Rommen and Ratzinger on Metaphysics: Its Importance for the Law and Society

In Fr. Robert J. Araujo, S.J.'s remarks on the natural law, he referenced a brilliant German lawyer and thinker, Heinrich Rommen. (If you haven't read Rommen, shame on you!) He was imprisoned by and later fled the Nazis for his defense of law as an "ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated" (Summa Theologiae I-II, 90, art. 4). The Nazi regime--as well as any totalitarian regime--in its embracing of the Modernist position (which is nothing other than the embrace of the Enlightenment project, specifically that of Descartes), perverted law from an "ordinance of reason" to be rather an "ordinance of will."

In our example in class the other day, we saw how an arbitrary exercise of the will can result in an unjust law. In the example given, we looked at the "reasonableness" aspect of the definition of law. But what is the foundation for a law's reasonableness? The answer lies in the Chesterton quote below. There we saw that one cannot escape the essential question of being or existence; and even more, the Ultimate Being or Existence Himself, God. In philosophy, this area of inquiry is called metaphysics. Rommen expands upon this in his magisterial tome The Natural Law. He looks historically at the times when natural law was esteemed:

The idea of natural law obtains general acceptance only in the periods when metaphysics, queen of the sciences, is dominant. It recedes or suffers an eclipse, on the other hand, when being and oughtness, morality and law, are separated, when the essences of things and their ontological order are viewed as unknowable. The natural law, consequently, depends on the science of being, on metaphysics (The Natural Law, 141).

I cannot emphasize enough, dear students, the importance of considering this fundamental question. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger in an article entitled, "Faith, Philosophy, and Theology," [11 Communio 351, 357 (1984)] stated: "The true philosopher, if he wishes to reach the ultimate questions, cannot free himself from the question of God, the foundation and end of being itself." The implications of this for the society are profound. It is the difference between the gulag and freedom.