"Since, then, man had a share in the portion of the gods, in the first place because of his divine kinship he alone among the living creatures believed in gods, and set to work to erect altars and images of them". (Protagoras, 322 a)
Here Protagoras sees that all men, everywhere have an ""instinct"" towards religion. I agree. Everywhere, at all times, all men are religious.
"…all men do in fact believe that everyone shares a sense of justice and civic virtue. …for a man cannot be without some share in justice, or he would not be human." (Protagoras, 323 a-c)
In this section, all men have a ""sense of justice"", or they would not be men. A sense of justice is instinct.
To be consistent, we don't have a Natural Religion. All men are religious, but then, we would have to have divine revelation to have the correct one. God would have to implant an instinct in order for man to fit religion. If man did not have an instinct for religion, man would not be religious.
I think the same here goes for justice. Protagoras uses the word 'sense', and I see instinct, and I think the Stoics put the word 'nomos' to this and created a "Natural Moral Law" or in their words a "natural law" which deals with morals and ethics. Is this an instinct, but not a law which is specific. For me, I think there is a confusion of 'instinct' with 'law'. The terms 'natural law' and 'laws of nature' are to be restricted to the metaphysical laws which are embeded in the cosmos, which run and guide the cosmos. For me, the Stoics went on a wild goose chase and invented something novel, the 'natural law', 'physeos nomos' for the instinct that all men have. There is NO moral 'law' that guide all men specifically into morals and ethics. God implanted a sense of justice in all men, so when divine revelation came, it would guide their instinct. Even apes and gorillas, herd animals, have a very marginal instinct of justice. We as herd animals, (Aristotle's 'social animal'), exhibit this sense of justice.
I think the Stoics started themselves and everybody else on a wild goose chase because they did not have divine revelation. Does anybody want to weigh in on this? have an opinion? correct my opinion? I believe the Cynics and the Stoics messed up the transmission of the natural law and everybody followed their que. I'm trying to straighten out this mess. What do you think?
See in olden times Archaic Greek, nomos, meant custom. Only later on, did 'nomos' take on the meaning of 'law'. Is this the meaning of 'custom' the Stoics meaning? Did they return the word 'nomos' to mean custom? Custom in the sense of man's natural way of things. Is this what they mean by 'physeos nomos'? |