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Christopher O. Tollefsen

Christopher Tollefsen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. His most recent book, with Farr Curlin, is The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession. In 2024-25 he is a Visiting Fellow with the deNicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame.

philosophy, natural law

Practical Reason, Basic Goods, and Natural Law

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Reason operating without error judges that no human being should ever intend the death of another human being for any reason whatsoever. No achievable good can justify such a choice. And that is the foundation for the case against the death penalty.

Doubting Thomas (Aquinas) on Private and Public Killing

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There is a genuine tension, not just in Aquinas but in Church teaching more generally, between claims about the intrinsic goodness, sanctity, and inviolability of human life, and claims about political authority to kill. The second in a two-part series.

A Philosophical Case Against Capital Punishment

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Arguments against the death penalty can be made not only on the basis of theology but also on the basis of natural law philosophy. The first in a two-part series.

Embryos and Five-Year-Olds: Whom to Rescue

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Both human embryos and human five-year-olds are human beings equal in fundamental worth and dignity. But there are differences between the embryos and five-year-olds that are or can be morally relevant to the decision concerning whom to rescue.

Our Addiction to Technology: Resistance Must Begin in the Home

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Our enslavement to technology leaves us alienated, depressed, and distracted, first of all by disrupting the cultivation of virtue in the home. Andy Crouch has written a thoughtful and practical guide for families looking to redirect their attention from technology to what really matters.

Harm, Neutrality, or Truth: What Is the Basis of Liberalism?

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Kevin Vallier’s recent book is a rich and rewarding attempt to reconcile people of faith with public reason liberalism.

What Is Legalism?

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Contemporary legalism downplays, ignores, and occasionally denigrates the “rules” of morality in favor of mercy, accompaniment, and integration, because it fails to see that there is an essential and constitutive relationship between morality and human flourishing.
Public Discourse

Mercy for Dylann Roof

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Showing mercy to Dylann Roof by refusing to impose the death penalty would respect the acts of both his victims, who showed him welcome, and their families, who showed him forgiveness. In this way, good could be drawn from evil, and the sinfulness of Dylann Roof’s actions could be overcome by love.

Joseph Boyle, Public Discourse, and the Kingdom of God

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Joseph Boyle was a colleague, mentor, and friend to many associated with Public Discourse and in the broader academic community. He will be sorely missed.

Couples Who Adopt Are “Real Parents”

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Couples who adopt children out of an abundance of spousal love are creative and life-giving; they help form the identity of their children in a way that mirrors God’s adoption of us through baptism.

To Whom Do Children Belong? Melissa Moschella’s Defense of Parents’ Rights

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A new book defends the view that parents have primary authority over their children. The role of the state is to help parents, not to take over tasks that are properly parental.

The Gospel of Happiness

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Christopher Kaczor’s The Gospel of Happiness brings new insight to Christian practice by applying the lessons of positive psychology to it. His approach shows how both religious and secular seekers of happiness can learn and benefit from the other tradition.
Public Discourse

Pope Francis, the Zika Virus, and Contraception

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Moral reasons exist for the use of contraceptives to defend against sexual assault, thanks to the principle of double effect—but these reasons do not apply to using contraception because of the Zika virus.
Public Discourse

Rights Through Obligations: The Case of Free Speech

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Some rights are grounded in the need for agents to fulfill their perceived responsibilities, including their obligation to pursue knowledge. This obligation, along with the communal nature of inquiry, supports a right to free speech that acquires particular stringency in those communities where inquiry is most essential.
Public Discourse

In the Cave: How Automation Changes the Way We Interact with Our World

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Good work connects us more deeply to the world around us. By contrast, automation can often alienate us from the physical world, changing the way we think and act.
Public Discourse

Why the “Catholic” “Pro-Life” Case for the Bomb Fails

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No one who claims to be pro-life can say that women, children, the elderly, and indeed, the unborn of a nation may be legitimately targeted with death for the sake of the consequences, however beneficial.
Public Discourse

Marco Rubio Is Right: The Life of a New Human Being Begins at Conception

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Senator Rubio is on the firmest possible scientific ground when he says that science shows that the child in the womb, from the very point of successful fertilization, is indeed a human being.
Public Discourse

On the Dangers of Thanking God for the Atom Bomb

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There are often great temptations to violate the absolute norms against intentional killing and against lying. On the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs over Japan, we should remember what is at stake in such decisions and how agents constitute themselves in their choosing.
Public Discourse

Gender Identity

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Gender is a way of communicating truths or falsehoods about one’s sex and its corresponding social and cultural roles. An age of gender confusion and rejection calls for reflection on important issues that, in an upright age, would hardly arise. The second in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

Sex Identity

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As animals that reproduce sexually, humans in the paradigm case are either male or female, with the sexes specified by reproductive roles they can potentially fulfill. According to this account, it is impossible for someone to change his or her sex, and all attempts to do so involve mutilation. The first of a two-part series.
Public Discourse

God, Death, and Capital Punishment

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It is philosophically and theologically defensible for Catholics to believe that the death penalty is intrinsically wrong.
Public Discourse

J.S. Mill and the Pro-Life Cause

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In spite of its many problematic aspects, the political thought of J.S. Mill provides a low but solid foundation for the essential convictions of the pro-life movement: that the unborn, in virtue of their common humanity, deserve the full protection of the law.
Public Discourse

Incest and Pornography: More Similar Than We Think

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Although we uphold the cultural taboo on incest, we accept something with precisely the same negative effect on integrity, marriage, and family: pornography.
Public Discourse

A Caution against Compatibility: On Natural Rights and Natural Law

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While Adam Seagrave offers a provocative and original reading of Locke, his assumptions about the self and ownership are deeply problematic.
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