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.
Author: R.J. Snell (R.J. Snell)
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Intelligible Goods, Marriage, and Intellectual Conversion
Unless we ask the “what” and “why” in ethical debate, we aren’t doing ethics. Debating ethics requires intellectual conversion and thus a commitment to intelligible reality.
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Protest and Reason
In order to stop our present decline, we must transcend our natural tendency to retreat into factions and instead begin to sacrifice for the common good.
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Offense and Criticism in the Marriage Debates
To take offense does not free us from further argument or criticism. Instead, offense demands ongoing criticism between partners in ethical discourse as a recognition of their fundamental human equality.
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The Shock of Recognition
Newly defined and vigorously enforced rights have proliferated even as they are uprooted from any philosophic grounding.
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Marriage and the Law of Tradition
Custom and tradition, far from being necessarily irrational, are often the vehicles of guiding and binding reason.
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Universities and the Graciousness of Being
Civility is at the foundation of democratic society, but our educational institutions have lost their manners and the grace of gentility.
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Remembering the Pill
The fiftieth anniversary of oral contraceptives is a reminder of all the things the Pill lets us forget.
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Desires Natural and Unnatural: A Reply to Paul Griffiths
A recent First Things article on natural law misses the mark.
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Bad Reason and the ‘Manhattan Declaration’
A good deal of online commentary about a recent ecumenical statement misunderstands the nature of human reason.