Can you base the laws of a world, the foundations of a people, on mere natural impulses?
You can – but what kind of place is that?
No really, stop and think about it philosophically.
If were are mere animals, our “desires” mean nothing more than the instincts of an ant, the reactions of a fly, or the chemistry of a plant.
You may prefer something.
But there is no underlying reason that your desire for X is more valid than my desire for Y.
You can either have objective value, or you can have tyranny – either megalomania or erotomania.
In your worldview, this is not an easy issue to avoid, if you think about it.
We have been trying, like Lear, to have it both ways: to lay down our human prerogative and yet at the same time to retain it. It is impossible. Either we are rational spirit obliged forever to obey the absolute values of the Tao, or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasure of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own ‘natural’ impulses. Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man (Amazon)
