The Disfigured Face : Traditional Natural Law and Its Encounter with Modernity / Luis Cortest.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cortest, Luis, Author.

Series:

Moral Philosophy and Moral Theology

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (144 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The central argument of this book is that the traditional notion of Natural Law has almost disappeared from the ethical and moral discourse of our time. For Thomas Aquinas, the author whose conception of Natural Law forms the foundation for the book, the ontological and ethical orders are not autonomous but inseparable-in effect, his ethical system is an "ontological morality." For Thomas, the ethical (practical wisdom) must be understood as an extension of the metaphysical (speculative wisdom). Most modern philosophers, by contrast, consider these two orders to be entirely separate. Here Luis Cortest shows how traditional Natural Law (the form Thomas Aquinas developed from classical and medieval sources) was transformed by thinkers like John Locke and Kant into a doctrine compatible with early modern and modern notions of nature and morality. In early Modern Europe one of the first of the great debates about moral philosophy took place in sixteenth-century Spain, as a philosophical dispute concerning the humanity of the Native Americans. This foreshadowed debates in later centuries, which the author reevaluates in light of these earlier sources. The book also includes a close examination of the recent work of scholars like John Finnis and Brian Tierney, who argue that traditional Natural Law theorists were defenders of a doctrine of positive rights. Rather than attempt to make the traditional doctrine compatible with modern rights theory, however, the author argues that traditional Natural Law must be understood as a form of pre-Enlightenment ontological morality that has survived the onslaught of modernity.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Thomistic Ontology

Chapter Two: Ontological Morality and Human Rights

Chapter Three: The War of the Philosophers

Chapter Four: The Modern Way

Chapter Five: Pope Leo XIII and His Legacy

Chapter Six: The Survival of Tradition

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mrz 2022)

ISBN:

9780823292844

0823292843

OCLC:

1369643492