Philosophy — Natural Law, Existence, Perfection and Transexuality.

[5] It is, moreover, a sign of perfection in things of the lower order of reality that they are able to produce their like, as Aristotle points out in his Meteorology.4

Aquinas, St. Thomas. Summa Contra Gentiles: Book Two: Creation (p. 37). University of Notre Dame Press. Kindle Edition.

Benjamin Caine has an essay on “Catholic Sanctimony and the Alleged Naturalness of Moral Law.”

Putting aside the probability that if the title had referred to the “sanctimony” of a recognized “protected group,” [1]Cain would be getting an email from Medium about violating its rules, Cain’s essay makes a fairly typical category error, namely, Cain thinks that the “nature” in “natural law” refers to the phenomenon of that which happens ordinarily in the course of material existence, rather than the “nature of the thing,” i.e., its metaphysical causes such as formal, final, material, or efficient. If you want to get more grounding on this point, then please consider this extensive review of Heinrich Rommen’s 1933 “The Natural Law.”

You can read Cain’s essay and my response.

My response elicited this:

As a trans man, the people crowing about natural law meaning something’s “form or essence” and that “things are more perfect when they become closer to their essential nature (or form),” become pathetically funny when they suddenly have to contend with trans people transitioning, going “wait no not like that you dirty degenerate.”

Like…I can promise you that what you say is absolutely true. When I started transitioning and living as my authentic self I stopped cutting and drinking. I stopped disassociating on a daily basis and have a healthier relationship with my body and more self-esteem.

Yet I’m somehow going against “natural law” because I’m not breeding and married like a good little Catholic female. When the ironic thing is that me forcing myself to live as a woman would make me less perfect and harmonious with myself and the world.

My counter-response is here:

Did it feel good for you to vent about your misunderstanding of natural law and sneer at “good little Catholics” whether female or male?

I don’t know what you think you were responding to but it was not to anything I said.

But let’s try to take your objections seriously.

Let’s take you and your personal feelings out of the picture for a second.

Would you agree that there seems to be a desire on the part of things — let’s say humans — seek what they feel is good?

When you transitioned weren’t you seeking what you thought was the good?

Didn’t you think that you were in some fashion perfecting yourself and making yourself better?

The answer to all that has to be “yes.”

Next, wouldn’t you agree that ordinarily things — people, animals, plants, anything that exists — seeks in its own say to preserve its own existence?

Wouldn’t you agree that it is the nature of things to ordinarily want to extend their existence into the future?

Wouldn’t you agree that in animals we see this occur ordinarily through reproduction?

But you in your search for your own perfection have given up this ordinary way of seeking the good, i.e., extending one’s existence into the future by reproduction.

So, we have a situation where searching for one good is at a variance from seeking another good.

No one is saying you have to prefer one over the other, but as a thinking being, a desire for self-perfection at least warrants a recognition of the tension in your position.

And, if you have been able to follow this thus far without snorting, stamping your feet, clutching your hair and shouting out bad words…congratulations! You are doing philosophy, which is not about making you comfortable.

Philosophy is an invitation to think deeper about our condition. Let’s consider the points I made and how they are formulated into Aquinas’s observation that “It is, moreover, a sign of perfection in things of the lower order of reality that they are able to produce their like.”

Is this true?

It seems like it. A thing that can produce its like seems better — more perfect — than a thing that can’t. Admittedly, this requires that we be bold enough to rank things from high to low, such that we can say that horses are better — or more perfect — than rocks, or that humans who can reproduce are better — or more perfect in the sense of approximating the ideal of being human — than humans who can’t.

As a matter of common sense, it is hard to argue with this. We axiomatically understand that a human being who cannot reproduce is maimed or deficient in some way. It may seem cruel to describe anyone as “maimed or deficient” but those are simply descriptive words, not moral judgments.

Maybe Aquinas was wrong? What would it mean for Aquinas to be wrong on his claim that “a sign of perfection in things of the lower order of reality that they are able to produce their like.”

Perhaps there is no order to existence? Maybe there is no better or worse, more perfect and less perfect? I guess that argument is possible, but it means that we must reject reason, which requires being able to make comparisons between things. Further, it is inconsistent with the argument of the trans individual who adamantly insists that he/she/it/they became better by changing identities.

All this argument would do in this case is to beg the question by saying that this one arbitrarily chosen perfection is better than alternative perfections. If we can’t agree on that, then reason breaks down, and we are left with force.

Perhaps, more importantly, it disarms the strongest foundation of reason, namely, its grounding in existence as a metaphysical concept. Certainly, we all understand that existence is real. We all ought to understand that to exist is a perfection of a thing. Things cannot be perfect if they don’t exist; they can only be perfect insofar as they exist, and the more they exist in conformity to the ideal of the nature of the thing they are, the more perfect they are. [2]

If we start with the correlation of existence and perfection, then the more existence a thing has, the more perfect it is. Things that cannot cease to exist are more perfect than those things that do cease to exist. Things that can extend their existence second-hand through reproduction are more perfect than things that can’t.

So, it is a sign of perfection in lower things that they are able to produce their like. Reproduction is not perfection, but it is more perfect than the alternative.

So, what can we say about those who voluntarily choose to remove their capacity for reproduction? Well, obviously, we would say that they have moved away from a due perfection.

It may be the case that the decision to make such a retrograde motion is rational. A Catholic would say that a celibate priest has embraced a greater perfection in God by giving up the perfection of reproduction. That’s arguable if there is a God and celibacy embraces the perfection of God. Of course, a Protestant or atheist would say that’s wrong and/or nuts.

This foregrounds this issue in the discussion about whether a trans person who removes their reproductive organs is more or less perfect than a person who doesn’t. The issue is have they moved to a higher and different kind of perfection?

Obviously, there are arguments to be made on all sides, but the point for me, right now, is that at least the discussion can be had through reasons which requires a shared understanding of the relevant concepts.

Philosophy Matters.

Footnotes.

1. Catholics are a minority group. They have suffered historic discrimination in Protestant America. America was essentially founded on anti-Catholicism (not slavery) insofar as Protestant English settlers found themselves between threatening Catholic powers to the north and south. Catholics have also been subjected to persecution by the Left, and recently, Leftists in America have questioned whether Catholics should be on the Supreme Court or if Catholic values are consistent with Progressive values. But in the ranked system of victimization, Catholics are no longer a “protected minority,” so don’t look to Medium to say, “Hey, there!! Pump the breaks on that one” if the speech would be described as “hate speech” if it was directed at a different group. I’m not complaining; I am stating facts. I’m also Catholic, and I don’t think that Catholicism needs to be cultivated in a nursery. We outlasted Nero, Napoleon, and Hitler. We will outlast “progressives,” who are the least impressive of the many anti-Catholics who have slid across the stage of history.
2. Of course, one can imagine the stock response of nihilism, viz, who is to define the ideal of the thing — its nature? But that is an argument about epistemology, not ontology. All we can do as finite human beings is to affirm that the subject is within the scope of reason. Even if we never fully comprehend the answer, we can move somewhat down the road to understanding the issue.