QUESTIONS FOR STUDY:

Basic Interpretation

1. Why did Richard Hooker write The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity? Which ancient thinker did Hooker draw on for his purposes?
2. Which Enlightenment philosopher borrowed from and praised the ideas in The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity?
3. How does Hooker define law, and how does his definition differ from the common definition? How does his definition of law affect his definition of “eternal law” as opposed to the definition that “the learned” use?
4. How does Hooker understand the relationship between the natural law and God’s eternal law?
5. What is the difference between the “first eternal law” and the “second eternal law” that Hooker discusses in Book 1, Chapter 3, Section 1 of his Laws?
6. How does Hooker think one can know the natural law without the help of supernatural revelation?
7. What two accounts does Hooker give of human beings’ inclinations to perfection?
8. According to Hooker, what roles do reason, the conscience, and our habits have in moral decision-making?
9. What does Hooker mean by “appetite” and “will,” and how does he describe the relationship between them?
10. How does Hooker explain the fact that some people seem to be unaware of what their duty is as written in the natural law?
11. Describe, as Hooker sees it, the process by which the mind reasons to the first principles and the particular laws of the natural law.
12. Hooker reasons that we ought to do good to others because otherwise we cannot expect them to do good to us. Professor Faulkner notes that this law sounds very much like Locke’s fundamental law of nature, that is, the law of preservation of mankind; however, he says, it is different. How do these two accounts differ?
13. What is the final goal of the natural law in Hooker’s opinion? By contrast, what do John Locke and Aristotle view as the final goal of natural law?
14. What part does God play in Hooker’s view of natural law? What role does sin play?

Connections to Other Thinkers

1. Professor Faulkner notes that John Locke seems to borrow aspects of his thought from Richard Hooker. Below is a list of all the places where Locke quotes Book 1 of Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in the Second Treatise of Government. Consider each of the quotes from Hooker in their original context.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 2, Section 5: Quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 8, Section 7 to support the claim that in the state of nature men exist in a state of equality.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 2, Section 15: Quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 10, Section 1 to support the claim that at one time men did exist in the state of nature.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 6, Section 60: Quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 7, Section 4 to explain why, if all men are born free, children and the insane do not have the freedom that properly developed adults have in society.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 6, Section 61: Quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 6, Section 5 to say that the age at which a man attains full political freedom is discerned more by “sense” than by “skill and learning.”
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 6, Section 74: In a footnote quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 10, Section 4 in support of the claim that one can imagine how the authority of kings would have been derived (incorrectly) from the right of fathers to rule their children.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 7, Section 91: In a footnote quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 10, Section 4 to support the argument that men leave the state of nature precisely when they subject themselves to commonly established laws and an impartial judge to decide disputes among themselves.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 7, Section 94, and Chapter 8, Section 111: In footnotes quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 10, Section 5: first, to support the claim that civil society never truly formed until men began to govern themselves by laws and not a single person; second, to support claims about how societies devised ways to restrain the abuses to which monarchy led.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 7, Section 94: In a footnote quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 10, Section 13 to argue that no member of society is above the law.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 11, Section 134: In a footnote quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 10, Section 8 to support the claim that law derives its authority from the consent of society.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 11, Section 135: In a footnote quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 10, Section 1 to support the claim that laws cannot be arbitrary but must always be framed for the common good in conformity with the laws of nature. The laws of nature remain in force and are in fact enforced by human laws.
   • Second Treatise, Ch. 11, Section 136: In a footnote quotes Hooker’s Laws, Book 1, Ch. 10, Section 7 to support the claim that political authority must rule justly and not arbitrarily.

   1. In which cases does Locke interpret his quotation of Hooker correctly and in which cases is his interpretation mistaken? If Locke ever misinterprets Hooker, does his misinterpretation undermine the argument he is trying to make?
   2. One of the foundations of Locke’s political theory is his notion of a “state of nature.” Locke defines “state of nature” in this way: “To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature; without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection: unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty,” (Second Treatise, Ch. 2, Section 5). Sometimes when he quotes Hooker, Locke interjects comments to argue that Hooker is in those places referring to precisely the “state of nature” that Locke is discussing. Would Hooker in fact agree with Locke’s notion of a state of nature as described above? Point to the elements in Locke’s definition that Hooker would accept or reject and explain why he would accept or reject them.
   3. Is Hooker’s thought closer to that of John Locke, the late medieval natural law theorists like William of Ockham, or Thomas Aquinas? How?

2. Hooker states that what he calls the “eternal law,” properly speaking, is “that order which God before all ages has set down with himself, for himself to do all things by.” He also says, “[God’s] imposition of this law upon himself is his own free and voluntary act.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 6). Contrast this position—that God imposes a law upon himself—with what Thomas Aquinas says about the eternal law in the Treatise on Law, Question 93, especially Articles 1 and 4.
3. Compare and contrast Hooker’s first list of man’s natural inclinations (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 5, Sections 2 and 3) with the list that Aquinas gives (Treatise on Law, Question 94, Article 2).
4. Hooker states that the mind is entirely empty (an “utter vacuity”) of moral knowledge before it begins to reason: “[M]en, if we view them [when they are newborns], are at the first without understanding or knowledge at all. . . . The soul of man [is] . . . at the first as a book, wherein nothing is and yet all things may be imprinted” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 6, Section 1).
1. Compare and contrast this statement with Aquinas’s opinion that the laws of nature are always embedded in the mind by the habit of “synderesis”: “[M]an’s act of reasoning,” Aquinas says, “since it is a kind of movement, proceeds from the understanding of certain things—namely, those which are naturally known without any investigation on the part of reason, as from an immovable principle—and ends also at the understanding, inasmuch as by means of those principles naturally known, we judge of those things which we have discovered by reasoning. Now it is clear that, as the speculative reason argues about speculative things, so that practical reason argues about practical things. . . . [T]he first practical principles, bestowed on us by nature, do not belong to a special power, but to a special natural habit, which we call ‘synderesis.’” (Summa Theologiae, Part I, Question 79, Article 12)
2. Compare and contrast the same statements from Hooker and Aquinas to Hooker’s later statement (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 8, Section 5) where he writes, “The main principles of Reason are in themselves apparent. For to make nothing evident of itself to man’s understanding would be to take away all possibility of knowing anything. And herein that of Theophrastus is true, ‘They that seek a reason of all things do utterly overthrow Reason.’ In every kind of knowledge some such grounds there are, as that being proposed the mind does presently embrace them as free from all possibility of error, clear and manifest without proof. In which kind more general axioms or principles are such as this, ‘that the greater good is to be chosen before the less.’” How does this statement fit with Hooker’s earlier statement that before man begins to reason his mind has no moral knowledge of any kind? Is he here agreeing with Aquinas?
3. Compare and contrast Hooker’s statement with John Locke’s argument in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Book I, chapters 2 and 3) that there are no innate notions or principles of any kind in the mind. Locke’s view is often referred to as the position that the mind is a “blank slate” or tabula rasa, in Latin.

5. Hooker states that, “Till we grow to some ripeness of years, the soul of man does only store itself with concepts [“conceits”] of things of inferior and more open quality, which afterwards do serve as instruments to that which is greater. . . . When once it comprehends anything above this, as the differences of time, affirmations, negations, and contradictions in speech, we then count it to have some use of natural reason. To which if afterwards there might be added the right helps of true art and learning (Aristotelian logical demonstration), . . . there would undoubtedly be almost as great difference in maturity of judgment between men inured with them, and that which now men are, as between men that are now and innocents. . . . Education and instruction are the means, the one by use, the other by precept, to make our natural faculty of reason both the better and the sooner able to judge rightly between truth and error, good and evil.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 6, Sections 3 and 5).
1. Compare and contrast Hooker’s position with what Aristotle says about how moral knowledge develops, particularly regarding the importance of the knower’s moral habits (vices and virtues): “[I]n order to be a competent student of the Right and Just,” Aristotle says, “and in short of the topics of Politics in general, the pupil is bound to have been well-trained in his habits. For the starting-point or first principle is the fact that a thing is so; if this be satisfactorily ascertained, there will be no need also to know the reason why it is so. And the man of good moral training knows first principles already, or can easily acquire them,” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1095b6–7). Later on he adds, “[T]hat eye of the soul of which we spoke cannot acquire the quality of prudence [good judgment about how to act] without possessing virtue. This we have said before, and it is manifestly true. For deductive inferences about matters of conduct always have a major premise of the form ‘Since the end or Supreme Good is so and so,’ . . . but the Supreme Good only appears good to the good man: vice perverts the mind and causes it to hold false views about the first principles of conduct. Hence it is clear that we cannot be prudent without being good.” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1144a10) He also says, “Virtue . . . is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principle, that is, as the prudent man would determine it.” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1106b14–15)
6. The Principle of Government by Consent of the Governed. Hooker says, “[B]y the natural law, to which [God] has made all subject, the lawful power of making laws to command whole political societies of men belongs so properly to the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate of whatever kind upon earth to exercise the same of himself, and not either by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their consent upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 8)
1. Compare and contrast this with what Aquinas says in the Treatise on Law: “A law, properly speaking, regards first and foremost the order to the common good. Now to order anything to the common good, belongs either to the whole people, or to someone who is the vice-regent of the whole people. And therefore the making of a law belongs either to the whole people or to a public personage who has care of the whole people: since in all other matters the directing of anything to the end concerns him to whom the end belongs.” (Summa Theologiae, Treatise on Law [Part I-II], Question 90, Article 3)
2. Compare and contrast Hooker’s statement to this statement from the late medieval natural law theorist William of Ockham: “[S]upposing that some prelate or prince or ruler is to be placed over some other people, it can be deduced by evident reason that, if it is not arranged by him or them to whom it pertains to do so, they have the right to elect the one who is to be placed over them. And therefore no one ought to be given to them against their will. This can be proved by many examples and reasons; I will adduce a few. The first is that no one ought to be placed over all mortals unless by their choice and consent. Furthermore, what affects everyone ought to be dealt with by everyone. Now it affects everyone that one should be set over others; therefore it ought to be dealt with by everyone. Again, those who have the right to make laws for themselves have the right, if they wish, to elect a chief. But every people and city can make its own law for itself, which is called civil law. Therefore both peoples and cities can make their own law for themselves and elect a chief.” (“Dialogue on the Power of the Pope and the Emperor”)
3. Compare and contrast Hooker’s statement to this one from John Locke: “Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way, whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.” (Second Treatise of Government, Chapter 8, Section 95)
4. Compare and contrast Hooker’s quote with what he says earlier in the same chapter (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 4): “Men always knew that . . . strifes and troubles would be endless, unless they gave their common consent all to be ordered by some whom they should agree upon: without which consent there would be no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge over another; because, although there be according to the opinion of some very great and judicious men a kind of natural right in the noble, wise, and virtuous, to govern them which are of servile disposition; nevertheless for manifestation of this their right, and men’s more peaceable contentment on both sides, the assent of them who are to be governed seems necessary.” A footnote of Hooker’s indicates that Aristotle (of whose thought Hooker generally approves) is among the “very great judicious men” to whom he refers.
1. Is Hooker saying here that people should be governed by their own consent not because they have an absolute right to such government but only out of a pragmatic necessity—to “manifest” the right to govern of those who are more fit to govern, and to maintain “peaceable contentment”?
2. Is this Locke’s understanding of why government ought to be by consent of the governed? Note that Locke quotes this section of Hooker’s Laws in his Second Treatise of Government (Chapter 7, Section 91) but ends the quote at “without which consent there would be no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge over another.” Would Hooker’s words no longer support Locke’s argument if the rest of the passage were included?
3. Compare what Aquinas says in the Summa Theologiae on whether some men are more fit to govern than others: “[If] one man surpassed another in knowledge and virtue, this would not have been fitting unless these gifts conduced to the benefit of others, according to 1 Peter 4:10, ‘As every man hath received grace, ministering the same one to another.’ Wherefore Augustine says (The City of God, Book 19, Section 14): ‘Just men command not by the love of domineering, but by the service of counsel’: and (The City of God, Book 19, Section 15): ‘The natural order of things requires this; and thus did God make man.’” (Part I, Question 96, Article 4, under “I answer that”).

7. Hooker says, “[T]here [is] no impossibility in nature considered by itself, but that men might have lived without any public government. Nevertheless, the corruption of our nature being presupposed, we may not deny that the Law of Nature does now require of necessity some kind of government, so that to bring things to the first course they were in, and utterly to take away all kind of public government in the world, would be apparently to overturn the whole world.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 4)

   
   

   1. Do you think there would be no need for government if human nature were not “corrupt” and people always did what was good?
   2. Compare and contrast Hooker’s statement with what Aquinas says where he discusses the question “Whether in the state of innocence [before original sin and the corruption of nature] man would have been master over men?” (Summa Theologiae, Part I, Question 96, Article 4). Aquinas first distinguishes between two kinds of mastership: the specific kind of a master over a slave versus the general kind of any governor over any subject, including free subjects. Aquinas says that it is proper to man to desire what is good for himself and not to yield his good to another; but because a “slave” is by definition “ordered to another,” therefore slavery causes pain and could not have existed before sin. “But,” he continues, “a man is the master of a free subject,” that is, in the second kind of mastership, “by directing him either towards his proper welfare, or to the common good. Such a kind of mastership would have existed in the state of innocence between man and man, for two reasons. First, because man is naturally a social being, and so in the state of innocence he would have led a social life. Now a social life cannot exist among a number of people unless under the presidency of one to look after the common good; for many, as such, seek many things, whereas one attends only to one. Wherefore the Philosopher [Aristotle] says, in the beginning of the Politics, that wherever many things are directed to one, we shall always find one at the head directing them. Secondly, if one man surpassed another in knowledge and virtue, this would not have been fitting unless these gifts conduced to the benefit of others. . . .”

8. After stating that political authority is derived from the consent of the governed, Hooker says that “to be commanded we do consent, when that society of which we are part has at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement. Wherefore as any man’s deed past is good as long as he himself continues; so the act of a public society of men done five hundred years since stands as theirs who presently are of the same societies, because corporations are immortal; we were then alive in our predecessors, and they in their successors do live still,” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 8). Would John Locke or other early modern natural law thinkers agree with this statement? Who would not agree with it and why?
9. In Chapter 5, Section 1, Hooker writes, “God alone excepted, who actually and everlastingly is whatever he may be, and which cannot hereafter be that which now he is not; all other things besides are somewhat in possibility, which as yet they are not in act. And for this cause there is in all things an appetite or desire, whereby they incline to something which they may be; and when they are it, they shall be more perfect than now they are. All which perfections are contained under the general name of Goodness.” Here Hooker argues the necessary connection between metaphysics and ethics. He shows how all beings in nature incline toward certain ends because their being is incomplete; that is, it is possible for them to “be” to a greater degree than they are now. To use the language of Aristotle and Aquinas, beings in nature have potencies to be in act, that is, to “be” more perfectly. Compare and contrast this position with that of the New Natural Law theorists.
10. While he discusses what the general principles of the natural law are, Hooker states that “In every kind of knowledge some such grounds there are, as that being proposed the mind does presently embrace them as free from all possibility of error, clear and manifest without proof.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 8, Section 5)  But Aristotle, at the beginning of his Nicomachean Ethics (Book 1, section 3) states, “The same exactness must not be expected in all departments of philosophy alike, any more than in all the products of the arts and crafts. The subjects studied by political science are Moral Nobility and Justice; but these conceptions involve much difference of opinion and uncertainty, so that they are sometimes believed to be mere conventions and to have no real existence in the nature of things. And a similar uncertainty surrounds the conception of the Good, because it frequently occurs that good things have harmful consequences: people have before now been ruined by wealth, and in other cases courage has cost men their lives. We must therefore be content if, in dealing with subjects and starting from premises thus uncertain, we succeed in presenting a broad outline of the truth: when our subjects and our premises are merely generalities, it is enough if we arrive at generally valid conclusions. Accordingly we may ask the student also to accept the various views we put forward in the same spirit; for it is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind which the nature of the particular subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.”
1. Are Hooker and Aristotle contradicting each other? If not, how does one reconcile Hooker’s claim that every kind of knowledge (including ethics) has “clear and manifest” principles with Aristotle’s claim that some disciplines, especially ethics, admit of less certainty and exactness than others? If they are contradicting each other, who is correct?
2. In that same section of Hooker’s Laws, before the quote provided, Hooker states that “to make nothing evident of itself to man’s understanding would be to take away all possibility of knowing anything.” Compare this to Aristotle’s claim in Book 1, Chapter 3 of his Posterior Analytics where he says that, if we were only able to know what can be proven from more fundamental principles, we would “be led back to infinity, since we could not scientifically know [episteme] posterior things from prior things of which there are no first things, . . . for it is impossible to go through things that are infinite. . . . [N]ot all scientific knowledge is provable [‘demonstrable’], but rather . . . the scientific knowledge of immediate things [‘things without a middle’] is unprovable.” Do you agree with Hooker and Aristotle? Why or why not?

11. Hooker argues that “[I]f everything were to be desired for some other without any stint, there could be no certain end proposed to our actions, we should go on we know not whither; yea, whatever we do would be in vain, or rather nothing at all would be possible to be done. For [just] as to take away the first efficient [cause] of our being would be to annihilate utterly our persons, so we cannot remove the last final cause of our working, but we shall cause whatever we work to cease. Therefore something there must be desired for itself simply and for no other,” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 11, Section 1). Aquinas says something similar: “Absolutely speaking, it is not possible to proceed indefinitely in the matter of ends [(the purposes for which we act)], from any point of view. For in all things that have by essence (per se) an order to each other, if the first be removed, those that are ordained to the first, must of necessity be removed also. Wherefore [Aristotle] proves (Physics Book 8, chapter 5) that we cannot proceed to infinitude in causes of movement, because then there would be no first mover, without which neither can the others move, since they move only through being moved by the first mover. . . . [I]f there were no last end, nothing would be desired, nor would any action have its term, nor would the intention of the agent be at rest; while if there is no first thing among those that are ordained to the end, none would begin to work at anything, and counsel would have no term, but would continue indefinitely.” (Summa Theologiae Part I-II, Question 1, Article 5). Both Hooker and Aquinas argue that there must be one ultimate end of all human behavior. Is this claim correct? Can you explain it in your own words? Is it convincing?
12. Explain what Hooker means when he says, “[L]aws do not take their constraining force from the quality of such as devise them, but from that power which does give them the strength of laws.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 8) Contrast what he says with the position of the legal positivists.
13. Why does Hooker say that the possession of God alone can make man happy (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 11, Sections 2 and 3)? Contrast his position with that of New Natural Law theorist German Grisez’s article on “The True Ultimate End of Human Beings.”

Critical Interpretation

1. Hooker argues that “such [nature’s] dexterity and skill appears, that no intellectual creature in the world could by [mental] capacity do that which nature does without [mental] capacity and knowledge; it cannot be that nature has not some director of infinite knowledge to guide her in all her ways. Who [is] the guide of nature, but only the God of nature?” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 3, Section 4) How convincing is this argument? Can you think of examples in nature that prove or disprove it?
2. Hooker gives two different divisions of man’s natural inclinations, one in Book 1, Chapter 5, Sections 2 and 3 (to continue in being through offspring, to operate with constancy and excellence, and to know truth and grow in virtue) and the other in Chapter 11, Section 4 (perfection of the senses, perfection of the intellect, perfection in matters “spiritual and divine”). Do these lists express the same reality from different perspectives? Or do aspects of one not overlap with the other? Why might Hooker have made two different divisions of human inclinations? Is one better than the other?
3. Hooker appears to identify the immediate cause of wrongdoing as ignorance, that is, lack of knowledge of what is good. This ignorance, he says, is the result of reluctance to work: “In doing evil, we prefer a less good before a greater, the greatness whereof is by reason investigable and may be known. The search of knowledge is a thing painful; and the painfulness of knowledge is that which makes the Will so hardly inclinable thereto. The root of this, divine malediction; by which the instruments being weakened with which the soul (especially in reasoning) does work, it prefers rest in ignorance before wearisome labour to know.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 7, Section 7).
1. Earlier Christian writers like Aquinas and the Protestant Reformers, and even certain non-Christians like Aristotle believed that the will could choose evil even if the agent had full knowledge of the wrongness of the deed. Aristotle believed that the will simply had an innate weakness to it (akrasia) by which it could succumb to base desires. Aquinas and the Reformers, adding to Aristotle, said that this weakness was in fact a consequence of the original sin, an aspect of the punishment or “divine malediction” attached to that sin, to which Hooker himself refers. Christians further added that the original sin was a deliberate choice of mankind to rebel against God in full knowledge that what they did was wrong. All subsequent wrongdoing retains some element of deliberate rebellion like that of that first sin. Both Aristotle and many of his Christian followers stressed the need for individuals to do good deeds repeatedly to strengthen the will (to practice askesis, or asceticism), and Christians added that help from God (grace) was also necessary to forgive the sin of wrongdoing and to order one’s actions toward God perfectly.

   Plato and others, on the other hand, seemed to think that wrongdoing was only the result of ignorance, a defect in the mind, and not in the will (though Plato’s writings are admittedly often indirect and hard to interpret). Take for instance what Plato has his mentor Socrates say in his dialogue Protagoras: “I am fairly sure of this—that none of the wise men considers that anybody ever willingly errs or willingly does base and evil deeds.” (345d–e) . . . “[Y]ielding to one’s weakness is nothing but ignorance, and mastery of oneself is as certainly wisdom,” (358c). Plato and others stressed the need for education of the intellect above all, especially by talking through one’s confusions.

   Is Hooker’s opinion more like that of Plato or of Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Reformers? Is Hooker effectively denying the Christian doctrine of original sin? Is his adherence to the belief in original sin fully salvaged by his statement that the Will does what is wrong because it will not make the effort to know the good, owing to “the painfulness of knowledge” that results from the “divine malediction”? Are there other parts in these excerpts of the Laws that agree more clearly with the Christian and Aristotelian view on this point?

2. If, as Hooker suggests, ignorance is only the result of lack of effort and reluctance to overcome pain, are people who lack understanding necessarily lazy and undisciplined? Are those who are most intelligent also most likely to be good and hardworking, and therefore to be fit and worthy to govern other people?
   
3. Later Hooker says that “The main principles of Reason are in themselves apparent.” Even the “less general” principles of the moral law—that one ought to worship God, honor one’s parents, and treat others as one would want to be treated—are “so manifest that they need no further proof. . . . Such things, as soon as they are alleged, all men acknowledge to be good; they require no proof or further discourse to be assured of their goodness.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 8, Section 5) Can you reconcile these statements with Hooker’s statement that obtaining moral knowledge is a painful process requiring great labor? How?

4. Although Hooker thinks that the best way to know which actions are good is to know the cause of goodness itself, he does not explain this cause because, he laments, his readers will not be patient enough to make the effort to understand it. He therefore proposes to do what he thinks is the next best thing: to explain what markers incidentally accompany those laws that are good. He thinks that the best sign that certain actions are good is that all people at all times have thought that they are good: “The general and perpetual voice of men,” he says, “is as the sentence of God himself. For that which all men have at all times learned, Nature herself must necessarily have taught; and God being the author of Nature, her voice is but his instrument. By her from Him we receive whatever we learn in this way.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 8, Section 3)  
1. Is this a helpful way of discovering the universal moral law? Can you think of any moral law that all people at all times have believed to be true? Are there behaviors that at one time were accepted everywhere but now are not because they are clearly recognized to be wrong? If so, how would Hooker explain such an earlier, universal error? 
2. Later Hooker seems to qualify his earlier statement about the universality of the moral law: “It is not agreed upon by one, or two, or few, but by all. Which we may not so understand, as if every particular man in the whole world did know and confess whatever the Law of Reason does contain; but this Law is such that being proposed no man can reject it as unreasonable and unjust. Again, there is nothing in it that any man (having natural perfection of reason and ripeness of judgment) may [not] by labour and travail find out.” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 8, Section 9) Does this qualification undo the usefulness of identifying the natural law as those moral laws that everyone acknowledges? Is not Hooker saying here that “that which is good is that which people with good judgment all agree or could agree to be good”? Are we not left asking “how do we know who has good judgment?” And how do we know who has good judgment unless we already know what is good, which is what we were trying to discover in the first place?  Can you defend Hooker’s position?

5. In Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 1, Hooker writes, “Political laws, ordained for external order and government among men, are never framed as they should be, unless they presume the will of man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience to the sacred laws of his nature; in a word, unless they presume man to be in regard of his depraved mind little better than a wild beast [and] do accordingly provide notwithstanding so to shape his outward actions, that they be no hindrance to the common good for which societies are instituted.”
1. Is the view of human nature put forth here more like that of John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, or Thomas Hobbes?
   
2. If the will of man is “averse from all obedience to the sacred laws of his nature” could there be any justification for giving freedom to citizens of a state? Does Hooker’s view support totalitarianism? Why or why not?

6. Hooker says that the first kind of law that human society establishes comprises laws that command whatever is “in itself naturally good or evil,” that is, the dictates of natural law (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 5). Why does Hooker think that this is necessary given that everyone should already know what the natural law says?
7. Why does Hooker say that “Nature even in this life does plainly claim and call for a more divine perfection than either [the perfection of the senses or of the intellect]”? (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 11, Section 4). Why does he think that such “divine perfection” is really obtainable? Are his arguments convincing, and why or why not?
1. Why does Hooker think that God had to reveal the way to the highest level of man’s perfection if he believes that the desire for it is already present in nature? (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 11, Sections 5 and 6)
8. Why does Hooker think that in the Bible God revealed laws of nature that man should be able to know by his own natural powers? (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 12, Sections 1 and 2)

Connections to Contemporary Issues

1. Richard Hooker thinks that one can discern a law of nature in the fact that some moral norms have been acknowledged by all people at all times (though he seems to qualify this statement in certain ways). Today many moral relativists, responding to arguments just like Hooker’s, claim that throughout history different societies have followed contrary moral rules, and that there is no moral norm that everyone has held. Even if one grants that not all of the precepts of the natural law that Hooker outlines have been held at all times in all places, are there at least one or two precepts that are held by all people at all times? Which might they be? Are there some moral customs that, even if on the surface they appear immoral, nevertheless presume a moral law that all people agree with?
2. Hooker says, “We all make complaint of the iniquity of our times: not unjustly; for the days are evil. But compare them with those times in which there were no civil societies, with those times in which there was as yet no manner of public government established, with those times in which there were not above eight persons righteous living upon the face of the earth (2 Pet. 2:5); and we have surely good cause to think that God has blessed us exceedingly, and has made us behold most happy days,” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 3).  Hooker wrote during a very tumultuous time in European history, and not long after great tumult in England itself; it is therefore remarkable for him to make this optimistic statement. Despite difficulties that beset our world today, can you think of aspects of contemporary life that are much better than they were even in Hooker’s day, around the year 1600? More generally, what benefits does civil society bring to human life? What aspects of life that we take for granted every day would cease to exist if civil order were to break down?
3. Hooker says that “[T]o constrain men to anything improper does seem unreasonable. Most requisite therefore it is that none but wise men be admitted to devise laws which all men shall be forced to obey. Laws are matters of principal consequence; men of common capacity and only ordinary judgment are not able (for how should they?) to discern what things are fittest for each kind and state of government,” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 10, Section 7). Do present-day western governments allow only the wise to be legislators? If not, is that bad or good, and why? Could the selection of legislators change to insure that they are wiser? How could this be done in states that are committed to democracy? Some people point out that the U.S. Constitution originally arranged that the president and senators be elected indirectly, through an electoral college and the states’ legislatures. Would Hooker have approved of that system more than the present American system, where the president and the Senate are elected directly? Which way do you think is best, and why?
4. Hooker seems to agree with Gratian’s definition of “Natural Right” as “the right which exacts those general duties that concern men naturally even as they are men,” (Laws, Book 1, Chapter 12, Section 1). When we speak of rights today in any number of public discussions (the right to marry, the right to life, the right to free speech) do we frame rights primarily as duties or as something else? How ought we to understand the meaning of “rights”?
5. Prof. Faulkner points out that Hooker’s commitment to reason is much different from that of John Locke. For Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers, reason is generally taken to be the primary standard of human knowledge; all other kinds of knowledge, including religious beliefs taken from alleged revelations from God, are thought to be sub-rational or even irrational. Hooker, on the other hand, believes that reason is compatible with religious belief and revelation, and perhaps even dependent upon it because of the wound of sin in human nature. Many contemporary leaders in society tend to agree with the strand of the Enlightenment that sees religious belief as necessarily irrational. Some very prominent figures have even concluded that religion can have no place in public life, because, they allege, it is entirely subjective, with no orientation toward objective reality. How might Hooker respond to such a view of religion? Do you think that the extreme Enlightenment’s view of religion (usually called “secularism”) is correct, especially based on your reading of Hooker’s Laws? Why or why not?