Table Of ContentNatural Law Today
Natural Law Today
The Present State of
the Perennial Philosophy
Edited by Christopher Wolfe
and Steven Brust
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Contents
Introduction vii
StevenBrustandChristopherWolfe
I:NaturalLawTheory 1
1 God,Teleology,andtheNaturalLaw 3
StevenA.Long
2 NaturalInclinationsinAquinas’sAccountofNaturalLaw 19
MichaelPakaluk
3 NaturalLawandNaturalRight(s):Conceptualand
TerminologicalClarifications 33
FulvioDiBlasi
4 “TheSameastoKnowledge” 53
J.Budziszewski
5 Aquinas’sSecondReasonfortheNecessityofDivineLaw:
CertaintyofKnowledgewithRespecttoParticularand
ContingentMoralActions 71
StevenBrust
II:NaturalLawPastandPresent 85
6 BuryingtheWrongCorpse:SecondThoughtsontheProtestant
PrejudicetowardNaturalLawThinking 87
J.DarylCharles
7 TheNaturalLaw—Again,Ever 111
HadleyArkes
v
vi Contents
8 ThomasAquinas’sConceptofNaturalLaw:AGuidetoHealthy
Liberalism 139
ChristopherWolfe
Afterword:ANaturalLawmanattheO.K.Corral 151
RalphMcInerny
Index 161
AbouttheContributors 169
Introduction
Steven Brust and Christopher Wolfe
Thenaturallawtraditionhasitsoriginsinthenaturalrighttraditioninclassi-
calGreekthought—especiallyofPlatoandAristotle—andwasdevelopedin
the natural law of the Roman Stoics, and later by canonists, jurists, theolo-
gians, and philosophers of the Middle Ages, most famously by St. Thomas
Aquinas. Even as the modern thinkers turned away from this premodern
notion of natural law, they still relied on it. In fact, many Enlightenment
thinkers attempted to expound complete theories of natural law even if their
understanding of it began to differ in substance from the traditional notion.
Accompanying this transformation was an emphasis on a modern notion of
naturalrights—bothbymodernpoliticalthinkersandbypoliticalmovements
such as the French and American Revolutions. Yet, natural law was still
embeddedin theEuropeanandAmerican cultures, howevermuchdeformed
ordiminished.ThehistoryofbothmodernEuropeandtheUnitedStateshas
witnessedasteadydecreaseintheacceptanceofthenaturallaw.
One of the most prominent American jurists, Chief Justice Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes Jr., disdainfully dismissed the notion of natural law in a 1918
HarvardLawReviewarticle,maintainingthat“juristswhobelieveinnatural
law seem to me to be in that naïve state of mind that accepts what has been
familiarandacceptedbyallmeneverywhere.”Hearguedthat“itistruethat
beliefsandwisheshaveatranscendentalbasisinthesensethattheirfounda-
tion isarbitrary.Youcannothelpentertaining andfeeling them,andthere is
an end of it.”1 Holmes’s relativism—the notion that there is no objective
moralityandeachindividualdecidesforhimselfwhatismorallygoodorbad
basedonhisorherpreferences—steadilyexpandeditsinfluenceinAmerican
life.Ironically,moralrelativismhasbecomedogmatic,attackingnaturallaw
argumentswhilepromotingitsownmoralabsolutesbasedonanassumption
oftheequalityofalllifestyles.
vii
viii Introduction
In the face of these tendencies, there has been something of a “renais-
sance” in natural law, in both ethical and political thought. Those oriented
toward the natural law tradition see this as inevitable, as there is always an
“eternal return of the natural law”2—most especially when it is faced with
fierceopposition.
Adherentstonaturallawareusuallyengagedontwofronts.Thefirstisa
dialoguewith contemporaryschools of thought that reject natural law, hold-
ingrivalmoralandpoliticaltheories.Thechallengeforproponentsofnatural
law in that case is to argue for the truth and rightness of the natural law,
while simultaneouslydiscerningwhatelementsof theopposingtheoriescan
beaccepted—oratleastconditionallyaccepted—inhopesofcomingtosome
common agreement. Given the trenchant analysis of outstanding contempo-
rary natural law thinkers, one hopes that opponents of natural law would
likewise show a willingness to engage representatives of the natural law
tradition.
The second front of engagement is the often intricate and subtle (but
important) debates among natural law adherents themselves, who are con-
stantlystrivingtoclarifyanddeepentheirunderstandingofnaturallawinits
breadth and depth, and to apply it to contemporary moral and political chal-
lenges. It should be noted that these two fronts of dialogue are not mutually
exclusive, but, in fact, overlap to a significant degree, each enriching the
other.
Today,thereexistdeepdivisionsinAmericaoveravarietyofissues:the
status of same-sex relationships, embryonic stem cell research and abortion,
euthanasia, gender identity, cloning, the use of drones, care for the environ-
ment, capital punishment, economic crises, and government involvement in
health care. These issues are bound up with ideas of “equality,” “dignity,”
“liberty,” “rights,” and “the good” that are often understood to have widely
divergentandevencontradictorymeanings.
This volume presents a number of essays relevant to these contemporary
challenges in morality and politics, not primarily by addressing specific po-
litical and moral issues, but by exploring the fundamental principles by
whichoneshouldapproachthem.Theessays,then,coveravarietyofimpor-
tanttopics,includinginterpretationsoftheclassicalnaturallawtheoryfound
in its most famous proponent (Thomas Aquinas), the relevance of God and
theology to natural law, the metaphysical foundations of the natural law,
especially the meaning and importance of nature and reason, the role of
inclinations in natural law, the relationship between natural law and natural
rights,andamorespecifictreatmentofnaturallawinrelationtothecontem-
porarypoliticalorderandcivillaw.
Someofthesetopicsareaddressedinreferencetothecriticsofthenatural
law tradition, but others concern the debates among fellow adherents. The
contributors to this volume intend to defend, in one way or another, the