[PDF] Natural Law And Moral Inquiry eBook

Author : Robert P. George
Publisher : Georgetown University Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 10,74 MB
Release : 1998-03-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781589013803

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Germain Grisez has been a leading voice in moral philosophy and theology since the Second Vatican Council. In this book, such major thinkers as John Finnis, Ralph McInerny, and William E. May consider issues in ethics, metaphysics, and politics that have been central to Grisez's work. Grisez's reconsideration of the philosophical foundations of Christian moral teaching, seeking to eliminate both legalistic interpretation and theological dissent, has won the support of a number of leading Catholic moralists. In the past decade, moreover, many philosophers outside of Catholicism have weighed carefully Grisez's alternatives to theories that have long dominated secular moral philosophy. This book presents a broad spectrum of viewpoints on subjects ranging from contraception to capital punishment and considers such controversies as the scriptural basis of Grisez's work his interpretations of Aquinas, and his new natural law theory. The collection includes not only contributions from Grisez's supporters but also from critics of his thought, from proportionalist Edward Collins Vacek, SJ, to the neo-Thomist Ralph McInerny. A reply by Grisez, written with Joseph M. Boyle Jr., addresses the issues and viewpoints expressed, while an afterword by Russell Shaw reviews Grisez's pioneering work and conveys a vivid sense of the philosopher's personality. As Grisez's influence grows, this volume will serve as an important touchstone on his contributions to moral and political philosophy and theology.

Author : Mark J. Cherry
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 38,11 MB
Release : 2006-04-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1402022247

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Accounts of natural law moral philosophy and theology sought principles and precepts for morality, law, and other forms of social authority, whose prescriptive force was not dependent for validity on human decision, social influence, past tradition, or cultural convention, but through natural reason itself. This volume critically explores and assesses our contemporary culture wars in terms of: the possibility of natural law moral philosophy and theology to provide a unique, content-full, canonical morality; the character and nature of moral pluralism; the limits of justifiable national and international policy seeking to produce and preserve human happiness, social justice, and the common good; the ways in which morality, moral epistemology, and social political reform must be set within the broader context of an appropriately philosophically and theologically anchored anthropology. This work will be of interest to philosophers, theologians, bioethicists, ethicists and political scientists.

Author : John Finnis
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 16,50 MB
Release : 2011-04-07
Category : Law
ISBN : 0191616656

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First published in 1980, Natural Law and Natural Rights is widely heralded as a seminal contribution to the philosophy of law, and an authoritative restatement of natural law doctrine. It has offered generations of students and other readers a thorough grounding in the central issues of legal, moral, and political philosophy from Finnis's distinctive perspective. This new edition includes a substantial postscript by the author, in which he responds to thirty years of discussion, criticism and further work in the field to develop and refine the original theory. The book closely integrates the philosophy of law with ethics, social theory and political philosophy. The author develops a sustained and substantive argument; it is not a review of other people's arguments but makes frequent illustrative and critical reference to classical, modern, and contemporary writers in ethics, social and political theory, and jurisprudence. The preliminary First Part reviews a century of analytical jurisprudence to illustrate the dependence of every descriptive social science upon evaluations by the theorist. A fully critical basis for such evaluations is a theory of natural law. Standard contemporary objections to natural law theory are reviewed and shown to rest on serious misunderstandings. The Second Part develops in ten carefully structured chapters an account of: basic human goods and basic requirements of practical reasonableness, community and 'the common good'; justice; the logical structure of rights-talk; the bases of human rights, their specification and their limits; authority, and the formation of authoritative rules by non-authoritative persons and procedures; law, the Rule of Law, and the derivation of laws from the principles of practical reasonableness; the complex relation between legal and moral obligation; and the practical and theoretical problems created by unjust laws. A final Part develops a vigorous argument about the relation between 'natural law', 'natural theology' and 'revelation' - between moral concern and other ultimate questions.

Author : Douglas Kries
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 40,48 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780739120378

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The Problem of Natural Law examines the understanding of conscience offered by Thomas Aquinas, who provided the classic statement of natural law. The book suggests that natural law theory could be improved by bracketing Thomistic conscience and then shows how a natural law pos...

Author : Pamela M. Hall
Publisher :
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 20,11 MB
Release : 1994
Category : Law
ISBN :

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With Narrative and the Natural Law Pamela Hall brings Thomistic ethics into conversation with ongoing debates in contemporary moral philosophy, especially virtue theory and moral psychology, and with current trends in narrative theory and the philosophy of history. Pamela M. Hall's study offers a solid, challenging alternative to rigid, legalistic interpretations of the substantial discussion of law in Aquinas's Summa theologiae and defends Aquinas's ethics from charges of excessive legalism. Hall argues that Aquinas's characterization of the content and relationship of natural, human and divine law indicates that his understanding of the quest for the human good is practical, communal, and historical. Hall maintains that natural law, the ongoing inquiry into what is the human good, is narrative both in terms of its internal structure and its being informed by the specific story of Scripture. According to Aquinas the discovery of natural law is enacted historically and progressively within communities and by individuals through a process of practical reasoning. Hall then goes on to show how natural law requires articulation by human law, and how both are connected to divine law (salvation history) as Aquinas understands it. Aquinas represents inquiry into the human good as a kind of historical narrative or story with stages or "chapters"; thus knowledge of natural law requires time and experience, as well as sustained reflection by individuals and by whole communities. Such learning of natural law implies the operation of prudence and the assistance of the moral virtues.

Author : Howard P. Kainz
Publisher : Open Court Publishing
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 22,30 MB
Release : 2004
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780812694543

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Is there such a thing as an objective law of morality? Natural law theorists maintain that there is, and Natural Law probes the history and implications of this powerful concept. Tracing the development of natural law from ancient times to the present, the book also examines the leading figures, transitions, and turning points in the idea's evolution, and brings a natural law approach to contemporary issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and assisted suicide.

Author : John Liptay
Publisher :
Page : 377 pages
File Size : 30,13 MB
Release : 2020
Category : Law
ISBN : 0813232953

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"This volume presents a selection of previously published essays by Joseph Boyle, a crucial contributor to 20th century Catholic moral philosophy through his development of the New Classical Natural Law Theory"--

Author : Hadley Arkes
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 30,67 MB
Release : 2023-05-02
Category : Law
ISBN : 1684513014

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Hadley Arkes, groundbreaking legal philosopher and acolyte of legendary political thinker Leo Strauss, takes a sledgehammer to both legal relativism and originalism, arguing that the principles the Founders embodied in the U.S. Constitution are built in to the general human condition, and that the path away from national dysfunction and ruin lies in reinvigorating our understanding of these innate moral principles and reapplying them to modern life. Mere Natural Law seeks to recover, for a new generation, the understanding of natural law that has never been learned by the lawyers and judges of our day. And it does that in part by returning to the American Founders, in their understanding of those axioms, or necessary truths, that form the moral ground of our law.

Author : Hadley Arkes
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 444 pages
File Size : 43,60 MB
Release : 2020-06-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0691213895

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This book restores to us an understanding that was once settled in the "moral sciences": that there are propositions, in morals and law, which are not only true but which cannot be otherwise. It was understood in the past that, in morals or in mathematics, our knowledge begins with certain axioms that must hold true of necessity; that the principles drawn from these axioms hold true universally, unaffected by variations in local "cultures"; and that the presence of these axioms makes it possible to have, in the domain of morals, some right answers. Hadley Arkes restates the grounds of that older understanding and unfolds its implications for the most vexing political problems of our day. The author turns first to the classic debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. After establishing the groundwork and properties of moral propositions, he traces their application in such issues as selective conscientious objection, justifications for war, the war in Vietnam, a nation's obligation to intervene abroad, the notion of supererogatory acts, the claims of "privacy," and the problem of abortion.