Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality PDF Download

Author: Robert P. George
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199243006
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
A number of leading defenders of natural law and liberalism offer frank and lively exchanges touching upon critical issues surrounding contemporary moral and political theory.

Author: Christopher Wolfe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139457985
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Liberal political philosophy and natural law theory are not contradictory, but - properly understood - mutually reinforcing. Contemporary liberalism (as represented by Rawls, Guttman and Thompson, Dworkin, Raz, and Macedo) rejects natural law and seeks to diminish its historical contribution to the liberal political tradition, but it is only one, defective variant of liberalism. A careful analysis of the history of liberalism, identifying its core principles, and a similar examination of classical natural law theory (as represented by Thomas Aquinas and his intellectual descendants), show that a natural law liberalism is possible and desirable. Natural law theory embraces the key principles of liberalism, and it also provides balance in resisting some of its problematic tendencies. Natural law liberalism is the soundest basis for American public philosophy, and it is a potentially more attractive and persuasive form of liberalism for nations that have tended to resist it.

Author: Robert P. George
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description

Author: Robert P. George
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9780878407668
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"Public reason" is one of the central concepts in modern liberal political theory. As articulated by John Rawls, it presents a way to overcome the difficulties created by intractable differences among citizens' religious and moral beliefs by strictly confining the place of such convictions in the public sphere. Identifying this conception as a key point of conflict, this book presents a debate among contemporary natural law and liberal political theorists on the definition and validity of the idea of public reason. Its distinguished contributors examine the consequences of interpreting public reason more broadly as "right reason," according to natural law theory, versus understanding it in the narrower sense in which Rawls intended. They test public reason by examining its implications for current issues, confronting the questions of abortion and slavery and matters relating to citizenship. This energetic exchange advances our understanding of both Rawls's contribution to political philosophy and the lasting relevance of natural law. It provides new insights into crucial issues facing society today as it points to new ways of thinking about political theory and practice.

Author: Charles Covell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 134922359X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The Defence of Natural Law comprises a study of the philosophies of law expounded by Lon L. Fuller, Michael Oakeshott, F.A. Hayek, Ronald Dworkin and John Finnis. The work of these theorists is situated in relation to the modern tradition in legal philosophy. In this way, it is demonstrated that the theorists adhered closely to the natural law standpoint in legal philosophy, while also defending the particular view of the proper functions of law and the state that distinguished the tradition of modern liberalism.

Author: Tom Angier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108586392
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
In Section 1, I outline the history of natural law theory, covering Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Aquinas. In Section 2, I explore two alternative traditions of natural law, and explain why these constitute rivals to the Aristotelian tradition. In Section 3, I go on to elaborate a via negativa along which natural law norms can be discovered. On this basis, I unpack what I call three 'experiments in being', each of which illustrates the cogency of this method. In Section 4, I investigate and rebut two seminal challenges to natural law methodology, namely, the fact/value distinction in metaethics and Darwinian evolutionary biology. In Section 5, I then outline and criticise the 'new' natural law theory, which is an attempt to revise natural law thought in light of the two challenges above. I conclude, in Section 6, with a summary and some reflections on the prospects for natural law theory.

Author: Robert P. George
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780199242993
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
In his collection George extends the critique of liberalism he expounded in Making Men Moral and also goes beyond it to show how contemporary natural law theory provides a superior way of thinking about basic problems of justice and political morality. It is written with the same combination of stylistic elegance and analytical rigour that distinguished his critical work. Not content merely to defend natural law from its cultural despisers, he deftly turns the tables and deploys the idea to mount a stunning attack on regnant liberal beliefs about such issues as abortion, sexuality, and the place of religion in public life.

Author: Christopher Wolfe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511242366
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Natural Law Liberalism argues that liberal political philosophy and natural law theory are not contradictory but mutually reinforcing. Contemporary liberalism tends to put traditional morality and religion off-limits in political discourse and to unreasonably exalt individual autonomy, but nothing in the liberal tradition demands this.

Author: Gary Chartier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108493041
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Elaborates and illustrates a radical version of political and social liberalism rooted in a rich understanding of fulfilment and flourishing.

Author: Francis Oakley
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826417655
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2006 The existence and grounding of human or natural rights is a heavily contested issue today, not only in the West but in the debates raging between "fundamentalists" and "liberals" or "modernists in the Islamic world. So, too, are the revised versions of natural law espoused by thinkers such as John Finnis and Robert George. This book focuses on three bodies of theory that developed between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries: (1) the foundational belief in the existence of a moral/juridical natural law, embodying universal norms of right and wrong and accessible to natural human reason; (2) the understanding of (scientific) uniformities of nature as divinely imposed laws, which rose to prominence in the seventeenth century; and (3), finally, the notion that individuals are bearers of inalienable natural or human rights. While seen today as distinct bodies of theory often locked in mutual conflict, they grew up inextricably intertwines. The book argues that they cannot be properly understood if taken each in isolation from the others.