Fairness in Holdings: A Natural Law Account of Property and Welfare Rights

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-226
Author(s):  
Joseph Boyle
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Welfare Rights

In this essay I will try to develop a natural law justification of welfare rights. The justification I will undertake is from the perspective of Catholic natural law, that is, the strand of natural law that has been developed theoretically by Roman Catholic canonists, theologians, and philosophers since Aquinas, and affirmed by Catholic teachers as the basis for most moral obligations. Catholic natural law is, therefore, natural law as developed and understood by Catholics or others respecting Catholic traditions of inquiry. It is not, however, primarily or exclusively natural law for Catholics, since the very idea of natural law includes the conviction that it is accessible in principle to anyone.

Normativity and Reason

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Pink
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Force Model ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Rational Justification ◽  
Recent Philosophy ◽  
Rational Demand

AbstractMoral obligation is a demand of reason—a demanding kind of rational justification. How to understand this rational demand? Much recent philosophy, as in the work of Scanlon, takes obligatoriness to be a reason-giving feature of an action. But the paper argues that moral obligatoriness should instead be understood as a mode of justificatory support—as a distinctive justificatory force of demand. The paper argues that this second model of obligation, the Force model, was central to the natural law tradition in ethics, is truer to everyday intuition about obligation, and also changes our understanding of the problem of moral rationality. A new account is given of why it might be irrational to breach moral obligations. The Force model also sheds new light on moral responsibility, our responsibility for meeting moral obligations. Moral obligation is a standard of reason; but moral responsibility is shown to involve far more than ordinary rational appraisability, precisely because moral obligation involves a distinctive justificatory force of demand—one which specifically governs how we act.

From the Truly Real to Spiritual Wisdom

2001 ◽  
pp. 17-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart W. Herman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Catholic Social Teaching ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Business Practice ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Faith Based

This essay sketches a method for identifying the insights that diverse religious traditions offer to the field of business ethics. Each article in this volume asserts or assumes faith-based claims about what is "truly real" as the ground of moral aspiration and obligation. Four distinct kinds of claims yield four kinds of wisdom, that is, moral guidance for business practice. 1) In Judaism and Islam, scriptural commands, as interpreted authoritatively down through these traditions, yield precise methods for rendering specific moral judgments; in Roman Catholicism, similar guidance is provided through natural law. 2) In Buddhism, Judaism, and most of the surveyed Christian traditions, the values of compassion, love, and justice provide spiritual resources to counter pressures towards immoral behavior in business. 3) The African-American and Mennonite churches interpret their particular histories of oppression to offer distinctive models of fortitude and hope. 4) In Evangelical Calvinism, Mormonism, and Roman Catholic social teaching, convictions about God's redemptive and sanctifying activity offer a robust moral vision for successful striving.

Natural Law in the Teaching of Christian Ethics

Ecclesiology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-269
Author(s):  
Robin Gill
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Humanae Vitae ◽  
Faith Traditions ◽  
Natural Law Ethics ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article looks at the ways that Thomas Aquinas’ classic and highly influential understanding of natural law ethics has been criticised by students coming from a number of different faith traditions. It suggests that the way that natural law ethics was deployed in Pope Paul vi’s encyclical Humanae Vitae has not typically been found to be persuasive even among Roman Catholic students. It then looks at the way that Lisa Sowle Cahill takes on board these criticisms and offers a more persuasive account of modified natural law ethics.

“In the Beginning Was the Grab Bag”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S. Massa
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Human Models ◽  
History Of ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Centripetal Forces

This synthetic chapter draws together the themes of the previous chapters, arguing that Roman Catholic theologies of natural law evolve in an analogous way to how Kuhn described the history of science. The author puts forth (no: argues) that the question of calibration warrants the use of “paradigm revolutions” when considering the centripetal forces that eventuated in very different models of what “natural law” actually was, the kinds of human behavior that resulted from living in accord with that law, and what the ends or purposes of living such a life in accord with that law brought to a person. The chapter concludes with the thought that talking about natural law is messy and chaotic, and the development of human models of it are, by definition, nonlinear because reality is always more complex than any model we can construct to explain it.

CLASSICAL NATURAL LAW THEORY, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND TAXATION

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Feser
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Natural Law Theory

AbstractClassical natural law theory derives moral conclusions from the essentialist and teleological understanding of nature enshrined in classical metaphysics. The paper argues that this understanding of nature is as defensible today as it was in the days of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. It then shows how a natural law theory of the grounds and content of our moral obligations follows from this understanding of nature, and how a doctrine of natural rights follows in turn from the theory of natural law. With this background in place, the implications of the theory for questions about property rights and taxation are explored. It is argued that classical natural law theory entails the existence of a natural right of private property, and that this right is neither so strong as to supportlaissez fairelibertarianism, nor so weak as to allow for socialism. Though the theory leaves much of the middle ground between these extremes open to empirical rather than moral evaluation, it is argued that there is a strong natural law presumption against social democratic policies and in favor of free enterprise.

Property and Justice in the Modern Encyclical Literature

1990 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 415-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Andrew Lustig
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
John Xxiii ◽  
The Past ◽  
Traditional Language ◽  
The Common

In Catholic social thought since the time of Leo XIII, two important developments have influenced justificatory arguments for the institution of property. First, the traditional language of the “common good” has been augmented by an emphasis in recent encyclicals upon the dignity of persons and the rights of individuals. I shall analyze the warrants for this shift in formulation to see how changes in the language of justification reveal both continuities and discontinuities with the earlier tradition. Second, in the past century of Roman Catholic social thought, understandings of natural law have been subject to significant revision. Especially since the time of John XXIII, the papal encyclicals have sought both to “historicize” and to update those elements in the traditional discussion of property that fail to reflect modern socioeconomic circumstances. In reviewing the recent encyclical literature on these themes, I will consider how, or whether, earlier discussion can be successfully modernized without undercutting the raison d'etre of natural-law terminology in the process.

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