Some thinkers who believe in natural law are uneasy with the language of natural rights. The reasons for this disquiet are understandable. Why? Because however firmly rights may be grounded in what is objectively just, grammatically speaking my rights seem to be subjective, just in the sense that they are “mine.”
A student in one of my classes insisted one day that when Thomas Aquinas spoke of Divine law, he means “one’s own Divine law”: Torah for Jews, the Gospel for Christians, Shari’a for Muslims, Thelema for Wiccans, Sheilaism for Sheila, whatever it may be. She was quite offended by the suggestion that this was not what St. Thomas had in mind.
A movement sometimes styled “evolutionary ethics” or “evolutionary psychology” takes as its goal the provision of a naturalistic basis for moral judgments. This new naturalist fashion comes in several overlapping varieties. Let us consider the two best-known.
I enjoyed your recent blog post on good libertarianism, as opposed to the sort of libertarianism which sees liberties as indeterminate so that its advocates can do as they please.
A few days ago I had a call from my brother. When I told him that my studies in seminary were going well, he was moved to tell me he had lost his faith and had been an apostate for years.
The law is reluctant to criminalize an act unless it can be framed in terms of the harm the act causes to others. Although this principle is often credited to John Stuart Mill, he does not deserve the credit. Versions can be found in Aristotle in the fourth century B.C., and in Thomas Aquinas in the high middle ages.
Recently I discovered that three of the links to videos of my talks were broken. I've set the fractured bones, and the three convalescents are as follows. If you discover any other broken links at this website, dear reader, please let me know.
