God Arises
Religion and Society
~ 399 ~
of any foundation, it is a concept, which may
controvert all basic human values.
The result of all this is that we are back where John
Austin left us, with no clear idea of what justice is,
or how it can be defined. Centuries of investigation
and research have failed to provide mankind with a
set of clear principles on which to base his laws. As
G.W. Paton says: “What are the interests that a
perfect legal system has to protect? This is a
question that has to do with values and comes
within the scope of legal philosophy, but we require
more help from legal philosophy in this matter than
philosophy seems
prepared to give us.
Consequently we have been unable to come up with
an acceptable scale of values. In fact, only in religion
we find such values, but religious dogmas are
accepted on faith or intuition, not on the basis of
rational argument.”
4
In the same work he later remarks (p. 109), “The
Orthodox Natural Law Theory based its absolutes
on the revealed truths of religion. If we attempt to
secularize jurisprudence, where can we find an
agreed basis of values?”
