Public Discourse

Natural law does not demand capitalism, but we can deduce from natural law that some institutions that are key to market economies are normally just, while practices key to socialist arrangements are usually unjust.

The Gosnell case shows us that a society’s laws teach, and if they teach a lesson of injustice they will corrupt its people over time. Indeed, contemporary abortion jurisprudence undermines the very notion of natural rights and constitutional government.

Natural law theory makes a very limited, but very important claim—that there is common ground between all human beings, and particularly between religious believers and non-believers, on which moral disagreements can be rationally adjudicated.

To reject the presence of natural law in documents of the Founding era is to embrace both cynicism and romanticism.

A recent claim to reject the natural law for its uselessness and false claims to neutrality misunderstands the first-personal perspective of contemporary natural law. The second in a two-part series.

A recent claim to reject the natural law risks misunderstanding the role of reason and overlooks the difference between practical reasoning and morality. The first in a two-part series.

A “Fantasy Slut League” created by high school boys in California suggests the reality of natural law even in those minds whose view of sexuality has been distorted by our culture.

Naïve proponents and skeptics of the natural law often point to the world “out there” as the source of objective truth (or lack thereof), but the truths of the natural law are to be found through the actions of our intellect.

Governments don’t legally recognize a certain type of relationship because they are suckers for romance; they do so because they are understandably afraid of the potentially destructive consequences of such romance.

Lying is always wrong because it always compromises the love of truth that we need to know and love God better.

Insofar as our lives are governed by reason, we cannot live without truth and a love for it.

As a pluralistic liberal democracy, we should craft our laws so that individuals will never be unnecessarily coerced into violating their consciences.

A book about sex by J. Budziszewski uses natural law arguments to persuade young adults of the moral benefits of purity.

The failure to grasp the implications of intrinsic human worth plagues arguments for physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia.

Despite their disagreements, conservatives and libertarians often agree on many things. Resolving their differences, however, means rejecting philosophical skepticism and taking right reason seriously.

One can neither deny nor question the natural law’s persuasiveness except by asking questions, conducting inquiries, achieving understandings, reaching judgments, and making choices—all of which are the natural law at work.

Whether we call it infanticide or after-birth abortion, ending the life of newborns kills human beings who are moral persons because they are rational beings.

It would be wrong for the United States to engage at this time in an attack on Iran or to participate substantially in an Israeli action.

The fundamental problem with the mandate is that it coerces some people into doing what they think is wrong, and this problem remains regardless of whether the coercion excuses the actions of the people being coerced.

Were the central task of government to be seen as that of aiding citizens in their own self-constitution, oriented towards real human goods including the good of religion, the HHS mandate would be seen for the unjust imposition it is.

Personally opposed, but actively supporting…well, it’s complicated.

The precepts of the natural law are obligatory not because they are commanded, but because they are necessary for our well-being. God’s revelation of these precepts is better understood as a divine reminding and authoritative inviting.

The conjugal conception of marriage is just and coherent; the same-sex marriage proponents’ conception of marriage is unjust and incoherent.

A eudaimonistic ethical theory can show, without appeal to God, that certain actions are always wrong.

The construction of an ethical theory, as a general matter, inevitably implicates philosophical theology.

Martin Luther King, Jr., espoused a worldview repugnant to many of those who now claim his legacy.

The absolute prohibition of intrinsically evil acts is the limit on one’s positive obligations.

Divine legislation functions to enforce moral absolutes, not to ground them.

If appeals to God get ruled out, either by disbelief in his existence or reluctance to rely upon it, then it isn’t possible to demonstrate that there are moral absolutes.

Rather than simply denouncing Truman for his decision to employ the atomic bomb, his critics need to confront the harsh reality of war and seriously consider the lack of viable alternatives available to him.

The tradition of common morality does not permit us to excuse the atomic bomb as a “necessary” evil.

Moral absolutes are not “mere” restrictions on our actions. Nor should they be suspended even when upholding them might bring about grave consequences. They are essential for protecting human wellbeing.

Modern science does not require us to abandon notions of nature and human nature upon which so much of traditional ethics depends.

The presumptive starting point in the natural law and, more specifically, Christian tradition is one of absolute opposition to intentional killing of beings created in the image of God, for which exceptions must be earned; but the traditional justifications for such exceptions fail.

While not explicitly denying the principle of proportionality, Tollefsen implicitly rejects it, leaving his argument not only counterintuitive but incoherent.

Nothing that a man does can change his nature as man, and so, considered in himself, it will always remain wrong to kill him. This should be the final judgment of practical reason when brought to bear on the question of capital punishment.

If one accepts the legitimacy of punishment and the principle of proportionality, then it is impossible to claim that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong.

Intentional killing is always wrong, and support of capital punishment often stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of human dignity.

In a discipline whose point is dispassionate reasoning and discourse, some would shut down debate and silence dissenters on a deep and complex moral-political issue. And the view they would anathematize, far from irrational, is more coherent and more compelling than their slippery and ill-defined 'default'.

Doctors are called to a life of compassionate service to human beings invested with intrinsic dignity. This essay is adapted from the Commencement Address Dr. Landry delivered at the St. Louis University School of Medicine.

Arguments for traditional urbanism are de facto truth claims about nature and human nature, and point to and are supported by the natural law. Why we can and should think normatively about our building patterns. Part two of two.

Arguments for traditional urbanism are de facto truth claims about nature and human nature, and point to and are supported by the natural law. Why we can and should think normatively about our building patterns. Part one of two.

Race and sex play qualitatively different roles in our interactions with each other, making sex rationally relevant to our social and political policies in a way that race is not.

Marital love implies dependence on another instead of autonomy, and it shows that certain goods (sex and procreation, love and marriage, marriage and parenthood) are connected. We must recover the language of self-giving. The second in a two-part series.

Metaphysics provides the crucial foundation for natural law, and our current intellectual climate is ripe for embracing metaphysical foundations once again. The third in a three-part series.

Acts are not made good or bad by our mere say-so. We must also examine the objective intention of our actions. The second in a three-part series.

A notion of “social practice” should guide the way we think about morality and politics. The first in a three-part series.

The requirements of natural reason in the pursuit of goods provide a more adequate starting point for moral reflection than the theological considerations in which moral reflection should come to its fruition.

Aristotelian virtue ethics has very little to say about what is a good political structure or economic system.

Alasdair MacIntyre may be wrong about the details of finance, but he is right on the largest questions of political economy.