Category: Ethics

  • From morality to nature and back again

    Below is a talk I recently gave at a local apologetics meet-up. The goal was to introduce and partially defend natural law theory to a group of fellow-Protestants who, as far as I was aware, had not engaged extensively with natural law theory before. The talk was recorded in various parts, with video coming in the second part. →

  • That orders regulate

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    In Summa Theologica II-I Q87 A1 corp. Aquinas says the following: Now it is evident that all things contained in an order, are, in a manner, one, in relation to the principle of that order. Consequently, whatever rises up against an order, is put down by that order or by the principle thereof. And because →

  • On the transitivity of strict preference

    The notion of comparing alternatives often comes up in philosophy, particularly when discussing practical reason. There are various names for this (we can talk about the reasons for choosing A over B, or how A is better than B, or how A is more desirable to B, or how A is preferred to B) but →

  • Goods, basic goods, and faculties

    We’ve mentioned before that the goodness of some thing is relative to that thing’s nature. It is good for a human to have two legs because our biology is structured in such a way that having two legs is conducive to our flourishing. By the same token, it is not good for a cat to →

  • Joy and hope

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    In a previous post, I took joy to be happiness with respect to our ultimate good. We also spoke about two ways in which happiness is achieved: through the acquisition of a good or the continued possession of a good. The Aristotelian inside me was unsatisfied with this, for we usually take happiness to be →

  • The good of others

    Previously we discussed the general notion of natural goodness, and saw that the natures of things determine what is good or bad for them. In particular, our nature as humans determines what is good or bad for us. We also saw that with humans our actions take on a moral significance to the extent that the ends or means willed →

  • Links on living well

    I’ve come across two different links today that speak to the broad question of doing this whole “living” thing well: A blog post by Lydia McGrew in which she reminds us that “An irresistible urge to follow every ephemeral fad is not the mark of a life well-lived.” A TED talk by Barry Schwartz in →

  • Happiness and joy

    I was thinking about the difference between happiness and joy, considered psychologically. The tricky thing with accounting for the difference is that any account of these two has to explain why happiness and joy seem related, but nonetheless why one can rejoice (ie. express joy) in the face of suffering (that is, experiencing sorrow, which →

  • Natural and moral goodness

    “Cats have four legs.” What an innocent statement. Who would’ve thought that unpacking it would lead us to a system of ethics? Natural goodness We start by noting that statements like this one don’t tell us some quantifiable fact about cats. Rather they tell us what features a cat has by virtue of which it →

  • An historical overview of natural law theory from Budziszewski

    In the preface to the second edition of J. Budziszewski’s What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide he gives a brief account of the history of natural law theory (a meta- and normative ethical theory very much at home in, but not limited to, Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy). I liked it, so I’m quoting it at length: Speaking →