Woke Ideology vs. Natural Law: Deconstruction and Reconstruction

In previous posts I described what is so problematic about woke ideology. I offered the idea of natural law as a more just, rational, and humane alternative to wokeness. I described natural law in both its descriptive dimension, which enables us to understand what is real and true about the world, and its practical dimension, which enables us to understand what is good and right to do. Now we can compare these two, competing ways of thinking and acting.

Like natural law, wokeness has two dimensions. Its proponents call the first dimension “deconstruction” or “debunking.” In this dimension, scholars of critical theories (Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, Dominance Feminism, Intersectionality Theory, and Queer Theory) use the tools of twentieth-century French thinkers, such as Jacque Derrida and Michel Foucault, to tear everything down. Law, constitutions, marriage, parentage, words, and even reason itself are all mere discursive regimes, constructed along arbitrary lines to serve the selfish desires of the people who are culturally dominant.

So, for example, there is nothing natural or reasonable or good about the biological family—mother, father, and the children they bring into the world. The idea that children do well when raised by their mother and father and that children therefore have a right to be connected to their mom and dad legally was made up by people whose personal desires are heterosexual, tame, capitalist, and religious. It’s arbitrary. The only purpose of this discursive regime is to define out of existence the experiences of people who prefer homosexual, polyamorous, and uncommitted family arrangements. But those subjective preferences are just as real, so the nuclear family must be debunked and deconstructed.

We can call the debunking dimension the unreason element of the woke. It does not appeal to reason. Indeed, it rejects reason. All is power. Critical scholars and activists teach that the discursive regimes of Western civilization—the family, the rule of law, monotheistic religion, and the rest—was all created by raw power. The way to expose the arbitrariness of Western assumptions is to pull it apart at the edges and then keep pulling until it all unravels. So, with marriage, the debunkers start with spousal abuse, infidelity, and divorce. Those marital abuses and defects are (sadly) always found at the edges of marriage because not all marriages are as good as they could be. The critical theorists identify those peripheral failures of marriage with marriage itself. They demand that we focus exclusively at the periphery, where vulnerable women and children are abused and neglected, and ignore the arbitrary, socially-constructed core, where men and women act out of love and sacrifice their own interests for each other and their children. The debunkers insist that marriage exists for abuse and infidelity. Then they pull those loose threads and they keep pulling until the whole thing unravels. They stoke resentment, sew confusion, and generate anger.

In their unreason dimension, the woke deny that there are any essential truths about human beings, law, justice, or knowledge. They believe that everything is artificial, socially constructed by the powerful to oppress the powerless. There is no such thing as “male” or “female,” really. Nor is there any reality to “justice,” the “presumption of innocence,” or “due process of law.” The first project of the woke is to debunk those social constructs. This unreason is on display when woke university students refuse to listen to facts and opinions they find offensive. They display it in their refusal to reason with those whom they regard as tainted by colonization and oppression. And they demonstrate unreason in the lack of logic and evidence in the assertions they make.

Natural law’s answer to woke unreason is to identify those principles that give us an accurate description of the world. (Natural law theorists call this “theoretical” or “speculative” reasoning, but those terms are not important.) Descriptive natural law enables us to identify the essence of some thing or being, what is most central or important about it. A rock is essentially an inert, hard mass. A dog is essentially a domesticated, carnivorous mammal with a snout. A human being is essentially an inspirited animal with a male or female body and a rational soul. By identifying the principal essence of each kind of being, we can distinguish different kinds of being and group together same and similar kinds.

So, natural law looks at marriage from its core or essence. The two most central things about a marriage are that a man and a woman remain committed to each other for life and that they make decisions together to act for the flourishing of any children that come from their union. When viewed that way, marriage looks not at all like a socially-constructed discursive regime. Instead, it looks like the perfect personal and social relationship to ensure the well-being of all the members of the family, to enable everyone in the family to live a life of flourishing. And the defects of marriage out at the edges are simply that: unfortunate defects. An abusive marriage is a marriage gone bad. To the extent that it is abusive it is precisely not a marriage.

Natural law identifies for us the animating principles that hold the pieces together. Descriptive natural law is the intellectual resource we need to reconstruct what the debunkers have deconstructed. And just as there are many critical theory scholars cranking out papers and speeches and journalism for woke uses, there are many reasonable thinkers rebuilding the ancient intellectual tradition of natural law, and extending its insights into contemporary questions.

The question for us today is which project will we join: deconstruction or reconstruction.