I am doing some research and at this point I don't know who or where to continue researching for answers. (Scholars who might have the answers are too busy to answer my emails--evidently.)
Anyone who knows anything about this or knows of a book or class to recommend, let me know.
My questions:
1) The American Founding Fathers stated that some things are "self-evident." Would that mean that self-evident principles are self-evident to all cultures and peoples for all time?
2) How do "self-evident" propositions compare to the Natural Law? Would the Founding Fathers believe they are the same? Are they basically the same? Or are they very different and why?
3) Would the Ten Commandments fall under laws that are "self-evident" or the Natural Law? Why or why not?
2 comments:
In Scholastic/Aristotelian thought, self evident propositions (propositiones per se notae) are those propositions of which the truth is immediately apparent when one considers the terms. No one that I know of claims to list of all of them, but they are generally pretty basic claims such as 'the whole is greater than the parts' or 'if two things are the same as a third thing, they are the same as each other'. For discussion, see Aquinas Summa (in English on New advent. org); in one of the opening questions he talks about whether the proposition 'God exists' self evident. I have an article on the topic if you want it, though it is fairly specific to what a Scotist thinker in the 15th c. thought about the issue.
I imagine the founding fathers are speaking from the general tradition about per se nota props., but I don't know if the scholastics would accept them as such. I would have to read what they said again.
The ten comm. would not be self evident, for they would not meet the definition above. Especially so since God at various times dispensed with particular commands. Self evident is to be distinguished from "necessary" as in cannot be otherwise. Scotus, for example, says that the first table is necessary because it pertains to God's nature, whereas the second table is contingent because it pertains to contingent human nature, thus God can dispense with particular commandments. Interestingly, given our background in SDAism, Scotus has some difficulty determining where the sabbath commandment belongs, since worship pertains to God, but the day was changed.
Thank you Mr. Faber, that was helpful.
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