Download or read book Natural Law and Modern Moral Philosophy Volume 18 Social Philosophy and Policy Part 1 written by Ellen Frankel Paul and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-29 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume--written by academic lawyers as well as legal and moral philosophers--address some of the most intriguing questions raised by natural law theory and its implications for law, morality, and public policy. Some of the essays explore the implications that natural law theory has for jurisprudence, asking what natural law suggests about the use of legal devices such as constitutions and precedents. Other essays examine the connections between natural law and natural rights.
Download or read book Human Values written by D. Oderberg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-10-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, the revival of natural law theory in modern moral philosophy has been an exciting and important development. Human Values brings together an international group of moral philosophers who in various respects share the aims and ideals of natural law ethics. In their diverse ways, these authors make distinctive and original contributions to the continuing project of developing natural law ethics as a comprehensive treatment of modern ethical theory and practice.
Download or read book Natural Law and the Possibility of a Global Ethics written by Mark J. Cherry and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book After the Natural Law written by John Lawrence Hill and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "natural law" worldview developed over the course of almost two thousand years beginning with Plato and Aristotle and culminating with St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. This tradition holds that the world is ordered, intelligible and good, that there are objective moral truths which we can know and that human beings can achieve true happiness only by following our inborn nature, which draws us toward our own perfection. Most accounts of the natural law are based on a God-centered understanding of the world. After the Natural Law traces this tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and then describes how and why modern philosophers such as Descartes, Locke and Hobbes began to chip away at this foundation. The book argues that natural law is a necessary foundation for our most important moral and political values – freedom, human rights, equality, responsibility and human dignity, among others. Without a theory of natural law, these values lose their coherence: we literally cannot make sense of them given the assumptions of modern philosophy. Part I of the book traces the development of natural law theory from Plato and Aristotle through the crowning achievement of Thomas Aquinas. Part II explores how modern philosophers have systematically chipped away at the only coherent foundation for these values. As a result, our most important moral and political ideals today are incoherent. Modern political and moral thinkers have been led either to dilute the meaning of such terms as freedom or the moral good – or abandon these ideas altogether. Thus, modern philosophy and political thought are leading us either toward anarchy or totalitarianism. The conclusion, entitled "Why God Matters", shows how even the philosophical assumptions of the natural law depend on a personal God.
Download or read book Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy written by John Rawls and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-15 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The premier political philosopher of his day, John Rawls, in three decades of teaching at Harvard, has had a profound influence on the way philosophical ethics is approached and understood today. This book brings together the lectures that inspired a generation of students--and a regeneration of moral philosophy. It invites readers to learn from the most noted exemplars of modern moral philosophy with the inspired guidance of one of contemporary philosophy's most noteworthy practitioners and teachers. Central to Rawls's approach is the idea that respectful attention to the great texts of our tradition can lead to a fruitful exchange of ideas across the centuries. In this spirit, his book engages thinkers such as Leibniz, Hume, Kant, and Hegel as they struggle in brilliant and instructive ways to define the role of a moral conception in human life. The lectures delineate four basic types of moral reasoning: perfectionism, utilitarianism, intuitionism, and--the ultimate focus of Rawls's course--Kantian constructivism. Comprising a superb course on the history of moral philosophy, they also afford unique insight into how John Rawls has transformed our view of this history.
Download or read book Human Values written by T. Chappell and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent revival of natural law theory in modern moral philosophy has been an exciting and important development. This book brings together an international group of moral philosophers who make original contributions to the project of developing natural law ethics as a comprehensive treatment of modern ethical theory and practice.
Download or read book Aquash s Murder written by Gregg Wager and published by TrineDay. This book was released on 2024-02-22 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the cruel South Dakota winter thawed toward the end of February 1976, a rancher on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation discovered the frostbitten corpse of a Jane Doe at the bottom of a 30-foot cliff, 100 feet from a state highway. An autopsy determined she had died of exposure, while the FBI sent her severed hands to Washington for analysis.Weeks later, a match of fingerprints to feisty American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash led to exhumation and another autopsy, this time revealing that she had been shot in the head. Those sympathetic to AIM assumed hers was simply one of nearly 200 unsolved murders during an era when the Reservation was held secretly under martial law, now known as the Reign of Terror.Months before Aquash's murder, a deadly gun battle between AIM members and two young FBI agents forced her to flee with her friend and fellow agitator Leonard Peltier. Although Peltier always denied FBI claims that he was the one who delivered coup de gr&â ce shots to the agents, he was eventually convicted of double murder. This prompted unsuccessful popular movements for a Presidential pardon as inept lies from both sides helped stalemate any legal or political progress. As the new millennium approached, a heroin addict coached by two zealous FBI agents stepped forward claiming he witnessed Aquash's murder at the hands of an AIM executioner, John Graham. Like so many haphazard and contradictory acquittals and convictions related to the deaths of Aquash and the two FBI agents, Graham's procedurally esoteric case may suggest that the American legal system has become too obtuse and unpredictable. An international community looks nervously on, wondering if Peltier will die in prison as Graham now suffers a similar fate.
Download or read book Moral Philosophy written by Joseph Rickaby and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Natural Law and Moral Philosophy written by Knud Haakonssen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-02-23 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing the most comprehensive guide to modern natural law theory available, this major contribution to the history of philosophy sets out the full background to liberal ideas of rights and contractarianism, and offers an extensive study of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Download or read book The Threads of Natural Law written by Francisco José Contreras and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of “natural law” has repeatedly furnished human beings with a shared grammar in times of moral and cultural crisis. Stoic natural law, for example, emerged precisely when the Ancient World lost the Greek polis, which had been the point of reference for Plato's and Aristotle's political philosophy. In key moments such as this, natural law has enabled moral and legal dialogue between peoples and traditions holding apparently clashing world-views. This volume revisits some of these key moments in intellectual and social history, partly with an eye to extracting valuable lessons for ideological conflicts in the present and perhaps near future. The contributions to this volume discuss both historical and contemporary schools of natural law. Topics on historical schools of natural law include: how Aristotelian theory of rules paved the way for the birth of the idea of "natural law"; the idea's first mature account in Cicero's work; the tension between two rival meanings of “man’s rational nature” in Aquinas’ natural law theory; and the scope of Kant’s allusions to “natural law”. Topics on contemporary natural law schools include: John Finnis's and Germain Grisez's “new natural law theory”; natural law theories in a "broader" sense, such as Adolf Reinach’s legal phenomenology; Ortega y Gasset’s and Scheler’s “ethical perspectivism”; the natural law response to Kelsen’s conflation of democracy and moral relativism; natural law's role in 20th century international law doctrine; Ronald Dworkin’s understanding of law as “a branch of political morality”; and Alasdair Macintyre’s "virtue"-based approach to natural law.
Download or read book Applied Ethics and Social Problems written by Tony Fitzpatrick and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2008-06-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Applied ethics and social problems presents introductions to the three most influential moral philosophies and relates these to some of the most urgent questions in contemporary public debates about the future of welfare services.
Download or read book Society Law and Morality written by Frederick A. Olafson and published by Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall. This book was released on 1961 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Natural Law and Natural Rights written by John Finnis and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Morality and the Human Goods written by Alfonso Gomez-Lobo and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise and accessible introduction to natural law ethics, this book introduces readers to the mainstream tradition of Western moral philosophy. Building on philosophers from Plato through Aquinas to John Finnis, Alfonso Gómez-Lobo links morality to the protection of basic human goods--life, family, friendship, work and play, the experience of beauty, knowledge, and integrity--elements essential to a flourishing, happy human life. Gómez-Lobo begins with a discussion of Plato's Crito as an introduction to the practice of moral philosophy, showing that it requires that its participants treat each other as equals and offer rational arguments to persuade each other. He then puts forth a general principle for practical rationality: one should pursue what is good and avoid what is bad. The human goods form the basis for moral norms that provide a standard by which actions can be evaluated: do they support or harm the human goods? He argues that moral norms should be understood as a system of rules whose rationale is the protection and enhancement of human goods. A moral norm that does not enjoin the preservation or enhancement of a specific good is unjustifiable. Shifting to a case study approach, Gómez-Lobo applies these principles to a discussion of abortion and euthanasia. The book ends with a brief treatment of rival positions, including utilitarianism and libertarianism, and of conscience as our ultimate moral guide. Written as an introductory text for students of ethics and natural law, Morality and the Human Goods makes arguments consistent with Catholic teaching but is not based on theological considerations. The work falls squarely within the field of philosophical ethics and will be of interest to readers of any background.
Download or read book A Shared Morality written by Craig A. Boyd and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defends a concept of natural law ethics in a postmodern setting of doubt regarding natural law.
Download or read book Vices Virtues and Consequences written by Peter Simpson and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vices, Virtues, and Consequences offers a broad study of the basic and universal issues in ethics and politics, the issues of what the human good is and how to attain it and avoid its opposite. These questions have long been debated and are no less debated today. However, according to author Peter Phillips Simpson, within the mainstream of Anglo-American modern philosophy they have been debated too narrowly. This narrowness is one of our modern vices, and it does much to encourage other vices, in particular that of despair of universal and objective reason. The essays in this collection not only attack these vices, but also attempt to replace them with the contrary virtues. The volume begins with an overview of modern Anglo-American moral philosophy and critiques the work of contemporary thinkers--specifically Alasdair MacIntyre and John Rawls--and the work of historical thinkers such as Machiavelli, Kant, and Hobbes. The author then explores ancient and medieval sources, and applies their concepts to discussions of modern problems. The book closes with chapters that discuss the direct consequences of contemporary vices in both thought and action, in particular the vice of failing to educate the morals of citizens. Simpson rejects the contemporary liberal dogma that political authority should not be involved in the moral education of citizens. Violence in Northern Ireland and the crime of abortion are among the issues discussed. Peter Phillips Simpson is professor of philosophy and classics at the Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. He is the author of numerous articles and books including The Politics of Aristotle, A Philosophical Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle, and Karol Wojtyla. "An important and significant contribution to the field. Simpson presents classical sources with a freshness and thoroughness not often seen."--Prof. John Hittinger, U.S. Air Force Academy "Simpson's application of his view to the current crisis in liberal culture is clear, consistent, and timely."--Prof. Nicholas Capaldi, University of Tulsa "It is a rare pleasure to read a book that combines the elegance and rigour of the best of analytic philosophy with the imaginative breadth and radical seriousness of some of its rivals." -- Margaret Atkins, Heythrop Journal
Download or read book Natural Law written by G. W. F. Hegel and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the central problems in the history of moral and political philosophy since antiquity has been to explain how human society and its civil institutions came into being. In attempting to solve this problem philosophers developed the idea of natural law, which for many centuries was used to describe the system of fundamental, rational principles presumed universally to govern human behavior in society. By the eighteenth century the doctrine of natural law had engendered the related doctrine of natural rights, which gained reinforcement most famously in the American and French revolutions. According to this view, human society arose through the association of individuals who might have chosen to live alone in scattered isolation and who, in coming together, were regarded as entering into a social contract. In this important early essay, first published in English in this definitive translation in 1975 and now returned to print, Hegel utterly rejects the notion that society is purposely formed by voluntary association. Indeed, he goes further than this, asserting in effect that the laws brought about in various countries in response to force, accident, and deliberation are far more fundamental than any law of nature supposed to be valid always and everywhere. In expounding his view Hegel not only dispenses with the empiricist explanations of Hobbes, Hume, and others but also, at the heart of this work, offers an extended critique of the so-called formalist positions of Kant and Fichte.
