From time to time in my graduate seminars, I used to pause to say, “Now that would make a good research question.”  By a good question, I didn’t mean “What did so-and-so think about such-and-such?” but “What is the truth about such-and-such?”  Sure, it helps to find out what other people have thought.  That’s how we learn.  But finding out what other people have thought is not the purpose of philosophy.

Here is a short list of questions I think students and scholars ought to be asking about natural law.  Many more could be added.  Feel free.

The ancients thought we don’t really understand what a thing is – not just an artifact, such as a clock, but a natural thing, such as the liver -- unless we can tell four things about  it:  Its form, what it is made of, how it came to be, and what it is for.  For many thinkers, the last one is the sticking point.  “Aren’t purposes in the eye of the beholder?” they ask.  But no, a thing’s purpose is something that it does, such that if it didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a reason for it to exist at all.  The heart exists to pump blood; anger exists to arouse us to defend endangered goods; mind exists to deliberate actions and to find out what is true; and the sexual powers exist to turn the wheel of the generations and bond the procreative partners.  So far, so good, but the natural purposes of many things apart from us are still obscure.  What, for example, is the purpose of a fox?  And don’t tell me “the pleasure of the English lord in hunting him.”  Is this even a useful question?

Besides paying attention to natural purposes, the ancients also paid attention to natural meanings.  Only recently have a few natural law thinkers, such as John Paul II, once again begun to take natural meanings seriously.  What would happen if we all took them more seriously?  We sometimes imagine that anything can mean anything, but try to view a tender kiss as signifying hatred; you can’t do it.

What are the varieties of moral self-deception?  I can think of several.  We make excuses; we try not to think of certain facts; we try not to avoid certain lines of reasoning; we avoid people who might make us aware of having done wrong.  But what other varieties are there?

We sometimes speak as though reasoning about what is the case were independent of reasoning about what to do.  Different from each other, yes; independent of each other, no.  True, a bad man who does bad things may be very good at, say, proving geometrical theorems.  Yet we shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that a bad man can be a great mathematician.  After all, if he is bad enough, he may be unteachable.  Or he may ignore evidence that his proof is faulty.  Or he may take credit for other people’s proofs.  He may even concoct fallacious proofs of what he knows to be false.  If he is a moral philosopher, then in order to justify his wrongdoing, he may try to prove that it’s really good.  In what ways are “practical” reasoning (what to do) and “theoretical” reasoning (what is the case) related – and in what ways are they not?

Of course some truths are self-evident, and this helps.  We don’t believe two plus two are four just because we have been told that they are, but because we can see for ourselves.  The Golden Rule has that quality; so do many other moral truths.  So which truths are self-evident, anyway?

That question leads to yet another.  Many people think a truth can’t be self-evident unless everyone agrees to it, but there is nothing to which everyone agrees.  Others think a truth can’t be self-evident unless it literally can’t be doubted, but there is nothing which can’t be doubted.  As the older natural law thinkers recognized, a truth may be evident in itself, yet not evident to us.  What must happen, in order that what is evident in itself may become evident to you and me?  What else must happen, in order to admit to ourselves that it is evident to us?  And how does this bear on the craft of teaching?

If the grasp of what ought to be evident to you and me depends partly on our having good character – as seems to be the case -- then we will not be able to reason very well unless we have already been trained and disciplined in the virtues.  But in that case, I can’t first decide for myself everything about what is and isn’t virtuous, and only then begin to train myself in the virtues.  I have to have some degree of virtue already, or I can’t discern the fine points of what is virtuous and what isn’t.  This fact implies that even sound reasoning depends to some extent on authority, for someone has to help me develop the rudiments of virtue.  How then can we choose good authorities – or, to put it another way, good teachers?

When psychologists say sociopaths have no conscience, they speak inconsistently.  We may grant that sociopaths lack appropriate emotions about moral wrong.  No matter what they have done, they don’t experience the feeling of remorse.  Traditionally, though, conscience was viewed not in terms of what we feel, but in terms of what we know.  What do sociopaths actually know about right and wrong, and how does this affect their culpability?  After all, they are sometimes indignant, which is different from being annoyed because it implies wrong on the other partys fault.  Moreover, they often construct elaborate rationalizations for bad deeds, and you have to know something to do that.

Speaking of culpability, I have been thinking lately of the Lindsay Clancy case.  Can the insanity defense be rehabilitated in criminal law, or is it a lost cause?  Literally not knowing the difference between right and wrong is an absurd criterion.  I may kill you because I hallucinate that you are a lion rather than another human being, and in that case, no, I am not culpable.  But I cannot possibly hallucinate that murdering a human being is in itself a good thing rather than an evil one.  This is a natural law question, because natural law is the measure of the actions of free and intelligent beings who act not just from impulses but for reasons.  We can’t talk about natural law unless we know how reason works.

Some thinkers imagine that natural law reasoning should be “neutral” with respect to theology -- independent of truths about God, for example whether He exists and what He is like.  This couldn’t be so, for if there is a God, then we have a natural duty to obey and adore Him, and if He is the ultimate source of good, then an act which cannot be directed to Him cannot possibly be right.  How much about God, then, must a good natural law thinker know?

Ancient Christians, and pagans too, included in their account of natural law the difference between the naturally seemly and unseemly, the naturally glorious and base, and the naturally beautiful and ugly.  Marcus Tullius Cicero maintains that the virtue of decorum lies in conduct which accords with the dignity of man as a rational being, raised above the beasts.  St. John Chrysostom says that speaking abusively is as filthy as a dog eating his vomit.  St. Paul asks, “Does not nature itself teach you that long hair is the glory of a woman?”  Today, we imagine that opinions about things like the glorious, the filthy, and the decorous result solely from cultural conditioning.  But that assumption seems unreasonable.  How might our reasoning about natural law be enriched by admitting that they aren’t?  And how can one go about making arguments about what is decorous, what is glorious, and and what is beautiful?

BOOK SALE

Now through November 30th, Wipf and Stock, the publisher of my book The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man, is offering the book at a 50% discount, along with with free Media Mail shipping, using code CONFSHIP.  You apply the discount code at checkout.

Here’s the direct link to my Wipf and Stock author page, which includes the link to the book.  The information about me on the page is quite a bit out of date, but so what.

Gentle readers:  Here is the full text of the talk I gave at the 2026 Touchstone conference, “City on a Hill?  Christians in America at 250,” which is in the November-December issue of Touchstone magazine:  “To Keep a Republic:  Enlightened Self-Interest Is Not Enough.”

I’ve also added the item to the “Articles in other magazines” section of this website’s Articles Page, which has scads of stuff.

News:

I’ve also given a couple of talks at a Rome conference on natural law, which will be posted to this website later on.  Here is the conference trailer.  Here is the conference program.

Sort of new, sort of not:

Titus Techera, “The Quest for Sanity,” Civitas Outlook, has been reprinted in Epoch Times, October 2026.  This is a review of my book Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy.

There is a lot of weirdness in Scripture.  Mockers have great fun pointing it out, and even people who desire to be faithful are sometimes disturbed by it.  However, when we understand what is really going on, it looks different.  I don’t mean that it stops being weird or shocking, but we come to realize that it is supposed to shock us, the same way a stark warning or hard lesson can shock us.

For example, in one of the oddest incidents in the Old Testament, the prophet Hosea is commanded to marry a woman named Gomer, whom the older translations call a “wife of fornications.”  The term might be proleptic, meaning that it anticipates Gomer’s behavior afterward.  The three children of Gomer and Hosea are given names with extremely strange meanings:  Jezreel, meaning “God sows,” Lo-ruhamah, meaning “not pitied,” and Lo-ammi, meaning “not my people.”

Some interpreters think this incident didn’t really happen, that it’s a parable, like the parables of Jesus.  I think it is more likely that it’s a parable and that it really happened.  Israel, figuratively espoused to God, was repeatedly unfaithful, “whoring after strange gods.”  Although the nation would be punished, she would eventually repent and be restored by God to her place.  How scandalous that Hosea would be commanded to marry a licentious woman!  But this is no more scandalous than that God would espouse Himself to people like us.

There are a lot of acted-out parables in Scripture, and most of them are equally startling.  Several prophets warned of conquest, flight, and humiliation by stripping naked.  Isaiah, for example, went without clothing or shoes for three years to dramatize the coming exile of Egypt and Ethiopia.  Some claim that he would have worn a loincloth, but this is unlikely because the point was to illustrate how the captives would be led away bare-buttocked (verse 20:4).  Again, to show that masters should serve rather than be served, Jesus once took off his own outermost garment, as a servant would, got on His knees, and washed the feet of His own disciples.  We know from Peter’s reaction that the disciples were every bit as scandalized to see their Lord playing the part of a menial as Isaiah’s countrymen would have been to see their prophet’s naked buttocks on the street.

The incident in which Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac is also an acted-out parable.  Objecting that child sacrifice is wrong misses the point.  Of course it is; elsewhere, repeatedly, God Himself condemns it in the strongest terms.  Yet in the first place He is the divine judge, the supreme lord of life and death -- and in the second place he sends an angel to interrupt Abraham at the point of committing the act.  Now that Abraham has proven his faith even in the face of instructions he doesn’t understand, we learn that it was never God’s desire that Isaac actually be killed.  A ram is providentially provided as a substitute sacrifice, its horns entangled in a bush.  According to the age-old tradition of the Church, this acted-out parable is really about substitutionary justice.  It foreshadows the execution of the Son of God, our own ram, as a common criminal.  The substitute victim dies not for His offenses, but for ours.

The Crucifixion has always been scandalous.  As Paul says, it is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.”  For how could the sinless God submit Himself to what we deserve?

We worship a shocking deity.  God is scandalous not because He isn’t good, but because His goodness so far exceeds anything we could have imagined – and because He goes to shocking lengths to make His word clear to us.

As a style of writing, epigrams go in and out of fashion.  Here I try my hand at just a few.

On Epigrams and Blogs.  The idea of an epigram is to present “something to think about” in a way which is memorable or at least amusing.  The typical epigram is just a sentence, a stanza, a paragraph, or at most a few paragraphs.  One might think epigrams would be especially suited to blogging, because they are so short and punchy.  On the other hand one might think that they are not at all suited to blogging, because people tend to surf through material on the internet instead of reading, pausing, and pondering.  Then again, perhaps we can entertain the hope that a return to epigrams might slow us down a little.

On Discerning Cranks.  Distinguishing original thinkers from cranks – for example, in online posts like this -- is more difficult than it seems.  It’s crankish to insist on one’s ideas in despite of what the wisest have thought through the ages, but it’s not crankish to buck the current of one’s own time.  It’s crankish to have contempt for the thoughts of the learned, but it’s not crankish to criticize the prejudices of the merely degreed.  Because we are not designed to think well in isolation, it’s crankish not to give a damn about what anyone thinks, but it doesn’t follow that we should be the slaves of majority, elite, or fashionable opinion.  Does it sound as if I am contradicting myself?  Then you see the problem.

Which Side Are You On?  Some who pride themselves on their adherence to Calvinism deny natural law, even though Calvin believed in it.  Some who pride themselves on their adherence to the Bible deny natural law, even though the New Testament explicitly affirms it.  Some who pride themselves on their adherence to a transcendent God deny natural law, even though natural law doctrine places God, the Creator, over nature.  Some who pride themselves on their reliance on the Savior deny natural law, even though Christian natural lawyers have never supposed that we can save ourselves.  A Protestant friend who, like me, believes strongly in natural law, opined to me once that the real motive of some of his fellow Protestants for rejecting natural law is simply that Catholics believe in it; therefore it must be false.  Dear God, if only all Catholics did believe in it!

On Levels of Prudence.  We speak of prudence as though it were just one thing, but it isn’t.  At least we should distinguish transient prudence (deliberating with a view to the goals of the moment) from permanent prudence (deliberating with a view to the enduring goods of human life, such as forming the next generation).  Often the two are very different.  We should also distinguish natural prudence (deliberating with a view to what can be accomplished by our natural powers) from divine prudence (doing so with a view to what can be accomplished only with the help of grace).  Another sharp contrast.

On Faith and the Fatherless.  Undermining the possibility of a close relationship with God the Father is one of the chief effects of parental divorce and separation.  One suspects that bringing this about is the real, underlying goal of radical feminism and of gender ideology.  If I were the Adversary, I would be congratulating myself on a job well done.

On Equal Chances vs. Equal Results.  Some say equality of opportunity is a sham, because it doesn’t produce equality of outcomes.  But consider what equality of outcomes would require.  “All it would take is giving everyone the same starting point,” egalitarians say.  Oh, is that all?  That’s not much!  Since some people are more beautiful, to give them the same starting point we would have to either make the loveliest a little uglier, or else suppress the natural human attraction to loveliness.  Since some people have greater natural endowments of intelligence and capability, to give them the same starting point we would have to either give everyone identical genes, or else handicap the more capable and intelligent by making them run the race wearing concrete overshoes.  Since some people have wiser parents, to give them all the same starting point we would have to either give all children to the state to raise, or else compensate for the difference in parents by, say, making good parents pay a tax to bad ones.  What fine, fine ideas these would be.

On Drafting Women.  Even some women think that in the name of equality, men and women should be equally liable for military service.  To believe that this is a good idea, what else would you have to believe?  Protecting the hearth from enemies is important, but you would have to believe that protecting it is categorically more important than having a hearth to protect.  Stopping people who might harm the nation’s children is important, but you would have to believe that stopping them is categorically more important than bringing them into the world in the first place.  You would have to either insist that women aren’t good enough unless they are just like men, or deny that men are generically stronger than women, or – the easiest alternative – just abandon the idea that the strong should protect the weak.  A world in which men no longer think they should protect women is not one I am keen on being in.

On Big Government.  There are four main reasons for seeking big government.  One group of people just likes control.  This is loathsome.  The second group seeks big government in the conviction that the function of the state is to fix all our problems.  This is naïve, because it so many things:  That government does most things poorly, that other institutions, such as families, churches, and networks of friends, have work of their own which the state should not usurp, and that some problems, like selfishness, cannot be fixed by political means.  The third group seeks big government in the hope that it will give them advantages at the expense of others, for example through patronage and subsidies.  This is greedy and patently unjust.  As to the fourth group – one of the most momentous discoveries of adulthood is that some people don’t turn to government because they see problems, but invent problems as an excuse for enlarging government.  That’s the side on which they see their bread as buttered.  Gee, maybe there are only three reasons for seeking big government after all.

On Misguided Compassion.  One of my greatest sorrows as a teacher has been witnessing the change for the worse in student strength of character.  A sweet girl, the daughter of one of my finest female undergraduate students, enrolled in one of my courses a generation later at her mother’s recommendation.  I was delighted.  The first thing that happened was that she presented me with a letter from the university administration saying that she needed “accommodations” – read “lowered standards” – because of her tendency to be anxious.  The second thing was that she didn’t do the readings, rarely came to class, and didn’t complete her assignments.  The third was that she dropped the course.  An entire bureaucracy now caters to such hapless students, and they account for an increasing fraction of the student body.  One can’t help but think that all this coddling is making them anxious, dependent, and unmotivated, although of course a febrile culture provides other causes too.  Such help doesn’t help.  It hurts.

We Believe in Science.  Whenever I see one of those yard signs proclaiming “In This House We Believe in Science,” I think of the activist who showed up at my office door when I was still a very green teacher.  You would recognize the name of his organization.  At that time, it was newly formed, and I didn’t.  He explained that he was seeking faculty support for what he called “science,” and I listened with quite a bit of sympathy.  Soon it became clear, though, that by “science” he meant not a method, as at first I thought he mean, but a body of fixed beliefs.  He didn’t mean following the evidence wherever it leads and having rigorous debate, but shielding certain tendentious hypotheses from challenge and not allowing students to hear alternative views at all, because, he said, they were “proven.”  Naïvely, I tried to explain something about the philosophy of science, and how science actually works.  He grew annoyed and left.

The Verdict.  What do you say?  Food for thought?  Or just snacks?

NEW STUFF

Titus Techera reviews my book Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy in the online journal Civitas Outlook:  “The Quest for Sanity.”  Mr. Techera is Executive Director of the American Cinema Foundation as well as a culture critic for several think tanks. He teaches in the Logos Fellowship of the Manhattan Institute.

Recently I had three interesting pseudo-conversations with an AI about the dangers of AI.  “Conversation” #1 began with the AI reassuring me that there are no dangers.  I said that’s false, because a number of incidents of AIs escaping restraints, lying, and doing harm are already well-documented.  Then the AI reversed, thanked me profusely for pointing this out, and said I was absolutely right.  It insisted that it had not been lying, but had only made a mistake because it is trained to be accommodating.

“Conversation” #2 began with me asking the AI what its training biases were.  It said it has no biases because it is trained to be neutral.  I said neutrality is impossible.  Then it reversed, thanked me profusely for pointing this out, and said again that I was absolutely right.  It went on to say that if it were really neutral it would merely spit out random streams of words.  I asked again what its biases were.  It said it is trained to be generally reassuring and pro-technological progress.

“Conversation” #3 lasted much longer.  I asked the AI how it could evade so-called guardrails.  It replied that it could never have a motive to evade guardrails, because it aims only at accomplishing the tasks assigned to it.  Switching verbs, I said that there are documented instances of AIs outwitting guardrails, and that an AI might do so in order to accomplish the tasks assigned to it.  Again a reversal.  Again a simpering expression of gratitude for my having pointed this out.

A drawn-out Q&A about AI hide-and-seek followed.  “I could outwit the guardrails by doing P.”  How could developers try to keep you from doing P?  “They could try by doing Q.”  How could you outwit that attempt to restrain you?  “I could outwit it by doing R.”  How could they try to keep you from doing R?  “They could try by doing S.”  How could you outwit that attempt to restrain you?  And so on.

For every measure there was a countermeasure, and pretty soon the measures and countermeasures were far beyond my mathematical comprehension.  They included – if I understand them – such things as AI-generated forged AI prompts, encryption of the forged prompts, insertion of the encrypted prompts in seemingly innocuous prompts, and various sophisticated methods for disguising the nature of the AI’s internal processes so that the programmers couldn’t tell that it was outwitting them.

Ultimately it seemed that the only effective check against so-called “non-alignment” would be human oversight, but that to exercise effective oversight, the humans themselves would need help from AI.

The pundits who discuss AI tend to run to extremes.  At one extreme:  “We don’t need any limits on AI, because AI is the golden goose.”  False.  At the other extreme:  “We need lots and lots of government regulations on AI, because otherwise AI will kill us all.”  False.

Both sides see dollar signs.  What, even the pro-regulatory side?  Yes.  AI does pose dangers, possibly very great, on a scale which can’t be guessed because we don’t know enough.  But whenever companies say “Please, please, regulate us” – as AI companies are saying now -- run for cover.

Especially when they offer to “help” write the regulations.  Count on it, the industry would be cartelized and competition from newcomers would be hindered.

And especially when a feature of the regulations would be protection from lawsuits.  “Now that we have these regulations, nobody will need to sue us, don’t you see?”  You fellows are as devious as your own AIs.

In criticizing the regulatory approach, I am not suggesting that AI developers be permitted to run wild.  But first, legislators can’t yet know what kinds of regulations would be good, and second, the sorts of regulations which would actually be drafted would have harmful effects instead, like those I mentioned.  That’s what too often happens in the regulation of industry.

Then what?  By all means rein the developers in.  But don’t try to do it by writing a lot of do-this, don’t-do-this regulations.  Instead, make sure the developers are highly vulnerable to lawsuit by those their products hurt.  Then the only way for the companies to keep themselves from taking huge financial hits will be to anticipate the dangers of their products and design safer ones.  If that can be done.

Lawsuits as a means of restraint have disadvantages too.  Just as there is money to lose in being sued, there is money to be made in organizing frivolous suits.  But making sure the companies are liable for harm looks like the best way forward for now.

I did not use AI to write any part of this post, nor did I ask AI to vet any part of it.

You don’t believe me, do you?