Modern Age - Winter 2018 - 71

Natural Law and Human Motives

The reference of human beings, whoever they may be, to an
idea of the noble or of the just is always in principle comprehensible and shareable by all human beings, at least as a possible
and meaningful perspective. If there are some forms of conduct
towards which we cannot make this movement of understanding, whether these be crimes of honor or of terrorism, then we
must conclude that these are forms of conduct that are just as
criminal for their agents as they would be if we had adopted
them ourselves.
Moreover, as I have said, the acting human being is not a prisoner of his or her motives. He is not the plaything of his idea of the
just. He is so much less its plaything as this idea is never completely
determinate. It is surrounded by a halo of the uncertain and the
problematic. The agent moved by a high idea of the just is able
to correct and to rectify, or at least to inflect, the idea that he has
received from his "culture" or his city. Thus those men who are
declared the most just have often been the "reformers" of their cities. In this sense the motive of the just or of the noble is "stronger"
than the idea of the just or of the noble that specifies it here and
now.
These remarks are intended only to suggest that the bases of
practical life are much more stable and constant than we are
inclined to admit, carried away as we are by the theoretical point
of view of the social sciences, and more generally by the point
of view of the observer or spectator. As spectators-and human
beings love spectacles-we are naturally attracted and charmed
by the spectacle of the diversity of human conduct that attracts
our attention all the more when it is different from what is familiar to us, and that attracts it most especially if the particularity
is spectacular, preferably spectacularly atrocious. This is not the
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Modern Age - Winter 2018

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Contents
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