The true gentelmen

Phoenix Institute for the Study of Western Institutions
2010

Reconstructing the concept of Natural Law:
Liberal Education, Friendship, and Leadership as means to bring about change towards a transcendental society


Abstract
The present essay proposes a method to recover the concept of Natural Law and restore its relevance in everyday’s debates and decisions, in order topresent a plausible solution that can contribute to bring about change in the current relativistic and individual approach to reality and moral choices. To achieve this, it will first describe some of modern society’s issues. Secondly, it will examine some of the ideas and philosophical schools that have nurtured this problem. Finally, the essay concludes that Liberal Education is a practical tool torecover the importance of Natural Law as a necessary perspective for modern debate.

Cristina Gutierrez Girault
Cristian Villamizar
Federico Hoyos Salazar

Table of Contents
Introduction 3
A soul-shaking experience 6
The importance of Liberal Education 7
Standing in the shoulders of giants 8
A very dangerous tendency 9
The rise of a champion: The Gentelman 11
The concept ofthe “gentleman” 12
A rare jewel indeed 13
From ‘mass democracy’ to the ‘aristocratic democracy’ 17
A call to an effective action 19
Institutions as means of change 21
Friendship: the antidote for the micro-self 22
Power to Empower 24
A more perfect interpretation of reality 25
Bibliography 27

Introduction
The present essay aims to present arguments that favor the importance ofthe study of Natural Law to enrich the current debate about morality, good and evil, and responsible choices; In our opinion, by recovering the concept of natural law and its implication in modern thought is not ‘the’ ultimate answer for many of the sensitive issues that arise with frequency nowadays; but it constitutes a powerful tool to enrich the discussion and steer it to what, we believe, is amore perfect interpretation of reality. The resurgence of the concept of good can only come through power of the individual and its capacity to impact society’s institutions. The principal goal of the present text is to propose a method – liberal education – to recover the concept of natural law and restore its relevance in everyday’s debates and decisions.
The study of natural law enrichesdiscussion of debated topics because in provides a wider observation of reality; thus allows us to arrive to a more perfect interpretation of it. To explain the previous statement let us consider the following argument: only one true conclusion could be drawn from the observation of the same reality. In this sense, variations – namely, differences in interpretations – only come through omissions of apart of reality; Thus, the most encompassing observation arrives to the most perfect interpretation.
In other words, this text states that an observation of nature that includes the possibility of the transcendental would lead to more accurate conclusions than an observation of nature that deliberately ignores any notion of divinity and order in nature.
As an example of the previous idea, ifone were to analyze Nietzsche famous quote “God is dead, remains dead, and we have killed him” in isolation from Nietzsche’s complete works, one could interpret such quote as an apology to the Christian faith. Nietzsche lived during an age when God was reduced to a mere observant in the periphery of the man-centered universe; the image of God was powerless, distant and obscure. One could argue thatNietzsche’s quote could be a reaction to the reduction of the image of God; in other words, if God’s image has been so distorted by the modern philosophy, then it is true that mankind has killed God. However, it is clear to most philosophers that Nietzsche did not intend to defend Christianity but to destroy human’s dependence on religion and the transcendent. In conclusion, in the present...