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Natural Law Theory (natural + law_theory)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences83%

Selected Abstracts

NEW NATURAL LAW THEORY AND FOUNDATIONAL SEXUAL ETHICAL PRINCIPLES: A CRITIQUE AND A PROPOSAL

THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 2 2006
TODD A. SALZMAN
The New Natural Law Theory (NNLT) argues against the morality (and legality) of same sex-unions on the basis that homosexual (and non-reproductive heterosexual) acts are unnatural, unreasonable, and therefore immoral. In this paper, we explore and critique the foundational principles , biological and personal complementarity, their subcategories, and the interrelationship between them , that the NNLT uses to justify its claim. We propose alternative principles , orientation, personal, and genital-biological complementarity, with a distinct interrelationship , to argue that homosexual couples can engage in sexual acts that are natural, reasonable, and therefore moral. Our study clearly demonstrates that for the NNLT genital complementarity, a subcategory of biological complementarity, is the sine qua non for personal complementarity. In other words, personal complementarity within a sexual act is only possible if there is genital complementarity between male and female. We believe that the NNLT's foundational principles reflect too narrow an understanding of the human person and human sexuality. Instead, we propose "holistic complementarity" as the fully human integration of orientation, personal, and genital-biological complementarity. What defines a natural, reasonable, and moral sexual act is not genital complementarity as the foundational principle, but a dialectic between these three principles of complementarity. [source]

Is Contemporary Natural Law Theory a Beneficial Development?

NEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1005 2005
The Attempt to Study Natural Law, the Human Good Without Metaphysics
First page of article [source]

Hobbes's Self-effacing Natural Law Theory

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 3-4 2001
S. A. Lloyd
First page of article [source]

THE RETURN OF THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY: A DIALOGUE ON HUMAN FLOURISHING

THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 3 2008
FRANCIS MICHAEL WALSH
In response to the proposal justifying the morality of homosexual acts offered by Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, this paper seeks to make intelligible the reasoning used by the New Natural Law Theory and others that arrives at the opposite conclusion. This article proposes to explore the weaknesses in the arguments offered in justification. By proposing an expanded notion of human nature so as to include sexual orientation as one of the factors from which to draw moral norms, the authors have adopted the central proposition of the Old Natural Law Theory defended by Francisco Suarez and others, viz., that human nature as such was a fit source from which to draw moral norms. Thus the New Natural Law Theory, formulated by Germain Grisez to answer the charge of the naturalistic fallacy, has curiously found itself being refuted by a reformulation of the Old Natural Law Theory. This article seeks to show how the proportionalistic reasoning used by Salzman and Lawler leads inevitably to a revival of the naturalistic fallacy. [source]

The Basic Goods Theory and Revisionism: A Methodological Comparison on the Use of Reason and Experience as Sources of Moral Knowledge

THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 4 2001
Todd A. Salzman
In Roman Catholic moral theology there is an ongoing debate between the proportionalist or revisionist school and the traditionalist school that has developed what is referred to as the ,New Natural Law Theory' or ,Basic Goods Theory' (BGT). The stakes in this debate have been raised with Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993) on fundamental moral theology that condemned ,proportionalism' or ,teleologism' as an ethical theory while utilizing many of the ideas, concepts, and terminology of the BGT, thereby implicitly endorsing that ethical theory. While absolute norms and intrinsically evil acts have frequently been the focus of debate between these two schools, what is it that divides them fundamentally, on the level of ethical method? It is the role and function of reason and experience as two sources of moral knowledge, in part, that distinguish these two versions of natural law on the most basic level. While the BGT has a strict hierarchy of the sources of moral knowledge that posits the hierarchical magisterium as the definitive interpreter of reason and experience, revisionists posit a more dialogical relationship between reason, experience, and the magisterium. On certain ethical issues (e.g., artificial birth control), the experience of the faithful as well as the rational arguments developed by revisionist Catholic moral theologians challenge some of the normative claims of the magisterium. This paper investigates the methodological use of reason and experience in each theory's interpretation of natural law and how and why these two sources of moral knowledge lead to fundamentally divergent normative claims on particular ethical issues. [source]

Legal Positivism, Law's Normativity, and the Normative Force of Legal Justification

RATIO JURIS, Issue 4 2003
Torben Spaak
In this article, I distinguish between a moral and a strictly legal conception of legal normativity, and argue that legal positivists can account for law's normativity in the strictly legal but not in the moral sense, while pointing out that normativity in the former sense is of little interest, at least to lawyers. I add, however, that while the moral conception of law's normativity is to be preferred to the strictly legal conception from the rather narrow viewpoint of the study of law's normativity, it is less attractive than the latter from the broader viewpoint of the study of the nature of law. I then distinguish between a moral and a strictly legal conception of the normative force of legal justification, and argue that legal positivists may without contradiction embrace the moral conception, and that therefore the analysis of the normative force of legal justification need not be a problem for legal positivists. I conclude that, on the whole, we have reason to prefer legal positivism to natural law theory. I begin by introducing the subject of jurisprudence (section 1). I then introduce the natural law/legal positivism debate, suggesting that we ought to understand it as a debate about the proper way to explicate the concept of law (section 2). I proceed to argue that legal decision-making is a matter of applying legal norms to facts, and that syllogistic reasoning plays a prominent role in legal decision-making thus conceived (section 3). Having done that, I discuss law's normativity (section 4), the normative force of legal justification (section 5), and the relation between the former and the latter (section 6). I conclude with a critical comment on Joseph Raz' understanding of the question of law's normativity (appendix). [source]