Natural Law and Human Dignity: Universal Ethics in an Historical World by Eberhard Schockenhoff (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Natural Law and Human Dignity: Universal Ethics in an Historical World. By EBERHARDSCHOCKENHOFF. Trans. by BRIANMCNEIL. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 330. $44.95 (doth), $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8132-1339-8 (doth), 0-8132-1340-1 (paper). Eberhard Schockenhoff is Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Freiburg. As a member of the National Ethics Council in Germany, he recently concurred in its recommendation that therapeutic cloning should not "at this time" be allowed in Germany. He, along with a minority on the council, argued that creating and then destroying human organisms is morally impermissible, even for research and medical purposes. It is dear, then, what sorts of ethical dialogue his book is meant to make comprehensible. Schockenhoff has an ambitious three-part plan: (1) outline and address recurring critiques of natural-law theory, particulady those stemming from the "irreversible" historicization of our consciousness of morals and culture; (2) argue for the reasonableness of natural-law theory's claim of universality, which is limited to the establishment of absolute rights, leaving significant room for a more robust ethics based on a richer theory of human nature; (3) establish the foundations of a universal claim for "biblical ethics" as contained in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, Ultimately, the life of the Christian churches must "bear witness to the inherent rationality of the high ethical teachings contained in the biblical history of revelation" and put them on offer in an "open contest about the humanum, where the various world religions, political utopias, and secular humanisms challenge each other" (284), The denouement of this program is a section on the distinction betvveen law and morality, which nevertheless suggests that they have a common origin in a basic notion of human rights, which becomes an alternative to the notion of "basic norm," used in positivistic theories of law to avoid an infinite regression in justifications. Schockenhoff is seeking a moral relativity without moral relativism: a thesis which will account for changes in the Roman Catholic teaching on slavery, torture, lending at interest, and voluntary organ donation, without ceding that there is no kernel of universal teaching. He wants, in addition, an historical consciousness without historicism, where the human being is understood as a 153 154 BOOK REVIEWS subject with an "inherent historicity": "the constitution of his finite nature as body and soul give him this character a priori: therefore, he is not only 'made' by history, but 'makes' it" (128-29). Schockenhoff reviews four argumentative strategies used by twentiethcentury philosophers against ethical relativism as a preliminary to making the case for universal ethics (42-81). Each strategy reveals something of what he demands from a successful ethical theory. (1) While cultural studies at the empirical level cannot establish either moral universals or irreducible moral pluralism, (2) dismissing the empirical level in order to avoid the naturalistic fallacy deprives moral philosophy of a due reflection "on the problem posed by the empirical plurality of our moral ideas." (3) All ethical (as opposed to merely cultural) relativisms either do not incorporate a principle of tolerance, or suffer logical collapse because they do, since this principle is nonrelative. The practical requirement of some sort of intercultural dialogue as an alternative to violent conflict requires "the transcultural validityofthe principle ofreason" to establish differing groups as equal partners in the discourse. (4) Finally, distinguishing among different levels of moral consciousness allows for the coexistence of disagreement on surface levels and agreement on the level of the principles from which the ultimate justification of an action or rule is derived. On the analogy ofbiology, the "occurrence of individual deviations or the formation ofirregular patterns is not evidence against the existence of a universal species-specific program, according to which all the examples ... display a core of common characteristics in exactly the same way." Schockenhoff's retrieval of natural-law theory is centered on Thomas Aquinas and assumes that his teaching "has not simply been disposed of by the critical objections to" later rationalist and neo-Thomistic doctrines (136). He divides contemporary interpretations of Aquinas on the relationship between natural law and practical reason into...