DOES NATURAL LAW STILL EXIST ?
Source : valeriebugault.fr – July 7, 2025 – Valérie Bugault
https://valeriebugault.fr/does-natural-law-still-exist
Abonnez-vous au canal Telegram Strategika pour ne rien rater de notre actualité
Pour nous soutenir commandez les livres Strategika : “Globalisme et dépopulation” , « La guerre des USA contre l’Europe » et « Société ouverte contre Eurasie »
This study examines the decline of classical natural law from Saint Thomas Aquinas’s divine-based legal hierarchy to today’s purely formal legal systems. The analysis reveals how Enlightenment nominalism and banking elites systematically replaced natural law principles with arbitrary rules serving plutocratic interests. As technological disruption challenges current power structures, the author argues for restoring classical natural law and renewing political leadership to rebuild just legal foundations.
To more precisely rephrase the question posed in the title of this article, the question is whether natural law still as an official functional place in the current hierarchy of norms, that is, in the rule of law as it exists in our society. In other words, does the process of creating positive law include a systematic allegiance to the principles of natural law?
To clarify the debate concerning the opposability of natural law rules to positive law, it is important to properly position the question of natural law in time and space. We will briefly detail the principles of classical natural law (I) before examining the modernist deviations it has undergone over time (II) to finally determine the position of natural law in our current political-legal order (III). Finally, we will open the debate with some remarks on political perspective.
I – Principles of Classical Natural Law
The origins of the theorization of what we commonly call « natural law » lie in the principles developed in the 13th century by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)1. Saint Thomas’s main doctrinal contributions lie in the fusion of the logical insights of Greek philosophy with Christian principles derived from God. More precisely, Saint Thomas fused the contributions of faith with reason, believing that faith and reason cannot contradict or exclude each other since they both emanate from God. This way of thinking was referred to as « scholasticism, » Saint Thomas being one of the principal masters of scholastic philosophy.
Saint Thomas Aquinas’ theoretical construction is part of the logic according to which all humans are obliged to follow and respect the laws of natural law, because they are dictated by God. The methodological elements that allow us to discover these rules of natural law written by God are, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas:
1) Knowledge, and therefore the search for truth2;
2) Concern for a peaceful communal life within society3;
3) Concern for the preservation of life and the human species4, which requires the transmission of an education that allows for this preservation.
As an illustration of his innovative doctrine, Saint Thomas Aquinas does not refute commerce as such but disputes the notion that the trade in money can produce enrichment5.
According to the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the legal order is part of a hierarchical understanding of the value of rules: first comes the eternal Law issued from the divine will, second comes the natural Law accessible by reason and third and last are the human laws, today called « positive law », which must be in conformity with the natural Law. According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, « Just law is that which is in conformity with nature and with the reason willed by God ». Logically according to this doctrine, the law must be « just » if it is to be able to meet its purposes which are to allow life in common as well as respect for the human person, understood in all its physical and spiritual dimensions. According to Thomist thought, an unjust positive law can neither meet the purposes indicated above, nor be in conformity with the eternal Law manifested in the natural Law. In Thomist thought, positive law is therefore « condemned » to be « just » or not to be. It should also be noted that Thomism considers positive law from a realistic perspective, as opposed to the nominalist movement6.
The principles derived from Thomistic philosophy, as briefly stated above, have historically enabled the construction of a lasting social life, eventually transforming into a true civilization, long called « Western civilization. »
This Western civilization underwent a sudden reversal of values, while becoming more brutal with the advent of the Modern Age (which lasted from the mid-15th century until the French Revolution of 1789), driven by the great maritime epics (called the Great Discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries), the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, which roughly cover the same historical period as that designated by the term « Modern Age. »
The enrichment of the banking and merchant class resulting from the Modern Age was concomitant with the weakening of Western civilization built around Thomistic thought.
II – Modernist and Nominalist Deviations from the Principles of Classical Natural Law
With the enrichment of the Modern Age, a new social order emerged, breaking with the balances established by the medieval order, represented by the social division into three orders: 1) the aristocracy, led by the King, guarantor of the general interest, « called temporal power, » 2) the ecclesiastical power, called « spiritual power, » and 3) the Third Estate, comprising all other social groups: peasants, artisans, and merchants. In this political organization, the temporal power’s social function is to ensure the security of all (it is the power that goes to war); the spiritual power’s social function is to ensure proper respect for the rules that allow the fulfillment of God’s will (those that guarantee the possibility of living together and those that guarantee the protection of the individual in their physical and spiritual dimensions), and the Third Estate’s social function is to nourish and oversee the material development of all.
With the Great Discoveries, a new caste emerged with a hegemonic vocation: the credit-providing bankers. All the merchants and artisans who became industrialists during the 18th and 19th centuries (thanks to the Industrial Revolution that followed the Great Discoveries) were dependent on the caste of credit-providing bankers. Free men under the Ancien Régime, the merchants of the Modern Age have de facto become the new « liegemen » of the Modern Age. It is important to understand that no trade, especially international trade, nor any industry can develop without the approval and support of the credit-providing bankers.
Thus, the old social order based on blood money7 and Christian morality (temporal and spiritual power were the two orders with privileges) gradually gave way to a new political and social order based on:
1) The arbitrary power of bankers, who always remained free to grant or withhold their favors to whomever they pleased,
2) The cunning of these same bankers to impose on all members of society, through institutions organized at their service8, rules entirely favorable to their own well-understood caste interests. This resulted in the privatization of profits and the collectivization (nationalization) of losses9.
This new ruling class, hidden behind grand, trumpeted democratic and liberal principles, modeled on nominalist philosophy, borrowed the advantages of the Ancien Régime aristocracy while freeing itself from the true meaning of the term « aristocracy, » since it was no longer « the government of the best » in the sense of competence, personal virtues, and self-sacrifice, but rather the government of the most cunning and adept at establishing generally applicable economic rules designed to enrich the personal fortunes of the High Bank caste.
In this sense, Modern Times and nominalism represent a systemic ontological break with the meaning of terminology, since the new economic elites no longer have the vocation of ensuring the sustainability of life or of communal life, the guarantor of social peace10, which presupposes the search for truth and justice, but have the sole objective of increasing both their own wealth and the power that this wealth confers on them over others (i.e., over the majority of people).
The Modern Times era sees the birth of an ideological convergence between the needs of the economic caste, led by the High Bank, which has come to power, and the nominalist philosophy, which stipulates that concepts (and therefore words) only have the meaning that one decides, voluntarily, that is, arbitrarily, to give them. For nominalist philosophy, concepts are independent of experience.
We have now reached the terminal phase of the plutocratic principle championed by the Modern Age. The political and social regime specific to this era, based on parliamentarianism, political parties, and an independent central bank, is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions.
The recent highlighting of the original contradictions inherent in this regime stems from the fact that modern technological means11, by multiplying the striking power of the ruling economic class, simultaneously highlight the systematic antagonism that exists between the proclaimed public discourse, transmitted by academic circles and the teaching profession, and the reality on the ground —that is, the reality experienced, actually perceived, by the entire population.
In other words, nominalist philosophy appears today for what it has always been: a highly effective means of social control based on the manipulation of language and collective narrative, the whole forming a paradigm, allowing the temporary imposition of a social functioning based on untruths, that is, on artificial postulates born from an arbitrarily imposed language and concepts. This philosophy was the weapon used by the merchant-banker caste to impose a paradigm based solely on the satisfaction of its own needs, a hegemonic one.
While the Ancien Régime organized a system in which each political body provided a social service to the other two, the parliamentary regime born of the Enlightenment implemented a political system of pure predation in the service of the caste that controlled the economy through its control of monetary resources.
III – The Position of Natural Law in Our Current Political-Legal Order
We will examine the precise position of natural law in our legal order (A) before examining how the political, legal, and social future presents itself in the current context (B).
A) The Position of Natural Law in Our Legal Order (it would be more realistic to speak of a legal disorder)
The legal-political situation linked to modernist deviations from the law is now becoming apparent due to the era of scientific rupture we have entered.
New communication technologies are, for our political regimes emerging from the Modern Era, comparable to what the invention of the printing press (mid-15th century) was for the political order known as the « Ancien Régime »: the beginning of the end. Printing was followed, in the 18th and 19th centuries, by the Great Discoveries and the Industrial Revolution.
The invention of modern telecommunications, the era of the internet and Artificial Intelligence (AI), along with major advances in quantum physics, will clearly profoundly disrupt the very concept of work—which will disappear in its current form—as well as the organization of social relations. Only humans will remain, faced with the dual need to: 1) preserve life and 2) organize and pacify community life to survive as a species. In other words, the combination of: 1) the evolution of information dissemination methods (internet), 2) the revolution in production methods through digitization and the emergence of AI, and 3) the rupture of previously well-established scientific assumptions by recent advances in quantum physics, will inevitably generate a radical change in modes of government.
Thanks to this unique situation, rare in the course of human history, the question—forgotten for too long—concerning the place of natural law in the legal system is naturally being raised anew. It was about time…
In order not to misinterpret this new and very widespread public enthusiasm for natural law, a few clarifications are necessary.
First, historical events mean that the current conception of natural law, cloaked in modernism, is purely rationalist and nominalist. Specifically, it must be understood that this modernist conception of « natural law » is a direct descendant of the Encyclopedist movement12 of the Age of Enlightenment, a movement entirely financed by major bankers with the aim of establishing their hegemonic project.
The main proponents of modern natural law are the Dutchman Grotius (16th century)13, the Englishman Pufendorf (17th century)14, the Englishman Hobbes (17th century)15, the Englishman Locke (17th century)16, and, later in the 18th century, Rousseau17 and his famous, yet vague, « social contract. »
Roughly speaking, these authors consider that natural law no longer depends on God but on the natural reason of man. This means, in concrete terms, that natural law is, in the nominalist fashion, enacted without any constraint, ad libitum, by the men charged with its enactment.
In other words, natural law no longer corresponds to the search for laws imposed by God through the organization of nature; it is now artificially designated as such by the humans who are responsible for enacting its rules. This school of thought led to the emergence of Human Rights, designated as the alpha and omega of natural principles. This is no coincidence, since the very objective of Human Rights was to multiply categorical rights in such a way as to eliminate Common Law, the only law capable of being imposed on all in relative public peace (provided it is « just, » as we saw in the first part of this article).
The proliferation of categorical rights, by mechanically killing the principles of « common law » and « responsibility, » has killed the natural law derived from Natural Law just as much as it has destroyed the very concept of law (understood as « positive law »), replacing it with a multitude of specific rules.
The « social contract » that made J-J Rousseau famous is also a sham. There can be no « social contract » other than one based on the application of a just « positive law » charged with enforcing Natural Law. However, the philosophical movement of the Enlightenment (to which Rousseau belonged) had, in exact contrast, the essential objective of eliminating Natural Law and transforming it, through modernist alchemy, into rules arbitrarily decided by those in power.
As an illustration, the famous « invisible hand of the market » is analyzed in the barely hidden hand of the bankers who provide credit: the latter have the possibility, by the choice of the beneficiaries of the credit they grant, to create the most influential economic actors, who, in turn, by the principle of the law of the strongest (free and perfect competition does not exist) and the application of their natural allegiance to those who provide them with credit, will have the possibility of orienting the market in one direction or another depending on the circumstances.
A further step towards the official disappearance of any reference to natural law in the principle of hierarchy of norms came with the publication in 1934 of Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law18, which has since been established as a veritable legal dogma. This theory, a true intellectual imposture, stipulates that jurists should no longer be interested in the ends of law, which are supposed to have no value, but should concentrate exclusively on the techniques to be implemented, without ever confronting these techniques with the reality of the necessities of life and of life in common. Since the Pure Theory of Law: the means is everything and the end is nothing for the jurist. Positive law, resulting from the parliamentary process, is prepared behind the scenes by people in the pay of the superior banking interests that control the modern State. The jurist, once a legal expert renowned for his skill in organizing the life of human societies, has become a mere pawn charged with applying legal techniques, which he sometimes helped to create, but without ever questioning the purposes of the texts he must apply! This pure theory of law transforms legal theorists into little soldiers charged with implementing texts that satisfy the interests of the ruling economic plutocracy.
The advent of this theory signaled the end of competent and responsible legal theorists, giving way to pen-pushers totally disinterested in the purposes of law, irresponsible and dangerous for social cohesion, veritable mercenaries in the pay of economic landlords.
The final blow to legal theorists came even later with the imposition, in France and throughout Europe, of the reform of higher education based on the master’s degree model. This model, of Germanic origin, has managed to establish itself in France and throughout Europe through the United States of America and the European Union (EU). It should be noted that this higher education system, which was established in the USA since the end of the 19th century, suggests limiting the time spent on basic research as much as possible. Any lengthy research activity is now considered, by irrefutable assumption, to be a waste of time. In this model, the doctorate should ideally be limited to a duration of three years, without exceeding five, beyond which it will be extremely devalued on the « job market. »
It goes without saying that this method applied to higher education is in direct contradiction with the long French and European history (which had already been brutally halted with the arrival of representative parliamentarianism, a direct consequence of the 1789 Revolution) of training legal theorists, entirely centered around the learning and experimental knowledge of the natural laws of life and those of life in society.
This system of higher education, of Germanic origin, has seriously undermined all fields of education, not just the field of law, which are systematically severely restricted in their ability to benefit from the fruits of fundamental research, which is by nature time-consuming. Make no mistake, behind this teaching model lies yet another attack on the sovereignty of states by the ruling economic class; this attack is a coup de grâce.
Thus, unfortunately, we must today understand the hierarchy of norms, which underpins the « rule of law, » as a purely formal principle that excludes natural law as such. This principle is based exclusively on an organic conception of the institution from which the norm emanates. The higher this institution ranks in the plutocratic social order born of the Enlightenment (so-called representative parliamentarism), the higher the enacted rule will be in the hierarchy of norms.
Roughly speaking, and without going into detail, this hierarchy of norms factually imposes in France today that European Union rules take precedence over domestic law. In domestic law, this hierarchy of norms requires that the Constitution be respected by laws adopted by parliament, and that these first two levels be respected by the lower norms emanating from the executive branch (decrees, orders, etc.).
While the concept of « natural law, » a veritable legal dinosaur, has not completely disappeared from the legal landscape, it now serves as a vague theoretical justification for the existence and permanence of principles, both domestic and international, inherited from Natural Law in the classical sense of the term.
The hierarchy of norms thus understood, that is, emptied of its meaning by the exclusion of natural law stemming from Natural Law, itself becomes obsolete: real economic leaders logically no longer wish to be burdened with a jumble of normative hierarchy as meaningless as the rules that compose it. All these rules are, ultimately and regardless of their hierarchical level, written and determined by and for the same people: the economic managers. « Positive laws » are all enacted based on the conjunctural hazards that the ruling economic class encounters during its long-term projects. Thus, not only the hierarchy of norms, but also any notion of the permanence of law and legal certainty, is now obsolete. The rule of law has been emptied of all substance.
In this context, the disappearance of the very notion of « rule of law » was inevitably established from the outset. Indeed, if the rules, regardless of the body responsible for enacting them, are discretionary in nature, respond to no natural imperative, and have the sole objective of satisfying the caste that has, as discreetly as anonymously, seized power, it is only a matter of time before this same caste deems it superfluous to officially respect a purely formal hierarchical legal order when it otherwise controls all the bodies at the origin of this hierarchy.
It is precisely because we, in the West, have renounced the principle of Natural Law19 that all countries of the world can today observe and deplore the disappearance of « international law » and its replacement by « rules » that are as arbitrary as they are fluctuating according to the best interests of those who enact them20.
In this extremely degraded context, it is currently unfortunately ineffective and even detrimental to seek, or claim, to rely on natural law to invalidate or emancipate oneself from any rule of positive law. This warning is unequivocal. Only a shift in the legal and political paradigm can restore natural law, as a translation of Natural Law, to its central place in the concept of the hierarchy of norms and the rule of law.
B) How the political, legal, and social future presents itself in the current context
We are currently living in a time of collective astonishment due to the cognitive dissonance in which everyone finds themselves, following the recent and brutal revelation of the systematic antagonism that exists between the public narrative and the reality experienced by everyone.
This time of collective astonishment is compounded by an extremely dangerous period in which economic elites are losing the cognitive and institutional tools that allowed them to govern quietly, unaccountable to anyone, comfortably seated in their hegemonic position.
The loss of the financial aristocracy’s tools of social control is accompanied by a threat to the latter due to the scientific and technological disruption we are currently experiencing. Thus, the merchant bankers who have dominated the public sphere since modern times are being challenged and competed with by a new « elite » mastering science and new technologies.
Will this emerging caste, which deserves the term « aristocracy » more than bankers ever did (so distinguished are they by their genuine technical expertise), be a true aristocracy? To put it another way: will this emerging social elite reign, as bankers did, through arbitrariness and a lack of social responsibility, or will it, on the contrary, base its emerging social and political model on the « service » it provides to the community, thereby restoring its credentials in the true sense of the word « aristocracy, » and consequently eliminating mass cognitive dissonance?
Will this emerging elite, mastering new technologies, be able to find the path to political realism, which involves the rehabilitation of classical natural law and the banishment of nominalist imposture, or will it continue to assume the role of social dominator through force and cunning that the bankers have imposed on the world?
The mobilization, or lack thereof, of populations aware of the colossal stakes involved in answering these questions will provide the answer to each of these questions. In this fight, the populations are in a rather bad way because the current technological disruptions were initiated by the owners of capital currently in power.
In order to regain control of a situation that could (or threatens to) escape them, it is of the utmost importance that ordinary people (those who make up the population) invest as much as possible in new technologies and quantum physics to « master » these areas of knowledge and avoid becoming their eternal victims.
Combined with a good understanding of the natural laws developed by the classics and adapted to our era, these scientific and technological breakthroughs can lead to a real improvement in the human condition. Without the combination of the two parameters of technological mastery and a good understanding of classical natural laws, the danger of the ultimate enslavement of Man and the disappearance of humanity is real, not to say probable…
IV – Conclusion in the Form of a Prospective
At the same time as the antagonism between the official discourse of the ruling plutocracy and the daily reality experienced by the vast majority of people becomes visible, another situation becomes apparent: that of inbreeding linked to dynastic bloodlines. The princely inbreeding of the Ancien Régime has gradually been replaced by the inbreeding of banking bloodlines that have prospered (by parasitizing the dynamism and creativity of the population) since the Modern Era.
Today, we are witnessing, in rapid succession, the decline of the financial plutocracy, just as we witnessed the decline of the princely aristocracy in the 18th century.
Let us be careful not to repeat the aristocratic transition between princes and high-end banking in what would, in the future, be the transition from high-end banking to high-tech owners, themselves already heavily intertwined with the inbred financial plutocracy.
In conclusion, I would like to return to a lesson from history, which we must consider a Natural Law. To find the path to civilization, we must radically renew the ruling elites by collectively bringing to power people who:
1) Have demonstrated their competence through their past actions and deeds,
2) Are informed and respectful of Natural Laws, understood in the classical sense of the term, that is, within a realistic framework, as opposed to nominalist philosophy. Based on the Thomistic model, these natural laws guarantee both the protection and integrity of the human person (and, more generally, of all living things) and, on the other hand, that of the group constituted as a political nation, by rehabilitating the notion of the « common good. »
3) Without prior experience of dynastic power.
Finally, it will be necessary to ensure that our future institutions protect leaders from the ravages of dynastic rule, which always degenerate into inbreeding, by guaranteeing the election of ministers and the Head of State by direct universal suffrage.
All these conditions for social reorganization—and many more—are guaranteed by the political renewal in the form of a paradigm shift championed by the « Révoludroit » project.
Notes
1 See https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_d%27Aquin
2 Unlike today’s political society, which thrives on lies and manipulation of all kinds
3 Unlike today’s political society, which creates and organizes social conflict
4 Unlike today’s political society, which generates infinite pollution, notably (but not exclusively) through the systematic implementation of planned obsolescence
5 See https://ses.ens-lyon.fr/articles/les-grands-themes-25448
6 See https://www.persee.fr/doc/ether_0014-2239_1927_num_2_3_1172#:~:text=Etre%20réaliste%20%2C%20c’est%20croire,est%20purement%20verbale%20et%20arbitraire ; https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalisme
7 The aristocracy of the Ancien Régime only enjoyed privileges because its social role was to protect the other two orders, at the cost of the blood it had to shed to ensure this protection
8 I am referring here to parliamentarianism based on political parties, coupled with the establishment of a supposedly independent central bank
9 Everyone will have recognized here the description of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP)
10 It should be noted that social appeasement, which must be a quest of institutions, can never be absolute, as the interests of each party naturally and spontaneously come into conflict
11 We are living in a time, rare in human history, of technological disruption
12 The encyclopedist movement was made possible by Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in mid-15th century Germany
13 Grotius was a 16th-century theoretician of the United Provinces (Holland), the very place from which the High Bank initiated its strategy of hegemonic development, before permanently settling in the City of London: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Grotius ; on the chronology of the advent of the concept of central banking, born in 1609 with the Bank of Amsterdam, see: https://valeriebugault.fr/decryptage-du-systeme-economique-global-1sur7
14 See: https://www.lgdj.fr/pufendorf-et-la-loi-naturelle-9782711620418.html ; https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_von_Pufendorf ; Pufendorf’s intellectual contributions seem to have, as is often the case, been falsified by the presentation and interpretation given to them, which has become entrenched in history…
15 Hobbes is a 17th-century English theoretician: Cf. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes
16 Cf. John Locke is a 17th-century English theoretician: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
17 Cf. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
18 See https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Théorie_pure_du_droit
19 See https://valeriebugault.fr/la-guerre-du-droit-naura-pas-lieu
20 On the origins of this deviation from the law, see: https://valeriebugault.fr/les-attaques-contre-le-droit-continental-s-intensifient ; https://valeriebugault.fr/contextualisation-et-enjeux-reels-de-la-guerre-du-droit; https://valeriebugault.fr/de-lempire-britannique-au-ivme-reich; https://valeriebugault.fr/pourquoi-le-modele-britannique-est-il-anti-democratique
