instills in each person a natural right to marry an a corresponding duty to embrace the responsibilities toward one's spouse and children that come with marriage.
Threats to the inclination to sexual union, marriage and family life derive from a fragmented view of the purposes of human sexuality.
By isolating the physical act and its associated pleasure from the bonds and affection of the couple and the family unit that comes about because of it, we may reduce sexuality to instincts and feelings rather than the comprehensive bond for which sexuality exists to serve.
Biologically speaking, reproduction is the process of transmitting human life from parents to children through sexual unions, called sexual reproduction, as opposed to asexual reproduction. Generally, the process of sexual reproduction entails the following steps:
(1) the development and production of gametes which are required to form a new individual (gametogenesis), where sperms are produced via a process called spermatogenesis and ova are produced via a process called oogenesis;
(2) sexual attraction between hetero-affective persons, where, a female person having a male-oriented sexual libido is erotically pulled toward a male person having a female-oriented sexual libido and vice versa (heterophilic sexual attraction);
(3) making a proposal to another person expressing one's intention to initiate a sexual relationship thereby seeking the other's consent to cooperate in the implementation of such a proposal (seduction);
(4) mutual sexual arousal through petting, caressing, necking, kissing, rubbing, and the like (sexual foreplay);
(5) adjustment of couples' bodies so that the head of the male’s penis is inserted inside the female’s vagina, and then moved in a manner that causes the membrane covering the head of the penis to be stimulated until when the male’s orgasm occurs, whereupon the penis becomes limp and intercourse naturally ends (copulation);
(6) the fusion of male and female gametes to form a zygote (fertilization);
(7) the change of gametic cells' shapes and aligning themselves closely together (compaction);
(8) formation of an inner cavity within the embryo and the embryo differentiating itself into the inner cell mass and the trophoblast (cavitation);
(9) the embryo's emergency from the membrane enveloping the ovum that the sperm had to penetrate for fertilization to occur as a preparation for beginning implantation (hatching);
(10) attachment of the fertilized egg to the wall of the uterus (implantation);
(11) the embryo's body differentiates into different organs inside the womb between conception and birth (organogenesis /gestation); giving birth to a new child (delivery); and
(12) caring for and bringing up a child as a parent (parenting).
Natural inclination to heterosexual marriage: The concept of a "natural inclination to marriage" refers to the idea that normal humans, by their very nature, are predisposed to form hetero-affective sexual unions, that may lead to reproduction and parenthood, where, the latter necessitate common family life, composed of a coital society and a parental society.
More properly, marriage is a human good because it enables the parties to it, the wife and husband, to flourish along three dimensions.
They flourish as individuals, thrive as a couple through the most far reaching form of togetherness possible for human beings and they grow by the most radical and creative enabling of another person to flourish, namely, the bringing of that person into existence as conceptus, embryo, child and eventually adult fully able to participate inhuman flourishing on his or her own responsibility.
On this view, marriage is a three-sided good, meaning that, it is psycho-somatically unitive at an individual level; it is socially unitive at an inter-personal level as a result of the chemical called the oxytocin hormone, which bonds the copulating pair; and it is biologically unitive at a parental level, in that, the child unites the father and mother into a single parenting pair.
As such, marital copulation is an indexical sign, which is a polysemic signifier that triply signifies psycho-somatic integration, interpersonal chemical-sexual unity, and parental unity.
Thus, at the center of the range of activities that go to make up the marital sharing of life is the kind of sexual act fittingly called a marital sexual act, which triply signifies body-self unity, coital unity and parental unity, while remaining relatively permanent exclusive of all others who are outside a given marriage.
So defined, marriage implies that, there is a morally inseparable connection between the personally integrative significance, biologically unitive significance and socially unitive significance of the marital sexual act. We may call this the inseparability thesis of uncontracepted copulation.
In other words, marriage is a personally integrative, socially unitive and biologically procreative type of sexual friendship.
The sexual act that takes its name from that friendship, namely the hetero-affective marital sexual act, is likewise a personally integrative, socially unitive and biologically procreative type of a human act.
People may engage in all sorts of sexual friendships, but only sexual friendships that are personally integrative, socially unitive and biologically procreative in type are hetero-affective marital sexual acts.
If the actors in any sexual relationship reject any of these goods of marriage, then the relationship, whatever else it is, is not hetero-affective marital. This follows logically from the axiological triangle of integration-unity-procreation.
On this view, the understanding that this three-sided good is a profoundly desirable and profoundly demanding opportunity entails that marriage is utterly misunderstood when conceived as no more than a conventional official status, imposed by law and accompanied by government entitlements and mandates.
To the contrary, its intelligible and inherent connection with human flourishing, and thus with human nature, makes it far more than a function of legal arrangements and definitions.
The natural inclination to knowledge of truth means that our human intellect is rooted in the desire to know and seek truth.
All human history is an exercise in experimentation, trial and error, and learning from consequences. We find this in scientific and philosophical study.
We instinctively know that truth exists and seek to prove it through observations. As we come closer to objective truth, we grow in wisdom and prudence and make choices that adhere to what is true.
Just like the goodness we seek can be confused, so too can the truth, since we form ourselves to only see what we want to see and nothing that we don’t.
However, also like goodness, we have an inclination to pursue truth continuously, allowing for it to be adequately discovered by us when we are ready to see and believe it.
Humans across all cultures tend to devote significant time, effort and resources to seeking to understand themselves, their history and their environment.
Many types of knowledge contribute to this project, spanning scientific, psychological, anthropological, sociological, philosophical, theological and other fields of enquiry.
The search for these forms of knowledge is supported by many different social institutions, including schools, universities, cultural centers, meditation retreats and churches.
A life that allows space for self-reflection seems obviously more fulfilling than one that does not. For this purpose we need true knowledge, that is, we nee to have knowledge of truth.
Truth is correspondence or conformity between the mind and the object that exist outside the mind, or between speech and thought or judgment; while falsity is the disconformity between the mind and the object that exist outside the mind, or disconformity between speech and thought or judgment.
In short, we can say that, truth is the fundamental epistemic good, meaning that, true belief is the fundamental epistemic good, where, "true belief" has been substituted for "truth" harmlessly. The thought here is that, in valuing truth we thereby value, and thus seek out, items which are the bearers of the property of true beliefs.
Also, we can say that, truth is the goal to which a properly conducted intellectual inquiry is directed, meaning that, truth is the constitutive goal of a properly conducted intellectual inquiry.
To say that truth is the fundamental epistemic good is to be committed to the idea that there is only one finally epistemically valuable epistemic good and that this is truth, with all other epistemic goods being merely instrumentally epistemically valuable relative to truth.
So, for example, on this view insofar as epistemic justification is an epistemic good, then its epistemic goodness is derivative on the epistemic goodness of truth, in the sense that we instrumentally epistemically value justification because we finally epistemically value truth.
And the claim that truth is the telos of a properly conducted intellectual inquiry means that seeking truth is the constitutive goal of a properly conducted intellectual inquiry, in that if one is undertaking an activity which is not directed at seeking the truth, then one is not undertaking a properly conducted intellectual inquiry at all.
Of course, it is consistent with this claim that properly conducted intellectual inquiries can have all sorts of other goals too, some of them being non-epistemic.
Accordingly, we are obliged to keep an open mind in all instances. But, as finite beings with limited capacity for knowledge we inevitably resort to vacillation between dogmatism, certainty and skeptism. So, deciding when we chose dogmatism and when we chose skepticism is what matters.
If so, one may ask: When is it permissible to end inquiry? One possible answer to this question is that one can permissibly end inquiry regarding a proposition when one knows that proposition.
After all, if one knows a proposition, then any additional evidence might get regarding that proposition would seem to be either misleading or superfluous.
But epistemic negligence resulting from closing off inquiry can detract from one’s epistemic performance and possibly result in the loss of knowledge.
In addition, closing off inquiry can also result in the loss of rational belief since the origins of one’s belief are continually fading from view, which requires that one’s current evidence play a primary role in rational belief. Thus, human inquiry in search for truth should be open-ended.
The natural inclination to live in a friendly society means that humans are social beings by our nature. We gravitate toward communities, relationships, and associations. Living in societies facilitates our physical survival and satisfies our innate needs for bonds, affection, and love.
Thus, the inclination to life in society presupposes a specific conception of the human person as a "social" or "political animal," as a being spontaneously drawn to associate with others.
So, the inclination to life in society is what we have in mind when we say that humans are social and political animals.
We are oriented by nature to organize into families, extended families, villages, tribes, the state, and the like, and to set up institutions with the authority to govern these social organizations. And this political authority derives not from any social contract but from the natural law itself, which preexists any contract.
Moreover, our social nature is not reducible to the herd behavior of non-rational animals, but participates in our rationality. It is manifest in language, culture, religion, science, and the other social activities and institutions that other animals lack because they lack intellects.
The good we realize by virtue of being social animals is also a common good in the sense that it is not reducible to the sum of private goods of the individuals who make up society.
The good of one’s country (say) is not just the aggregate of the private good of this particular citizen, the private good of that particular citizen, etc. Being an organic part of the larger social whole is itself a good over and above the private goods each individual could enjoy on his/her own.
Without doubt this tendency rests on our need of others for survival, but it has a deeper foundation: the awareness of the other that dawns in friendship, and is destroyed by the opposite sentiments. Mutual friendship is more natural than struggle and rivalry. Man is not primarily a wolf to man, although he can become one.
The most significant evidence of this inclination is language. In contrast to animals that merely exchange cries, humans have invented a language that enables them to communicate their thoughts, feelings, and needs, to express good and evil, justice and injustice, to reveal the inner movements of their mind and heart. The whole life of the human person can be transcribed in language.
Language lets us express our thoughts, needs, and feelings to others. It also enables us to express the goodness and truth we all seek to one another.
Language also helps us to bridge the differentiation between "I" and "You", “me” and “us,” by facilitating a sense of unity with the other, hence serving as the common good of every member of the community that is united by one language.
From the inclination to life in society springs the virtue of justice, which holds each member to a standard code of conduct in which each member receives his due according to his actions, in terms of the rule according to which, the equals must treated equally and the different must be treated differently, every time, every where..
On this view, we all desire peace and harmony, which both spring from justice, because they signify a healthy and flourishing societal life. A disordered societal life is revealed in disunity, opposition, fighting for power, and conflicting self-interests with differing perspectives on goodness and truth.
Sociality entails positive, meaningful, supportive and fulfilling social connectedness.
The good of social connectedness takes multiple forms lying on a continuum from the closest and most restricted human relationships to the wider and more expanded forms of social bond.
They range from intimate relationships and close friendships to workplace relationships and other wider social, economic and political communities.
There are diverse social institutions that facilitate this, including families, workplaces, clubs, schools, churches, political groups and online communities.
These connections help us to forge a sense of identity and belonging; without them, we become isolated and lonely.
So, the duty all agents have to support the common good derives at least partly from their duty to pursue and respect the good of friendship.
Natural inclination to self-integrity or self-integration: Self-integration is the good within one’s life that obtains when the various aspects of one’s life “hang together.”
On one hand, humans experience inner tension and the need to struggle for inner harmony. Self-integration is the good that answers to the need to which this inner tension points.
In this sense, the most obvious examples of disintegration involve conflicting desires, which entails emotional integration. To this extent, self-integration is emotional balance. It is understood as the attainment of emotional equilibrium and inner harmony.
As such, self-integration refers to the state of inner harmony, where one's actions, thoughts, and feelings are consistent and not in conflict. Inner harmony comes when the competing components of the human self are integrated together.
On the other hand, humans experience inter-personal tensions and the need to struggle for inter-personal harmony. To this extent, self-integration is understood as the attainment of harmony between the inner self and the other selves.
On this view, by talking about various aspects of the self, we will be referring to outer behavior as well as inner judgment and disposition. The point here is about integrating one’s outer behavior with inner judgments and dispositions.
As such, self-integration is harmony among all the parts of a person which can be engaged in freely chosen action. It entails harmony among one’s reflections, free choices and their executions.
It involves integrating one's thoughts, feelings, and actions, as well as integrating different aspects of one's identity such as professional, personal and social.
It requires that human actions should integrate the volitional, affective, and biological dimensions of the human self in a way that is harmonious and conducive to human flourishing.
Accordingly, integrity is a fundamental aspect of human flourishing, neither reducible, nor merely instrumental to some other basic good.
But to see this requires understanding integrity along a multiplicity of axes since human persons are complex, and can come apart in a variety of ways.
For example, in social life, human flourishing requires us to place a high value on truthfulness. Accurate information plays a vital role in relation to both social cooperation and autonomous action. Indeed, directly and indirectly, truth helps to make every variety of flourishing possible.
So, in social life, we have reason to object to lying because lies attack one or more basic goods, including knowledge, practical reasonableness, self-integration, and friendship.
And in sexual life, fulfilling sexual relations have a key role in promoting personal integration in so far as body-self integration is concerned.
The sexual response cycle that terminates in orgasm revitalizes the body-self bond, hence promoting personal integration by eliminating body-self disintegration resulting from sexual tension.
The human sexual response cycle describes the physiological and psychological changes that occur during sexual activity. It typically involves four phases: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.
These phases involve a range of physical and emotional changes, and the cycle can be influenced by various factors like physical and emotional well-being. Here's a breakdown of the four phases:
Excitement phase: This phase involves initial arousal, marked by increased heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration. In men, this includes penile erection, while women may experience vaginal lubrication and nipple erection.
Plateau phase: During the plateau phase, the initial physiological responses intensify. Muscles tense, breathing becomes more rapid, and heart rate and blood pressure continue to increase.
Orgasm phase: This is the peak of sexual arousal, characterized by intense pleasure and rhythmic muscle contractions in both men and women. In men, orgasm is typically accompanied by ejaculation.
Resolution phase: This phase involves a return to the pre-aroused state. Heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing gradually return to normal. Men typically experience a refractory period where they are unable to have another orgasm.
The good of psycho-somatic integrity answers the question: what is the point of copulation during the infertile phase of the menstruation cycle?
The point of copulation during the infertile window of the menstrual cycle is simply to promote the basic good of self-integration at a personal level.
By the same logic, while copulation between a permanently infertile sexual pair is not parentally unitive in fact, and cannot be, it is still meaningful, since it is inter-personally unitive and psycho-somatically unitive at a personal level.
They promote the good of sexual friendship by reason of the oxytocin hormone just as the promote the good of self-integration by reason of sexual orgasm.
Natural inclination to ownership: The idea of a natural inclination to ownership refers to the human tendency to form attachments to and claim possession of things, called property.
Property is anything which is owned or a thing over which one has the exclusive authority of control and disposal at will. The unjust seizure of another's property is called theft or stealing, and the said seizure is unjust because it goes against the owner's reasonable consent.
Ownership enables humans to take and use the goods that nature provides for their sustenance, comfort, and development. That humans must act in this way is evident from their natural right to life.
Nature gives humans a right to life, and also to the kind of life befitting human beings, namely, a decent life with opportunity for physical, mental, and moral self-development. But the use of material goods is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of life and for proper self-development.
Therefore, nature requires humans to use the material goods of this world. In doing so humans bring these materials under their ownership, their property, if no other human has already taken them.
On this view, ownership may be defined as the authority of exclusive control and disposal over a thing at will. And so, property ownership is an exclusive authority to determine how a resource, say a piece of land, is used, whether that resource is owned by an individual or a group.
Exclusivity of ownership means keeping others from the use of the thing owned, meaning that, although many persons may own a thing together in joint ownership, yet anyone outside the group is excluded from the property.
Authority of control and disposal means doing anything possible with one’s property, including: keeping, changing, giving away, selling, using, consuming, and destroying.
And the owner acts at will, meaning that one acts for himself, in his own name, and need consult no one else as far as mere ownership is concerned.
Ownership is distinguished from mere possession or holding of a thing in one's hands, since a thieves have possession of stolen goods, but they do not own them because they cannot acquire a right to them without the consent of the previous owner.
But, how do humans come to get title to property ownership over this or that piece of property?
A title to property is an historical fact that changes the status of a common property to a private property under the dominion of someone.
The chief titles to property arise as follows: appropriating what belongs to no one (occupancy), adding new values to raw materials (labor), gratuitous transfer of ownership to another (gift), any kind of exchange including purchase (trade), gift to take effect at one's death (inheritance), increment accruing to one's property (accession), and possession in good faith over a long time (prescription).
Property rights can be partially transferred to another person through a contract. Accordingly, a lease is a contract by which a person, the lessor, undertakes to provide another person, the lessee, in return for rent, with the enjoyment of a movable or immovable property for a certain time.
The states have a duty to protect that property, and to secure to the owner the full enjoyment of it. Anything else is inconsistent with the very notion of property as it would violate the contract between the society and the individual ensuring that the latter retains his property and its use.
Generally, property ownership is a three-pronged right of the object holder to make exclusive use of the property, to receive and enjoy profit from the property like rent, and to modify the attributes of the property by consuming it, selling it, donating it, destroying it, or otherwise.
Property rights are defined in such a way as to regulate who and how an asset can be used, who can appropriate profit from a property, and who can change form, substance and location of a property.
The protection of private property from trespass by others including the state is one of the distinctive contributions of the liberal political order to human happiness. In short, understanding the contribution of property to happiness requires understanding why property that deserves protection is good for humans.
The right to private property is grounded by the principle that adult human beings may not be prohibited or prevented by anyone from acquiring, holding and trading with willing parties valued items not already owned by others.
Four characteristics emerge from this definition deserve attention, namely: It starts from the outset couching property in terms of rights; these rights are characterized negatively, as immunities from interference; that which is protected from interference is described in terms of fluid commodity exchange (“acquiring, holding and trading”); and the items exchanged are identified in terms of “value” placed upon them.
Property can be owned collectively. Property promotes human flourishing, the common good, and human dignity.
One may choose among equally reasonable, possible uses of one’s property. Some people use property for personal accommodation; to raise and support families; others use property to raise income for pursuing education and knowledge; others donate property to charitable causes.
That different people use property to pursue different aspects of the common good is one of property’s great strengths. So, the right to own property is a strategic right, allowing its possessor to more easily enjoy other human rights.
For example, it assists individuals to enjoy their subsistence rights, either directly by cultivating food on their own land or indirectly by otherwise providing income from property that they can use to purchase food.
The above analysis suggests that property titling helps the poor in general and vulnerable groups in particular to use their land, homes, and businesses to support themselves by using them as loan collaterals.
This is why, everyone has the right to own such property as it meets the essential needs of decent living, that helps to maintain the dignity of the individual and of the home, and shall not be arbitrarily deprived of it.
Natural inclination to technology: The term "natural inclination to technology" refers to human's inherent tendency to create and use tools for simplifying human life.
It is also called technological philia (technophilia), which refers generally to a strong attraction for technology, especially new technologies such as personal computers, the Internet, mobile phones, and home cinema.
Technophilia is opposed to technological aversion or technological phobia (technophobia), which is the fear or dislike of, or discomfort with, advanced technology or complex devices such as personal computers, smartphones, and tablet computers.
It is an extreme fear of technology. People with technophobia may fear computers, cell phones or the powers of artificial intelligence. It is most common in older adults and people who are generally anxious about the future. Media portrayals of “technology gone wrong” may also contribute to technophobia.
Technophobia aside, humans have a long history of using tools and developing technology to solve problems and improve their lives. This suggests an innate inclination towards innovation and adaptation.
Historically, the human race has existed on earth for about one million years. In this period, it successively experienced four major social changes as it made a transition from one social revolution to the next. Each transition marked a change in the mode of social, economic and political organization.
Chronologically, gatherers-hunters transformed into pastoralistic societies around 1500 BC. Then pastoralists were replaced by agricultural societies around 800 BC. And finally, agriculturalists were substituted by industrial societies around 1700 AD.
Across this trajectory, the discovery and control of fire was one of humankind's earliest and most significant technological advances, occurring over a long period that began with the early Stone Age.
Humans first used first around two million years ago, and by about 400,000 years ago humans were using fire in many aspects of daily life such as cooking, hunting, and making tools.
Fire provided light, warmth, and protection, enabled cooking, and allowed for better tools and broader geographic expansion. Later, fire was used to heat-treat stone for better tools, create ceramics, and clear land for agriculture, fundamentally shaping human evolution and civilization.
In effect, fire became a focal point for social gatherings, strengthening community bonds, and possibly contributing to the development of language.
As such, technological Evolution with Fire cuts accross agriculture, material science and industry. In agriculture, fire was used to clear forests for planting, laying the groundwork for settled agricultural societies. In material Science, heating clay in fires allowed for the creation of ceramic objects.
And in industry, the ability to create metal tools and objects using fire, as seen in the Bronze Age, was a transformative technological change that allowed humans to control their environment more effectively.
Finally, for the 300 years the human race has lived in industrial societies we have further experienced four transformational stages. In the 1760s, we started living in the first industrial revolution, that used coal, water and steam power to mechanize production.
In the 1900s, we began living in the second industrial revolution, that used petroleum and electric power to create mass production knocked. In the 1960s, we commenced living in the third industrial revolution, that used electronics, telecommunications and computers.
And in the 2010s, we entered the fourth industrial revolution, where, we are reaping the benefits of the convergence of electronics, telecommunications, computers, and software possessing artificial intelligence.
Specifically, the Fourth Industrial Revolution” was first defined in 2016 as an “industrial revolution” specified by unprecedented and simultaneous advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the internet of things, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, quantum computing and others which are redefining industries, blurring traditional boundaries, and creating new opportunities.
So, science and technological innovations as dominant factors in determining beliefs and practices in various sectors of human life have existed for only 300 years.
Yet, in this brief period they have proved incredibly powerful social revolutionary forces, which have moved societies from the valleys of ignorance and basins of passive fatalism to the mountains of near-omniscient knowledge and highlands of near-omnipotent actions.
They are forces which together enable humans to get a two faced coin, one face showing empirical knowledge about the nature of reality while the second face reveals practical skills for doing things that can transform reality for the good of humanity.
Today, technology plays so central a role in modern society that it is impossible to live responsibly without understanding it and its role in human affairs.
But, the fundamental question is: What is technology? Underlying the many struggles to acquire an adequate definition of technology are three broad approaches:
- The anthropological approach, which considers technology as making activity intrinsically related to the nature of humankind;
- The epistemological approach, which considers technology to consist of certain procedures and the knowledge of the making process; and
- The sociological approach, which views technology and its pervasive impacts as the defining mark of thought and action in modern society.
- Enable one to distinguish technical activity from other human activities;
- Provide a basis for analyzing the relationship between premodern and modern technology; and
- Follow from an objective understanding of reality and humankind's role in technology.
There are five key elements in this definition which require clarification. Let us look at each in turn.
The first element is that technology is essentially a human cultural activity as opposed to certain products or certain procedures.
In saying that technology is an activity of human culture we are here using the word “culture” to mean the integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.
As formers of culture, human beings shape materials into new forms, process information, raise and harvest crops, establish families, states, political parties, and businesses, craft words into novels, produce radio and television programs, develop languages, taboos, and customs-and much more.
These cultural forms and expressions are not simply a random, unconnected assortment but are formed into an "integrated pattern" of activities and results. It is an extremely complex network of human activities, customs, beliefs, traditions, institutions, and products.
These patterns or networks differ widely from one society to another, from primitive tribal societies to modern, industrialized Western societies.
But all societies possess culture. As such, we purposefully take what is given in creation and creatively form it into art, language, laws, social mores, societal institutions and technological tools and products.
The second key element in our definition of technology is that this cultural activity involves persons exercising freedom and responsibility in response to their inherent natural inclinations for self-fulfillment.
This is follows from the fact that, cultural formation generally, and the doing of technology in particular, is purposeful activity in which human beings make choices, choices for which they are held responsible.
The third key element in our definition is that technology involves forming or transforming the natural creation. This phrase distinguishes technology from other cultural activities.
Technology deals with the natural creation, not primarily with the worlds of ideas, thoughts, or symbols. Doing technology is thereby distinguishable from such cultural activities as developing language, telling stories, and writing laws.
The natural creation includes both the physical and the biological worlds. Technology thereby deals with both the living and the nonliving worlds.
Examples of technological activities that utilize aspects of the living creation include brewing, some baking processes, and certain sewage treatment and bio- technology processes.
Ideas, religious beliefs, and other nonphysical realities deeply influence and guide the doing of technology, of course, but technology itself is limited to the natural creation.
Technology deals with the natural creation in order to form or transform it. Forming nature refers to shaping or making something out of existing materials.
Transforming nature refers to changing objects or processes from one form to another, like changing the energy of water flow into electricity.
Both forming nature and transforming nature consist of two separate processes: design and fabrication. Design is the process that specifies the means by which the actual forming or transforming is to be done. Fabrication is the process that carries out the design.
The fourth key element in our definition of technology is that the forming of nature or transforming of nature is done with the aid of tools and procedures.
The word “tools” is used very broadly here to encompass everything from simple hand tools to complex, automated machines composed of thousands of integrated parts electronically controlled by computers.
The decisive question in technology will always concern the direction in which its power is applied. That is why our definition stresses technology as a cultural activity done in freedom and responsibility in response to the natural inclination to human fulfillment.
This is a crucially important perspective that enables us to speak against the use of technology contrary to the demands of the personalistic norm.
According to the personalistic norm, living a faithful, responsible life includes living responsibly in relation to technology.
This is so because, technology is a pervasive, powerful, value-laden force that presents modern society with a highly ambiguous situation.
The supposed neutrality of technology as means in opposition to ends is unwarranted. Those who see technology as neutral usually make a distinction between means and ends.
They see technology as an ethically neutral means to reach a predetermined, ethically chosen end in which human valuing plays a salient role.
Judgments are made concerning the worth to be attached to the end use to which technology is put. But many claim that the best means to reach that end is only a technical matter.
This position can be summarized this way: Only the discussion of ends is commonly regarded as ethically relevant, and if ethically relevant decisions have been made, the remaining problems seem to be only technical problems.
The presumption is that once the policy decision has been made to attain a certain end, whether that decision was made by government, corporate leaders, or the demands of the market, decisions related to the best means of designing and fabricating the technological object to meet the end are neutral, involving no valuing. They are only technical matters.
But this perspective is fundamentally inaccurate. The argument that technology is a means does not dismiss the issues of valuing and normative principles. There are normative principles that should guide the choice of means as well as the choice of ends.
In evaluating a number of possible means to reach a desired end, many questions beyond that of efficiency arise. There are questions of aesthetics, economics, social impact, justice, resource use, and more.
Sometimes, the supposed neutrality of technology rests in part upon a view that sees science as neutral, and since science is closely linked with modern technology, technology is also seen as a neutral activity. The neutrality of science and the neutrality of technology are seen as twin truths.
According to this view, science, and, by implication, technology as well, deals with concrete, observable brute facts, with that which is the case. Science rests upon empirical facts, facts discoverable through observation by the human senses.
An entirely different category of propositions, and one alien to the methods of science, is that of "oughtness."
That which ought to be the case, in distinction from what is the case, rests upon valuing, preferences, and presuppositions. It cannot be proved or confirmed by the senses.
Because of the apparent concreteness of scientific knowledge, there is a further presumption that "is" propositions are objective, while "ought" propositions are subjective, and, because they are based on individual preferences, optional.
On the basis of this distinction, science, and, by extension, technology, have been seen as concrete, sure, and neutral.
But, there are flaws in this position. Control beliefs govern such factors as what sorts of situations are perceived to be problems and which ones may properly be subjected to technological manipulation.
These control beliefs link one's broad understanding of the nature of reality with the particular issue at hand.
Control beliefs must in turn comport well with the religious base or, broadly speaking, with the heart commitments of their holders.
If they do not, the holders of these beliefs will be torn apart, for they will attempt to develop conceptual understandings and technological solutions that are at odds with their fundamental confessions about the nature of reality.
Persons can maintain this dichotomy for some time by setting it aside, for example, by attempting to assert that such beliefs are irrelevant to science and technology under the neutrality argument, but the persistent presence of the belief component and its link to their world and life view will eventually create internal conflict.
The value-ladenness of technology is not difficult to see. Problems, solutions, and concepts do not exist in a presuppositionless vacuum.
Technology proceeds out of whole human experience and is affected by the confessional, moral commitments unique to human beings.
As a result, technology is value-laden, the product of the inevitable valuing activities of human beings. Clearly, the non-neutrality and the value-ladenness of technology are two sides of the same coin.
Natural inclination to personal self-determination: The phrase "natural inclination to personal self-determination" refers to the inherent human tendency to make choices and control one's own life.
As rational beings, humans possess a level of autonomy and self-governance that sets them apart, making it inherently wrong to treat them merely as means to an end.
Rationality establishes moral side-constraints, meaning that even for a greater good, a rational being cannot be sacrificed.
On this view, if you have the capacity to reason, to self-reflect, and to govern yourself, you cannot be used as a mere tool for someone else’s ends.
That is, the ability to determine one’s own fate is fundamental, to an extent that, when you interfere with a rational being’s decisions, you are violating what makes them who they are.
And so, self-determination means the capability that results from a combination of skills, knowledge, and beliefs that enable a person to engage in goal-directed, self-regulated, autonomous behavior.
In effect, the success of self-determination depends on the individual’s rational capacity and on the environment’s support for the individual to make choices and exert control over his or her own life.
And when a human person acts collectively act with others, in pursuit of the said goods, such cooperation must be based on a free, informed, just and deliberate consent.
The "free, informed, just, and deliberate consent" refers to a process where individuals freely agree to something, with full understanding of the implications, and with a fair and considered decision-making process, always ensuring respect for an individual's autonomy and self-determination.
In other words, all human relations must be free from coercion, deception, and manipulation of any kind that may hinder proper understanding and prior deliberation on the proposed social transaction.
This principle equally applies both to individuals having fully developed exercisable physical and mental capacities, and to those whose physical and mental capacities are not yet fully developed. This fact is captured by the phrase "radical capacity for intelligence and volition."
The term "radical" in this phrase is intended to distinguish between a radical capacity and a developed capacity or ability.
A radical capacity can be called an active potentiality, as distinct from a merely passive potentiality.
For example, an unborn baby and a newborn child, precisely by reason of his or her membership in the human species, has the radical capacity or active potentiality to discriminate between true and false propositions, to make choices, and to communicate rationally with others.
However, in order for the unborn or newborn child to exercise this capacity or set of capacities, his radical capacity or active potentiality for engaging in these activities, which are predictable kinds of behavior characteristic of members of the human species, must be allowed to develop.
The point here is that, it could never be developed if it were not present, rooted within the being of the human unborn or newborn child, to begin with.
Similarly, members of the species “bald eagle” have the radical capacity or active potentiality to engage in behaviors predictable of members of the “bald eagle” species, such as, the activity of soaring through the air on their wings.
But for baby eaglets to exercise this capacity it must first be developed, and adult eagles may be inhibited from exercising this capacity because of accident, say, if their wings are broken, but the fact that this capacity is not now exercisable does not mean that it is not a radical capacity or active potentiality rooted in the being of all members of the species, bald eagle.
In other words, an active potentiality means that the same entity which possesses it is the same entity as will later exercise that active potentiality. With a passive potentiality this is not the case.
That is, to say, the actualization of a passive potentiality often produces a completely different thing or substance. For example, oxygen has the passive potentiality to become water when appropriately combined with hydrogen, but water is a different thing from oxygen.
In light of this personhood thesis no human person is to be merely used and discarded arbitrarily without simultaneously considering one's free, fully informed, just and deliberate consent.
In other words, then, anyone who arbitrarily treats a person as the mere means to another's end does violence to the very essence of the other, to what constitutes its natural right to a free, fully informed, just and deliberate consent.
And so, we have a principle, the personalistic norm, which negatively state that, the human person is an entity that is incompatible with the practice of mere using, meaning that, one may never be treated as an object or instrument of mere use and, in this sense, as a mere means to another’s end, without regard for one's free, fully informed, just and deliberate consent.
In light of the stated personalistic norm, a good society is a partnership whose community-citizen relations, market–citizen relations and state–citizen relations should be governed by ends-based (I-You) relationships as opposed to means-based (I-It) relationships.
A good society preferentially elevates “I-You” relations over “I-It” relations in human interactions, hence elevating “human persons” over “things.”
Naturally, community-citizen relations, as opposed to market–citizen relations and state–citizen relations, are mostly governed by ends-based (I-Thou) relations, hence the necessity of respecting the autonomy of communities, which include civil societies and religious institutions.
In other words, a good society is one in which people treat one another as ends in themselves and not merely as instruments; as whole persons rather than as fragments; as members of a community, bonded by ties of affection and commitment, rather than only as employees, traders, consumers or even as fellow citizens.
The personalistic norm is closely related to the principle of "social justice," which is mentioned in article 8(1) of our constitution,
The principle of "social justice" is a norm of rationality according to which, like cases should be treated alike and different cases should be treated differently, without any unwarranted diachronic and synchronic inconsistencies.
Diachronic inconsistency refers to inconsistencies over time, such as a person changing their answer to the same question in different interviews.
It can indicate a change in perspective, new information, or a failure to maintain consistency in beliefs.
And synchronic inconsistency refers to inconsistencies within the same timeframe or context, like a person contradicting themselves within a single interview.
It can arise from a lack of clarity, cognitive biases, or a failure to properly integrate different pieces of information.
So, while distinct, "the personalistic norm" and the principle of "social justice" are complementary.
Offenses against “the personalistic norm" refer to actions in which an agent users one's power to treat another person as a mere object or a means to a mere end, rather than recognizing the other's inherent dignity and value as a uniquely free and intelligent individual.
In this regard, power is defined as the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance.
On this view, agent A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.
Power thus resides in social relations between at least two social actors, in which one actor whom we can call the powerholder deliberately changes or modifies the behavior of another actor whom we can call the power endurer.
A social actor can be individuals, groups, roles, offices, governments, nation-states or other human aggregates.
There are six strategic means that social actors can employ in exercising power over others, namely: (1) seduction,(2) coercion, (3) force, (4) manipulation, (5) authority, (6) objectification, and (7) persuasion, some of which are compatible with the personalistic norm, while others are not.
Coercion is a form of power relationship in which by threat of punishment A successfully gets B to do X which B would not otherwise do.
On this definition, coercion involves threats to impose sanctions and penalties, such as causing or inflicting pain or suffering to one’s person, a damage to one’s property, or a harm to one’s loved ones.
Forcing means exerting force on others, where force is a form of power relationship in which agent A successfully causes agent B to do action X, by eliminating all of agent B’s options to do anything but action X, and the power-endurer is aware of the demands of the power-holder.
It should be noted that forcing is not a “reduction of alternatives to two”, but a complete elimination of alternatives.
Therefore, when B is presented to choose between her life and her wallet, and she chooses her life, it means that A has exercised coercion over B.
On the other hand, if in the same situation B chooses her wallet, and then A has to injure or kill B in order to take the wallet away from B, it means that A has exercised force over B.
Seduction is a form of power relationship, in which by promise of reward X, agent A successfully gets agent B to do action Y which agent B would not otherwise do.
In seduction, power stems from the power endurer’s perception of the probability that the power holder will provide them with rewards in return for their compliant behavior.
The strength of seductive power increases with the magnitude of the reward, which can come either in the form of a provision of positive consequences, or elimination of negative consequences for power endurers by power holders.
Since seductive or reward power derives from the probability that the power holder will provide rewards to the power endurer, it follows that successful seduction depends on the power holder’s observable behavior, meaning that the seduced agent is aware of the demands of the seducing agent.
From the supplied definition of coercion, it can be understood that coercion is a counterpart, or a mirror image, of seduction: whereas seduction is based on the promises of a reward, coercion is based on the threat of a punishment.
Just as a promise of promotion can be used as a means of getting compliant behavior in seduction, so too can a threat of demotion serve as a means of ensuring compliance in coercion.
Manipulation entails using someone to achieve one's own goals without regard for their well-being or consent.
It involves getting people to act in a certain way by performing actions behind their back, withholding information from them, or deceiving them in some way.
Whereas in coercion, the power endurer is aware of the demands of the power holder, in manipulation the power holder disguises the nature and the source of his or her demands. Specifically, there are three conditions that specify manipulation.
First, the manipulated should not know that the manipulator is doing X which is the reason why the manipulated is doing Y.
Second, the manipulated should not know that X is the reason why the manipulated is doing Y.
And third, the manipulated should not know that the manipulator has a reason for the manipulated to do Y.
Exploitation entails taking unfair advantage of another person's vulnerability or needs.
Objectification entails reducing a person to a mere body or a set of characteristics, rather than recognizing their full personhood.
Authority is a form of episodic power whereby A successfully gets B to do X by virtue of the fact that B accepts or does not contest the hierarchical or otherwise ranked order in which B is subordinate to A or where A is superordinate to B.
One can find instances of authority in cases when the tax payer complies with the demands of the tax collector, or when the vassal obeys the will of the lord, or when the churchgoer obeys the word of the priest.
Here authority should be distinguished from coercion. For example, it can be the case that A gets B to comply with A’s demands, but where B’s compliance is a result of B’s fears of facing potential reprisals if she does not comply, and not the result of B’s acceptance of her subordinate position.
Authority in its pure form thus requires that B’s compliance should derive from B’s acceptance of the state of affairs in which B is subordinate to A.
There are three different types of authority: (1) legal, (2) traditional, and (3) charismatic.
Legal authority as a form of power is held by a person who occupies a lawfully established superordinate position.
It can be argued that the legal authority does not really belong to the person who exercises it, but, more appropriately, to the official role or status which the person occupies.
For example, when one obeys a police officer, one can be said to be obeying the officer and not really the person who happens to be this officer.
This furthermore suggests that legal authority can be exercised by an institution or organization.
Traditional authority as a form of power is usually held by a person who occupies her authoritative position in accordance with a certain tradition, often on the bases of their age, sex, caste, or some other such characteristic.
On this view, gerontocracy, patriarchalism, and patrimonialism are all instances of super-ordination and subordination based on traditional authority.
Finally, charismatic authority as a form of power is held by persons who are perceived to possess certain outstanding or exemplary virtues inaccessible to common people.
Prophets, wartime leaders, and revolutionaries often happen to be charismatic leaders.
Persuasion is a form of episodic power, whereby A gets B to do X by getting B to accept that it is reasonable for B to do X.
Persuasion normally involves a person or a group convincing another person or group to assent to a certain course of action or to accept a certain state of affairs.
The power to persuade is the power to convince others with the help of credible but not necessarily proven evidence.
On this view, persuasion does neither require a full disclosure on the part of the persuader nor a fully informed consent on the part of the persuadee. Persuasion occurs at different levels of social and political interaction.
While persuasion is normally regarded as an interactive process happening between two or more persons or groups, it is also possible to conceive of persuasion as an internal process of deliberation taking place within one person or group, for example, when we try to persuade and convince ourselves regarding some matter.
Persuasion, as a form of power, plays an important role within democratic political practices. For example, political parties and political leaders deploy persuasive tactics in building and maintaining their political base.
So, in short, some negative values, which always and everywhere erode the goodness of a society can be directly derived from this understanding of the personalistic norm and how it is violated.
Child abuse, spousal abuse, violent crime, abductions, torture, election rigging, corruption, civil war, international war, slave trade, colonialism and whatever offends the personalistic norm are contrary to the vision of a good society.
Natural inclination to order as opposed to chaos: The concept of a "natural inclination to order" suggests a belief that humans, by their very nature, have an inherent tendency to establish and follow rules, and to create societies with structures of governance.
In essence, the idea of a natural inclination to law and order suggests that the desire for rules, justice, and social harmony is not merely a learned behavior, but a fundamental aspect of human nature.
This idea is deeply rooted in philosophical and ethical traditions, particularly in natural law theory.
Natural law theory posits that there are universal moral principles, discoverable through reason, that are inherent in nature and form the basis for just laws and social order. These principles are seen as objective and independent of human-made laws.
The word “law” denotes a pattern of order in the physical and human worlds.
Thus, law is a pattern of orderly things, whereby “orderliness” and not commandments or legislation, governs the physical and human worlds. Hence, natural laws are patterns of natural order of things.
For the natural sciences, law is the order of natural things as seen from the perspective of a particular discipline or branch of physics, biology, or chemistry.
The main pre-occupation of a scientific discipline is to identify stable patterns of order and to express them as of laws of nature.
Scientists also search for the conditions of existence of those patterns to determine where they do or might break down.
As such, “orderliness” within our biological and psychological nature, is “natural law” exactly.
Jurists, economists, anthropologists, and practitioners of other scientific disciplines as well, study the patterns of order in the human world.
A natural law theory, in so far as it concerns human affairs, attempts to explain both what the natural law of the human world is and why and how we ought to respect it.
However, whereas, for example, economists focus on how orderly patterns of coordinated actions emerge in the human world, jurists focus on the order of persons as such.
Their concern is with the conditions in which human persons can be and are distinguished properly from one another and from other things.
Thus, in the juristically relevant sense, patterns of order among natural persons, namely, human beings who are capable of rational, purposive action, speech and thought.
Each one of us by nature is an element of the human world and each one us by nature is capable of doing, thinking and saying things, independently of what others are doing, thinking and saying at the same time.
The primary practical objective of the juristic study of natural law is to propose rules or practical principles that, if followed by human beings, are likely to maintain, strengthen and restore respect for the natural order of the human world. They are the principles and rules of justice.
It is possible to speak of the natural law of the universe, an order that encompasses all things. However, it is more meaningful to speak of the natural order of particular sorts of things in the universe.
For example, physicists, chemists, biologists, astronomers, geologists, and practitioners of other natural sciences all look at different orders of things, concentrating on different sorts of objects and phenomena, trying to discover and eventually to explain patterns of order (natural laws) within their chosen fields.
Because this letter is about the natural law of the human world, I shall focus on the natural order of human persons rather than the natural order of such things as particles, atoms and molecules, physical states, cells, organs, and life forms.
Natural inclination to peace as opposed to an aversion to violence: The idea that humans possess a natural inclination to peace is premised on the argument that peace is the most conducive state for human life and well-being, rather than violence in the name of might makes right.
While primal instincts for conflict (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) exist, they are often seen as responses to perceived threats rather than inherent desires for aggression.
"Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn" are four stress responses that serve as survival mechanisms to perceived threats, where fight is to confront the danger, flight is to escape it, freeze is to become immobile, and fawn is to appease to avoid conflict. This acute stress response is an automatic, physiological reaction involving the sympathetic nervous system and the release of stress hormones like adrenaline.
On this contrastive view, peace is not the complete absence of all struggle, but rather a state of internal balance and equilibrium within humans and their environment, enabling them to fulfill their life goals and thrive.
However, what one does to achieve peace depends on how one images, defines, or conceptualizes peace.
Across the dichotomy of “peace and coercion,” coercion is defined as the threat and/or the actual imposition of costs on an actor, directed towards eliminating the actor’s freedom of action with regard to a specific set of actions.
On this view, coercion is an attempt or a tendency to force an actor or several actors into doing something, where, an actor’s freedom of action is partially eliminated.
Against this background, it is necessary to distinguish between democratic peace and coercive peace.
Democratic peace theory posits that democracies are less likely to wage war against each other, fostering peace through shared norms and institutions, while coercive peace describes a state of calm achieved through threats, punishment, or force, often imposed by powerful states and involving a significant degree of control or power imbalance.
The core difference lies in their mechanism: democratic peace relies on cooperation and shared values, whereas coercive peace relies on coercion and the threat of force, even if it doesn't result in actual violence.
Democratic Peace has the following attributes:
- Mechanism: Relies on shared democratic institutions, norms, and values, creating a framework for peaceful conflict resolution between democratic states.
- Characteristics: Cooperation: Democracies are less likely to resort to war against each other, preferring peaceful negotiations and mutual understanding. Transparency: Open political processes in democracies can lead to more credible threats of force, but also foster greater domestic constraints against using it. Soft Power: Favors influencing other states through culture and knowledge, rather than direct coercion.
- Limitations: Some critics argue that liberal states often engage in conflicts with non-democratic nations, and historical events suggest that peace between democracies may be influenced by factors other than their democratic nature, such as mutual deterrence.
- Mechanism: Peace is achieved and maintained through the threat or application of force, economic sanctions, or other coercive means to deter conflict and control behavior.
- Characteristics: Power Imbalance: Involves a significant power dynamic where a stronger entity imposes its will on others. Controlled Environment: Peace is not a result of shared consensus but rather an imposed calm, often through fear of punishment. Potential for Abuse: The same mechanisms that enforce a coercive peace can also be used for abuse, as seen in relationships where one person's freedom is restricted by another's threats.
- Limitations: Instability: Peace achieved through coercion may be fragile and prone to collapse. Moral Questions: Raising ethical concerns about the use of force and control to achieve peace. Unintended Consequences: Coercive actions can have negative impacts on a person's or state's well-being and can create resistance.
Dimensions of democratic peace:
- Fundamental Idea:A descriptive and predictive theory in international relations that predicts that democratic states rarely, if ever, engage in armed conflict with one another.
- Causes of Peace: Peace is the byproduct of democratic norms (e.g., compromise and respect for rights) and institutional constraints (e.g., checks and balances, public accountability).
- Approach to Conflict: Negotiation and Compromise: Democracies are more likely to seek diplomatic and peaceful resolutions when in disputes with other democracies.
Credible Signaling: The open nature of democratic politics allows for clear communication of intentions, reducing the risk of miscalculation. - Subjects of Peace: It is specifically a theory about the peaceful relations between democracies (the dyadic variant). Democracies are not necessarily more peaceful toward non-democracies.
- Underlying Norms: Rooted in liberal values that favor non-violent conflict resolution.
- Fundamental Idea: A prescriptive strategy that uses the threat or limited application of force to persuade an opponent to take or stop a specific action.
- Causes of Peace: Peace is the result of one state successfully using leverage, such as military threats or sanctions, to enforce its will on another.
- Approach to Conflict: Threat and Force: Coercive peace relies on the credible threat of force (deterrence) or the actual use of limited force (compellence).
Unequal Power: It assumes a power imbalance where one state has the ability to impose costs on another to achieve its objectives. - Subjects of Peace: Any state, including democracies and autocracies, can attempt to achieve peace coercively, though the strategy's effectiveness is not guaranteed.
- Underlying Norms: Unconstrained by regime type, drawing instead on a realist understanding of international relations where power is the ultimate arbiter.
- Defining "Democracy": The theory's validity can depend on how "democracy" and "war" are defined. Critics argue that supporters sometimes retroactively exclude conflicts or countries from their analysis to preserve the theory.
- Limited Sample Size: Since the number of mature, liberal democracies has only become substantial in recent history, some argue that the evidence is still limited.
- Other Factors: Alternative explanations for peace among democracies include shared economic interests (capitalist peace theory), alliances, and the stabilizing influence of global powers.
- Conflict with Non-Democracies: Democracies have frequently gone to war or engaged in covert operations against non-democracies, challenging the idea that they are inherently more peaceful overall.
- Risk of Escalation: Relying on threats is inherently risky and can escalate a situation into a full-scale conflict if miscalculation occurs.
- Unpredictability: The effectiveness of coercion is not guaranteed and depends on many factors, including the target state's resolve, the credibility of the threat, and the costs it is willing to endure.
- Lack of Legitimacy: Unlike democratic peace, which is built on shared norms, peace achieved through coercion may lack legitimacy and generate resentment, potentially leading to future conflict.
- Moral and Ethical Concerns: The strategy relies on the potential use of violence and force, raising ethical questions about its role in achieving lasting peace.
- As global geopolitical power shifts, traditional democratic peace is being re-examined in a more complex, multipolar world with rising authoritarianism.
- States often use a blend of both approaches, employing coercive economic sanctions or military threats (coercive peace) while still preferring diplomatic engagement with fellow democracies (democratic peace).
- Economic coercion, such as that used by China, is a significant feature of modern statecraft and a key example of coercive peace, which stands in contrast to the normative foundations of democratic peace.
Natural inclination to coherence as opposed to an aversion to incoherence: A natural inclination to coherence refers to the innate human tendency to seek logical order, harmony, and a lack of contradiction in thoughts, beliefs, and the world around us.
This inclination drives the formation of coherent personal narratives and a desire for consistent actions and principles, as it leads to a greater sense of understanding, psychological well-being, and effective reasoning by making sense of new experiences and integrated information. It is an innate, fundamental tendency in humans to seek and maintain coherence.
But what is coherence? Consistency means the absence of contradiction or logical inconsistency within a set of ideas or actions. It simply means “sticking together.” There can be forms of coherence that have nothing to do with the human mind, say, the coherence of the parts of a complex machine. So, general coherence is a form of “making sense.”
And coherence means a broader concept where parts of a system "hang together" well, are mutually supportive, and contribute to a unified whole that makes sense.
But the question to be addressed in this analysis is psychological coherence. It is a kind of coherence that is required for rationality. This is to say that, we are discussing the thesis according to which “rationality requires coherence”.
Naturally, when someone who realizes that, he believes “a proposition that p” and she simultaneously believes “a proposition that not p,” he just finds oneself revising one of the two propositions.
She doesn’t make a transition from one mental state to the other by mere association, as someone does when the thought of clouds reminds her of rain. Rather, she realizes that she must revise at least one of their states, and then reason about which state to revise. In other words, her change of mind is a reasoned change of mind.
But, what explains the fact that the agent is disposed to reason their way out of incoherence? It’s natural to think that this fact is partly explained by the agent’s realization that they’re incoherent.
That is, the awareness of incoherence explains why an agent is disposed to revise their attitudes under conditions of full transparency. So, the fact about the disposition toward coherence is best explained by facts about the realization of incoherence.
That is, it is naturally fitting for every human to structure one’s deliberation so that only coherent sets of attitudes are considered. So, agents who realize that their attitudes are incoherent are naturally disposed to revise them because they recognize that they could not reason their way to this combination of attitudes if they were deliberating in a fitting manner. Fittingness, then, plays a central role in the account of coherence as opposed to incoherence.
According to this view, a system is coherent when its parts are completely consistent with one another. The absence of contradictions makes a set of propositions consistent. That is, the consistency of a system of propositions is a necessary condition for its coherence.
It follows that a legal system containing one contradiction is not consistent, hence not coherent. To this extent, consistency and coherence are substitutable terms.
On this view, while our practical or theoretical success might be hostage to fortune, there is some purely “internal” facet of rationality that is free from the influence of fortune: that purely “internal” fact has often been thought to consist in coherence.
However, coherence is a multi-level concept. This is the case because, it entails that a given mind has a set of attitudes which are jointly satisfied in the sense of jointly fitting the world.
Accordingly, some of coherence requirements, as norms of structural rationality, can be formulated as follows:
- Belief coherence: An agent must not believe a proposal that p and believe another proposal that not-p simultaneously. Thus, we are rationally required not both to believe a proposition that p and to believe a proposition that not p.
- Means-to-Ends coherence: An agent must not intend to pursue F, believe that if they don’t now intend to pursue C, then they cannot pursue F, and not intend to pursue C.
- Inferential coherence: An agent must not believe a proposal that p; believe a proposal that if p, then proposal q; and not believe a proposal that q. Thus, an epistemically rational agents should, at any given space and time, have an inferentially consistent sets of belief. Alternatively, If proposition q is a logical consequence of proposition p, we are rationally required if we believe proposition p, to believe proposition q too.
- Transitive preferences coherence: An agent must not prefer a to b; prefer b to c; and then prefer c to a.
We can think that a theory of coherence should begin with the idea that intentional states like belief, desire, and intention have conditions of satisfaction.
The satisfaction conditions of an intentional state are those conditions under which there is a fit between the state and the world, in whichever direction of fit is appropriate for the kind of state in question.
A belief is satisfied if and only if it fits the world, in the sense of representing it as it truly is. An intention is satisfied if and only if the agent changes the world so that it comes to fit the way that the intention specifies.
On this view, Coherence as Joint Satisfiability, is the view that a psychological profile P of agent A is coherent just in case and because there is a logically possible world W such that: (1) for each state specified in P, that state is satisfied at W; and (2) P is a correct description of A’s psychological profile at W.
Generally, it can be said that, a set of mental attitudes is coherent just in case and because they can be jointly satisfied, where satisfaction is understood in terms of a notion of fit, to be made precise, between each mental attitude and the world.
On this view, a set of attitudinal mental states is jointly incoherent if and only if any agent who holds these attitudes is disposed to give up at least one of them under conditions of full transparency.
By “conditions of full transparency” we mean that the agent knows, and explicitly and consciously believes, that she has the states in question, without self-deception, mental fragmentation, or any failure of self-knowledge pertaining to those attitudes.
An agent who finds themselves holding genuinely incoherent attitudes under full transparency is disposed to revise at least one of them. If they aren’t, then they don’t count as really having the relevant mental states.
Generally, coherence consists of four levels, namely: the level of internal coherence or synchronic coherence; the level of consecutive coherence or diachronic coherence; the level of system coherence; and the level of environment coherence.
Any form of rational discourse has to correspond to a level of coherence below which it makes no sense at all. This is the first level of coherence, the level of internal coherence.
This is a condition of internal consistency, order, and logical connections within our beliefs, actions, and perceptions. This inclination manifests as a preference for understanding phenomena in a unified, sensible, and non-contradictory way, which is why we strive to form coherent narratives, theories, and plans. Coherence is seen as an ideal of rationality, where a coherent agent or system is one that avoids internal contradictions and successfully responds to reasons.
In essence, the "natural inclination to coherence" describes our drive to make sense of the world by connecting its various parts into a unified and intelligible whole, aligning with our desire for logical consistency and order.
As a rule epistemic rationality requires two kinds of coherence. Broadly speaking, an agent’s beliefs must fit well together at a time, and also fit well together over time. At any particular time, we should avoid believing contradictions, believe the consequences of our beliefs, and so on. And over time, we should respect the evidence we’ve received and adapt our beliefs to new evidence.
However, the principle of diachronic evidentialism requires that, an agent should only change her epistemic state by updating on new evidence. So, it is obvious that we would not want to demand that an agent' s beliefs at different times exhibit the same sort of consistency that we demand from an agent' s simultaneous beliefs; there' s nothing irrational about believing P at one time and not-P at another. Nevertheless, many have thought that some sort of coherence or stability of beliefs over time is an important component of epistemic rationality.
In summary, based on how contradictions are generated in a given set of claims, we can identify three types of contradictions, namely: explicit contradiction, formal contradictions and implicit contradictions.
Explicit contradiction: A set of assertions is explicitly contradictory if and only if at least one member of the set is the direct negation of at least one member of the same set.
The first example is this set of statements: "Africa has 54 countries including Tanzania"; 'therefore, Tanzania is in Africa'; and 'Tanzania is not in Africa'." The second and third statements are contradictory.
The second example is this set of statements: "'A square has four corners; a triangle has three corners'; 'therefore, a triangle is a square'; and a triangle is not a square'". The second and third statements contradict each other.
The third example is this set of statements: "'All Tanzanians speak Kiswahili', 'Juma is a Tanzanian', therefore, 'Juma speaks Kiswahili', 'Juma doesn't speak Kiswahili.'" The third and fourth statements contradict each other.
The fourth example is, "the sun revolves around the earth and the sun does not revolves around the earth."
The fifth example is a set of these sentences: "I love you and I don't love you."
The sixth example is a set of these sentences: "at one time grape wine is a harvest from a grape tree; and at another time wine is the blood of Jesus". But plant cells cannot naturally change into animal cells.
The seventh example is a set of these sentences: "at one time the eucharistic bread is a harvest from a plant called wheat; and at another time the eucharistic bread is a body of Jesus." But plant cells cannot naturally change into animal cells.
The eight example is a set of these sentences: (1) All substantial changes are either generative or annihilative; (2) During mass, the consecration prayer leads to neither generative nor annihilative change in the bread and wine; (3) Thus, there is no visible and real change that occurs via consecration prayer; (4) there is an invisible and real change that occurs via consecration prayer.” The third and fourth claims are contradictory.
The ninth example is a set of these sentences: “The Son assumed a human nature; the Son is God; thus, God assumed a human nature; the Father did not assume a human nature; the Father is God; thus, God did not assume a human nature.” The third and sixth claims are contradictory.
And the tenth example is a set of these sentences: "(1) The paradox of eucharist transubstantiation asserts that, after the consecration prayer, which is administered by the Priest, the body of Jesus Christ, who is in heaven, is truly, really, wholly and substantially present in every consecrated host wherever it may be located on earth; (2) according to physics principles of impenetrability of bodies, no two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time; and (3) according to physics principles of the irreplicability of bodies, for any ordinary objects X and Y, if X and Y occupy distinct places at t, then X is distinct from Y."
But, the first statement in this set, explicitly contradicts the second and the third statements.
Formal contradictions: A set of assertions is formally contradictory if and only if at least one member of the set is an indirect negation of at least one member of the same set, where an explicit contradiction can be derived from its members by using the rules of ordinary logical inference only.
The first example is this set of statements: "'All Tanzanians speak Kiswahili', 'Juma is a Tanzanian', 'Juma does not speak Kiswahili.'"
While the third statement says that, "Juma does not speak Kiswahili," the first two statements produce a contradictory conclusion that, "Juma speaks Kiswahili."
The second example is this set of statements: "'A triangle has three corners'; 'a square has four corners'; and 'A triangle is a square.'"
While the third statement says that, "a triangle is a square," the first two statements, produce a contradictory conclusion that, "a triangle is not a square."
The third example is this set of statements: "God is three persons; The Father is one person; and the Father is God.” While the third statement says "The Father is God" the first two statements produce the conclusion that "The Father is not God."
The fourth example is this set of statements: "God is three persons; The Son is One person; and the Son is God.” While the third statement says "The Son is God" the first two statements produce the conclusion that "The Son is not God."
The fifth example is this set of statements: "God is three persons; The Holy Spirit is One person; and the Holy Spirit is God.” While the third statement says "The Holy Spirit is God" the first two statements produce the conclusion that "The Holy Spirit is not God."
The sixth example is this set of statements: "The Father is God; The Son is God; The Holy Spirit is God; and There is one God.” While the third statement says "There is one God" the first three statements produce the conclusion that "There are Three Gods."
The seventh example is this set of statements: "'Boys have chromosomes with an XY format and girls have chromosomes with an XX format'; 'therefore, boys have XY format and male genitalia and girls have XX format and female genitalia'; and 'There is a person with XY chromosomes and female genitalia.'"
While the third statement says that, "There is a person with XY chromosomes and female genitalia," the first two statements, produce the contradictory conclusion that, "No person has XY chromosomes and female genitalia."
The eighth example is this set of statements: "'God is spirit'; and 'God wrote the Torah with his finger.'" From the statement that "God is spirit" it logically follows that, "God has no body."
But, from the statement that "God wrote the Torah with his finger," it logically follows that, "God has a body." The two conclusions that "God has a body" and that "God does not have a body" are contradictory statements.
The ninth example is this set of statements: "God is the creator and ruler of all things, Jesus is God, the Virgin Mary was created and was ruled by God, a pregnant woman rules over her pregnancy, the Virgin Mary was the ruler of God."
While the first three claims produce the conclusion that "God was the ruler of the Virgin Mary," the fifth claim says that "the pregnant Virgin Mary was the ruler of God." This is a contradiction.
Example 10 is this set of statements: "By his nature, God is a spirit without a body, Jesus is God, and Jesus has a body."
While the first two statements produce the conclusion that "Jesus does not have a body," the third statement says that "Jesus has a body." This is a contradiction.
Example 11 is this set of statements: "A self is a center of decisions, God is a self and man is a self, Jesus is God-man by nature, Jesus has one self."
While the first two statements produce the conclusion that "Jesus has two selves," the third statement says that "Jesus has one self." This is a logical fallacy.
Example 12 is this set of sentences: "Juma is married to Jane; and Jane is not married to Juma." But, the first statement implies the conclusion that, "Jane is married to Juma" as well, a conclusion that contradicts the second statement.
Example 13 is the following set of statements: “The Son assumed a human nature; the Son is God; the Father did not assume a human nature; the Father is God.”
The contradiction comes in this way: From the first and second statements, we have the conclusion that “God assumed a human nature”; and from the third and fourth claims, we have the conclusion that, “God did not assume a human nature”. These two conclusions are contradictory.
Implicit contradiction: A set of assertions is implicitly contradictory if and only if at least one member of the set is an indirect negation of at least one member of the same set, where an explicit contradiction or implicit contradiction can be derived from its members by using the rules of ordinary logical inference after adding some necessarily true propositions to it.
The first example is the following set of statements: “The Son assumed a human nature; the Son is God; thus, God assumed a human nature.” This set has neither explicit nor formal contradictions. But, if the set is expanded by adding the following three statements, a contradiction emerges: “the Father did not assume a human nature; the Father is God; thus, God did not assume a human nature.” Now, the third and sixth claims are contradictory.
The second example is the following set of statements: "an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God exists; and physical evil exists.” There is neither explicit nor formal contradiction in these two statements.
But, the contradiction will become clear after adding the following statements which are necessarily true.
"God’s omnipotence allows his to eliminate physical evil; God’s omni-benevolence allows him to desire eliminating physical evil; and God’s omniscience allows him to know how to eliminate physical evil; Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God does not exist.” Now, the sixth claim contradicts the first claim.
Natural inclination to the common good: A natural inclination to the common good describes the idea that humans possess an innate desire and orientation toward social harmony, justice, and collective well-being, rather than solely self-interest.
This concept suggests that our inherent nature compels us toward living in a community and pursuing ends that benefit the group, such as friendship and justice. It is not a learned or chosen behavior, but a fundamental feature of human nature.
This inclination directs individuals toward collective well-being, emphasizing cooperation and fairness. It implies that human beings naturally understand and seek the good of the community.
The inclination to the common good suggests that humans are not merely selfish but also intrinsically oriented towards the prosperity and harmony of the community.
On this view, an alternative thinking which generally takes for granted an apparent conflict between the common good and the individual good, as though the two ends were somehow incompatible, is unwarranted.
Under this alternative view, the interest of the employee is seen as in conflict with the interest of the employer, the customer’s interest in conflict with the corporate seller’s, or the tax payer’s interest in conflict with the general welfare of the nation. The same holds on the social and political levels. One interest always seems to be at the expense of another.
This conflictual view of society can be traced back to the mechanistic analysis of nature, according to which, nature is made up of separate atomic entities each competing to secure a foothold in the environment.
Given the atomistic view of nature, a political society is consequently conceived as an artificial organization imposed upon a pre-political state of nature, with its laws devised to curb the natural human inclination to selfishness. In this view the human person is neither naturally social nor willingly cooperative.
The atomistic view of human society, which reduces nature to a mere struggle for existence, is propagated in direct opposition to the standard view of society, according to which, the human species is naturally social and political.
On this standard view, nature is conceived as a harmonious whole where everything has its due place and contribution to make in the overall scheme of things. Under the view, society is part of nature.
It hardly needs to be said that such a view is wholly contrary to the conception of the natural laws that govern society, as well as our understanding of human nature.
All living things that we know cooperate in some kind and to some degree. So far as we can see, nothing that lives can live in and for itself alone.
Specifically, humanity is the only species which cooperates by exchanging, and we may be distinguished from all the numberless tribes that with us tenant the earth as the exchanging animal. Of them all we are the only one who seek to obtain one thing by giving another.
This cooperative exchange includes all material economic activity without exception. But it also includes intellectual and cultural exchange.
In short, the common good often gets served despite the selfish desires of individuals. Nature looks first to the whole and only secondly to the part, and human reason itself corresponds with this in its natural inclination to understand the nature of things. A formal argument follows.
We start with the easily observed fact that a man is not alone in the world but lives in company with others like himself. Many living beings thrive in groups, clusters, colonies, or herds, in which there may be some degree of cooperation and even a primitive form of leadership.
But society is considered to be uniquely human and therefore must consist in something more than mere togetherness, be it of place or of activity. Given the fact that man does live in society, we ask why he does so and what there is about human society that makes it different from other ways of living together.
We may formulate our questions as follows: Why do humans live in society? In response, we may build our argument:
The nature of anything is revealed through its properties, for we have no direct intuition of any nature but discover what it is by the way it acts.
But human nature has properties which fit and impel man to live in company with his fellowmen and to cooperate with them for common ends, and this cooperation is more accurately obtained if men bind themselves thereto, each guaranteeing his help to the rest so that all can depend on it; when men bind themselves together in this fashion, they have formed society.
Therefore man is naturally fitted and impelled to join with his fellow man in society; in other words, society is natural to man.
But, what sort of thing is society as it emerges from the proof just given? We notice that several elements are necessary:
One, there can be no actually existing society without members. The number of persons is not specified, but there must be at least two; otherwise there can be no togetherness or commonness of interests and activity.
Two, the members must be united in a stable or enduring way. A single act of working together may be only a haphazard occurrence. The union need not last forever or for life but must last for some considerable time.
Three, the members must cooperate or work together for the attainment of some end. This end will be some common good that all the members will share in and that no member could accomplish singly.
Four, society is held together by bonds, moral bonds of means and end. Either the members bind themselves by contract, pledge, or agreement, or else the bonds are imposed upon them by some law, natural or positive.
Five, to guide the cooperative effort to the common good, society must be equipped with that moral power called authority. Authority is the right to determine the means and direct the members in their use.
Hence we may define society as an enduring union of a number of persons morally bound under authority to cooperate for a common good.
An examination of the four causes of society, so defined, will help to bring out the idea more clearly.
One, the material cause is the members, the human beings capable of entering into society. Since society is a moral union supposing agreement of wills, only rational beings can form society. Herds of animals are not societies.
Two, the formal cause is the moral bond uniting the members. Form is that which determines matter, and it is the moral bond which distinguishes these human beings from others, constitutes a society out of them, and makes them members of it.
Some writers identify this moral bond with authority and say that authority is the form of a society; others consider that authority is rather a property flowing from the essence of society. Without entering into this theoretical dispute, we can say that authority is at least an essential property of society.
Three, the efficient cause is the one who brings about the moral union among the members, the one who puts the form on the matter. This is the founder of the society, and in a lesser way those who keep it going.
The efficient cause may be the members themselves or someone outside the society. In a remote sense, we may think of man's social nature itself as the efficient cause of society.
Four, the final cause is the good sought by the members, that which they hope to gain by their cooperative effort. This will differ for each different kind of society. Since society itself is a means to an end, the nature of the society will be determined more by its end than by any other factor.
Accordingly, the common good is the end for which society exists. It is the temporal welfare of the community, taken both collectively and distributively.
The collectivist may stress the first element only, making the common good an entity over and above the individual good, the former absorbing the latter.
The individualist may see only the second element, making the common good a mere sum of individual goods.
But, an adequate view of society and the common good must find a place between these extremes.
The common good is realized only in the individuals who make up society, but it is a good that they could achieve only by the interaction of many cooperators.
To have a common good which can be the end of society, it is not enough that it concern several persons.
That might give us two interdependent private goods, such as we find in contracts of exchange.
If an employer is interested only in profits from business and an employee only in wages from his labor, each benefits the other, but they have not a common good in the strict sense.
To have a really common good as the end of their joint effort, the employer must be genuinely interested in the welfare of his employee and the employee must have at heart the success of the business he works for, and these two interests must be merged in one common enterprise.
They must help each other not only accidentally, because their private goods are entangled, but essentially, because they share in the one same good. For lack of this the employer-employee relation normally found today is not a society.
Negatively, the common good consists in the establishment and maintenance of order. Each knows his place, his relations to others, his rights and duties as compared with others' rights and duties toward him.
Each can rely on the other not to interfere; each is guaranteed a wide enough scope for private action and the development of his own personality.
There result peace, harmony, security, opportunity, and freedom. Cooperation for the maintenance of order must be done by all for the benefit of all and is thus a truly common good.
Positively, the common good consists in giving to others and receiving from them powers and resources that as individuals none would possess. It is both active and passive, both supplementation and participation; perhaps the best single word for it is communion.
Scattered raindrops over a wide enough area may, if added together, equal the force of a waterfall, but they cannot do the work of a waterfall harnessed to a turbine.
Similarly, the common good is not an arithmetical sum of each individual's contribution but something new resulting from the channeling of human energy and the mobilization of nature's resources.
The means society uses to develop and share the common good are often called institutions.
These are such things as schools, libraries, laboratories, hospitals, police, military forces, public utilities, corporations, banks, stock exchanges, law courts, and countless others.
Some of them are also societies in their own right, but as institutions they are regarded as instrumental causes used by society for storing and distributing the means to the common good.
The common good is to be shared in by all. The negative aspect of the common good should be shared in equally, for it consists in the absence of interference and the affording of opportunity.
Even if nature does not give equal opportunity to all, there should be no artificial human restrictions on such opportunities as nature does offer.
The positive aspect of the common good should be shared in not equally but proportionately. The proportion is a blend of equal and unequal elements.
There should be equality between one's contribution to society and one's share in the distribution of society's benefits, but, as not all contribute equally, neither should all receive equally.
This establishment of social justice, the foremost task of society, is so difficult that in this imperfect world we can hope for no more than an approximation.
Natural inclination to knowledge of divine beings: A natural inclination to the knowledge of religious truth refers to an innate human tendency or disposition to seek, understand, and believe in a divine reality or higher power.
It is often described as a fundamental part of human cognition and a universal human feature. This inclination is not necessarily about fully formed religious beliefs but rather a foundational drive toward truth, meaning, and connection with a divine source.
The inclination is not about a predetermined religion but a general orientation towards truth and a deeper reality, regardless of specific religious doctrines or cultural influences.
It is an inclination according to which, most humans are naturally predisposed to "divine beings," as opposed to "demonic beings" where, this naturalness provides a moral foundation for the right to religious freedom.
The most direct opposites of "demonic beings" are divine beings such as angels or gods, representing the forces of good and order, while demonic beings represent the forces of evil and chaos.
Divine beings are spiritual beings associated with goodness, order, holiness, and purity, such as angels or gods. And demonic beings are spiritual beings associated with evil, chaos, sin, and corruption.
When biologists developed the system of biological classification of living things in 1735, the attribute of "rationality" strongly governed views of humanity.
As a result, Linnaeus designated the human species as homo sapiens, “the rational man.” Soon, however, the incipient human sciences accentuated other dimensions of humanity than the rational.
Later attributes included "homo ludens" or playing man, "homo faber" or human as creator, "homo viator" or man the traveler, "homo economicus" or economic man, "homo semioticus" or sign creating man, and others.
The nineteenth century's growing awareness of the universality of religion, especially in the realm of the primitive communities, made it inevitable that a phrase would emerge to express that aspect of humanity, namely, "homo religiosus" or the religious human.
The inherent religiosity of humans
Finally, anthropologists have concluded that, for more than four millennia, human beings from virtually every culture around the world yearned for and sought the divine, where, the expression and the fulfillment of that yearning are similar in several areas, namely:
- That, there is a belief in the existence of divine reality which appears to be the center of absolute truth, morality and goodness.
- That, the divine reality is transcendental, meaning that, it is conceived as something whose nature transcends the ordinary limitations of human sensory experience which perceives reality in the physical world. This is a world of objects which are extended in space and time. Thus, sacred reality is hidden from human sensory perception.
- That, whenever the transcendent divine reality appears into the physical world it brings with it sacredness or holiness that splits the reality in the physical world into two parts: “the sacred reality” which is connected to transcendent reality and “the profane reality” which is not connected to transcendent reality.
- That, the religious idea of the hidden divine reality refers to a reality that is squarely transcendental, meaning that, it entails metaphysical/ontological transcendence, axiological transcendence, moral transcendence, and soteriological/teleological transcendence. This way, one can speak of square transcendence, transcendental square ultimacy of metaphysical transcendence, axiological transcendence, moral transcendence, and soteriological transcendence. This religious ultimate reality is instantiated uniquely in each known organized religion.
- That, the transcendental divine reality desires to connect with human beings and so enters into the profane world at a particular place and time.
- That, when the sacred reality enters into the world, it sacralizes the place and time it enters.
- And that, the celebration of rituals and recounting of myths not only strengthens the participants but also imparts lessons about purpose in life, the goods to be pursued, evils to be avoided, the virtues and laws that will help to achieve the good, and the vices that will undermine it.
On this view, "homo religiosus" is a Latin term that means "religious human," curently used to describe the human tendency towards sacred reality as opposed to the profane reality.
Accordingly, the concept of a natural inclination toward sacred reality, or a predisposition towards the ultimate reality of religion, suggests that humans possess an inherent tendency to connect with the divine reality, seek meaning beyond the material world, and engage in practices considered sacred, as opposed to the profane practices.
It reflects a deep-seated human desire to understand the fundamental nature of ultimate reality, connect with this hidden reality, which is something larger than oneself, and find meaning and purpose in life.
This inclination can manifest as a search for ultimate truth, meaning, or a higher power, and is often linked to concepts like the sacred, the divine, the ultimate cause, or the necessary being.
Philosophical definition of religion
As understood in philosophy of religion, divine reality refers to the ultimate, transcendent truth or source of existence, often associated with a supreme being. It's the foundational principle underlying the origin of the universe and often guides spiritual growth and human understanding.
This concept can be explored through various lenses, including Islamic, Christian, and mystical perspectives, each offering unique interpretations.
Accordingly, the terms "metaphysical ultimacy," "axiological ultimacy," "soteriological ultimacy," and "moral ultimacy" all relate to different aspects of divine reality.
They describe, respectively, the ultimate nature of reality, its inherent value, its role in salvation or liberation, and its implications for human conduct.
In light of the above empirical facts, it is now generally agreed that "religion" can and should be philosophically defined as a system of beliefs that: (1) make categorical demands on human action, (2) are insulated from ordinary standards of empirical evidence and reason, (3) involve a metaphysical, axiological, ethical and soteriological elements of ultimate reality, and (4) provide existential consolation.
From this definition, we have four key concepts: categoricity of religious demands, insulation from reason and evidence, philosophy of ultimate reality and existential consolation.
Categoricity of religious demands refers to central beliefs that issue in categorical demands on action -- that is, demands that must be satisfied no matter what an individual's antecedent desires and no matter what incentives or disincentives the world offers up.
Insulation from reason and evidence refers to central beliefs that do not answer ultimately (or at the limit) to evidence and reasons, as these are understood in other domains concerned with knowledge of the world. Religious beliefs, in virtue of being based on "faith", are insulated from ordinary standards of evidence and rational justification, the ones we employ in both common sense and in science.
Philosophy of ultimate reality refers to beliefs that involve, explicitly or implicitly, a metaphysics, axiology, soteriology and ethics of ultimate reality.
And existential consolation refers to beliefs that render intelligible and tolerable the basic existential facts about human life, such as suffering and death .
Metaphysics, axiology , soteriology and ethical ultimacy of divine reality
In this part am interested in explaining the "philosophy of ultimate reality," along metaphysical, axiological , soteriological and ethical dimensions.
By the word "reality" I shall mean the totality of individual entities, their particular attributes, the related universal properties, and the associated causal processes.
Metaphysically speaking, the starting point is the recognition that, one of the significant etiological question about ultimate reality arises in connection with the following claim: "Entity X is best causally explained by the existence of some ultimate reality."
The significant metaphysical question about ultimate reality that arises in connection with this schema is this:
Are there true instances of X for which it is the case that the best explanation for those X's lies in the existence of ultimate reality, aspects of ultimate reality, actions of ultimate reality or the like?
Under the philosophy of causality, cosmological arguments claim that the existence of hidden ultimate reality can be established as the required explanation of what exists in the physical world of space and time.
The main ingredients of cosmological arguments are typically two. One, we have a causal principle. Some variety of this claim look like "every event has a cause" or "everything that begins to exist has a cause."
And two, we have a denial of the infinite regress. This is the claim that time does not go back forever but had a starting point.
The combination of these two ingredients is meant to show that the universe must have had a cause. There are then a variety of methods used to try and show that there is ultimate reality whose best candidate for what that cause is can then be unpack in concrete terms based on some assumptions.
The typical version of the argument is a posteriori, beginning with observations of the world and then concluding that some first cause or necessary being is the only explanation of their origin.
Cosmological arguments can be broadly categorized into those that focus on causation and those that focus on contingency.
Cosmological arguments from causation include: argument from motion; argument from from atemporal causation; and argument from temporal causation.
On the other hand, we have cosmological arguments from contingency which include: arguments from necessity; and argument from sufficient reason.
The argument from motion
- We observe motion.
- Motion is the actualization of a thing’s potential to be in motion.
- A thing can only come to be in motion by being moved.
- A mover must be something that is actual.
- A thing cannot move itself.
- So, all things in motion must have been moved by something else.
- If there were no first mover, there would be no motion now.
- Therefore, there must be a first mover which must itself be unmoved (pure actuality).
- That thing we call ultimate reality
- We observe efficient causation.
- Nothing can cause itself.
- There is a logical order to sustaining causes: the first cause, then intermediate causes, then an ultimate effect.
- If A is the efficient cause of B, then if A doesn’t exist neither does B.
- There must be a first sustaining cause, otherwise P1 would be false as there would be no further sustaining causes or effects.
- As there is a first cause, there cannot be an infinite regress of causes.
- The first cause must itself be uncaused.
- That thing we call ultimate reality
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
- The universe began to exist (since an infinite regress is not possible).
- So, the universe has a cause of its existence.
- We call it ultimate reality
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
2.1 Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite.
2.11 An actual infinite cannot exist.
2.12 An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
2.13 Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.
2.2 Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition.
2.21 A collection formed by successive addition cannot be actually infinite.
2.22 The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive addition.
2.23 Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
Cosmological arguments from necessity
- We observe that there are contingent beings (things that can possibly not exist).
- If it is possible for something to not exist, then there is some time in which it doesn’t exist.
- If everything were contingent, then at one time nothing existed.
- If nothing once existed, nothing could begin to exist, so nothing would exist now.
- So, there must be something that is not contingent, “having of itself its own necessity
- That thing we call ultimate reality
Cosmological arguments from sufficient reason
- For every true fact or assertion, there is a “sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise.” (PSR)
- It is a contingent fact that a series of contingent beings exists
- So, the contingent series that exists must have a sufficient explanation.
- The sufficient reason for contingent beings cannot be found in other contingent beings
- So, it must be found in a necessary being, which is God.
- So, ultimate reality exists
A natural proposal about the word "god" is that it connotes something like a supernatural being or force that has and exercises power over the natural world but that is not, in turn, under the power of any higher-ranking or more powerful category of supernatural beings or forces, where supernatural beings and forces may include two aspects.
One, persons and forces that do not have spatiotemporal locations while nonetheless being causally responsible for and/or having causal effects on things that do have spatiotemporal locations.
And two, spatiotemporally located persons that bring about causal effects at spatio-temporally remote locations in the absence of spatiotemporally continuous causal processes connecting their actions to these effects (unless somehow making use of quantum entanglement or the like).
Given this account of the word ‘god’, a natural proposal about the word "God" would be that it connotes "the god." That is, the word "God" refers to the one and only god, on the assumption that there is just one god.
Generalizing from this discussion, we have something like the following causal principle:
"When a god makes something, there is a point in the causal order where that thing is absent, and then god’s activity makes it the case that this thing is present at some subsequent points in the causal order."
The most widely accepted theistic explanation is the theory that God created the universe from absolutely nothing. The Latin phrase “creatio ex nihilo”, literally means ‘creation out of nothing’.
Most major Theologians in Christian History-for example Irenaeus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, Karl Barth, and Paul Tillich-believed that God initially created the universe from absolutely nothing.
One of the strongest arguments in favor of ‘creatio ex nihilo’ is that so many influential Christians throughout history have affirmed the theory.
However, it seems that to argue that “major thinkers in the history of the Church affirmed ‘creatio ex nihilo’, therefore ‘creation from nothing’ may be true,” would be a logical fallacy, only affirming ‘Ad-Populum’, the fallacy of appealing to truth due to its popular idea.
Alternatives include creation from God (creatio ex deo), creation from pre-existent matter (creatio ex materia), and ongoing creation (creatio continua). Some also propose creation from chaos, possibilities, or love.
Soteriological argument for the existence of ultimate reality is a line of reasoning that connects the concept of salvation (soteriology) with the potential existence of a divine being. It suggests that if salvation is a real and desirable goal, then there might be a divine power responsible for achieving it. Here's a breakdown of the argument:
- Humans desire salvation. Many people believe in the concept of salvation, whether it's from sin, suffering, or an undesirable state of being. This desire for salvation is a common theme in various religions and philosophies.
- Salvation implies a salvific agent. If salvation is a real possibility, there must be a force or being capable of bringing it about. This agent is often identified as God.
- Therefore, the desire for salvation, and the possibility of achieving it, supports the existence of a divine being.
And the axiological argument for ultimate reality's existence posits that ultimate reality's existence is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral values.
It essentially argues that objective morality, the idea that certain actions are inherently right or wrong, requires a divine source or grounding, which is provided by ultimate reality.
The core Idea is that, the argument starts with the premise that objective moral values exist, meaning that some things are truly right or wrong, regardless of individual opinions or cultural norms.
For example, most people would agree that murder is objectively wrong, even if a specific society condones it.
The argument then claims that the best explanation for the existence of these objective moral values is the existence of ultimate reality.
The idea is that if ultimate reality doesn't exist, there's no objective standard for morality, and morality would be a human construct or simply a matter of personal preference.
However, if ultimate reality exists, He could be the source of these objective moral values, providing a foundation for right and wrong.
The common way to formalize the argument is as follows:
- Objective moral values exist.
- If ultimate reality that is maximally good does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
- Therefore, ultimate reality that is maximally good exists.
We can simply look at the behavior of each culture and DESCRIBE what we see. We don’t try to discern if the behavior is “good” or “bad”, we simply look at it and describe it. We talk about “what is” and “what is not”.
Men can easily do this and it is clear that if there is no judgment that can be made about whether something is good or bad, then all this behavior can be attributed to MAN alone.
If we live in a world where no behavior can be judged, then anything that men say is appropriate would certainly be appropriate.
After all, man is the final judge in a world where behavior is simply described. But if moral behavior is more than what is described by each culture, if there is an overriding morality that supersedes the desires of each culture, then we will have to admit that behavior is not only described, it is PRESCRIBED! Prescribed behavior calls us beyond“ what is” and “what is not” and directs us toward “what ought to be” and “what ought not to be”.
And while men can certainly describe “what is”, it will take an absolute being to prescribe what absolutely “ought to be”!
And that is the kind of world that we live in. It is a world that DOES have moral absolutes, and world that DOES have moral PRESCRIPTIONS, and if that is the case, then we are going to have to recognize that these prescriptions require a prescriber, and that prescriber is God Himself. In effect, we have the following argument:
- There is an Objective (Absolute) Moral Law
- Every Law Has a Law Giver
- Therefore, There is an Objective (Absolute) Law Giver
- The Objective (Absolute) Law Giver is God
In summary, the axiological argument suggests that the existence of objective morality points to a divine source, and that source is best explained by the existence of an ultimate reality.
Thus, to the extent that metaphysics, axiology and soteriology of ultimate reality are distinguishing features of religion, it follows that, they may supply believers with instrumental reasons for acting insofar as acting in the right kinds of way enables believers to stand in the right kind of relationship to that ultimate reality.
God as the ultimate reality
The nature of ultimate truth that is related to the ultimate divine reality, which is hidden from human sense experience, has been conceived differently by various organized religions.
Each world religion acknowledges an Ultimate Reality that is eternal and unchanging, and posits a cause and effect relationship between ultimate reality and human nature.
Christianity portrays ultimate reality as the oneness of god. The Bible describes God as the eternal Creator. The Christian view of ultimate reality is deeply personal, where God is not just a cosmic force but a being of love who has an intimate connection with humanity.
In Judaism, ultimate reality is interpreted as Yahweh which is the singular, eternal God. Judaism emphasizes the oneness of God and rejects any form of duality. While God is transcendent and beyond human comprehension, God also has an intimate connection with this dimension.
In Hinduism, Brahman is considered the ultimate reality. Brahman is an infinite and all-encompassing force that is the source of all existence, in other words, totality. Brahman transcends duality and is the unchanging truth behind the ever-changing physical world.
Buddhism considers ultimate reality to be Nirvana, a state of liberation that transcends the cycle of suffering. Buddhism teaches that all things are subject to change and that ultimate reality is found in the realization of this impermanence.
Islam portrays ultimate reality as Tawhid, which emphasizes the oneness of Allah, believing that nothing exists independently of Allah's will. The concept of supreme reality in Islam is intertwined with submission to the divine will, and this submission leads to understanding the nature of ultimate reality.
And Shamanic beliefs portray ultimate reality as totality, a universal consciousness we're all connected to, or the Godself, which is the idea that at the deepest layer of consciousness, we are all the same entity experiencing oneself infinitely. This is the deepest level of self-realization.
Despite the different terminologies and frameworks, ultimate reality is generally seen as transcendent, eternal, and the ultimate source of all that exists.
Religious models of ultimate reality
A religious model captures well the ways people think about what is ultimate. There are several philosophical common categories which distinguish ultimate realities from each other.
The categories of ultimacy are best grasped by framing them with a question. For example, we can categorize models of ultimacy in particular as the logically possible variations on a theme of five questions, whose positive answers can get symbolized by ETCKWPULOS.
The questions can include: :Is the ultimate entity eternal (E)? Is the ultimate entity temporal (T)? Is the ultimate entity conscious (C)? Does the ultimate entity know the world (W)? Does the ultimate entity include the world (W)? Is the ultimate entity personal (P)? is the ultimate entity an efficient, material or final cause of the universe (U)?, Does the ultimate entity intervene in human Life (L)? How many ultimate entities do obtain (O)? How does the ultimate entity relate to the world of time and space (S)?
Accordingly, we have the following possibilities:
- Monism (literally, one-ism): There exists just one thing or one kind of thing, depending on how the monism is read: either ultimacy is identical to the world, or all there is is ultimacy, or all there is is the world.
- Pantheism is a species of monism in which the one thing or kind of thing is God, or it is a monism in which the emphasis is on the divinity of the world instead of on the worldliness of the divine.
- Panentheism (all-in-God-ism): The world is a proper part of ultimacy. I.e., though the world is in ultimacy, ultimacy is more than the world. It takes space and time to be attributes of God, and affirm that the universe is literally in God because the universe is spatially and temporally located in God.
- Merotheism (part-God-ism): Ultimacy is a proper part of the world. I.e., though ultimacy is in the world, the world is more than ultimacy.
- Dualism (two-ism): Ultimacy is not the world and the world is not ultimacy, so there are two fundamentally different things or kinds of things, depending on how the underlying ontology is read. Dualism includes both the view that ultimacy and the world are disjoint (they share no parts) and the view that they bear a relation of proper overlap (they overlap in part, but not in whole).
As we have seen, most religions involve some objects of ultimate interest. As the term is used here, to say a religion is theistic means that its ultimate objects are persons who somehow transcend nature.
Whatever the term natural may mean, these ultimate persons are not natural; on the contrary, they are supernatural. For example, the Abrahamic God is an ultimate person who transcends nature.
Of course, the theistic religions raise many philosophical problems. Protheistic philosophy aims to resolve those problems in favor of theism. It focuses intensely on the defense of the Abrahamic God.
Although protheistic philosophy is currently a thriving enterprise, it has threats. One threat to protheistic philosophy appears to come from naturalism.
As the term is used here, a naturalist rejects all supernatural objects (especially supernatural persons, such as the Abrahamic God).
Some define naturalism as the rejection of the theistic God. Thus naturalism motivates anti-theistic philosophy, which aims to refute theism.
The naturalistic attack on theism has been forcefully articulated by others who argue that the theistic religions are not merely false, but cause real harm.
Assuming these definitions of theism and naturalism, many philosophers of religion will be familiar with the following unsettling argument.
- Once the heliocentric theory of the solar system was known to be true, debates about the geocentric theory died out; once the oxygen theory of combustion was known to be true, debates about phlogiston died out; likewise, once naturalism is known to be true, debates about God will die out.
- If naturalism is known to be true, then both protheistic and anti-theistic philosophy will die out.
- If they die, then philosophy of religion dies.
- Therefore, if naturalism is known to be true, then philosophy of religion is over. There is no philosophy of religion after naturalism.
Some may object to the first step of the unsettling argument. After all, some people still advocate geocentrism.
But geocentrism no longer thrives; if it is discussed in the academy, it belongs to history. And some may wish to challenge the second step.
They will insist that naturalism and theism can be rendered compatible. Perhaps they are right. Maybe the definition of theistic religion given here is too narrow.
Others may object to the third step. Accordingly, even if debates about God die out, philosophy of religion will still flourish. Many surveys report that people no longer regard theism as the only religious option in the West.
The nontheistic religions are growing. As defined here, a nontheistic religion does not involve any kind of God.
So, if some victorious naturalism were to wipe out theistic religion, then the philosophy of religion would focus on the nontheistic religions. But what if there are no philosophically interesting nontheistic religions?
To defeat the third step, it is necessary to show that there are indeed some philosophically interesting non-theistic religions. And these religions cannot be merely theoretical constructs. They must be practiced by living communities.
Key properties of the ultimate
Transcendence means that ultimate reality exists beyond the material world and human understanding. This realm transcends the rules of our universe, such as time, space, matter, and form, making it impossible to understand or depict from the human mind.
Transcendence is triply ultimate. That is, it depicts a reality which is unsurpassable metaphysically, axiologically, and soteriologically. Specifically:
A religious reality is metaphysically/ontologically transcendent if and only if its existence is a fact distinct from any natural fact and in some way a more fundamental fact about reality than any natural fact.
As the label suggests, any ontologically ultimate entity possesses being, or existence, to the ultimate or highest possible degree.
Areligious reality is axiologically transcendent if and only if its intrinsic value its splendour, its excellence– exceeds that of anything found in nature alone.
The axiologically ultimate entity would be or would possess unsurpassable—the maximum possible degree of—value or goodness.
And a religious reality is soteriologically transcendent, or teleologically transcendent, if and only if being rightly related to it will make for more well-being, fulfilment, wholeness, and the like for creatures than can naturally be attained.
That is, an entity is soteriologically ultimate just in case in relation to it an ultimate good can be attained. A teleologically ultimate entity would be an entity whose purposes, goals, aims and ends are ultimate.
Immanence means that while ultimate reality is transcendent, it also permeates and sustains everything in existence. All dimensions are tied together energetically. So even though our universe seems to be a completely separate phenomenon, it's a manifestation of this transcended realm.
Eternality means that ultimate reality is timeless, without beginning or end. Depending on the belief, it's either ever-changing or constant.
And unity means that ultimate reality is often seen as the one true essence that connects all of existence, even if it appears fragmented on the surface. If you imagine existence as the letter "V," ultimate reality is the point, the source that all existence converges into, at some level of reality.
Different conceptions of God
In short, religious ultimate reality can be understood through theistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, and deistic lenses.
Theism emphasizes that the ultimate divine reality is God, understood as a transcendent, personal God separate from the universe, where this God created the universe and does continually intervene in its affairs.
The pantheism sees that the ultimate divine reality is God, where this God and the universe are identical.
Panentheism holds that the ultimate divine reality is God, where this God is in the universe but also transcends it.
And deism proposes that the ultimate divine reality is God, where this God created the universe but does not intervene in its affairs.
But, given these definitions of God–world relationships under panentheism, pantheism, or theism, how could we and how should we conceptualize the nature of divine reality?
What are the arguments for this divine reality being theistic, and being neither pantheistic nor deistic nor panentheistic?
In other words, what reasons does a theist have for embracing theistic conception of God and rejecting a panentheistic or pantheistic conception of God?
To answer this question one must be able to intelligibly specify the attributes that define the identity of the entity referred to as divine reality. This is an epistemic problem of divine reality to which I briefly respond below.
When we ask what physical objects are, we are considering them as things, extended in space and time, we human beings have to do interact with, through our five bodily senses.
To this extent, our question is about the nature of what we naturally call external reality. So, the existence of objects involves the existence of somethings other than our perceptions.
The fact that there is something external to the mind, or out there means that, the object is independent of our perceptions, more particularly, independent of our impressions of sensation on it.
However, this something somehow affects us, and that is why it gives rise to our perceptions of it, and this is the reason why we recognize it as it is.
On this view, we essentially distinguish between our perceptions, on the one hand, and the objects which are a part of external reality, on the other hand.
Thus, the objects are entirely distinct from our perceptions, meaning that, our perceptions are not the objects and they are not even any part of what the existence of the objects consists in.
This is to say that, outside the human mind, there does in fact exist something which (1) is other than our perceptions and (2) affects our perceptions and (3) is the reason why our perceptions are what they are.
However, there is a fundamental problem with respect to the whole notion of the truth of any account of the nature of this reality as it is in itself, where, the most important thing about the problem is what this reality is not.
The supposition that something is real and that reality does in truth have some intrinsic or ultimate nature that humans can intelligibly manage to know or say something about, is less disputed.
This means that, within the bounds of five human senses, it is possible for humans to give some definitively true account of how things are, is easily granted.
Similarly, within the bounds of five human senses, the supposition that there may be aspects of reality which are completely inaccessible to and completely unintelligible by humans, is less disputed.
But, the idea that, within the bounds of five human senses, humans can ever give a full account which expresses the whole truth about the general nature of reality as it is in itself is often disputed.
The is a phrase "reality as it is in itself" means that, if something exists, then it exits in a certain way. And the way it is just is how it is in itself. That is all that is meant.
Against this clarification of "reality as it is in itself," the dispute is that, our human concepts, have their whole origin, life, being, and legitimate and intelligible employment utterly and entirely within the bounds of human experience, in such a way that we cannot even talk about reality, or intelligibly apply any concept to it at all, so far as we are thinking of it specifically as something which may transcend possible human experience, within the bounds of five human senses.
So, there seems to be a deep difficulty in the idea that, given a mind-independent physical universe, any general account of the nature of concrete reality given by finite and sensory intellectual human beings could ever be the single and final truth, that is, the ultimate truth, about that reality.
The point is that, It seems that one can have knowledge of the essential nature of the reality one is trying to give an account of (call it X) only if one is affected by it, somehow or other, meaning that, one must be in some sort of contact with it.
Accordingly, if any positive descriptive account of any aspect X of the nature of reality which can be given by any finite sensory being (call it agent B), necessarily involves, as an essential part of its content, features of how agent B is sensorily affected by X which could be significantly different for other possible experiencing beings affected by the same aspect of reality X, then there can be no such thing as a true or correct positively descriptive account of X, so far as the finite sensory human being is concerned.
So, if we are going to give any good sense to the notion of agent B’s achieving something like a correct understanding of the essential nature of some range of aspects of reality (call this range X)—then we have to suppose that agent B’s understanding of the nature of X must be intellectually abstract in some way, meaning that, there must be some sense in which agent B can correctly be said to abstract, in its mode of representation of X, from all features of how it is sensorily affected by X which could be significantly different for other possible beings, such as C-type beings and D-type beings, who are also affected by X.
A key thought behind this point is that one needs to make room for the idea that two different races of beings with very different sensory equipment could possibly formulate theories with strong similarity of content, that they could possibly have essentially the same view of things, at some fundamental level, despite their differences of sensory equipment.
From this discussion, it can be concluded that, ultimate reality is opposed to mundane reality in one key respect:
Mundane reality refers to aspects of human life and its environment to which just any mature human always has quick and natural cognitive and experiential access through one's senses operating within the limits of space and time. This is not the case for religious ultimate reality.
To this extent, the exact identity of religious ultimate reality, which is hidden from our sensory experience, remains unintelligible.
Key attributes of religiosity
However, from what has been said, so far, about religions, four features appear to be especially closely tied to the nature of religion, and can assist us in our continued search for divine identity. Specifically, every religion entails the following elements:
- Frequent thoughts of a transmundane reality, that crosses the limits of our sensory experience in the physical world;
- An emphasis on a significant good, for oneself and others, that may be realized through a proper relation to this reality;
- The cultivation of a proper relation to the ultimate reality; and
- A disposition or tendency, when attending to matters in which they are implicated, to totalize or ultimize in some way the central elements of features in number (1) to (3) above.
Frequent thoughts of a transmundane reality. Religious persons can appear to be, among other things, those whose thoughts are often turned to something “beyond” or “more”.
The relevant notion of “going beyond” can apparently be cashed out either metaphysically or axiologically or in both ways.
That is, it can be linked simply to there being more to reality than is included in the mundane realm, or to that more embodying or facilitating greater value than can be realized in the mundane realm, or to both these things.
An emphasis on a significant good, for oneself and others. Whether it really is so or not, religion is at any rate seen as a positive thing by those in whom it is realized.
It appears to bring with it a promise of deliverance from evil or of harmony and peace in one’s everyday existence or, more strongly, of spiritual transformation. It contributes to the religious person’s sense of meaning in life by rising above certain inadequacies.
So if religion involves a concern with rising above such inadequacies, it may quite naturally involve thoughts of something other than and greater than the mundane.
The manner in which religion is thought to be a power for good may vary from one form to another, but it seems impossible to conceive of religion where nothing good is promised.
To be a religious good, moreover, something must be thought to be more than trifling, hence, significant. It does seem that to focus on a good tailored to a single person, namely, oneself, would be to step outside the realm of the religious: hence a possibility for oneself and others.
Though there is a distinction between personal and institutional religion, the former has a strong tendency to turn into the latter which it arguably would not have if focusing on a good tailored to oneself alone could be religious.
The cultivation f a proper relation to the ultimate reality. The religious person, sees himself as headed somewhere, though perhaps a “somewhere” that is to some extent or in some measure visited every step along the way.
And to travel along such a way one must, in some manner and to some extent, seek to be more intimately connected to the delivering or transforming reality.
It is within this context that we can understand what is going on when the religious person meditates or sacrifices or sings or befriends the helpless: his life is bound up with a quest for the good referred to above, sometimes for self-interested reasons, but also, in more ethically mature forms of religion, for its own sake and for the sake of others.
A disposition or tendency to totalize or ultimize reality in some way. There is a tendency, when attending to the relevant matters, to treat the object of the religious thoughts, the related good, and the various religious activities, as in some way unlimited or ultimate.
A more sensitive and accurate characterization might speak disjunctively of a tendency to experience ultimizing, or limit removing, thoughts, or to engage in limit-removing behavior, or else to feel limit-removing emotions.
One’s behavior in relation to an entity is limit-removing or ultimizing if it is such as makes sense only if the entity is ultimate, and emotions are ultimizing if they are appropriate only given that the said entity is ultimate.
To these four points about religiosity certain others can be added. We can note that religion is a matter of degree—one can be more or less religious—and that any obvious move toward ultimization, however much it might reflect conceptual misunderstanding, would normally be taken by the religious as marking an increase in religiosity.
While no one definition best accommodates everything that has been or might be counted as belonging to the world of religion, its possible to craft an appropriate and adequate definition of “religion” from the above discussion, as follows:
"An agent A is religious or exhibits religion if and only if: agent A takes there to be a reality that is ultimate, in relation to which an ultimate good can be attained; and agent A’s ultimate commitment is to the cultivation of dispositions appropriate to this state of affairs."
In this definition, we have collapsed the first two elements of “ultimized” religion, namely, the ideas of an ultimate reality and an ultimate good both appear close together.
This allows us to keep everything that is, in a broad sense, cognitive in one part of the definition. Then, everything conative is kept in the other part of the definition.
The immediate result of this inquiry that is of obvious philosophical interest is that, we have a new understanding of what we might call the central or basic religious proposition.
If religion is construed in the suggested manner, then that proposition will be the one embedded in the first part of our definition: that there is an ultimate reality in relation to which an ultimate good can be attained.
This is to be viewed as the central or basic religious proposition because all more specific religious claims of the sort actually adhered to in the various forms of religion that philosophy examines must, according to our definition, entail this proposition—and it entails none of them but only the disjunction of all such claims.
Traditional theism is not the most basic religious proposition, for it is not the case that all other religious claims entail it; rather it too entails this more general proposition, which entails not theism but only the disjunction of theism and similar claims.
Ultimate realities beyond God
We have seen that, what it takes to be ultimate is to be the most fundamentally real, valuable or fulfilling among all that there is or could be. Historically, philosophy of religion in the West has taken God to be ultimate.
Also, we have noted that, over the past centuries, the world has become increasingly aware that ultimacy is grasped under different concepts in the world’s religions, philosophies and quasi-religious philosophies—so not only as “God” but also as, e.g., “Brahman”, “the Dao”, and more.
Moreover, people have thought to conceptualize each of these ultimates in numerous ways across cultures and times, so there are many models of Brahman, many models of God, many models of the Dao, and more.
Let us now give a name to the aforementioned more general proposition that theism, as construed above, entails. Let us call it "ultimism."
This has echoes of theism but reminds us that theism itself qualifies as a religious claim only because it entails the above stated larger claim, which is therefore a more appropriate point of reference for investigation in philosophy of religions.
So, what we have been discussing so far might be called generic ultimism, the idea that there is an ultimate reality of some sort in relation to which an ultimate good of some sort can be attained.
But of course, as already observed, religious claims tend to come clad in more particular garb: in the real religious world we have, for example, both the claim that there is a personal God and the claim that there is a nonpersonal Absolute (the Brahman of non-dualistic Hindu religion).
All such specific religious claims, claims that entail generic ultimism but also fill it out in someway, are forms of what I call elaborated ultimism.
Generally, we can say that, philosophy is provoked and enriched by the claims of faith in a revealed God.
Similarly, we can say that, theology is stimulated by its contact with the philosophy that proposes to investigate the full range of human experience.
And finally, we can conclude that, at the threshold where they meet, there inevitably arises a discipline of reciprocal interrogation and the promise of mutual enhancement.
On this view, theism, pantheism and panentheism entail ultimism. But ultimism entails none of these propositions.
By claiming that ultimism is true, any religious believer who embraces this proposition is in one sense claiming that God exists.
But one is at the same time recognizing, admitting, and even exulting in the many alternative conceptions of God.
So, it can be argued that the desire for transcendence can be understood as a natural human drive for self-improvement and the pursuit of meaning in life, even without necessarily positing a transcendent object or divine being. It grounds the right to religious liberty.
Philosophically speaking, then, transcendent reality has three dimensions, namely, metaphysical transcendence, axiological transcendence, and soteriological transcendence. Let us call this complex property triple transcendence.
To say that something is metaphysically transcendent, or ontologiically transcendent, is to say that its existence is a fact distinct from any physical fact and in some way a more fundamental fact about reality than any physical fact more fundamental in a broadly causal sense.
On this view, something is metaphysically ultimate just in case its existence is the ultimate or most fundamental fact about the nature of things, in terms of which any other fact about what things exist and how they exist would have to be explained in a correct and comprehensive account of things.
Metaphysical ultimacy is also known as ontological Ultimacy. It refers to the philosophical idea that there must be an ultimate explanation for everything, a final cause or source of being, that is not itself contingent or dependent on anything else.
To say that something is axiologically transcendent is to say that its intrinsic value exceeds that of anything found in mundane reality alone.
If axiological transcendence is excellence surpassing anything in mundane reality, then axiological ultimacy is completely unsurpassable splendor and excellence.
And to say that something is soteriologically transcendent is to say that being rightly related to it will make for more wellbeing, fulfilment, wholeness, and the like for creatures than can be attained at the mundane level alone.
And soteriological ultimacy is the very greatest good that can be embodied in creaturely living, that is, our deepest good.
The different realities believed by practitioners to be at the heart of Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist practice certainly appear to be regarded as more in all three of these ways.
The inclination to transcendence implies a belief that reality extends beyond what can be directly perceived and measured, hinting at a deeper, perhaps even divine, source of existence.
In short, transcendental reality refers to a realm or aspect of existence that transcends the ordinary, everyday world of our sense experiences, often associated with concepts like the divine, the spiritual, the absolute, or the ultimate source of meaning and purpose.
This reality is not directly accessible through empirical observation or scientific investigation but may be apprehended through other means, such as mystical experiences, intuition, or philosophical reflection.
The concept of a natural inclination to transcendental reality suggests that humans are not merely material beings but have a spiritual or transcendent dimension.
It implies that our search for meaning and purpose is not just a personal quest but is connected to a larger reality.
Understanding this inclination can provide insights into human nature, spirituality, and the search for meaning in life, including religious life.
Stock-taking on religious inclination
Under this part, we have seen that, ultimism is the claim that there exists a transcendent reality which is metaphysically and soteriologically ultimate in relation to which, axiologically speaking, it is possible to achieve the fullness of being.
This is the more general and fundamental religious idea, to which theism stands much as the specific versions of it found in the theistic religions of the world such as Christian theism, Islamic theism, and so on.
There are actually several possibilities of what we have called of a “transcendent reality” or an “ultimate reality” or an “ultimate divine reality.” At any rate going forward, and for purposes of religious investigation, we might link religion to this less vague proposition we have called ultimism.
Whatever its status, ultimism is indeed a religious proposition, and more fundamental than theism. It says that a divine reality would have three broad and interrelated characteristics, each representing a type of ultimacy: its existence would be the ultimate fact about the nature of reality; it would embody the ultimate in inherent value; and it would at least potentially be the source of an ultimate good for the world.
Returning to theism, we can see that it assumes ultimism but through its notion of personhood and agency provides more information than ultimism alone does; we might call this elaboration of ultimism theistic ultimism or personal ultimism.
According to theism, God is a personal creator who intentionally produces or permits everything else that exists (ultimate fact); who has all power, all knowledge, and all goodness (ultimate inherent value); and whose love—a part of personal moral goodness as defined in Chapter 1—makes for our deepest well-being (source of an ultimate good).
Theism therefore represents one way of filling out the more general idea of ultimism, drawing on ideas we understand and can examine for their truth-value. Here, theism gives ultimism a personal stamp.
On this view, ultimism is the backbone of every organized religion, while the differences between these religions arise from different views of what the nature of the ultimate reality is.
Thus, if there is to be progress in religion, then it is most reasonable to assume that we are only at the beginning of the inquiry into the religious ultimate reality.
This perspective grounds the right to religious liberty, understood as, a freedom of conscientious search for religious truth.
In short, ultimism is the view that there is a transcendent reality ultimate in three ways: in reality, in inherent value, and in its potential contribution to our good and that of the world.
As the corresponding terms are defined here, ultimism and skeptical atheism are compatible.
Along these lines skeptical theism is the view, popular in contemporary philosophy of religion, that we cannot rule out but should rather be in doubt about whether there are good states of affairs, unknown to us, that justify God in permitting horrors or remaining hidden from us.
Natural law, conscience and revelation: Conscience, in its strictest sense, is the application of knowledge to action. It is the mind of man, determining whether an action is good or bad; whether something should be done or left undone.
It approves or condemns. In arriving at its decision conscience uses the results of teaching and experience.
It is a sort of inner light indicating to humans the essential difference between right and wrong, good and evil.
Though varying in individuals according to their religion, intelligence and education, yet it conveys to all, even the rudest, a more or less perfect knowledge of God's law, sufficient at all events to make them answerable for their conduct.
On this view, although ethics deals with natural religion only, it does not deny supernatural religion but merely considers it outside the scope of a philosophical study.
However, it must face the possibility of a supernatural revelation and determine what adjustments it must make in its own sphere if this possibility is realized.
Specifically, since ethics deals with the natural law, it must answer this question: Supposing a supernatural revelation to have taken place, what then would the natural law prescribe to man regarding it? There are three possible answers.
One, if a man is certainly convinced of the existence of a divine revelation, he is morally bound by the natural law to accept it. God is not obliged to speak to the human race, but if He does so. He must not be despised. If God speaks to man, man must listen, believe, and obey. The natural law demands this of man because of his status as a creature.
Two, if a man doubts about the existence of a divine revelation, he is morally bound by the natural law to inquire further into it. He is bound also to give it the full and serious attention which the importance of the question demands, and hardly any question can be imagined more important.
Until he has made the effort, he cannot plead invincible ignorance. His inquiries will either lead to certitude or leave him in doubt. If the former, he must follow his certain conscience.
If the latter he may form his conscience according to the reflex principle, a doubtful law does not bind, and may refuse to accept the revelation until he is certainly convinced of it, meanwhile keeping his mind open for additional information.
This way of treating the matter is only an application of our natural ethical principles, and takes no account of supernatural influences.
And three, if a man is certainly convinced that an alleged divine revelation is not what it claims to be, he is morally bound by the natural law to reject it.
This case may involve an erroneous conscience, but a man is obliged to follow a certain conscience even when erroneous.
A certain conscience is one with complete confidence and no doubt about the rightness or wrongness of a decision, while an erroneous conscience is one that makes an incorrect judgment, mistakenly believing a bad action is good or a good action is bad.
The key difference is one of conviction: a certain conscience is assured, whereas an erroneous conscience is mistaken. It is possible for a person to have a certain conscience but be wrong, as their conviction does not guarantee the action's actual morality.
Here, the crucial difference is between conviction (certain conscience) and correctness (the opposite of an erroneous conscience).
Someone can be certain that a decision is right and still be wrong, if their reasoning is based on flawed information or principles. An erroneous conscience is fundamentally mistaken about what is morally right.
In general, there are various kinds of conscience. Conscience may be true, erroneous or doubtful.
Conscience is true when it is in conformity with God's law; it is doubtful when it hesitates or is unable to decide whether a certain action is right or wrong; it is erroneous when it is out of harmony with the divine law.
It is never lawful to act with a doubtful conscience, because that would be carelessly running the risk of doing the wrong thing, and so of sinning.
A person's conscience may be in error with or without his own fault; if without his own fault, he does not sin by following it.
When one's conscience is in error through his own fault, because he does not wish to know what is right, or because he has neglected to use the ordinary diligence and interest to determine what is right, he has a false conscience and is in bad faith, and is guilty of sin every time he acts according to such a conscience.
Two kinds of erroneous conscience are especially harmful: a lax conscience and a scrupulous conscience.
The former makes one think that grave sins are only slight matters, or even virtuous deeds. The scrupulous conscience, on the contrary, is one that sees sin in everything, or which magnifies mere trifles into enormous crimes.
We must not, however, confound a scrupulous conscience with a timorous or delicate conscience, which is careful, not only to avoid grave matters, but even slight offenses.
Natural inclination to culture: Culture is a system of signs that create shared meaning, enabling communication and understanding within a given community.
These signs include words, gestures, and objects, which are organized into a collective code that shapes beliefs, values, and behavior, allowing people to codify and communicate their experiences and understand the social-cultural environment.
Human beings are distinguished by a wide range of internal and external activities. These activities are based on his or her interest in creating new things and developing values. These are the matters that humans are not born with but cultivate them manually or are acquired from a previous generation.
In this way, through their acts, humans declare that they are indeed “homo culturalis,” that is, agents capable not only of caring for the worries of everyday bread, but also of a style worthy of a man considering the interest in spiritual values.
Specifically, “homo culturalis” is a conceptual term for human beings that emphasizes their inherent capacity for and dependence on culture, distinguishing them from other species through their creation, transmission, and use of signs as bearers of specific meanings.
It is defined by a fundamental drive for meaning and a deep engagement with the learned behaviors, beliefs, and values that are shaped by social environments, leading to phenomena like language, art, ritual, and religion.
The study of these cultural systems of signs is known as semiotics. Semiotically speaking, signs can be classified as indexical, iconic, or symbolic based on their relationship to the object they represent. Iconic signs show a physical resemblance to their object (e.g., a photograph), indexical signs have a direct physical or causal connection (e.g., smoke indicating fire), and symbolic signs are based on arbitrary cultural convention (such as words in a language).
Taking stock on natural inclinations
The ordering of the five inclinations has a pattern. The list moves from inclinations we share with many things to inclinations more specific to us.
The first inclination, toward the good, is one shared in a sense by all things. For goodness or badness, is defined in terms of how well or badly a thing manifests its nature, and everything manifests its nature to some extent, otherwise it wouldn’t be the kind of thing it is in the first place, and is in that sense and to that extent good.
The second inclination, toward self-preservation, is found in living things specifically, and thus also in man as one living thing among others.
The third, toward sex and child-rearing, is even more specific, limited to certain kinds of animals.
The fourth, toward truth, is among animals, as opposed to angels, who are incorporeal limited to us as rational animals, where rational animality is our essence.
And the fifth, toward sociality of the higher, rational sort we exhibit involves a property or proper accident that flows from our essence as rational animals.
Because they are natural to us, these five inclinations cannot be extinguished. They are always present in human beings and always manifest themselves in some way and to some extent.
However, and as has already been indicated, their manifestation can be frustrated and distorted in various ways.
Intellectual error can lead us to deny one or more of them, and moral vice can make us reluctant to affirm or consistently to pursue one or more of them. Historical and cultural circumstances can also obscure our view of them and distort their manifestation.
Another startling consequences of this understanding of natural inclinations is the denial of a hierarchy between them. Nor are they instrumental inclinations to the highest good called God in supernaturalism.
Therefore, naturalism argues that, the true end of human life is "the Kingdom of Goodness," which includes all human goods and excludes all human evils.
Accordingly, the Kingdom of human goods is the ultimate end toward which we human persons should direct our lives. That kingdom, which will be a wonderful communion of virtuous persons.
Every member of the kingdom of human goods will be richly fulfilled in respect to all human goods, including friendship with each other.
On this view, in a political community, the role of the state is to provide the necessary conditions for persons and smaller communities to seek their basic goods.
The state is therefore necessary for maintaining the political common good which is instrumental to the realization of the goods to which natural inclinations point.
Rationality humanizes natural inclinations thesis
At an individual level, the rationality humanizes natural inclinations thesis states that, every human person is an embodied living entity, which is a center of a radical capacity for intelligence and volition, by virtue of which, the entity can knowingly and willingly, decide to either act alone in pursuit of certain goods to which the entity is naturally inclined because of their attractive appearance and, for this very reason, are believed to fulfil the entity's perfection.
And at a community level, the rationality humanizes natural inclinations thesis states that, every human person is an embodied living entity, which is a center of a radical capacity for intelligence and volition, by virtue of which, the entity can knowingly and willingly, decide to act together with others, in pursuit of the said goods, and for the said reasons, based on a free, informed, just and deliberate consent. This is called the personalistic norm.
The crucial point here is that natural inclinations do not acquire a moral quality, except insofar as they are connected to the human person through human reason. That is, the natural inclinations are variables that are subordinate to a higher principle.
On this view, an order of natural inclinations does not establish the moral pattern for human reason, but rather human reason establishes, formulates, or promulgates its own moral pattern by interpreting the order of nature.
On this view human action, our natural inclinations need not determine what we do. They influence us, but we have the capacity to decide, freely and rationally, whether or not to act on them.
The key question here are two: When one takes a step back from one's inclination for the purpose of deciding whether or not to act on it, what is it that one is stepping back from? And, if so, what kind of thing is an inclination as opposed to rationality?
In other words, we need to unpack the concept of rationality to make matters comprehensible.
That is, in order to develop an adequate rationalist account of decisional autonomy, it is imperative to first be clear about the understanding of the nature of rationality that one is invoking, and its relationship to autonomy.
Rationality entails self-governing ability. What then is it for an agent to be self-governing? Autonomy requires that agents act in accordance with pure and unconstrained reason.
The concept of autonomy to denotes a particular capacity to which we attribute value in a particular decision making contexts, and that we mean to invoke with respect to two particularly salient concerns, namely: (i) Is an agent making her own decisions about what to do? (ii) And is an agent able to act on the basis of those decisions?
In view of the first concern, a theory of autonomy must be able to explain what it is for an agent to make their own decisions. I shall refer to this dimension of autonomy as the decisional dimension of autonomy.
On this view, an agent is autonomous with respect to an action, including an act of making a decision, if it is performed: (1) intentionally,(2) with understanding, and(3) without controlling influences that determine their action.
Thus, an action can be thought to be non-voluntary if it is either performed from reason of ignorance, or if the action takes place by force, in such a manner that the moving principle of the action is most appropriately understood to be ‘external’ to the agent.
Conditions (1) and (3) of the standard account above can primarily be understood to reflect this latter sense of voluntariness, whilst condition (2) primarily reflects the former (although deception represents a form of controlling influence that can be understood to determine action by adversely affecting the patient’s understanding).
But, autonomy, on this understanding, involves not only being able to make decisions on the basis of one’s own desires and values, but also being able to act in accordance with those decisions (or to otherwise have those decisions realized) in some minimal sense.
This is why, the principle of respect for autonomy incorporates a positive obligation that enjoins us to facilitate an agent’s ability to make an autonomous decision; however, it also incorporates a negative obligation not to restrain the autonomous actions of others.
Accordingly, this negative obligation implies that autonomy can be understood as having a practical dimension, pertaining to the agent’s ability to act effectively in pursuit of their ends, where, the practical dimension of autonomy incorporates both positive and negative freedoms. With this in mind, we can present a conceptual map of autonomy in the following way:
Figure: Conceptual map of autonomy
In short, the relationship between "natural inclinations and human freedom" explores how inherent human inclinations interact with our capacity for autonomous decisions and self-determination.
In this regard, our chief difficulty is caused by our habit of considering nature and freedom as contraries. If we think of freedom as something dependent only on our voluntary decision, and totally indeterminate before we take that decision, then we will be led to think of the natural as something necessarily predetermined. In this view, it is hard to see how we can reconcile the natural and the free. We will see the natural inclinations of both intellect and will as tendencies both blind and coercive.
But, there is “freedom for excellence” that assumes a correlation between inclinations and human autonomy.
For example, a biological inclination such as hunger or thirst directs that appetite in a determined and compelling way. Yet we would hesitate to say that it is contrary to freedom, since by eating we are achieving the physical strength needed for action.
Spiritual inclinations in no way limit freedom but rather incite and develop it. Anyone drawn to a person, a virtue, a science, or an art, which are spiritual inclinations, realizes that one's freedom increases through the experience and is not diminished by its determination.
In concluding this part, I shall elucidate two key distinctions concerning the nature of rationality, namely, the distinction between theoretical rationality and practical rationality.
Theoretical rationality relates to the set of norms that govern how we come to form and sustain our beliefs.
These norms may involve, among other things, being responsive to evidence in sustaining one’s beliefs, drawing logical implications from matters of fact and probability, and holding broadly consistent and coherent sets of beliefs.
Whilst theoretical rationality pertains to the rationality of your beliefs, practical rationality pertains to the rationality of what we do, or the desires that move us to action.
On one prominent approach, practical rationality might be understood to derive from theoretical rationality.
On the view under consideration, a desire is understood to be rational if it is causally dependent upon beliefs that the individual has attained in a theoretically rational manner.
Human nature grounds human goods thesis
The human nature grounds human goods thesis states that, human goods, also known as the goods of human nature, or more fully, the goods of human person's nature, are those things which fulfill the potentialities and tendencies inherent in the nature of human persons.
The meaning of the term "goods" in the context of this ethical statement is very crucial. It is virtually impossible to carry on an ethical discussion without reference to the words "good" and "evil".
These terms are the basic building blocks of ethical discussions because without them the discourse itself would be hard to identify as specifically ethical. So, it is important to explain why do we call something "good" and others "bad" or "evil".
There are those who say that what is good is what is to be found in the divine will or divine plan. Conformity with the divine will insures moral goodness. This, of course, begs the question of how we come to know what the will of God might be; which in turn leads us to an alternative answer premised on scriptures.
There are those who say that scripture is the source of knowing what is good because scripture supposedly relates the will of God in an explicit manner. This, in turn, begs the question of how to interpret scripture. Does the divine will rest in the dietary laws of Leviticus, in the 613 commandments of Jewish tradition, or in the Sermon on the Mount?
Then there is the natural approach according to which: what is good is what is natural. This approach is fraught with difficulty, however, which becomes evident the moment we attempt to describe what might be "natural."
While many people have a clear view about naturalness when it comes to questions of, let us say, human sexuality, there is hardly a clear consensus about what is natural in regard to issues of ecology, resource management, engineering or social, cultural and economic rights.
Generally speaking, we can make a list of the various things that have been invoked to serve as a criterion for what might be called "good" which would include, besides those things already mentioned, knowledge, experience, reason, feelings of pleasure or pain, empirical law, cosmology, authority, even the structure of the mind.
Most of these have played a part in the development of the natural law ethics throughout the centuries. However, at the present time it appears to be justified to say that the present consensus about what constitutes the primary criterion for determining the meaning of the "good" is none other than the human person.
On this view, the reason why we call something "good" is because we determine that what is being considered has been found to be good for persons. This is what is implied by human fulfillment, the answer to human need, the reasons for human activity, or the reverence owed to the person rather than to an abstract Idea.
Thus, the phrase "good for persons" means that "what is good is that which is in service to human persons.' And what is "in service to human persons" is that which serves to protect (persons are vulnerable), promote (persons need a conducive environment to become what they are) and enhance (persons are processes in becoming, open to new possibilities) the human person.
As such, good is that which serves to protect, promote and enhance the human person adequately considered; evil is that which threatens, hinders or diminishes the human person adequately considered.
In short, non-ethical goodness may describe taste, efficiency, handiness, and so forth while ethical goodness, or "good" used in an ethical context, points to the making of moral statements.
In this case, the term `good' is related to reason, motive, need, and fulfillment, all of which involve human persons. So, when used ethically, the term must be qualified by explaining good in relation to what, or good according to what criterion.
On this view, human goods are aspects which provide reasons for human action because they are naturally attractive to humans, and naturally pursued by humans for that very reason.
They provide an answer to the question, "toward what definite goods can practical reason, that is reason oriented to action, direct human action?"
The answer is found by investigating basic human inclinations, which are part of human nature. This is to say that, human goods are discovered by consulting human person's fundamental inclinations.
This process of consulting human inclinations shows that, human goods include life, reproduction, health, education, recreation, beauty, friendship, rationality, religion, marriage, family, freedom, property, peace, justice, equality, self-integrity, security, and more.
Some human goods are intrinsic or basic to human nature while others are extrinsic or instrumental to human nature.
Natural law ethics holds that the basic goods are grounded in human nature. There are four different ways in which this grounding thesis may be understood.
First, it might be taken as holding that the basic goods are logically dependent on human nature. That is, the goods are logically derived from facts about the natural properties of humans.
The second interpretation of this grounding thesis holds that the basic goods are counterfactually dependent on human nature.
That is, if human nature were sufficiently different, the goods would also be different. On this view, the basic goods are what is good for human beings with the nature they have.
The third reading of this thesis holds that the basic goods are causally dependent on human nature. That is, if human nature were sufficiently different, the goods would also be different as a direct consequence of the change in the natural properties of humans.
The fourth possible interpretation of this grounding thesis holds that the basic goods are explanatorily dependent on human nature.
That is, facts about human nature, specifically, about the characteristic biological and social dispositions of humans, explain not only where our grasp of the basic goods comes from, but how it is that they are good.
In order to flesh out this claim, it is necessary to look more closely at the notion of explanation.
One sense in which facts about human nature could explain the basic goods would be if the basic goods were logically or causally dependent on them. The idea is that facts about human nature play an integral role in an explanatory theory of the basic goods, explaining how it is or could be possible that they are good.
Here, it should be noted that, explanation and derivation are two different modes of enquiry. Derivation is a form of proof that seeks to lead the reader to a conclusion by logical deduction from premises. Here, derivational proofs begin with premises and lead up to a philosophically significant conclusion.
But, explanations, by contrast, begin with philosophically interesting phenomena and then seek to offer an account of how these are or could be possible.
So, an explanatory theory of the basic goods, takes the goods as its starting point and aims to produce an overarching theory that explains and contextualizes their foundational role in practical rationality.
These accounts aim to link the basic goods with facts about human nature and thereby explain why they do and should line up with human desires.
On this view, the basic goods reflect both the natural drives of humans and the social conditions in which they find themselves. They are the product of a diachronic process whereby human dispositions are refined and adapted over time.
Regardless of the sense in which this grounding thesis is preferred, human nature is necessary for explaining why human goods are different from herbivore goods, carnivores goods and the like.
In short, the basic goods, then, are valuable precisely because they capture what objectives are worthwhile and fulfilling for humans, given their actual biological and social properties.
It is not that the basic goods are valuable for humans because humans are disposed to value them; rather, the fact that humans are disposed to value the goods provides evidence of their value for humans.
Practical reason, that is reason oriented to action, must be appropriate to the material of humanity. As such, it reflects the possibilities suggested by human experience.
A theory of natural law ethics represents the result of systematic reflection on the forms of life that humans and their communities recognize as holding value for them.
Properly understood, then, natural law ethics is a theory of what is good for humans, and the constraints this places on practical rationality, rather than what is good simpliciter.
People act for reasons. Some reasons explain why people act in particular ways. Let us call these motivating reasons. A motivating reason is a psychological state of an agent that gives her a disposition to behave in a certain way.
Other reasons justify why people act in particular ways. We can call these normative reasons. A normative reason is a feature of the world that makes it the case that an agent should or should not act in a certain way.
Motivating reasons, then, enable us to causally explain an agent’s actions, whereas normative reasons allow us to evaluate or justify her actions. Human goods are normative reasons.
That having been said, some human goods and their corresponding human evils are as follows: beauty as opposed to ugliness, children as opposed to infertility, connection as opposed to alienation, courage as opposed to cowardice, creativity as opposed to destruction, freedom as opposed to subjugation, friendship as opposed to loneliness, function as opposed to disability, happiness as opposed to despondency, health as opposed to illness or disease, intelligence as opposed to ignorance, justice as opposed to injustice, kindness as opposed to cruelty, knowledge as opposed to ignorance, truth as opposed to falsity, leisure as opposed to toil, life as opposed to death, love as opposed to hate, meaning as opposed to meaninglessness, necessities as opposed to privation, order as opposed to chaos, peace as opposed to conflict, pleasure as opposed to pain, preservation as opposed to extinction, purpose as opposed to purposelessness, security as opposed to fear, self-esteem as opposed to guilt, temperance as opposed to greed, victory as opposed to defeat, success as opposed to failure, virtue as opposed to vice, vitality as opposed to boredom, and prosperity as opposed to poverty.
Human goods ground human rights thesis
The human goods ground human rights thesis states that, human rights are ethical beliefs, about human conduct which receive their normative through a deductive derivation from the goods of human nature.
On this view, human rights are norms concerning what we ought to do or ought not to do, or what is valuable or worthy of our choosing, or what a society must try to guarantee.
Norms do not articulate the actual condition of things to which they refer. Rather, they articulate what is necessary for the fullness of being of things to which they refer.
Fullness of being is always understood in terms of the possibilities projected for entities of that sort.
Thus we expect a mammal which has just delivered a young one to give milk: The cow ought to freshen. We do not expect roses to give milk: The roses ought to bloom soon.
If such norms are not fulfilled, we assume that something has gone wrong, and that the individual somehow is defective, for it is falling short of the full potentialities of its kind.
In summary, norms of any kind are statements which indicate how something must be if it is to be good as opposed to being evil. Goodness is fullness of being. It is a fulfillment of potentialities which disposes to continuing and greater fulfillment.
It is against this thought process, the recognition of the good comes first, and then right action follows from this recognition. Formally we can present this thought process by using the following syllogism:
- The essential nature of a given class of entities called humans tells the entities to pursue a certain set of goods and avoid a corresponding set of bads, where, this is a is a descriptive premise stating "what is naturally pursued" ;
- If the essential nature of a given class of entities called humans tells the entities to pursue a certain set of goods and such a pursuit is not ordered toward any intrinsic evil then they ought to conduct themselves in a manner that allows them to pursue those goods and avoid a corresponding set of bads, where, this is a as a prescriptive premise stating "what ought to be pursued";
- Thus, entities in a given class called humans ought to to conduct themselves in a manner that allows them to pursue a certain set of goods and avoid a corresponding set of bads, where, this is a deductive normative conclusion based on one descriptive premise and one prescriptive premise.
Within this context, the natural law theory is in favor of a thoroughly immanent, this-worldly, grounding for normativity. It is opposed and rejects the necessity of ethical supernaturalism.
In other words, ethical naturalism proposes an argument, which deductively derived moral norms from natural facts through the above shown three-step argument, which can be paraphrases as follows:
- Descriptive premise: Every action that fulfils human nature is good, where, the term “good” merely describes “something that is oriented toward the realization of the inherent tendencies or potentialities of a human being”.
- Prescriptive premise: Any action that is oriented toward the realization of the inherent tendencies or potentialities of a human being and it is not ordered toward any intrinsic evil then it ought to be pursued practically, and its opposite avoided.
- Prescriptive conclusion: Therefore, action which is oriented toward the realization of the inherent tendencies or potentialities of a human being is good, where, the term “good” is normative since it refers to “something that fulfills the inherent tendencies or potentialities of a human being and that ought to be pursued practically, and its opposite avoided.”
Thus, the second premise, which is a prescriptive premise, stating what ought to be done, is necessary so as to open a room for deducing a prescriptive conclusion from the first descriptive premise.
According to this natural law theory the basic moral criterion is not human nature itself. It rejects the position according to which, human actions are morally permissible if they conform to the teleologies inscribed within human nature, and morally wrong if not.
On the view of the above proposed interpretation of ethical naturalism, the basic moral criterion of the natural law is that we should choose in line with an openness to and respect for all basic human goods, both in ourselves and in others.
This type of ethical naturalism proposes a distinction between four orders of being, based on how reason is differently related to what it knows.
First, the order of nature, which is the order of beings that reason considers but does not produce ; second, the order of meaning and logic, which is the order that reason introduces into its own acts; third, the moral order, understood by ethics, that is, the order that reason introduces into acts of will; and fourth, the order of technique, which is the order that reason introduces into external matter.
On this view of human rights and duties, right-holders are related to duty-bearers through an action, which is specified by some moral or legal rule, and whose performance or non-performance, promotes at least one human good, without harming any other basic good.
Basic goods versus instrumental goods thesis
The basic goods versus instrumental goods thesis states that, there are different classes of human goods, where, some goods are called basic human goods, also known as intrinsic human goods, while others are called instrumental human goods, also known as extrinsic human goods.
On this view, not everything that could possibly be described as a goods will occupy our attention or even demand a moral response in the same way. Some goods are clearly more important than others.
Some human goods occupy a special place because they stand in service not only to human persons as individuals but to the entire human community.
Thus, goods like promise-keeping and truth-telling, for instance, may be referred to as institutional goods because they serve institutions of society rather than just individual persons.
Some goods may be looked at as supportive of others. The goods that satisfy our basic needs are sometimes called basic goods, although some life situations may dictate that even these may have to be sacrificed in extreme circumstances.
The goods of health and even life itself take on new meaning in the face of terminal illness, risks undertaken to help persons in need, or martyrdom.
In short, while some (institutional) goods are `more important' because they protect the social fabric in which persons flourish; some goods `become' more important in certain circumstances(basic needs, urgency, reasonable probability); others must be appreciated because of their long term importance, their role as prerequisites to other goods, or their symbolic rather than merely instrumental function.
Yet, arriving at a determination, list and priority of goods is necessary but not sufficient for making moral judgments.
The world is filled with hundreds, literally thousands of goods and evils. So, human activity is extremely complex, consisting of or touching upon literally hundreds of goods and evils in any one decision, act or omission.
Therefore, the specification of what might be called good (that is elaborated upon the basis of some more fundamental criterion) remains pre-moral in that it is incapable of delivering a adequate answer to specifically moral questions.
But, as a general rule, then, basic goods, as opposed to instrumental goods, must be preserved. They never enter into real conflict with one another. It is never permitted to sacrifice, damage or destroy one of the basic goods for the sake of preserving, protecting or realizing another good.
The idea that one may never choose between basic goods is referred to as incommensurability. It is the idea that one basic good cannot be compared with another, as there is no common scale for this purpose.
The incommensurability thesis is a response to the question: where does one locate `objectivity' in morality? The question about moral objectivity is crucial if we want to avoid a moral attitude that is purely subjectivistic.
Something which is sought, that is, the end of a moral action, may be indicated by human desire, but that desire must be demonstrated to be typical of the human species as a whole, universally and trans-historically, in order to achieve the status of being directed toward an objective good.
The alternative would reduce the definition of good to a purely private affair, responding to individual, subjectivistic, and inevitably transient desire.
On this view, incommensurability demonstrates the wrongness of moral proportionalism, which justifies the doctrine according to which good ends may justify evil means, provided that the evil proportionately outweighs the good.
The mistake of the proportionalists, then, is the idea that basic human goods can be compared and decisions could be arrived at by determining which actions maximized good and minimized evil.
This is a sense of proportional goodness as opposed to the sense of objective goodness, suggested by negative moral precepts, which are exceptionless moral norms.
The theory of basic goods, therefore, is an attempt to establish the objective validity of a reason for moral choices.
Derogable rights versus underogable rights thesis
The derogable rights versus underogable rights thesis states that, there are two types of human rights, namely, underogable human rights arising from basic goods and derogable human rights arising from instrumental goods.
Natural moral law grounds positive laws thesis
This is a claim which posits that positive laws are validated by the natural moral law.
Natural Law is not a complete set of rules governing every human action. Nor is it a set of rules so nearly complete that, by making deductions from them, people can be led to conclusions which will properly govern all their actions.
Natural Law contains precepts, some known certainly, others with more or less certainty.
Large areas of the practical everyday affairs of life are left uncovered by the Natural Law to be filled in by human positive laws based on the precepts of Natural Law.
The human law is necessary to bring about peace and virtue in society in a more concrete way. It involves punishment, discipline, and force.
The reason is that natural inclination does not suffice to bring about virtue.
It does not always incline toward an act of virtue at first (94.3), so some training is needed, whether by admonition or punishment, to bring an individual to virtue, or at least to prevent him from harming the virtue of others.
Perhaps this is a difference between natural law and human law: natural law is about natural inclinations, and human law is about social law and order.
Both of them play a part in determining acts, but in different ways; the natural law works within; the human law from without.
Every human law has force only insofar as it is just, and it is just only insofar as it is derived from the rule of reason from the precepts of natural law.
There are two ways that a human law can be derived from the natural law.
One, by way of conclusions, as when, from the principle that one should do no harm, we draw the conclusion that one should not kill, for to kill is to harm. These derive some of their force from natural law.
An two, by way of determination, as when, to the natural precept that the evil-doer should be punished, we add the determination that his punishment should be this or that.
The force of these determinations is exclusively from human law, at least according to Aquinas, though it’s not obvious to me that he is correct.
But, the scope of the human law is limited too. It needs to be proportional to its subjects, most of whom are not perfectly virtuous.
So, it does not forbid all vices or all acts of vice lest the laws be despised and broken with ease. Instead, it forbids only the most grievous vices and acts, especially those that are injurious to others.
Natural moral law qualifies customary laws thesis
It is a claim which posits that cultural laws are validated by the natural moral law.
Natural moral law and cultural laws represent distinct frameworks for understanding morality and ethics.
Natural moral law, rooted in philosophy, posits inherent, universal principles of right and wrong accessible through reason, while cultural laws, or positive laws, are societal norms and rules created by humans, varying across cultures and time.
Cultural Laws are also referred to as Positive Laws. Cultural laws are the specific rules and regulations established by societies and governments. They are created and enforced by human authorities within a particular culture.
They vary across different cultures and time periods, reflecting the specific values and needs of a society. For example, we have laws on Speed limits, traffic laws, and specific regulations regarding property ownership.
Cultural laws derive their authority from the governing body that creates and enforces them. Natural law theorists argue that cultural laws should align with natural moral law to be considered just and legitimate.
Some natural law theorists argue that natural law is a higher authority than cultural laws, and that cultural laws should be judged against the standard of natural law.
There can be conflicts when cultural laws contradict what is believed to be a natural moral law.
For example, we have a law that permits slavery, despite the belief that all humans are created equal (a natural law principle), would be considered unjust by natural law theorists.
In all cases, human reason is seen as the key tool for understanding both natural law and for evaluating the moral validity of cultural laws.
Good society is a kingdom of human goods thesis
The good society thesis posits that there are inherent moral and legal principles derived from nature, accessible through reason, and forming the basis for just social, economic, political, and legal institutions.
These principles are considered universal, objective, and eternal, influencing the creation, interpretation, and application of human-made laws.
This contrasts with legal positivism, which emphasizes laws created by human authorities. It suggests that there are fundamental aspects of nature, both biological and indirectly moral, that are intrinsically beneficial to humans and should inform the design and function of our social institutions.
Because of our conception of a good society, based on natural law, if any one of the following rules were embedded in the laws of our own government, we would reject them:
- Parents may abandon their minor children without any justification and without any requirement to provide financial support.
- It is permissible for a city or state to pass post facto laws.
- The maximum punishment for first-degree murder is an all-expense paid vacation to Las Vegas.
- Any city or state may pass secret laws that the public cannot know.
- Anyone may be convicted of a crime based on the results of a coin toss.
- All citizens are forbidden from believing, propagating, or publicly defending the view that there is a moral law against which nations and individuals are measured.
- Your guilt or innocence in a criminal trial depends entirely on your race and not on a judge or jury’s deliberation on legitimately obtained evidence.
- Government contracts are to be distributed based on family connections and bribes and not on the quality of the bids.
- Original parenthood is to be decided by a special board of experts appointed by the governor and not on whether one sires or begets the child.
- No citizen may believe, propagate, or publicly defend the view that there is a transcendent source of being that has underived existence.
We should reject rules 2 and 5 because we know that law should be based on reason. It is unreasonable to prosecute someone for a crime that was not a crime when she committed it, and it is unjust for a court to determine a verdict by an arbitrary and capricious method. Along similar lines, you reject rules 4 and 7. An unknowable law is like a post facto law, and one’s race is as relevant to one’s criminal guilt or innocence as is a coin flip.
We should reject 8 because we know that it is unjust for a government to award someone a contract based on their genealogy and willingness to bribe, for neither has any bearing on whether one deserves the contract.
We should reject rule 3 because you know that human life is sacred and that a just society must reflect that in its laws. To reward someone for intentionally killing the innocent is an abomination.
Because you we that the human mind has a natural inclination to know not only particular and mundane truths, but universal and transcendent truths as well, we should reject rule 10. Rule 10 essentially prohibits the full exercise of a power that is distinctly human, what Aquinas called “speculative reason.”
And finally, we should reject rule 6 because we know that societies and individuals can be properly judged by a moral law external to their own practices and beliefs. We know on a personal level that we sometimes fall short of the moral law’s requirements.
Dear President Samia, this natural law theory of human rights and duties generates a set of human moral norms which ground the nation on an absolutely firm basis, a basis which is as definitive as possible, while relying on the most elementary and incontrovertible anthropological truths about the human person's nature and the associated goods of human person's nature. There are five inferences that directly follow from above stated natural law theses, namely:
One, that, the natural law theory defines for us terms like good and bad, right and wrong on a general and fundamental level and give us some guiding principles that will help us make and defend moral judgments. It allows us to first recognize good traits of human nature and then define right action as action that facilitates the development of these traits.
Two, that, the natural law theory maintains there are moral laws to be found in nature just like there are scientific laws to be found in nature. While scientific laws are only descriptive, being generalizations that claim to describe how the physical world does in fact work on a very fundamental and general level, natural moral laws are prescriptive or normative in so far as they tell us how we should act.
And yet they have something in common with certain scientific laws, in that, they are universal, applying everywhere at all times, objective and not only a matter of personal or cultural opinion, and intelligible as they are capable of being rationally understood either immediately or after careful consideration.
Two, that, humans can know a natural law using human reason, meaning that, we don’t need revelation from God or any mysterious capacities or talents.
Three, that, we can know what natural laws exist by rationally analyzing human nature. This analysis will first entail identifying potentials of human nature the actualization of which contribute to flourishing (for example, the potentials to talk, reason, socialize, love, create, and imagine).
Such potentials are what the theory holds to be good. The analysis will then entail discovering actions that actualize these potentials (for example, getting educated to help actualize the good potential to reason). Such actions are what the theory holds to be right.
Natural laws are then articulated to guide such actions. Since they are read off of our shared human nature they are intelligible, objective, and universal rather than being limited and relative to a certain time or place.
And four, that, once we have an account of human nature we can use it to justify natural rights. Natural rights, just like natural laws, are not contingent on the decisions of a particular society like civil rights are.
Rather, they are inalienable and necessary if our natural potentials are to be actualized at all. So if we follow this vision of morality we can say that natural rights will be those rights that, on the one hand, entitle us to the goods that we read off of human nature and, on the other hand, find their justification as inalienable with reference to our common humanity with its universal, objective, and intelligible potentials.
So the formulation of rights are human creations that refer to things we didn’t create. Thus they are natural rather than artificial in their reference.
ETHICAL NATURALISM REJECTS THE NECESSITY OF ETHICAL SUPERNATURALISM IN FORMULATING MORAL NORMS
Dear President Samia, as a general position about what actually exists, naturalism is a view according to which, every real entity either consists of, or is somehow totally grounded in, the physical laws and objects studied by physics, chemistry, biology and other empirical sciences. It endorse some kind of materialism, or physicalism, about reality.
Something is said to be material, or physical, if and only if it is physically extended in space. This approach portrays materialism as the view that everything that actually exists is physically extended in space, and thus that nothing exists outside physical space.
So understood, naturalism specifies its domain by reference to the empirical or the sense perceptible world. The one type of reality admitted by it is that of the sense-perceptible world and its constituents.
On this view, all knowledge is, reducible to, or in some manner continuous with, sense perception, and all inquiry essentially involves sense perception, directly or indirectly.
To this extent, naturalism is not atheism. To affirm that nature is self-sufficient is not to deny God’s existence. God could, after all, have created the world to be self-sufficient. Nonetheless, in the interest of keeping human inquiry productive, naturalism insists that the existence and activity of God be bracketed.
Dear President Samia, naturalism affirms not so much that God does not exist as that God need not exist. And because God need not exist, intellectual honesty demands that we get about the serious work of life without invoking him directly. This is the received wisdom under liberal and democratic republican states.
In its principal form naturalism takes the form of scientific naturalism which locates the self-sufficiency of nature in the undirected natural causes studied by science. Accordingly, scientific naturalism would have us understand the universe entirely in terms of such causes.
In particular, since human beings are a part of the physical universe, who we are and what we do must ultimately be understood in naturalistic terms.
This is not to deny our humanity. But it is to interpret our humanity as the consequence of brute material processes that were not consciously aiming at us.
Nor is this to deny God. But it is to affirm that if God exists, he was marvelously skillful at covering his tracks and giving no empirical evidence of ever interacting with the world.
To be sure, it remains logically permissible for the scientific naturalist to affirm God’s existence, but only by making God a superfluous rider on top of a self-contained account of the world.
Accordingly, there are three strategies for providing a context for the concept of human nature and its role in ethics, the theistic view, the naturalistic view and the hybrid view.
Dear President Samia, the theistic, but non-naturalistic, view of human nature holds that humans have a common nature because they were created in this way by God. It holds that human nature is nothing more than God’s idea of humanity’s place in creation.
The naturalistic, but non-theistic, view of human nature holds that humans have a common nature due to their natural features, along with their social and natural environments. It holds that human nature is constituted by humanity’s shared natural and social features.
These features mean that human lives go well when people pursue certain goods and badly when those goods are neglected.
And the hybrid view of human nature holds that humans were created by God with certain natural features and social propensities, meaning that, human nature is simultaneously theistic and naturalistic.
Since a naturalistic, non-theistic, human nature is possible, then the natural moral law is not necessarily theistic. Accordingly, the naturalistic, but non-theistic view this is the position officially endorsed by secular state constitutions, including the constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania.
But, where does the nature of an entity come from? The first question that confronts naturalism is where the nature of a thing comes from. A more precise formulation of this question might be: in virtue of what properties does an entity count as natural?
The properties cited in answering this query might be theological, biological, psychological, genealogical or historical ones, but they might equally posit metaphysical or ontological relationships between an entity and other features of the world. One might expect human nature to figure in such accounts.
An obvious theistic response to the above question of where the nature of a thing comes from is that it comes from God.
More precisely, this response holds that something counts as natural by virtue of being part of God’s design in the universe. This theistic response has the merit of offering a relatively straightforward explanation of the normativity of nature.
On the other hand, the naturalistic account of where the nature of a thing comes from is derived from the notion of a function characteristic of an entity by birth. All things have a function which is the characteristic role or activity which allows them to be perfected.
For example, a flute player has the function of playing music and an eye has the function of seeing. Humans, too, have a function, which we can identify by asking what is special about humans compared to other non-human entities.
On this view, it is held that humans are distinguished from other forms of life by their rationality. The goods of human nature, therefore, entail fully engaging human rationality.
This, in turn, involves acting in accordance with those goods that reason identifies as attractive and fulfilling. A crucial move in this argument is the shift from a descriptive account of humans as a species to the identification of their distinctive function.
Dear President Samia, the significance of the concept of functions, then, is not merely that they describe the characteristic activities of a certain entity, but that they capture what is good or bad for that entity given its nature.
An eye, for example, can be judged good or bad by reference to its capacity for sight. Similarly, the argument goes, human lives can be judged good or bad by reference to their fulfilment of rational capacities.
Dear President Samia, specifically, the view of natural law theory stated above, provides us with the vision of a good society, which is fundamentally grounded in the personalistic thesis, and the related personalistic norm, both of which are warranted by our state constitution, under articles 6 to 32, of part and part three of chapter one.
Specifically, article 9(a) claims that "the state authority and all its agencies are obliged to direct their policies and programs towards ensuring that human dignity and other human rights are respected and cherished," article 12(1) avers that, "all human beings are born free, and are all equal (in rights and dignity)"; article 12(2) asserts that, "every person is entitled to recognition and respect for his dignity"; and then, articles 12-32 list the "basic rights and duties".
So, these constitutional articles, presuppose the natural fact, according to which, each and every person is a living embodied entity, which is a center of a radical capacity for intelligence and volition, by reason of which, it can knowingly and willingly, decide to act in pursuit of certain human goods which it finds naturally attractive and, for that very reason, it believes can promote its perfection.
The personalistic norm is not aligned to any religion, tribe, race, sex, age, historical era, or geographical location.
It is the ultimate universal foundation of our enduring commitment to the tenets of liberal and democratic republicanism, which are deeply entrenched in our state constitution.
The most recent CCM slogan toward the general elections in 2025, namely, "𝗞𝗮𝘇𝗶 𝗻𝗮 𝗨𝘁𝘂, 𝗧𝘂𝗻𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗮 𝗠𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗲," is very close to the "personalistic norm."
However, there is a huge heaven-versus-earth mismatch between CCM words and their horrible deeds which are violative of the personalistic norm.
GOOD HUMAN ACTIONS ARE TRIGGERED BY THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF BASIC AND INSTRUMENTAL HUMAN GOODS
Dear President Samia, human goods are the immediate, mediate and ultimate purposes or values that humans strive for in their daily lives.
They are pursued by humans because they are good for humans. The goodness of a good thing consists in the appetibility or desirability of that thing by another thing.
I have the following list of goods in mind, as proposed by modern natural law thinkers: life, health, knowledge of truth, aesthetic experience, play or skillful performance, self-integration (the harmony among the different aspects of the self), practical reasonableness (harmony among moral truth, judgements of conscience and choices; that is, moral goodness), harmony with other human beings (friendship of various kinds, social unity or communion), harmony with the more-than human source(s) of meaning and value in the universe (the human good of religion), and marriage.
From this list, one can develop principles of practical reason, that is, reason oriented towards action, as follows: Life is a good to be pursued, marriage is a good to be pursued, family life is a good to be pursued, knowledge (about many things including God) is a good to be pursued, life in society (communion) is a good to be pursued, and so on.
Desirability, so understood, presupposes something in a being which is good and on account of which it is actually desired or desirable.
When a good thing is attained by a desirer, it is experienced as pleasant, enjoyable, satisfying and fulfilling.
As a rule, what a being desires or seeks as good in another, depends also on the sort of the individual the being is.
For example, a magnet reflexively seeks iron, a plant reflexively seeks sunlight, a lion reflexively seeks meat as its food, and humans intelligently seek knowledge and other goods. Hence, a good thing consists in this, that it is suitable to another thing.
Now, all beings have a nature or essence as members of a given class and as individuals. And each such nature has a very real and definite purpose or end within itself which it tends to bring to full completion and perfection.
A being is perfect when it has everything that it is supposed to have according to the exigencies of its nature, that is, when it has attained its full actualization, having as much reality as its nature demands.
For example, humans have the natural purpose of actualizing themselves as fully developed human persons.
In this way, each nature implies a specific natural tendency within itself, and all beings will be 'good' for it insofar as they suit its nature.
Hence, we can define goodness as the suitability of a being for that which has or seeks it.
There are many kinds of goodness. Physical Goodness is that which satisfies the demand of the nature of a being. Each being has its own specific and individual nature, and as such it has a very definite end and purpose.
For example, a human person is supposed to have a head, a trunk, two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, etc. They are required if a person is to be considered physically good.
Moral goodness is that which satisfies the demands of the moral law. An action may be ontologically and physically very good but morally evil.
For instance, a soldier defends one's country in a just war. In an attack by the enemy, the one kills an enemy soldier with one's rifle.
On another occasion an enemy soldier comes toward the one carrying a flag of truce. The soldier kills the enemy soldier too with the rifle. In both cases human beings are killed.
The action is ontologically good insofar as it is something. The action is also physically good insofar as it is physically successful. But the morality of the action is different in each action.
In the first it is morally good as it is a justifiable homicide in defense of one's country. In the second it is morally bad as it is murder; for the moral law requires respect for the enemy with a flag of truce.
Ontological goodness is that which is good in its very being itself. Every being insofar as it is, is good. Every being is good insofar as it possesses a certain amount of reality.
For its reality is suitable for the tendency of its own nature to be what it is, to perfect itself, and to retain its perfection.
As beings are good in themselves by possessing their own being, they are capable of being desired and striven for, so as to perfect the nature of some other being.
Sometimes humans experience aversion as opposed to desire and pain as opposed to pleasure, as a result of which, a good is opposed to an evil, or a bad.
So, a thing is good inasmuch as it is appetible or desirable, and it is bad inasmuch as it is not appetible or undesirable. So, the opposite of good is evil.
There are two main kinds of evil: physical evil and moral evil. Physical evil is the privation of a perfection pertaining to the physical order. It is the privation of a physical good. Physical evil is an established fact in the world.
Many beings lack some reality which they ought to have. Sickness and injuries deprive living beings of that physical integrity which they require.
Beings are physically evil only insofar as some entity is missing in them. Whatever entity they possess is in itself good.
For instance, a cancerous lung is a physical evil only because that portion of the body is infected, but the remaining parts are good.
The rest of the body is not a physical evil. This privation is not an entity in itself, but something relative to an individual's needs.
Moral evil is the privation of a perfection pertaining to moral order. Crime is an everyday occurrence. But, the criminal action as an action is ontologically good, insofar as it is something.
The action is also physically good if the action is performed in a manner conducive to the natural purpose of the act.
But it is morally evil since this ontologically and physically good act is not in accordance with the requirements of the moral law.
There is no morally evil entity here, but rather the defect or privation of an entity, namely, the defect of the proper relation between the act and demands of the law.
Moral evil, therefore, does not consist in a positive entity or reality but in a privation that is relative. So, evil is the privation of perfection (goodness) which is due to a subject.
So, we can say that, a "good" is also called a “value,” where, the latter refers to the degree of usefulness or suitability of things to satisfy necessities or afford comfort and content to another thing.
On this view, whatever thing provides a positive motive for human behavior is called a “good” thing and whatever provides a negative motive is called a “bad” thing.
The badness of what is bad is confirmed by its distorting, damaging, or corrupting tendency.
And the goodness of what is good is confirmed by its fulfilling, perfecting, or bettering tendency.
Accordingly, the term "good" when used as a noun refers to anything that perfects or fulfills another thing.
It is anything that serves as the object of intentional human action since it is believed to be fulfilling to humans, hence a human good.
Furthermore, the good sought in any human action is either a final good or an instrumental good.
A final good is one which, once achieved or possessed, brings an end to the action or series of actions directed toward it.
An instrumental good is one which serves as a tool for the attainment of yet another good. The action or series of actions directed toward this instrumental good continues on toward some further good.
Another way of putting this is to say that final goods are desired by human agents (whether rightly or wrongly) in and of themselves, and not because they are useful aids in accomplishing or possessing some further good.
Instrumental goods, on the other hand, are really only desired because their achievement or possession furthers a larger plan to achieve some other good.
Money, power, and academic degrees (as distinct from the knowledge gained by studying for the degree) are all instrumental goods.
Many goods have a sort of mixed character. They may be the culmination of a determinate set of actions, and so have the character of a final good, but they may also be valued for their utility in bringing about another good.
Dear President Samia, in light of what ha been said above, let me summarise by proposing the following taxonomy of human goods, to which the government of Tanzania should always pay attention:
Goods related to physical and Mental Well-being:
- Health: The physical and mental well-being, consisting in the proper functioning of humans as organisms, allowing them to engage with daily life's activities. It involves the pursuit of health and fitness and the avoidance of defects and diseases. Good health equips people to pursue a range of fulfilling behaviors and life plans, while poor health makes it more difficult for people to pursue their chosen goals. It is empowering to be healthy and disempowering to be unhealthy.
- Recreation: Structured engagement offered by games, hobbies and activities that bring enjoyment, relaxation and body-self integration. Cultures present agents with an array of appropriate games. There are many human practices, including games, hobbies and at least some forms of work, that offer structured opportunities for developing excellence in a particular restricted domain.
- Knowledge of truth: Knowledge is the understanding and skills, fostering personal growth and development.
Humans across all cultures tend to devote significant time, effort and resources to seeking to understand themselves, their history and their environment. Many types of knowledge contribute to this project, spanning scientific, psychological, anthropological, sociological, philosophical, theological and other fields of enquiry.
The search for these forms of knowledge is supported by many different social institutions, including schools, universities, cultural centers, meditation retreats and churches.
A life that allows space for self-reflection seems obviously more fulfilling than one that does not. For this purpose we need true knowledge, that is, we nee to have knowledge of truth.
Truth is correspondence or conformity between the mind and the object that exist outside the mind, or between speech and thought or judgment; while falsity is the disconformity between the mind and the object that exist outside the mind, or disconformity between speech and thought or judgment.
In short, we can say that, truth is the fundamental epistemic good, meaning that, true belief is the fundamental epistemic good, where, "true belief" has been substituted for "truth" harmlessly. The thought here is that, in valuing truth we thereby value, and thus seek out, items which are the bearers of the property of true beliefs.
Also, we can say that, truth is the goal to which a properly conducted intellectual inquiry is directed, meaning that, truth is the constitutive goal of a properly conducted intellectual inquiry.
To say that truth is the fundamental epistemic good is to be committed to the idea that there is only one finally epistemically valuable epistemic good and that this is truth, with all other epistemic goods being merely instrumentally epistemically valuable relative to truth.
So, for example, on this view insofar as epistemic justification is an epistemic good, then its epistemic goodness is derivative on the epistemic goodness of truth, in the sense that we instrumentally epistemically value justification because we finally epistemically value truth.
And the claim that truth is the telos of a properly conducted intellectual inquiry means that seeking truth is the constitutive goal of a properly conducted intellectual inquiry, in that if one is undertaking an activity which is not directed at seeking the truth, then one is not undertaking a properly conducted intellectual inquiry at all.
Of course, it is consistent with this claim that properly conducted intellectual inquiries can have all sorts of other goals too, some of them being non-epistemic.
Accordingly, we are obliged to keep an open mind in all instances. But, as finite beings with limited capacity for knowledge we inevitably resort to vacillation between dogmatism, certainty and skeptism. So, deciding when we chose dogmatism and when we chose skepticism is what matters.
If so, one may ask: When is it permissible to end inquiry? One possible answer to this question is that one can permissibly end inquiry regarding a proposition when one knows that proposition.
After all, if one knows a proposition, then any additional evidence might get regarding that proposition would seem to be either misleading or superfluous.
But epistemic negligence resulting from closing off inquiry can detract from one’s epistemic performance and possibly result in the loss of knowledge.
In addition, closing off inquiry can also result in the loss of rational belief since the origins of one’s belief are continually fading from view, which requires that one’s current evidence play a primary role in rational belief. Thus, human inquiry in search for truth should be open-ended.
- Food: Refers to the availability and accessibility of adequate, safe, and nutritious food. Meeting food needs is fundamental for survival and maintaining health.
- Shelter: Provides protection from the elements (sun, rain, wind, cold, heat), as well as from potential dangers and threats. It's a fundamental human need that ensures physical safety and well-being.
- Friendship: The positive, meaningful, supportive and fulfilling social connectedness. The good of social connectedness takes multiple forms lying on a continuum from the closest and most restricted human relationships to the wider and more expanded forms of social bond.
They range from intimate relationships and close friendships to workplace relationships and other wider social, economic and political communities.
There are diverse social institutions that facilitate this, including families, workplaces, clubs, schools, churches, political groups and online communities.
These connections help us to forge a sense of identity and belonging; without them, we become isolated and lonely.
So, the duty all agents have to support the common good derives at least partly from their duty to pursue and respect the good of friendship.
- Marriage: A monogamous, polygamous, polygynous, or polyandrous sexual union, between hetero-affective persons, which is potentially antecedent to fatherhood, motherhood and childhood.
- Peace: The harmony or tranquility of intra-personal and inter-personal social, political and economic relations.
- Security: A sense of safety and stability in one's life.
- Justice: Consistently treating similar cases similarly and different cases differently for all members of society, by giving each one's due.
- Equality: The principle that all individuals are of equal worth and should be treated as such.
- Self-integrity: Self-integrity refers to a state of being whole, consistent, and aligned with one's own values and principles, that is premised on harmony among a person’s judgments, choices, feelings, and actions.
When individuals are fragmented or conflicted within themselves, it can lead to anxiety, stress, and a sense of incompleteness.
Thus, self-integration refers to the process of unifying different aspects of the self, such as thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and values, into a coherent and harmonious whole. It's about becoming a more complete and authentic individual.
A distinctive feature of modern times is the compartmentalization of life into a variety of segments, each with its own norms and modes of behavior. So work is divided from leisure, private life from public, the corporate from the personal, and so on.
The fragmented or compartmentalized life is always subject to instability, in so far as unresolved psychological conflicts and tensions may threaten to derail our ethical plans and projects.
- Mobility: Refers to the ability to move around, access services, and participate in daily life, where this includes access to transportation, evacuation routes, and the ability to reach essential services like healthcare and food distribution points. So, this is a view of integrity understood as involving a life that fits together as a coherent whole.
- Communication: Encompasses access to information, means to connect with others, and the ability to share information, especially during emergencies, where this includes access to communication devices, networks, and information channels.
- Rationality: The capacity for logical reasoning, avoidance of contradictions, and making proper alignment between means and ends for practical effectiveness, hence, excellence in human agency, reasonableness. It is the value of bring rational, or being properly responsive to reasons, in one’s plans and actions. It calls upon us to follow the standard principles of sound reasoning, namely, the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of the excluded middle, plus the principle of individuation and differentiation, also known as the principle of identity and difference.
- Religion: The pursuit of harmony between one's life and the ultimate soteriological, metaphysical and axiological reality, that may provide meaning and purpose in life.
- Beauty: The qualities that often tend to produce positive responses manifesting a sense of wonder or delight in the beholder. It is the appreciation of aesthetic experiences in the social and the natural world. A life filled with these kinds of experiences seems obviously more fulfilling than one that affords few or no such opportunities. Artists, architects, filmmakers and others seek to make artifacts for others to appreciate.
- Freedom: The ability to make choices and act according to one's will, within the bounds of law and respect for others.
- Pleasure: This is experiential well-being. People devote significant time, energy and resources to seeking pleasure, and there are many diverse social avenues for doing so. A decision to engage in some activity because doing so would be pleasurable, and not obviously harmful, is normally intelligible without further reasoning. Hedonism and utilitarianism are not wrong because pleasure is not a basic good; they are wrong because it is not the only basic good. The mistake of focusing too heavily on a single basic good to the exclusion of the others can be associated with any of the goods, not only pleasure.
- Money: Money as a human good is a means to an end. It is a tool that can be used to pursue human well-being, including providing for basic needs and pursuing personal goals.
Money is one of the most powerful tools ever created by human beings and plays a vital role in meeting necessities, ensuring ease, and providing chances. For experts, fiscal success is not just a return but a tool that lessens trauma, offers safety, lifts people out of poverty, opens doors of opportunity, and instils a sense of liberation and sovereignty.
It helps access the best education, healthcare, and even justice. Money is often seen as the basis for a strong, happy, and successful life in today’s society, where financial pressure is high and the cost of living is rising. For some people, the search for money is not greed but existence and ease.
Strong economic conditions allow people to care for their families, invest in their futures, and remove the hurdles due to financial hardship. In the commercial environment, it allows for career development, free enterprise, and the detection of personal growth, where the economic benefit is also part of performance and credit. Bonuses, salaries, and investments are physical consequences of hard work and capability.
From this perspective, money is seen as more influential,” and operative, motivator, benchmark, and often a confirmation of one’s professional value. With abundant money, anyone can travel the world, fund causes, and shape whole societies.
So, money has its place and is also essential in this modern world; it can change life for the better, but it can never replace a human’s profundity, self-respect, and rarity.
A world that wisely values both money and human beings will be wealthier in every field, not only in wealth, but also in consideration, imagination, and construction. Money, when used wisely, can enhance human life.
It can raise hospitals, fund education, decrease the dearth, and authorize change. However, it loses its goal when money becomes the final goal rather than a tool to improve life.
Dear President Samia, all of these goods are elements that contribute to a meaningful and fulfilling life, often seen as inherently valuable and worthy of pursuit. They are universally accepted human values that define ‘a good life’
They are interconnected and contribute to a holistic view of human flourishing. For instance, a person's physical health (life, health) can impact their ability to pursue education or engage in social relationships (friendship, family).
Similarly, a just and peaceful society (peace, justice, equality) provides a stable environment for individuals to thrive and pursue their personal goals (property, freedom).
Access to transportation (mobility) can be necessary to reach food distribution points (food). Similarly, communication is vital for sharing information about available shelter options (shelter) and basic goods distribution.
So, addressing one need can positively impact other areas. For instance, access to safe and secure shelter can improve a person's physical and mental well-being, making it easier to access other services and participate in community life.
In short, this set of human goods and the derivative behavioral norms, of human rights and duties, together serve as the foundation of the vison of a good society, which is, here conceived as, a personalistic society, in accordance with our constitutional standards.
BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE COMMON GOOD OF OUR NATION INFORMS BETTER GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE
Against the background of basic and instrumental goods, the common good, previously alluded to, by definition is a good that is, or may be, owned, used, enjoyed, pursued or otherwise shared by a number of persons.
Accordingly, the common good of a nation, is the good that is equally shared or equally belongs to each and every member of the nation.
In a neighborhood, for instance, public goods, like street lamps that work, or clean sidewalks, are part of the common good because the bond of sharing the same public spaces requires members to take care of them in order to ensure safety and sanitary conditions for all.
Dear President Samia, generally, then, the common good of a nation is constituted by the following elements, among others:
- Public commodities and services such as the roads, ports, schools, and hospitals which the organization of common life it presupposes;
- Clean environment, a flourishing economic system and material prosperity;
- Sound fiscal condition of the state;
- Functional military and para-military systems;
- Functional legal and political system;
- Customs and wise institutions, which provide the nation with its political structure;
- Heritage of its great historical remembrances,
- National symbols and its glories,
- National living traditions and cultural treasures;
- Sociological integration of the civic conscience, and political virtues,
- A sense of right and wrong in all human activities,
- Religious and spiritual happiness,
- Unconsciously operative hereditary wisdom,
- moral rectitude, justice, friendship, happiness and social virtues, and
- Heroism in the individual lives of its members, among others.
OUR HUMAN RIGHTS ARE DERIVED FROM HUMAN GOODS
Historically, the best example of intellectual analysis and synthesis, from which human rights were framed, comes from the historical process that led to the formulation of the UDHR.
The framers of the declaration made step by step intellectual observations, as follows:
One, that, a human right is a claim by someone, called a claim bearer, to some action in relation to something good and against someone else, called a duty bearer, which is recognized by some legal or moral rule or both.
Two, that, claim bearers and duty bearer are persons, as opposed to non-persons such as brute animals, and inanimate entities.
Three, that, every person is free and intelligent agent, who acts willingly and knowingly, under the control of reason, where, these acts are the means of pursuing the goods which can fulfill the natural needs of the human kind.
Four, that, there is, by virtue of human nature, a natural disposition toward a certain range of basic goods, which are the familiar ends of daily activity. Human reason discovers them and the human will must act accordingly in order to align itself to these essential and necessary ends of human perfection.
Five, that, these basic human goods are “states of affairs” that almost all humans naturally find attractive. They include knowledge, friendship, sexual union, the care of one’s children, beauty, self-direction in choosing a path in life, bodily integrity, lay or leisure, and life which is the foundation of all other basic goods. Without these basic goods, we cannot flourish.
Six, that, it is rational for humans to pursue these basic goods and irrational to attack them, since naturally, we pursue what is good and attractive, and avoid what is bad and repugnant.
Seven, that, these goods are incommensurable in that they do not have any common measure with each other such that the two goods can be rank ordered. On this view, it is a mistake to say that knowledge is of greater worth than friendship or, indeed, the reverse. Each basic good is unique.
Eight, that, in exploring these characteristics of basic goods, we arrive at a natural axiology that forms the basis of the right and the wrong. This means that, we have to look at the basic goods as the ends of moral action that lead to the flourishing of the human person.
Nine, that, to claim that an inclination toward some “state of affairs” (X) is natural and so morally warranted or unnatural and so morally suspect, is equivocal, since it may mean that (X) is either (a) statistically average, or (b) what people expect, or (c) spontaneous, or (d) not artificial, or (e) it helps actualize the goods of the person, where, counter examples to each of these criteria are easy to cite, except for the last option.
Ten, that, as a case for counter examples, to claim that an inclination toward some “state of affairs” (X) is natural and so morally warranted because it is not artificial, leads to the following absurd conclusion: using hearing aids is unnatural and so morally suspect. But this is not so, since, using hearing aids to understand others promotes friendship and is morally warranted, sometimes even obligatory.
Eleven, that, as opposed to the above counter example, natural human inclinations toward the basic goods serve as sources of moral direction because of the following logic:
The relevant standard for affirming that an inclination toward some “state of affairs” (X) is natural and so morally warranted is the fact that it helps actualize the goods of the person.
Twelve, that, understanding the basic goods leads to an account of the common good, a pivotal aspect of natural law of ethics. The achievement of basic goods depends on both the material and the social environment.
For example, knowledge depends on, among other things, the tools of communication. It also depends on language acquisition and the transmission of culture. We can reason similarly for other basic goods.
On this view, the common good is the whole range of material and social conditions that enables us to pursue the basic goods, together with the basic goods themselves.
Thirteen, that, the common good includes is an inventory of the material and social conditions for political society which include the collection of public commodities and services, such as the roads, ports, and schools, which the organization of common life presupposes; a sound fiscal condition of the state and its military power; the body of just laws, good customs and wise institutions, which provide the nation with its structure; the heritage of its great historical remembrances, its symbols and its glories, and its living traditions and cultural treasures.
Fourteen, that, the fundamental moral standard of the natural law theory of morality thus far outlined in the above points, includes both a positive imperative and a negative prohibition, in the following form:
“An act is morally right if and only if it is intentionally pursued and done in a way that promotes some human good and does not, in so doing, intentionally cause an evil by attacking any basic human good.”
And fifteen, that, this first principle of the natural law theory of morality grounds both core human rights and ancillary human rights, where, the former are absolute and negative and the latter are conditional and positive, and each core right is directly grounded on a basic good.
Let us consider some examples of core human rights first. There is a right not to be intentionally killed, because life is a basic good. There is a right not to be sexually assaulted because sexual integrity is a basic good.
We have a right that our governments not act on policies of deception because civic friendship is a basic good. Each of these rights is both absolute and negative in formulation. Each is an absolute human right.
Let us consider some examples of conditional human rights next. Each ancillary right is grounded in the material and cultural pre-conditions necessary to realize the basic goods.
There is a positive right to medical care but this right is conditional. It is rarely possible to provide the best medical care for everyone who needs it. There is a positive right to protection against sexual assault but this right is conditional.
There might not be sufficient police information and resources to protect everyone at risk. There a positive right to governmental transparency and public review, but again the right is conditional.
Only with great difficulty can a government make all policy transparent and open to review. Each of these rights is conditional and positive in formulation. Each is an ancillary right.
In distinguishing between positive and negative rights and their corresponding duties, we can reflect on exculpation and excuses. There might not be the time nor the resources to give medical care to someone in need.
There might not be the time nor resources to make government policy transparent and participatory. But none of us is so limited in time and resources, or so restricted by prior commitments, that it is necessary to murder or rape.
Nor is any government so limited or restricted that it must use deceptive social policies. Not even beneficence excuses the violation of justice.
This way, we can assess rights listed in the constitution and the UDHR in terms of whether they are core or ancillary. Some are core while others are not, but both derive from the goods of human nature, without any reference to revelation from scriptures.
THE LOGICAL STRUCTURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Dear President Samia, in our daily human rights talk, wr use the word "right" to mean at least six different things. So our talk will be meaningful if we clarify these different meanings.
Generally, there are two fundamental postulates of the standard system of human rights, namely:
- That, all assertions of rights can be reduced without remainder to ascriptions of one or some combination of the following six standard legal rights:
- (a) positive claim, which entails a positive duty on others,
- (b) negative claim, which entails a negative duty on others,
- (c) positive liberty, which entails the absence of a negative claim from others (no-negative-claim),
- (d) negative liberty, which entails the absence of a positive claim from others (no-positive-claim),
- (e) power, which entails liability on others, and
- (f) immunity, which entails disability on others; and
- (a) one person (A), the right holder,
- (b) one other person (B), the duty bearer,
- (c) An act-description (Q), which is a link between the right holder and a duty bearer,
- (d) The human good (G) whose promotion and protection is targeted by an act description, and
- (e) a justificatory rule (R), the justification, that grounds the claim under consideration.
So, let us us simplify the clarification in terms of the following questions:
- What may person A (or person B) do, without societal penalty assessed for the benefit of the other?
- If we determine that A may conduct himself in a certain way he has a liberty with respect to B, and B has no-right that A shall not so conduct himself.
- If we determine that A must conduct himself in a certain manner he has a duty to B, and B has a right against A.
- Person A has a positive claim-right against person B that person B perform act Q, in relation to human good G, if and only if person B has a legal duty under rule R to person A to perform act Q.
- Person A has a negative claim-right against person B that person B not to perform act Q, in relation to human good G, if and only if person B has a legal duty under rule R to person A not to perform act Q.
- Person A has a positive liberty-right in face of person B to perform act Q, in relation to human good G, if and only if person B has no claim under any legal rule R against person A that person A not to perform act Q.
- Person A has a negative liberty-right in face of person B not to perform act Q, in relation to human good G, if and only if person B has no claim under any legal rule R against person A that person A perform act Q.
- Person A has a legal power over person B to change the legal rights of person B if and only if person B has a legal liability under rule R in face of person A that person B bring about this legal consequence through act Q in relation to human good G.
- And person A has a legal immunity against person B's act of changing the legal rights of person A if and only if person B has a legal disability in face of person A to bring about this legal consequence through act Q, in relation to human good G, since there exists no rule R that creates that power.
THE RIGHT TO RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS A FRUIT OF A LONG AND PAINFUL HISTORICAL STRUGGLE
Dear President Samia, as you may know, before the seventeenth century religious superiors called for the state to coerce, by issuing legal directives backed up by threats of punishment, in support of religious truth and against religious error and to enforce the laws of the Church.
But since 1648, in the Westphalia Treaty, the world started to learn something that appeared quite opposite, namely, the fact that, we have a right not to be coerced in our religious activities by the state, except where the state needs to protect just public order, because the state lacks the authority to coerce religiously.
The Peace of Westphalia brought an end to the devastating Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which involved major European powers and was fueled by religious and political conflicts. It also ended the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648) between Spain and the Dutch Republic.
While often referred to as a single treaty, the Peace of Westphalia actually consisted of two main treaties: the Treaty of Münster, signed by the Holy Roman Emperor and France, and the Treaty of Osnabrück, signed by the Emperor and Sweden.
The treaties established the principle of Westphalian sovereignty, which asserts that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, free from external interference.
This laid the foundation for the modern international system of nation-states, which gave rise to the doctrine of religious freedom for all religions, even when there is religion-state fusion.
And finally, 300 years later, while the world was emerging from the ashes of the Second World Wars, in 1948, the right to religious liberty was finally articulated most authoritatively in article 18 of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Our state constitution (1977) implicitly inherited it through article 9(f) and explicitly domesticated it under article 19. These constitutional provisions have been given statutory interpretation through the Societies Act, Chapter 337 and its subsequent legal amendment through Miscellaneous Law Revision Act No. 3 of 2019.
Under our republican liberal democracy, the said human right to freedom of religion is an instrument by which key human values that constitute the minimum requirements for a just society, in so far as the universal right to freedom of religion is concerned, are protected and promoted.
STATE ACTIONS AGAINST GWAJIMA CHURCH IS A WAKE UP CALL TO ALL OF US
Dear President Samia, the above questions and their common answer directly point to the unevenness and complexity of the uncommon events witnessed in in Dar es Salaam, around 02 June 2025, just after the alleged deregistration of Bishop Gwajima’s Church, was informally announced by anonymous government agent through privately owned social media outlets.
These events have provided keen political analysts with yet another opportunity to critically remind you about the President’s constitutional duty to protect and promote republican national values, of longevity, equality, justice and liberty, where the latter includes religious liberty, which is directly referenced by the above opening questions.
Under the present letter, the government’s overt violation of the constitutionally protected and underogable human right to freedom of religion, in so far as Bishop Gwajima's Church members are concerned, is a case in point, which I shall discuss within a range of 1,000+ words.
THE DEREGISTRATION OF GWAJIMA CHURCH IS VIOLATIVE OF BASIC HUMAN GOODS
Dear President Samia, specifically, the human right to freedom of religion provides protection to at least eight key values, which must be protected and promoted by the President through the instrumentality of one's appointees, all acting within the laws of the land.
These values are:
- internal freedom of conscience,
- external freedom of action,
- immunity from coercion,
- immunity from discrimination,
- parental autonomy,
- religious corporate autonomy,
- immunity from arbitrary limitations, and
- immunity from derogation.
Dear President Samia, let be clarify the meaning of these goods, one after another:
One, the human value of “internal freedom of conscience” means that everyone has the right to freedom of thought and belief about religious matters, where this right includes freedom for all to to seek, to embrace, to manifest by one's way of life the voluntarily accepted religious truth and to change one's religious commitments, as and when new evidence emerge.
Two, the human value of “external freedom of action” means that everyone has the freedom, either alone or in community with others, in public or private space, to manifest his or her religion in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Three, the human value of “immunity from coercion,” first means that, in the sphere of religion no one is to be compelled to act against one's conscience; and second, it means that, in the sphere of religion no one is to be impeded from acting according to one's conscience, be it in public or in private, alone or in association with others.
Four, the human value of “ immunity from discrimination” means that the state is obliged to respect and to ensure to all individuals within their territory and subject to their jurisdiction the right to freedom of religion without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or other origin, property, birth or other status.
Five, the human value of “parental autonomy” means that, at a family level, the state is obliged to respect the liberty of parents, and, when applicable, legal guardians, to oversee the moral education of their children in conformity with their own religious convictions, provided that they respect the right of each child to freedom of religion consistent with the evolving capacities of the child who has reached majority age.
Six, the human value of “religious corporate autonomy” means that a vital aspect of freedom of religion is for religious communities to have a legal status as corporate persons, meaning that, religious communities themselves have freedom of religion, including a right to self-determination in their own affairs.
Seven, the human value of "immunity from arbitrary limitations" means that the right to religious freedom may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by laws which are of importance to a democratic, safe, healthy, and peaceful society within the limits of the duty to respect the fundamental rights of others.
And eight, the human value of “immunity from derogation” means that the state may never suspend the right to freedom of religion, not even in times of public emergency.
OUR CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY FRAMEWORK FOR PROTECTION OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IS VAGUE
Dear President Samia, facilitating the human right to freedom of religion requires more concrete arrangements at a constitutional and statutory levels.
Such arrangements entail various forms of religion-state relations, including religion-state separation, religion-state cooperation and religion-state fusion, where the latter form means identification of the state with a particular religion.
While Tanzania is a secular state, the inherent religion-state relations form a wise hybrid between religion-state separation and religion-state cooperation, which reflects our diverse histories, cultures, and political compromises.
Under your presidential oath, you are strictly duty-bound to firmly protect and promote the constitutional and statutory norms in place now.
However, more needs to be done so as to formalise religion state relations in Tanzania through a separate statute.
We need a clear legal specification of when and how religion and state relations overlap and when they are disjointed. Currently we running our business based on the principle of good will. It is not enough.
CALL TO ACTION BY THE STATE
Dear President Samia, what good is a job description if it is never used by the employer to limit and guide the employee?
Thus, I now call upon you, under your capacity as the head of government to immediately align your government with the common good of the nation by doing the following:
One, causing legal amendments, so as to update the societies act, chapter 337 (RE 2002), with a view of making sure that it fully facilitates the respect, protection and promotion of all the human goods which are embraced by the human right to religious freedom, as summarized above, with a special focus on the following amendments:
- Replacing the phrase "in his discretion" with "subject to a court order" under section 17 of the Act so as to eliminate the element of human bias;
- Deleting the phrase "or is likely to be used" from section 17(b) of the Act so as to eliminate an element of trial and error which is akin to superstition; and
- Replacing the phrase "shall give it an opportunity to submit reasons why the registration should not be cancelled" with "shall give it an opportunity, through a court application, to submit reasons why the registration should not be cancelled"
- Revising article 19, with a view of making sure that it fully addresses all the human goods which are protected by the human right to religious freedom, as summarized above;
- Revising article 19(2) by correcting a typographical error of using the word "coercion" instead of "cohesion", as seen today in the softcopy posted on the parliamentary website;
- The right to life,
- The right to Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment;
- The right to Freedom from medical or scientific experimentation without consent;
- The right to Freedom from slavery and servitude;
- The right to Freedom from imprisonment for inability to fulfil a contractual obligation;
- The right to Freedom from retrospective operation of criminal laws;
- Right to equality before the law;
- Freedom of thought, conscience and religion; and
- The right to participate in domestic government.
Four, taking administrative steps of purging some of your key appointees who by all measures have overtly and consistently cooperated in the violation of the fundamental tenets of good governance, in so far as the mishandling of the Gwajima saga is concerned.
It is my considered assessment, that the performances of the following appointees deserve your immediate re-appraisal: The Minister of Home of Affairs, Mr. Innocent Bashungwa; The Good Governance Minister, Mr. George Simbachawene; The Prime Minister, Mr. Kasim Majaliwa; The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Dotto Biteko; The Attorney General, Mr. Hamza Johari; The minister of constitutional and legal affairs, Dr. Ndumbaro; and The Registrar of Societies, Mr. Emmanuel Kihampa.
All of these appointees are so far acting as spectators who, for that very reason, become accomplices in the political evils going on around Gwajima saga. They are not playing their legally stipulated roles. This scenario is nauseating.
And five, given that, Art. 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) recognizes the family as "the natural and fundamental group unit of society," I call upon you to pronounce a formal apology to the nation for your failure to protect the religious rights of the families, falling under Bishop Gwajima's Church, which tirelessly have been playing a crucial role in human life and well-being, serving as fundamental units of society and as sources of support, socialization, and cultural transmission, as a result of which, the resulting strong family bonds contribute to individual happiness, reduced stress, and a healthier lifestyle, while providing a nurturing environment for children, fostering their physical and mental development, and instilling values and social skills.
Dear President Samia, I honestly suggest that, the absence of the proposed bold and quick responses from you will mean one of the following conclusions.
Either, it will further cement the currently prevalent general perception that Tanzania is now in the hands of the President who has intentionally decided to betray one's oath of office for some ulterior motives which are incompatible with the constitutionally defined republican dream of longevity, equality, liberty and justice.
Or, it will support the position according to which, the sixth phase government is not a good fit to the state administration job description, as it can be gleaned from the state constitution of our nation, which you took oath to defend, protect and uphold with all your heart .
Dear President Samia, That having been said, I hereby attach the book authored by Tore Lindholm, W. Cole Durham Jr. and Bahia G. Tahziblie (2004), entitled “Facilitating Freedom of Religion or Belief: A Deskbook.”
It was published at Dordrecht, in Netherlands, by Springer Science and Business Media, B.V.
It is attached for further use by yourself, your state house political analysts and other assistants of yours.
Dear President Samia, I sincerely wish to thank you in advance for the possibility of taking seriously my call to action as conveyed to you through this polite digital letter, from your bona fide common citizen, who happens to be knowledgeable enough to advise on key statecraft matters.
Dr. Mama Amon,
“Sumbawanga Town”
Tanzania.
23 June 2025.
