Comment on Oppenheim: In Defence of “The Natural Law Thesis”

Harry V. Jaffa

American Political Science Review, 1957, vol. 51, issue 1, 54-64

Abstract: The core of Oppenheim's attack on what he calls the natural law thesis is the contention that it rests upon an incorrect epistemology:To subscribe to the natural law thesis is to adhere to the epistemological theory of value-cognitivism. Value-cognitivism claims that there exist intrinsic value-judgments which are cognitively true or false, regardless of the speaker's or listener's intrinsic value-commitments.In contrast to this view is the epistemological theory of value non-cognitivism, which tells us thatValue-words do not designate objects, and it is misleading to use nouns such as “Justice” and “Goodness.” … A value-expression in an intrinsic value-judgment refers to a relation which holds between an evaluating subject and some object or event or state of affairs which he values intrinsically, whether positively or negatively.I take the foregoing to mean that, to predicate just or good of a law or of a man does not tell us anything about the law or man, but rather describes an attitude toward the law or man. Justice, as a noun, is misleading, because justice is not a “thing” or a “this”; it is not a substance but an attribute; not a real noun, but an hypostatized adjective, a quality of evaluating subjects, never of the objects of which the subjects themselves always predicate it.

Date: 1957
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