Diritto naturale
.. è una consapevolezza

A Word on Society. 

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Man is not born for society—society is created for man. Those who forget the Divine within the human being and place society above him worship the non-divine. Mindless veneration of society is a sign of artificiality in human life, a corrosion of self-law. Man does not belong to society, but to the Divine.

Those who seek to weaken the Divine within him—by imposing on his mind, his life, and his soul the bondage of societal norms and countless external ties—have lost sight of humanity’s true purpose. The sin of such oppression prevents the awakening of the inner Divine; Power falls asleep. If one must serve, let them serve the Divine, not society. In that service lies sweetness and progress. The highest joy, freedom in captivity, and freedom without restriction are its sublime fruits.

Society cannot be the goal—it is a means, a tool. Self-inspired knowledge and power, emerging through action and shaped by the Divine, are the true guides of human life. Their progressive unfolding is the goal of life’s spiritual evolution.

This knowledge and power must use society as an instrument—shaping it, and if need be, transforming it. This is the natural order.

A stagnant and unprogressive society becomes the tomb of lifeless humanity. The outpouring of life and the radiance of conscious force are destined to bring social transformation.

Binding man with a thousand chains to the social mechanism and crushing him leads inevitably to inertia and decay. We have diminished man and exalted society.

But no society can thrive this way—it becomes small, stagnant, and sterile. Instead of using society as a channel for progressive development, we have made it a tool of oppression and bondage. This is the root of our degeneration, our sloth, our helpless impotence.

Elevate the human being. Open the temple door where the Divine secretly shines within him.

Society will then become noble, radiant in every limb— a field of triumph for the venture of free and lofty intent.

Definition of Natural Law

Starting from the two primary experiences described above—moral imperative and contingency—it is possible to derive the existence of natural law: “law” because morality cannot exist without a clearly defined obligation; “natural” because the source of this law is beyond human discretion, just like the characteristics that constitute a person’s nature, that is, their being. Humans are free to choose between good and evil, but not to define what is good and what is evil.

It is noteworthy that the idea of limitation is embedded in the term “nature,” which derives from the Latin verb nascor, meaning “to be born”: only what is limited has a beginning, a “before” in which it did not exist. The Latin natura corresponds to the Greek physis (φύσις), from the verb phyo (φύω), meaning “to generate,” “to grow,” and “to develop.”

Relationship Between Natural Law, Eternal Law, and Human Laws

A deeper reflection on these two experiences allows us to contextualize natural law within other types of law. The first and most important is the so-called “eternal law,” which resides in the wisdom of the Principle of reality—namely, God, the being from whom all contingencies, human and non-human, originate and to whom they must ultimately return. This eternal law guided God in defining nature, and therefore, there can be no conflict between eternal law and natural law—otherwise, one would be positing a contradiction within God.

Human laws, on the other hand—norms established by people to regulate behavior and coexistence—can conflict with natural law.

A literary testimony to this is found in Sophocles’ Antigone, where the heroine defies King Creon’s decree forbidding burial of her brother, honoring instead a natural duty. When accused of breaking the law, she responds:

“[Creon:] Tell me briefly—did you know the decree forbidding what you did? [Antigone:] Yes. How could I not? It was publicly proclaimed. [Creon:] And you dared to break these laws? [Antigone:] That decree was not from Zeus; and Justice, who dwells with the gods below, never ordained such laws for mankind. I did not believe your decrees had such power that a mortal could override the unwritten, immutable laws of the gods. Their authority is eternal—not of today or yesterday—and no one knows when they first appeared.”

The conflict between natural and human law is possible because the latter depends on human discernment and will—both limited faculties of contingent beings, mysteriously marked by a wound whose memory, alive in many traditions, traces back to the origins of humanity.

Due to this mysterious wound, humans experience conflicting impulses, making moral discernment difficult even for the well-intentioned. As the Latin poet Ovid wrote:

“I see the better and approve it, but I follow the worse.”

5. Contents of Natural Law

Natural law is a norm that arises from the very being of humans. They also experience a third insight: that the world manifests both external order (in relationships between things) and internal order (in the development of each reality), especially in living beings. This ordered dynamism is evident, for example, in the transformation of a seed into a plant, or a human from embryo to adult.

This order and development are reflected in the Greek term cosmos (κόσμος), linked to “order” and “beauty,” and the Latin universum, meaning “that which tends toward unity.”

This third experience is tied to an immediate intuition—undemonstrable but observable—that reality carries intrinsic value: it is good that things exist and develop.

For humans, endowed with reason and freedom, this development becomes a duty. Thus, from the moral imperative “do good and avoid evil,” we arrive at a more specific directive: “act in ways that respect and promote the ordered development of reality.” Morality cannot be separated from metaphysics and anthropology—a “neutral” morality is a false morality, because one cannot take responsibility for development without knowing what is developing and toward what end.

Take the “Golden Rule”: “Do not do to others what you would not want done to you.” This widely recognized moral principle rests on the anthropological truth of the equal dignity of all humans—substantial and untouched by individual differences.

Ordered development occurs because each reality is governed by an internal principle. For inanimate objects and non-rational beings, this happens necessarily. But for rational and free beings, it requires conscious listening and acceptance of this inner principle—a tension toward their proper end and full development. No moral norm should be considered inhibiting or restrictive; if it is, it cannot be natural law.

The Stoic school offers a powerful term for this harmony between moral behavior and nature: homologhia (ὁμολογία), meaning “adherence to reason” or “life according to reason”—that is, according to logos (λόγος), the rational, meaningful, and divine principle that orders both things and thought.

Another Stoic term, oikeiosis (οἰκείωσις), expresses the intrinsic harmony between natural law and being. It can be translated as “adaptation,” “affinity,” “relationship,” or “familial bond.” It refers to the conscious appropriation of one’s nature—the embrace of what preserves and develops one’s being, a harmonious dwelling within the cosmos.

Since humans are living, rational animals, the major determinations of natural law can be grouped into three categories:

• “It is good to preserve existence.”

• “It is good to develop and perpetuate existence as an animal being.”

• “It is good to develop and perpetuate existence as a rational being.”

Examples include dressing, eating, self-defense, reproduction and education, community relationships, and seeking and worshiping God. These categories, though theoretically distinct, are never separate in reality. Likewise, many goods serve multiple purposes—for instance, marriage supports survival, physical perpetuation, education, and loving union between spouses.

Moral Conscience and Contingency

From a very young age, all human beings experience an inner voice that recommends certain behaviors and forbids others. This voice is known as the connection to conscience; its very essence is based on the fact that humans possess, not incidentally but essentially, the freedom to speak or remain silent, to act or refrain from acting, to behave or not behave in a certain way. If humans were not free, none of their actions could be considered immoral.

Humans are therefore moral beings. While animals and plants are guided by instinct and biological dispositions, humans must identify and adopt norms that regulate behavior—not only in their mutual relationships but also in recognizing other forms of life that contribute to the broader system.

Humans also undergo another experience: none of them is necessary, and none discovers within themselves the sufficient reason for their own existence. In other words, every person senses that they could exist—or not exist. If there was a moment when they did not exist, it means that a person did not choose to exist; nor to exist at that particular time, in that place, from those parents, with those psycho-physical characteristics. In a word, humans are contingent.

As moral and contingent beings, humans understand that the norms governing their behavior cannot be found within their own discretion. Since humans do not originate from themselves, full discretion in defining their behavior would place them in the absurd position of limited beings who write the rules of their own existence. According to this contradiction, humans already exist and therefore already possess being, yet would be tasked with determining the norms that govern that being.

The being of humans must therefore already contain within itself the norms that regulate behavior. Humans must strive to identify these norms so that they may become explicit in their actions.

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Natural Law and the Path to Its Knowledge

If natural law is a norm derived from beings themselves to support their ordered development, then anything that brings us into contact with those beings is a legitimate meeting point for discovering it.

We can identify, in the simplest terms, three meeting places.

Experience

All human beings are constantly in contact with themselves and with others: family, school, social and political communities, and friendships are all points of contact where one can observe what hinders or promotes human flourishing. Direct experience is the first and most important form of knowledge—but not the only one. The second is history.

Human history—broadly speaking—can be traced back at least to the Neolithic era, around the 8th millennium BCE. Understanding the rules, choices, and consequences that shaped the behavior of countless individuals across diverse cultures, times, and places allows us to identify common denominators that can be compared and studied.

The Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460–c. 395 BCE), considered one of the founders of modern historical science, rejected myth and fantasy in favor of factual accuracy. In a famous passage, he writes:

“Perhaps the lack of the marvelous will make the facts less pleasing to hear; but if those who seek truth in past events and those that may recur in the future—according to human nature [κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον]—find my account useful, that will suffice. It was written as a possession for all time [κτῆμα ἐς αἰεί], not as a performance for immediate applause.”

This highlights history’s value as an experimental archive: because of the shared nature of humanity, it allows us not only to understand past behavior but also to anticipate future tendencies.

The Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) offers a compelling example of this experimental process:

“Since this world of nations was made by men, let us observe what things all men have always agreed upon and still do—because such things may reveal universal and eternal principles, the foundation of all sciences.”

“We see that all nations, whether barbaric or civilized, despite vast separations in time and space, uphold three human customs: all have some form of religion, all celebrate solemn marriages, and all bury their dead. No human actions are marked by more elaborate ceremonies than these.”

From the study of human history, we can identify behaviors and their consequences in relation to the ordered development of human potential—rises and falls, successes and failures.

As Joseph de Maistre once wrote, history is “experimental politics”; we might even say it is experimental anthropology.

Reason

As previously stated, morality exists only where there is order and development—since it is the effort to respect and promote these through free and conscious action. If the moral imperative “do good and avoid evil” cannot answer the obvious follow-up question “what is good and what is evil?”, then its very existence is undermined. Thus, metaphysics and anthropology are necessary extensions of the moral imperative.

When experience—direct or historical—is conducted through a formalized method, and reflection on the data is carried out systematically (i.e., coherently and holistically), we enter the realm of science: physics, biology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, history, archaeology, and so on.

All these disciplines rely on the everyday observation that things, though diverse, share common traits: this tree resembles that tree, this horse resembles that horse. We wouldn’t call them both “tree” or “horse” unless we perceived a unifying element beyond their individuality.

From this arises a key truth: knowing the essence of one thing allows us to gain stable knowledge about all things of the same kind. In other words, if I study one tree, the knowledge I gain will help me understand all trees—knowledge that is infinitely perfectible, yet stable and reliable.

This truth can be denied—and many have—but only in words, because paper and air tolerate almost anything. Behavior, however, does not. That’s why no one stops studying history, geography, chemistry, physics, biology, pharmacy, anthropology, or philosophy: we all trust that knowing one member of a genus gives us a reliable, though improvable, understanding of the whole. This is the “possession for all time” Thucydides spoke of.

In philosophy and anthropology, identifying a universal yet concrete mode of being present in every instance of a genus is what we call “having a common nature with one’s peers.”

Thus, experience—whether direct or scientific—is a source of universal knowledge. And we can all engage in it, with just a bit of observational spirit.

The Pathways to Natural Law

An example of the observational spirit from which moral insights can be drawn is found in a long and significant passage from the Naturalis Historia by the Latin writer Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE):

“We shall rightly begin with man, for whom nature seems to have created everything else. Yet in exchange for such great gifts, she has exacted a high and cruel price—so much so that it is uncertain whether she has been a good mother or a harsh stepmother to man. First of all, she forces him—alone among living beings—to seek clothing from outside himself. All other creatures are provided with coverings: shells, bark, hides, spines, fur, feathers, scales, wool. Even tree trunks are protected from cold and heat by one or two layers of bark. Only man is cast naked upon the bare earth on the day of his birth, abandoned to cries and tears, and unlike any other creature, he weeps from the very first moment of life. Laughter, even when early, is not granted before the fortieth day. Immediately upon entering the light, man is bound in every limb—more tightly than domestic animals. Thus he, who opens his eyes to happiness, lies on the ground with hands and feet tied, crying—he who is destined to rule over all other creatures—and begins life in torment, guilty only of having been born. What folly it is for one who begins thus to believe himself destined for great achievements! His first strength makes him resemble a quadruped. When does he walk and speak like a man? When does his mouth become fit for food? How long does his head remain soft—a sign of the greatest weakness among all living beings? Then come illnesses, and countless medicines devised to combat them, only to be defeated by new misfortunes. Every other creature knows its nature: some run, some fly, some swim. Man, however, knows nothing unless taught: not how to speak, walk, or eat. By nature, he knows only how to cry. Hence many have thought it best never to be born—or to die as soon as possible. Only man is given tears; only he experiences pleasure in infinite forms; only he possesses ambition, greed, an insatiable desire to live, superstition, concern for burial, and even for what happens after death. No one has a more precarious life, nor greater craving for everything; no one suffers more chaotic anxieties or more violent rage. In conclusion, other animals live peacefully among their kind. Lions do not fight other lions, serpents do not bite other serpents, and sea monsters and fish do not attack their own species. But, by Hercules, most of man’s misfortunes are caused by other men.”

A second example comes from the Roman philosopher and statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE):

“We often say that the highest good is to live according to nature; but nature has made us fit for both contemplation and action. Consider the evidence for the first: does it not arise naturally when one asks how strong our desire is to know the unknown, how much we are drawn to every story? Some travel across seas, enduring long journeys, simply to learn something distant and unfamiliar. This is why crowds gather at spectacles, why we peer through cracks, seek out secrets, study ancient histories, and inquire about the customs of foreign peoples. Nature has given us the instinct of curiosity and, conscious of her own skill and beauty, has made us spectators of immense wonders. She would lose the fruit of her labor if such splendid, intricate, and beautiful things were displayed in a desert. If you wish to be convinced that her intent was to be admired—not merely seen—observe the place she has assigned us: she placed us at the center of herself and offered us a panoramic view of the universe. Not only did she make man upright, but also gave him a flexible neck and a head turned upward so he could follow the stars from rise to set. By advancing six constellations by day and six by night, she revealed every part of herself to instill in us the desire to know the rest.”

Seneca continues:

“This is the point over which you sail, fight, and build kingdoms—yet it is of little importance, even when bathed by both sides of the ocean. Above lie vast spaces, and the soul is permitted to possess them, provided it carries as little as possible from the body, is cleansed of impurity, and rises free, light, and content with little. When it reaches those heights, it finds nourishment there, grows, and—freed from chains—returns to its origin. It finds proof of its divine nature in the fact that it is drawn to divine realities, not as foreign things, but as its own.”

From these three examples, we take the last: the experiences humans undergo—“man is fascinated by the divine and treats it intimately”—form the basis for structured reflection and judgment. If we treat something as familiar, it means it belongs to us intimately; thus, humans and the object of their contemplation share something in common.

This is philosophy—that is, science—a systematic, coherent, and rational reflection on one’s carefully gathered experience.

Revelation

The experience of contingency is also an experience of limitation in all faculties, including knowledge. As previously noted, humans are not capable of fully understanding the world or themselves to the extent of grasping the complete order and development that defines them.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (6th–5th century BCE) famously stated:

“You will never find the boundaries of the soul, no matter how far you travel—so deep is its reason [λόγος].”

Not being the origin of themselves, humans are a mystery to themselves. Plato (428/427–347 BCE) expresses this more explicitly:

“As for the idea of the soul, we must say the following: To explain what it is would require a divine exposition in every sense—and a long one.”

To explain what it is would require a divine exposition in every sense—and a lengthy one.” (20)

Human beings experience their own contingency, their condition of being enveloped within a given reality whose observation is never exhaustive. From this awareness arises the hope that He who is the Principle of this reality might offer further insight, helping to illuminate this complex system of orders and developments.

Plato, in the dialogue Phaedo, brilliantly expresses this hope:

“[…] there is no other way but one of these: either to learn from others how things are, or to discover it oneself; or, if that is impossible, to accept, among human reasonings, the best and least easily refuted, and on that—as on a raft—risk the voyage across the sea of life: unless one can make the journey more safely and with less risk on a sturdier vessel, namely, by trusting in a divine revelation.” (21)

This structural need is further intensified by the aforementioned original wound of human intelligence and will, due to which impulses toward the deteriora obscure the meliora—that is, the precepts of natural law, which have become—de facto, though not de jure—difficult to fully and clearly discern. This explains, for instance, the presence of the Decalogue in revealed data. That presence is far from obvious: if the norms of moral behavior are accessible to reason, what need is there for God to reveal them?

They appear in revelation for at least two reasons. First, revelation offers man all and only the knowledge necessary for salvation, whether accessible by natural reason alone—as in the case of the Decalogue—or not—as in the case of the Unity and Trinity of God. In other words, revelation certifies that following the Decalogue is necessary for salvation.

The second reason, which concerns us here, is that even knowledge accessible to natural reason must be recalled in its clarity and completeness by revelation, precisely because of the original wound to human intellect and will.

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