How do ethical norms relate to human nature? This comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume surveys the latest thinking on natural law.

Presents a systematic, contemporary defence of the natural law outlook in ethics, politics and jurisprudence.

Morality based on natural law has a long tradition, and has proven to be quite resilient in the face of numerous attacks and challenges over the years. Those challenges are no less serious today, which leads one to ask if natural law is still a viable foundation for ethics. Craig Boyd provides a contemporary defense of natural law theory against modern challenges from the arenas of science, religion, culture, and philosophy. In his analysis, he defends many of the classical elements of natural law, but also takes into account the contributions of scientific discoveries about human nature. He concludes that natural law is a necessary but not sufficient basis for ethics that must be accompanied by a theory of virtue.

It is natural for us to wonder what should I do, and why? And although a combination of common sense and upbringing aids us in answering our questions, it is also natural for us to seek answers that are grounded in something deeper and more enduring than our personal dispositions and those of our parents. We seek a genuinely good life and the practical wisdom necessary to arrive at happiness. In this Introduction to Ethics, Brian Besong presents a comprehensive and contemporary introduction to the practical wisdom handed down to us by Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many others—a position now commonly called “natural law.” Written as a beginner’s guide, the book systematically explores a range of moral issues including moral knowledge, happiness, right and wrong action, and virtues, to name a few. Introduction to Ethics explains in a lively way how natural law provides principled and persuasive answers to our most fundamental moral questions.

Knowing the Natural Law traces the thought of Aquinas from an understanding of human nature to a knowledge of the human good, from there to an account of ought-statements, and finally to choice, which issues in human actions. The much discussed article on the precepts of the natural law (I-II, 94, 2) provides the framework for a natural law rooted in human nature and in speculative knowledge. Practical knowledge is itself threefold: potentially practical knowledge, virtually practical knowledge, and fully practical knowledge.

This collection of essays focuses on key questions debated by Greek and Roman philosophers of the Hellenistic period.

Natural Law Ethics in Theory and Practice brings together a selection of essays of the late Joseph Boyle. Boyle was, with Germain Grisez and John Finnis, a founder and developer of the New Classical Natural Law Theory, arguably the most important development in Catholic moral philosophy of the twentieth century. While this theory is indebted to the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, it incorporates an understanding and assessment of that work that is different from that found in other statements of natural law. Boyle made crucial contributions to a wide variety of aspects of this theory, and the volume is divided into two parts. Part One: Articulating a Theory of Natural Law contains three sections in which Boyle defends the reality of free choice and the view that the basic reasons for action, or first principles of natural law, are incommensurable in goodness. Boyle identifies the basic moral standard for choice and action, and develops an account of human action that elucidates the important role played by intention and double effect in their moral evaluation. The essays in Part Two: Natural Law Theory and Contemporary Moral Problems demonstrate the strength and scope of Boyle’s natural law account, as he brings it to bear upon just war theory, property and welfare rights, and issues in bioethics. The essays in bioethics address the difficult question of whether it is appropriate to tube-feed patients in persistent vegetative state, and include an unpublished essay, “Against Assisted Death,” which he delivered as the Anscombe Lecture at The Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford about a year before he died. This volume also includes a Foreword by Princeton’s Robert P. George; an Introduction by the editors that highlights Boyle’s contribution to the development of the new classical natural law theory; and a bibliography of Boyle’s publications.

Collects ten essays on Germain Grisez's writings. Topics include the scriptural basis of Grisez's revision of moral theology, contraception, Grisez's metaphysical work, capital punishment, and the political common good in Aquinas. The book includes a response by Grisez and Joseph Boyle, Jr. to the e

Aristotle and Natural Law lays out a new theoretical approach which distinguishes between the notions of 'interpretation,' 'appropriation,' 'negotiation' and 'reconstruction' of the meaning of texts and their component concepts. These categories are then deployed in an examination of the role which the concept of natural law is used by Aristotle in a number of key texts. The book argues that Aristotle appropriated the concept of natural law, first formulated by the defenders of naturalism in the 'nature versus convention debate' in classical Athens. Thereby he contributed to the emergence and historical evolution of the meaning of one of the most important concept in the lexicon of Western political thought. Aristotle and Natural Law argues that Aristotle's ethics is best seen as a certain type of natural law theory which does not allow for the possibility that individuals might appeal to natural law in order to criticize existing laws and institutions. Rather its function is to provide them with a philosophical justification from the standpoint of Aristotle's metaphysics.

From Human Dignity to Natural Law shows how the whole of the natural law, as understood in the Aristotelian Thomistic tradition, is contained implicitly in human dignity. Human dignity means existing for one’s own good (the common good as well as one’s individual good), and not as a mere means to an alien good. But what is the true human good? This question is answered with a careful analysis of Aristotle’s definition of happiness. The natural law can then be understood as the precepts that guide us in achieving happiness. To show that human dignity is a reality in the nature of things and not a mere human invention, it is necessary to show that human beings exist by nature for the achievement of the properly human good in which happiness is found. This implies finality in nature. Since contemporary natural science does not recognize final causality, the book explains why living things, as least, must exist for a purpose and why the scientific method, as currently understood, is not able to deal with this question. These reflections will also enable us to respond to a common criticism of natural law theory: that it attempts to derive statements of what ought to be from statements about what is. After defining the natural law and relating it to human or positive law, Richard Berquist considers Aquinas’s formulation of the first principle of the natural law. It then discusses the love commandments to love God above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself as the first precepts of the natural law. Subsequent chapters are devoted to clarifying and defending natural law precepts concerned with the life issues, with sexual morality and marriage, and with fundamental natural rights. From Human Dignity to Natural Law concludes with a discussion of alternatives to the natural law.