Ultimate Normative Foundations The Case for Aquinas's Personalist Natural Law

by Lemmons, R. Mary Hayden

• ISBN13: 9780739147955
• ISBN10: 0739147951
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-05-31
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

Ultimate Normative Foundations: The Case for Personalist Natural Law Across the Globe focuses on two features of morality and law that most normative paradigms ignore. The first of these is the indefeasibility of moral obligations that prevents moral agents from exempting themselves from culpability, and the second is that certain norms (such as the proscription of genocide) are universal. Rose Mary Hayden Lemmons explores the foundations of normativity and delves deep into metaethics, normative ethics, applied ethics, and jurisprudence, exposing the weaknesses inherent in key normative theories. She argues that today's popular normative paradigms cannot adequately explain or justify the universality and indefeasibility of any moral or juridical obligation; this explanation and justification is provided instead by the personalist natural law formulated by Thomas Aquinas in terms of a love of God and neighbor distinct from Christian charity. Personalist natural law establishes the parameters of interpersonal relationships that enable each of us to flourish while establishing indefeasible and universal obligations that hold across the globe. At the same time, it retains the ability to do the work of traditional natural law theory and justify, for instance, inalienable rights and Just War theory. These considerations will have strong implications for any academic concerned with philosophy, theology, or law.

Author Biography

Rose Mary Hayden Lemmons is associate professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. xv
Problematic Sources of Normativity	p. 1
Rational Intuitionism: Ross or Maritain	p. 13
Human or Divine Will: Kantianism or Divine Prescriptivism	p. 21
Natural Inclinations as a Voluntarist Naturalism	p. 37
Indispensable Social Goods	p. 49
Autonomous Virtues	p. 65
Eudaimonic Pluralism (the GBF Paradigm)	p. 89
Thomistic Normativity	p. 105
Aquinas on Truth, Goodness, and Eudaimonia	p. 107
Privileging the Love Precepts	p. 133
Thomistic Puzzles	p. 155
Basic Questions and Responses	p. 157
Whether Personalist Natural Law Is a Thomistic Abomination?	p. 179
Classical and Contemporary Metaethical Challenges	p. 201
Challenges to Natural Law's Normativity, Objectivity, or Specificity	p. 203
The Challenges of Agnostic and Atheistic Moral Eudaimonism	p. 227
The Challenges of Voluntarist Liberty and the Nietzschean Will to Power	p. 249
Love Precepts: Their Normativity and Specifications	p. 267
Love's Normativity and Love's Virtues	p. 269
Neighborly Love: Personalist and Juridical Obligations	p. 283
Loving God: Proportional Obligations	p. 311
Updating the Parameters of War and Punishment with Love	p. 339
Global Challenges and Thomistic Responses	p. 349
The Reality of Moral Diversity	p. 351
The Globe, Feminism, and Aquinas	p. 375
Personalist Natural Law: Normative Advantages	p. 383
Conclusion	p. 399
Appendix: A Historical Sketch of Natural Law	p. 403
Bibliography	p. 425
Index	p. 459
About the Author	p. 469
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