A free society needs a foundation. Part 6

I first published this series of articles in the German-speaking area under #freie-gesellschaft. I started the attempt to translate this article series also for the English-speaking countries. I have only a limited command of English and have therefore used a translation program. However, many terms are very difficult to translate because there is no clear translation for some words. I hope, however, that at least the meaning of the content will be understandable.
for the English readers I will open the section #free-society

It'll be more exciting from now on. We begin to lay a strengthening foundation for natural law, also known as the banner of freedom. We are now stiffening the foundation so that it becomes both static and dynamic (movable).

The aim of the discussions so far has been to bring the concept of the ego, its sociality and the concept of freedom into a form that corresponds to our cognitive faculty. They represent a kind of armament or also equipment for a principle that becomes the starting point for the concept of free society to be presented in this series of articles #free-society and the criticism of unfree social forms to be associated with it.

One reads the sentences about duality in the ego, about the constitution of you and about the equal freedom of all so easily. We will see that there is an immense explosive force behind the insights it expresses.

From part 5 (here #free-society immortalized for the first time) it resulted: As a result of the ego-transformation to the you, all people are equally entitled to freedom. The "meta-physical collectivization" is based on equal freedom for all. The trilogy freedom, equality and generality was derived from the self-experiencing ego and its social-forming act of will. Freedom, equality and generality are now nothing other than the three principles of natural law.

It may be interesting for my readers that the three terms already appear in John Locke (reprinted 1977) and in the Virginia Bill of Rights (1791, Section 1) written by Thomas Jefferson as explicitly formulated natural law grounds. The principles are not clearly stated as such and were probably not conscious as such. A rational society, however, was obviously already seen at that time, to put it in John Henry Mackay's words, as "the social state of the same freedom for all" (1980; see also Kurt Zube, 1977).

Now the most diverse forms of life develop in each ego. Each ego unfolds its individual life in one way or another. Developing one's life means realizing oneself, becoming something, realizing a given potential. People are fundamentally different in this respect. To want to bring something like "equality" and "generality" into play contradicts the observable. The concrete development of life is everyone's very own thing and has a different form with everyone.
With the individual development of life and the three principles freedom, equality and generality we now have all elements together to formulate a principle:

Everyone has the same right to freedom of expression.

The sentence describes man's natural right - in desirable brevity and conciseness. It refers the principles of freedom, equality and generality to the physical life of each individual ("development of life"). Hence the version: Everyone has the same right to free development of life.

Natural law "materializes" the legal principles of freedom, generality and equality, which otherwise - as mere principles - are free of all materialization and as such must remain free at all times. Principles - taken purely as principles - are always immaterial. Only in connection with the concept of unfolding life do freedom, universal unity and equality appear materialized, i.e. present in space-time. In this way, connected with life ("filled with life"), with that which really takes place, they receive flesh.

The principles of natural law refer to man sui generis, to "the idea of mankind in our subjects" (Kant). The unfolding of life, on the other hand, affects each individual, in the flesh. It is different for everyone. It depends on the individually available (inherited or self-created) resources.

To anchor the aspect of the human development of life in the principle of natural law seems particularly important to me. With the term "unfolding of life" the really lived life of all human beings, i.e. of each individual, is understood at all stages of its development: from infancy to old age. This diversity is given freedom by the principle of natural law.

Natural law refers to that right which "every human being is entitled to by virtue of his humanity" (Kant). It is a right equal for all. It should be noted that the term "equality" refers here to the law and not to the development of life. Non-observance of this fact has led to strange omissions and demands.

It was essential that some difficult preliminary considerations had to be made about the version of the natural law principle presented here and against its impermissible interpretation (see Parts 3 to 5 in #free-society). That it was developed from the sphere of experience of the ego is based on its evidence, which can also be experienced intersubjectively.

With the sentence "All have the same right to free development of life", natural law - as far as I can see - is formulated for the first time concisely and comprehensibly for everyone. This became possible because the discussions in the publications from Part 3 to Part 5 laid a solid foundation for it. The proposition represents a succinct formula that is founded in the nature of the ego and is therefore not based on mere intuition. Because of its brevity, it is memorable and easy to remember.

It is conceivable that in the future an even more catchy formula will be found for natural law, a formula in which the freedom given to each individual human being is pronounced even more evidently. The advantages of the version of natural law that I have proposed become apparent with further explication.

Natural law is the banner of freedom. It is because the development of life of all human individuals takes place by nature and because freedom is granted to all in the same way. The version of the term offered here is to be distinguished from the Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of natural law. There the divine order is the starting point, here the liberty-gifted ego.

Instead of the principle just formulated, Johannes Messner, for example, who refers to the European tradition of natural law, offers us moral imperatives in his very extensive bible on natural law (in the 7th ed. 1984 almost 1400 pages!). He enumerates: "Keep moderation, behave humanely; do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you (golden rule); give to each his own (justice); do not reward good with evil (gratitude); keep the given word (faithfulness); obey the legitimate authorities. But these are nothing other than man-made imperatives for human behavior. They are based on traditional "moral principles," as Messner says. They are anchored in the conscience. Readers have certainly not been unaware that I have proclaimed natural law not as a regulative of action, but as a naturally predetermined right. I developed it from the self-experience of the self. Some problems arose which are connected with the limitation of our cognitive faculty.

Because the natural law principles of generality, freedom and equality are founded in the ego, the natural law principle is necessary and appropriate. Insofar as the you - on the basis of its constitution (see Part 4) - is equal to the ego, it is also you-moderate. With this principle we have an extremely ego- and you-appropriate legal basis, which in addition has "flesh", that is, is related to the living being of each individual.

As self-evident as natural law may seem to us after its realization, it already determined our existence unrecognized. The law of nature is lived unconsciously by man, without requiring a deeper reflection. The requirement of such a "right" only comes to consciousness in our naive life when we are handicapped in our possibilities of life: in captivity, in oppression or in excessive gangsterism.

Walter Lippmann speaks of a "guiding law" in his comprehensive Freedom Work. "The conviction that there is a guiding law that stands above all written laws, ordinances and customs can be found among all cultural peoples. It arises from an unclear intuitive perception. Again and again people pay attention to this intuition in order to forget it again and to go out again for its discovery and its possession. For at least 25 centuries people have struggled to formulate them. They have expressed it in a thousand ways. They have discussed it ever since they learned to discuss general ideas. Usually the rulers disputed the idea of the guiding law, whereas the subjects called upon it... If one asks where this guiding law is to be found, the answer is that it is due to a gradual discovery of people who are striving to civilize, and that content and framework are only gradually revealing themselves, a development that is far from complete" (1936).

Lippmann rightly observes that this "guiding law", as unclear as it has been so far, has always been the basic motive for the struggle against all forms of oppression. At the time of Lippmann, as he himself says, there was no clear and unambiguous formulation of his so-called "law" known.

Whatever the content of such a guiding law may be formulated in the future, it must refer to the three natural law principles of freedom, generality and equality and to the concrete development of each individual's life. Then it will be a battle cry against any form of oppression. If it remains in the dark, there will always be a group of people who rise above their fellow human beings as authorities and who claim to lead the "ordinary man on the street" - and exploit and harass him (we will talk about this in later parts).

The formulation of the principle of natural law chosen here has not only the advantage that we can do without mere intuitions in this respect. The principle implies further sentences. It allows for a wealth of derivations that all natural law states. The class of sentences that can be derived from the principle of natural law is almost infinite. It has a large scope because the term unfolding of life is extremely rich and therefore a lot of final chains can be formed from the principle of natural law.

One can separate from the term unfolding of life arbitrary possibilities of unfolding and form a priori second premises on the way of analytical judgements. With the principle of natural law as the first premise, they produce a rich class of conclusions. In this way, many near-life rights can be derived from natural law - by means of formal logic (syllogism). These, in turn, allow derivations, the derivations under certain circumstances also again and so on. Because they are all concretisations of the term "development of life", they always have a direct relation to human life.

The principle of natural law, for example, equally grants everyone the right to freely practice religion, the right to free association and assembly, the right to freedom of movement, the right to freely dispose of their property, the right to freedom of choice of profession, the right to freedom of expression, the right to sue for injustice, the right to whom one wants to entrust one's secrets, and much more. The conclusions of the respective syllogisms would then be: "All have the same right to freedom of worship"; "All have the same right to freedom of movement"; "All have the same right to freedom of association", freedom of expression, etc., etc. From these sentences it follows that the concept of equality is always only in connection with the concept of "law", but nowhere in connection with the concept of "development of life", a - as already emphasized above - very important point for human coexistence!

The rights just mentioned are derivatives of natural law. A subclass of these derivatives are the so-called "human rights". I am not aware of any human right whose core statement could not be derived from the above-mentioned natural law, even though its proclamators may have formulated it in a covert manner (it must be borne in mind that the famous Human Rights Charter does not only contain natural rights). It is a conglomerate of rights, duties, prohibitions, claims, etc. The statements to be described in the actual sense as "human rights" make up only a limited part of the text of the Charter.)

If one wants to keep the accusation away from human rights, that they are only fiction and mere label fraud, one has to clarify the nature of the natural law on which they are based. This is particularly necessary because natural law, cleansed of its historical distortions, provides the basis for all further discussions and theses of this publication.

Because the principle of natural law permits derivations in many directions, it can be called an axiom by fugue and right. This axiom may not be mentioned in any law book of the world. Within the Free Society, however, it is the reason for all the rights man is entitled to by nature. It is therefore a fundamental right (axiom). The rights usually also called "fundamental rights" - above all the so-called human rights - are only derivatives of this one fundamental right.

We owe the biting remark to the provocative nature of Max Stirner: "What use is it to the sheep that nobody shortens their freedom of speech? They stick to bleating" (reprint 1972).

He thus denounces the euphoric ideologisation of human rights. Its content can be easily ascertained from the above principle by anyone who is capable of reasoning.

Even if an individual does not or cannot use one of the rights for his own development of life, natural law does not lose its significance for individual life in a free society.

The advantage of the general version of natural law is that one can spare oneself the breakdown down to the smallest details. One needs only one sentence - as a fundamental sentence for the entire natural law system. Despite the multitude of natural law derivatives, there is basically only this one human right formulated above. Kant would not be Kant if he had not noticed this. In his writings, for example, human rights are always only mentioned in singular terms (Martin Kriele, 1988).

The main forms of human development are growth, action and speech. In this respect, the most important derivatives of natural law are freedom of growth (which includes freedom of education), freedom of action (which includes freedom of contract) and freedom of speech (which includes freedom of the press, i.e. freedom to publish writings of any content). As derivatives of natural law, they are also natural rights.

The striking thing about the axiom of natural law is that it contains only elements from the really lived world of man. Its content touches the two spheres of experience of the immaterial and the material: the three legal principles of generality, equality and freedom (immaterial) on the one hand and the development of life (material) on the other. In this respect, the axiom of natural law and its derivatives are not only taken from human nature, but are also founded there. They are not "reconstructed in thought experiments" like the five "types of fundamental rights" that Jürgen Habermas, for example, thought he had to invent (1998).

In the derivation of natural law, it pays off that we have approached the topics "Two ways of existence of the ego" (see Part 3), "Sociality of the ego" (see Part 4) and "Freedom of the ego and freedom of the you" (see Part 5) somewhat more deeply and radically than usual.

In order to make the role of natural law for the social existence of man completely transparent, attention must be drawn to a problem that arises at the latest when natural law is fanned out into its derivatives. If these are placed side by side, one quickly finds that the rights of one ego collide with the rights of the other ego.

It is true that natural law applies to every ego. But the natural law of the one restricts or even destroys the natural law of the other. For example, the right to freedom of housing may be opposed to the right to freedom of movement. Where a place of residence is already occupied, one cannot simply move out to create a place of residence for oneself. One would have to fight for it against the first owner. The right to freedom of movement of people is thus limited. Another example is the right to freedom of opinion, which personality rights ("integrity") can stand in the way of.

The use of rights that are derivatives of natural law obviously gives rise to conflicts. If this oddity is traced back to its origin, it becomes apparent that conflicts of the kind just described are already inherent in natural law itself. In this respect, they are system conflicts. The right to free development of life, which is equal for all, is at the same time the negation of the right to free development of life, which is equal for all. The natural law of freedom is two-faced, Janus-faced. What is the reason for this?

In the principle of natural law not only freedom but also equality of all is stated. Because the same freedom is granted to all, there is already in it the opposition of the freedom of one against that of the other. I stand against I, will against will. The demanded equality - together with the equally demanded generality - slows down the freedom of both.

The guarantor of the freedom of the ego - with the principles of generality and equality - also holds within itself the taming of personal freedom. The equality and generality required by natural law put the freedom required by the same law in its place. In accordance with the principle of freedom, my legality must be as unrestricted as possible. But it should also - according to the principles of equality and generality - give space to the right of another, and that means restriction.

It follows from this that, despite the importance of the principle of natural law as a banner of freedom and despite its effectiveness as a battle cry against all forms of oppression, natural law and its derivatives do not create peace by themselves. They do not dissuade anyone from being the wolf of another wolf (Thomas Hobbes). Natural law does not eliminate the war of all against all.

Especially those who fully proclaim the "human rights" and hope for the salvation of mankind seem to be completely unsuspecting at this point. Natural law and all its derivatives merely demand what every human being is entitled to by virtue of his human nature, namely freedom. That it (and the human rights derived from it) could create peace among human beings is a completely absurd idea.

Friends of nature and human rights find themselves in a considerable dilemma. The dilemma is rooted in natural law itself. Therefore, it cannot be eliminated without eliminating natural law itself. But nobody wants that. For natural law is our elixir of life. - For some time now, humanity has found a way to escape the dilemma or to deal with it in a rational way: the development of a completely different kind of law that exists alongside natural law without replacing or repressing it. This right is called "statuary law" because of its origin. Statutory law will be discussed in detail in the later parts of this publication.

And so part 6 of the series #free-society concludes with the words "All have the same right to free development of life" and in the next contributions we take care of the realization. For reading all parts are listed under #free-society.

Your @zeitgedanken

#free-society #anarchy #freedom #voluntaryism #steem