Isaiah Roman

Rule of Law: Foundation

Logos. This Greek word was the foundation of all logic and rationality. Literally translated it means “speech, word, reason.” The Greek word for law is “nomos.” This word, strangely enough, is also used for “melody” or “strain.” In classic Greek philosophy there is also the concept of cosmos. The word cosmos is defined as “an ordered, harmonious whole.”

Plato assumed a transcendent logos to the cosmos. In his estimation this transcendent logos was reality, and our existence was merely a shadow of that reality. Yet within logos there is a need for nomos. Aristotle discovered this, and summarized it within the Law of Noncontradiction. He clearly understood the need for explaining the laws which already existed within cosmos, because he, like his predecessor, understood that laws are a product of a preexistent order.

This concept of two essences, “heterousis” was the result of the need for an explanation of spirit and body. This has always been the quandary of men; why do we have a need for law?

Laws keep men in order. Laws keep societies running in harmony. Without nomos, there is no cosmos, and without logos we cannot explain or express these concepts. The simple surface issue of the establishment of laws to provide for safety, security and productivity within society began to be explored by philosophers not as a means of understanding the need for law, but to understand the establishment of law. The overriding thing that all these discussions are based on is the question; what is the foundation of law?

Hellenistic thought recognized that law preceded humanity. Intrinsic within creation itself is a sense of orderliness. Through cause and effect we can see the need for orderliness. If you put your hand in fire, you get burned. The natural law teaches us that fire is dangerous and therefore should be controlled. This thought process is not germane to the Greeks. All societies have understood that there are certain rules within nature that must be obeyed. The society that begins to believe that it can supersede these natural laws the society that destroys itself.

But, because natural law precedes, and supersedes humanity, the answer to the primary question becomes even more mysterious. The Greeks began to recognize, through Plato and Aristotle’s examinations of the meaning of cosmos, that the gods of Olympus were insufficient as an explanation of the primacy issue.

The gods were capricious, contentious and immoral. They shared too many human traits. The Titans, their predecessors, were despotic and evil. It was when the Greeks, under Alexander, encountered the Jains, the homeless ascetics, or Buddhists in India that Hellenism began to express the meaningless of existence. Alexander took several philosophers with him, and himself – a student of aristotle – was a renowned philosopher. Their discussions with the Indian philosophers changed the strain of Hellenistic thought towards a form of asceticism. Platonism died in the face of self-examination. The basic contradiction between cosmos itself and the Hellenistic explanation of the foundations of cosmos could not be sustained.

The Buddha had taken a long, hard look at Hinduism and found that the plethora of gods were also insufficient to explain order. Too many gods with too many variant interests creates chaos, not transcendent order. Buddha proposed something very similar to Plato in that there must be some force, some greater power that provides a general sense of reason for the existence of everything. Yet, where Plato embodied that force, having understood that order does not come from chaos, Buddha generalized that force as a non-centralized, undirected essence of blind, meaningless forces of nature. And yet, both recognized that there was something at the heart of all things which could not be explained by simply understanding the nature of things.

In our time, this society has decided that science holds the explanation of all things. This is, however, no different than the problem that the Buddha perceived. There are too many variant interests which are all insufficient to explain order. Science changes from day to day. What science proclaims today has often been proved to fail to describe reality. This is why science has moved from the empirical study of phenomena to the creation of explanations for phenomena. In essence, science has found it’s roots; alchemy.

So what then is the foundation of law? Even in a world where evolution is used to describe the origins of species, those species all were forced to adhere to natural law. If morals, laws and societies formed as a response to the influences of nature as part of the process of evolution, then it is nature that is the foundation of all law.

Our founding fathers wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” However, the preceding text clearly explains the context under which these words present themselves;

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” – The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

Our founding fathers recognized the dilemma that Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, and every other thinking man throughout all history had wrestled with. They also understood that the only truly transcendent force which fits Logos resides within nature, but also within “Nature’s God.”

The Rule of Law requires a transcendent authority. In order for law to rule, those rules must be both above reproach and above revision. If laws are perfect in their design, there is no need for a revision. If the authority for those laws reside within divinity, then men have no ability to change them. This is why our nation was founded upon the concept “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

It also goes on to say that when a government “becomes destructive” towards these natural rights, granted by God, that this government should necessarily be abolished by the people. But, are rights the same things as laws? Clearly not. We were created with certain rights intrinsic to our existence, but along with those rights came responsibilities. It is when these responsibilities are not kept that justice must be exacted. It is for this reason that laws exist. Laws describe the order, but more than this, they point out the dangers of breaking the conditions of the order.

What our founding fathers understood very well is that laws do not grant rights. Our rights as individuals were granted to us as part of our creation. Laws condemn those who would seek to destroy those rights. The law exists as a means of maintaining order, through the threat of justice; do right and thrive, do wrong and die.

Law, all law, requires a law giver. Without a law giver who has the authority to enforce the law, the law is meaningless. Where all other definitions of the transcendent law giver fail, God prevails. The very heart of the Judeo-Christian ethos is law. The understanding of that law was provided for within the person of the Christ. It is on these that all of Western Civilization founded it’s concepts of justice, law and order.

The culmination of these concepts became a nation of laws, established in justice for all. How this came to be is a story of its own…