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Yes indeed – and it is a very different idea of law than what we see in the Roman Empire.
In the Roman Empire the will of the Emperor was law – if he ordered the burning alive of everyone with blue eyes than that was “the law” – Roman lawyers accepted the existence of natural law (natural justice) but held that the commands of the Emperor were more important. We also see this idea of “law” as simply the commands of the ruler or rulers with Thomas Hobbes and other “Legal Positivist” thinkers – but till the 19th century such thinkers as Thomas Hobbes were, rightly, despised in the West and considered to be outside the Western tradition.
In the emerging post Roman West, no matter how many abuses there were (and there were very many) the principle that there was a natural law (natural justice) that trumped the commands of the King was understood.
The new legal thinkers, most of them clerics. held to the same categories as Roman legal thinkers – but they reversed the order of importance. “Positive Law”, the commands of the ruler or rulers, was no longer at the top – it was now held to be at the bottom. The “law of all nations” was next – and “natural law” (natural justice) was now held to be at the top – the reverse of how the Roman lawyers had held that “the law of all nations” (for example on slavery) was more important than natural law and that the commands of the Emperor were highest of all.
For example, in 877 AD King Charles the Bald of France accepts that there are a whole series of things that he does NOT have the legal power to do – for example take land from one family and give it to another family. Or interfere in the doctrines of the Church (Christian Roman Emperors had taken it for granted that they had the right to say what the doctrines of the Church were – and, just as with Pagan Emperors, they had taken it for granted that there was no limit on their secular powers either).
And in the “Middle Ages” we get such things as the Council of London in 1102 – forbidding the buying and selling of human beings (the slave trade) and King Louis X of France (rather later) declaring that slavery in France was unlawful – and destroying most of serfdom as well (the Marxist claim that serfdom replaced slavery in France as a “feudal mode of production” is just not true).
None of this would have possible in the Roman Empire – or the various Eastern Despotisms outside the West in the Middle Ages and beyond.
Of course there were terrible abuses – but the PRINCIBLE of the limited state, of natural freedom, had been accepted in the West.
Sadly today we have such philosophical (and legal) botches as “the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights” – which does not have clear statements of such things as the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (the sign of a free person both in Classical Greece and Republican Rome – and among the Germanic tribes “sitting in council under the oak tree”) or Freedom of Speech – instead we get such things as “the right to holidays with pay”, rights not as a limitation on government power, but as goods or services from the government.
Still the Decline of the West (so horribly obvious by the 1940s – indeed decades before) is not the concern of these early episodes of the series – hopefully the Decline of the West, what caused the decline and how it might be reversed, will be a subject for later episodes.
The statement “my honour is loyalty” is a confusion (a philosophical botch) that any Medieval “School Man” (Scholastic philosopher or legal thinker) would have been able to point out – honour is what one measures loyalty against, if a lord gives a dishonourable order (say to murder the weak and innocent) it is the moral duty of a warrior (or indeed anyone) to resist that order – if need be to-the-death. Contra to Thomas Hobbes, the most important laws are not the commands of the ruler or rulers – and nor is one’s own life the primary motivation, indeed an honourable person must be prepared to lay down their life in the defence of someone “they have never set eyes on before” – whether the attack on this person comes from conventional criminals or from the ruler or rulers.
This was understood by some old families such as the Hapsburgs and the Wittelsbachs in the 1940s.
It can be seen, to some extent, at the start of the film “The Eagle has Landed” with the character played by Michael Caine.
From the point of view of the Western tradition – it is Michael Caine’s character who is the lawful man, and it is the rulers of his country who are the criminals. Their “laws” actually being crimes – which it is the duty of a just person to resist to the death. Aristotle, in Ancient Greece, pointed out that life at the expense of what it was to be a human being (the telos – purpose of being a human being) was not worth having, and other thinkers had done it before him.
All this is incompatible with the philosophy of Mr Hobbes and Mr Hume – which is why, till the 19th century, such thinkers were seen as outside the Western tradition.
As for the role of religious faith….
In the film “El Cid”, the titular character, played by Charlton Heston. faces down men engaged in an evil act – they say to him “but we are a dozen men – whereas you are alone”, to which he replies “I am not alone – for God is with me” which causes doubt in the minds of his opponents when he attacks. However, as the philosophers and legal thinkers of the time agreed, “even if God did not exist – natural law, natural justice, would be exactly the same” and so would our duties – even if this moral duty leads to our own death.
As Aristotle, and others, made clear – if a man can not live as a man, it is better not to live at all.
Paul, have you seen the discussion between Richard Vobes and Delores Cahill on his YouTube channel. They attempt to explain the distinction between Lawful and Legal. Dolores and others in Eire are currently challenging the republic’s legal establishment.
Most “Christians” I know who attend church regularly may know Paul but they do not know Yeshua.
David Roberts – I have not seen that discussion. Delores Cahill I know of because her work on Covid – which earned her the hatred of the establishmentarians – Richard Vorbes is valued by the historian Neil Oliver – but I do not really know much about the work of Mr Vorbes. I seem to recall the man mistranslating the word “Parliament” – but that could be me getting him confused with someone else.
As you know Sir the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland at least makes a nod to the existence of a higher law, but (like a fortress) no Constitution will stand if the people desert it – the recent, overwhelming, vote to kill babies shows how much Ireland has changed in only a few years (partly because the Church choose to cover up terrible crimes by some priests – rather than root out the evil) – and if one is going to kill the babies then why not sexually abuse them first? It worked for the Emperor Tiberius – and even ordinary pagan Romans used to dump unwanted babies on rubbish heaps to be eaten by rats.
Western principles, such as the sacredness of innocent life (innocent life – not murderers) and Freedom of Speech, may still exist in some places, such as Texas, but in most of what was once the Western world, Western principles are already dying if not dead.
By the way on the confessional – it should not need a lukewarm Anglican like me to remind anyone about theology, but no confession is valid unless there is sincere repentance. And if someone has committed terrible crimes against the natural law – the sign of sincere repentance is for that person (priest or laity) to seek, indeed to DEMAND, just punishment for their crimes – if there has been no effort to do that, then the “repentance” is obviously insincere and no absolution can be granted.
“Of course God will forgive your sins my son – I will personally visit you in prison and you will be granted absolution, but if you will not seek just punishment for your terrible deeds then get-thee-gone from this church and do not darken our doors again till you have had a sincere change of heart”.
This used to be fairly well understood – but, like so many things, it seems to have been forgotten about from the 1960s onwards.
Sadly Pope Francis is not blameless in all this – for example he was recently asked by young men studying for the priesthood whether a sinner who one does NOT believe has sincerely repented should be granted absolution.
His answer was “yes” – and that answer is just wrong, flat wrong (he might as well have said that 2+2=5).
In the 16th and 17th centuries there was a movement to restore the idea that “law” was just the commands of the ruler or rulers – Thomas Hobbes was just one of the thinkers pushing this evil.
In England and Scotland this movement was eventually defeated – but in the 18th century there was a strange twist.
Instead of pushing the evil of the Divine Right of Kings such men as Sir William Blackstone started pushing the evil of the Divine Right of Parliament – pretending that anything that Parliament declared was the law, was the law. This view naturally outraged the Founding Fathers of the United States – and helped lead to the American War of Independence.
In the 19th such as legal writers as Frederick William Maitland went almost full Thomas Hobbes – so there was the odd situation of the supposed leading authorities on the Common Law, such as Maitland, spitting on the basic foundation of the Common Law (natural law – natural justice) and claiming that any ravings of Parliament were “the law” and must be obeyed.
Maitland goes so far as to claim that no statute of Parliament has even been “irrational or wicked” – that is a lie as (as Maitland knew very well) many statutes of Parliament had been irrational or wicked (or both) – for example the “Black Act” (or “Black Acts”) by which about 200 offences, some of them fairly minor, were punishable by death – juries, quite rightly, refusing to convict if they thought they had a judge who would enforce this wicked Act of Parliament (one of many wicked Acts of Parliament).
The question is why (why) did legal scholars such as Maitland tell such blatant and extreme lies? The only answer I can think of when considering that question is that that the PHILOSOPHY that was fashionable in the time of Maitland and others meant that one could not come to natural law conculusions.
The philosophy of such men as Mr Hobbes and Mr Hume (and indeed even Mr John Stuart Mill – although his case is more complicated) is not compatible with such things as the Bill of Rights – British or American.
F.A. Hayek (an admirer of Mr Hume and Mr J.S. Mill) says in “The Constitution of Liberty” (1960) that he wants to keep the political and legal principles of the “Old Whigs” whilst rejecting their philosophy.
You can not successfully do that – it does not work. It does not work because the basic philosophy (for example what a human person, the “I”, is) is the foundation for the political and legal principles.
Reject the basic philosophical principles and you end up with Parliament (or officials – or whatever) being able to do anything they feel like doing to people – no limits on state power at all.
There is no substitute for a proper education in the “old and outdated” philosophy of the nature-of-man and so on – otherwise if judges think in terms of rights at all they will not think in terms of limits on state power (right to keep and bear arms, freedom of speech, and so on) they will think in terms of rights as in goods or services from the state – such as a “right to holidays with pay” (drawn from that confused mess the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948).
If judges are to be powerful they must first (first) be properly educated in basic principles – as, for example, Sir John Holt (Chief Justice from 1689 to 1710) was.
Putting people who do not believe in the philosophy behind the Constitution of the United States on the Supreme Court of the United States was the road to certain disaster – and Harvard Law School was controlled by people who rejected the basic philosophy behind the Constitution of the United States, from the early 1900s.
It was only a matter of time before totally outrageous judgements, such as the two judgements in the “gold clause” cases of 1935, started to occur.
“Paul you are saying that a leftist should not be a judge” – yes, that is exactly what I am saying.
For example, how can someone who does not believe in private property rights, who believes in “Social Justice” instead, enforce private property rights? He or she will not even try – indeed they will rule against people who try and defend their property themselves.
Without the defence of basic private property rights civilisation starts to decline – as it is in American cities right now.
The same is true of juries – if juries no longer care about whether someone is really innocent or guilty, and just judge people on the basis of whether they (the jury) like them or not, then civilisation starts to fall apart – again this is true in some American cities right now, where juries do not seem to grasp the basic principles of natural justice (or do grasp them – and reject these principles).
Where most people are just no-good civilisation can not stand – not in the long term, and contra J.M. Keynes, this is the long term.
Civilisations do not normally collapse because of external attack – at least not unless they have been weakened internally, by many people no longer supporting the principles of civilisation.
The West also created Marxism: the Anti-West. Why?
Apologies for OT but a response is needed.
Paul, I do not think you will find one instance in the New Testament where Jesus required a payment of suffering for misdeeds.
To the prostitute who was about to be stoned and whom He rescued He just said, ‘go and sin no more’.
Mercy and forgiveness are the key elements.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us”.
JohnB.
Repentance has to be sincere, not a matter of saying a few “Our Fathers” or “Hail Mary’s” and then going back to raping children.
How can one tell if repentance is sincere? A priest does not have the power of God – he can not see into the soul of the person who claims to be repenting, so the only way that a priest knows if a repentance is sincere is if the person who is claiming to repent seeks out just punishment.
It is NOT the suffering of the person who claims to have repented that matters – it is that the person (for example the child rapist) has volunteered for just punishment – not tried to cover up what they have done. It is that which shows they have repented.
“Go now and sin no more” – NOT “say a couple of Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s and I will hold down the next child victim for you, and then you can hold them down when it is my turn – and you can grant me absolution when I confess to you, just as I will do with you”.
There has to be sincere repentance – not just a ritual.
lucklucky
I do not thing “the West” as a collective entity created Marxism – but the West was, and is, very vulnerable to it.
Why?
Because the basic economic and political philosophy ideas of the West were in terrible trouble BEFORE Marxism came along.
For example the false ideas of David Ricardo on the Labour Theory of Value and on LAND are, if taken to their logical conclusions (and someone was going to do that – if it was not Karl Marx and Henry George it would have someone else) not compatible with civilisation – it really is that serious.
And the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, state absolutism, had already captured the minds of lawyers before Dr Marx came along – Mr Hobbes himself wrote a Dialogue between a “Philosopher and a Student of the Common Law of England” rightly understanding that scholars of the Common Law were the chief enemies of his evil and false idea that law is just “commands” of the ruler or rulers.
But by the 19th century – this idea was common among Common Lawyers themselves, at least in the United Kingdom, where the perverted idea of Sir William Blackstone (mid 1700s) that any ravings of Parliament were “law” and must be obeyed, was common.
Blackstone paid lip service to natural law (natural justice) but, in practice, he was a Hobbesian.
If anyone denies this – show on what grounds a follower of Blackstone (of the “Blackstone heresy”) would oppose a Parliamentary Statute that said that everyone with blue eyes should be burned alive.
This idea that government (the “legislature” which is held to “make law” rather than to FIND the law) should be able to do whatever it likes, that whatever ravings it produces must be obeyed as law, is bound to lead to tyranny.
The Founding Fathers of the United States understood this – hence the American War of Independence.
But few legal scholars in the United States really understand these matters now – indeed they are far more likely to follow Social Justice rather than Justice.
Social Justice is the opposite of Justice, it is injustice and, as such, it is evil.
But how many people dare say that now?
There has to be honesty.
Without the acknowledgement of reality, the truth, there is nothing, sure.
I don’t think honesty comes from a big stick.
For a priest to know?
Well, you can’t fool God. That is all that really matters to me.
Organisational structures. Not so much.
The priest needs to keep his mind and spirit close to God.
Thank you Paul, but you can’t say those men aren’t product of the Western civilization.
I would say that with high West development cames with arrogance and hubris that not only everything can be controlled but also it should. Still i think that is not an enough explanation that in it there is also a quasi religious motive of purity. The New Socialist Man, The New Techno Man, The New Woke Man are alter-egos of the Man without sins, and for many of those that want the Man without Sins exterminating Man is a solution.
Uhhhh… I’m glad to see Westerners taking pride in Judeo Christian culture.
But starting with Christianity is typical of the old, ungrateful successionist doctrine that portrayed Judaism as primitive.
Much of the “Christian” ideas discussed in this clip are actually Jewish. They did not spring fully-formed from the forehead of Paul, Jesus, or any of the other Jews who founded Christianity… they got them from their Rabbis, from the Jewish milieu that formed them.
The core catechism of Jewish monotheism is the engine of the West:
One omnipotent, incorruptible, ineffable G-d
– who cares deeply about morality, and His creation
– who gives humans free will and calls them children
– these lead ineffably to the idea that humans are fundamentally equal to each other, freeborn, and of transcendent worth as individuals.
Christendom started with these *Jewish* ideas – so hard to see until recently, because they were ubiquitous – and got to free, liberal Western democratic society.
Judaism started the process – starting to limit slavery and concubinage, separating the powers of prince, priest, and prophet, and establishing a Sabbatical system that regularly redistributed agricultural resources to free citizens, combatting serfdom and concentration of power.
Again – I’m pleased to see people talking proudly and avidly about these concepts.
It would have been nicer – and more honest – to see the old grudge match left behind…
JohnB – correct.
They can not fool God – and saying “but I said the Our Fathers – I did all the ritual things” will not help at the Last Judgement.
lucklucky – I recently posted to Facebook a lecture (not by me) on Descartes and Francis Bacon – two philosophers normally presented as opposites, but (the lecture argued) they were, in one important respect, the same.
What is the purpose of science? The traditional answer is to find truth – to understand the physical universe.
But that is NOT the answer of Descartes or Francis Bacon – they give the answer that science is about CONTROLLING nature for the benefit of humans, not (not) about find truth and understanding for its own sake.
The desire to make science just a servant of human desires is indeed hubris – it also shows a contempt for truth-as-such as end-in-its-self.
For example, Francis Bacon did not care that the Earth went round the Sun – indeed he wanted people who taught that punished.
He was, in the true sense, not a man of science at all – Sir Francis Bacon did not really care about objective and universal truth for its own sake, and nether (it is alleged) did Descartes.
If all that matters is power (power over nature and power over one’s fellow man) it is a short step to the endless lies of the Marxists.
And to the endless lies of the Corporate State regime (the dream of Saint-Simon) that now threatens to dominate the United States and other lands.