After the Natural Law

by John Lawrence Hill

The "natural law" worldview developed over the course of almost two thousand years beginning with Plato and Aristotle and culminating with St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. This tradition holds that the world is ordered, intelligible and good, that there are objective moral truths which we can know and that human beings can achieve true happiness only by following our inborn nature, which draws us toward our own perfection. Most accounts of the natural law are based on a God-centered understanding of the world. After the Natural Law traces this tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and then describes how and why modern philosophers such as Descartes, Locke and Hobbes began to chip away at this foundation. The book argues that natural law is a necessary foundation for our most important moral and political values – freedom, human rights, equality, responsibility and human dignity, among others. Without a theory of natural law, these values lose their we literally cannot make sense of them given the assumptions of modern philosophy. Part I of the book traces the development of natural law theory from Plato and Aristotle through the crowning achievement of Thomas Aquinas. Part II explores how modern philosophers have systematically chipped away at the only coherent foundation for these values. As a result, our most important moral and political ideals today are incoherent. Modern political and moral thinkers have been led either to dilute the meaning of such terms as freedom or the moral good – or abandon these ideas altogether. Thus, modern philosophy and political thought are leading us either toward anarchy or totalitarianism. The conclusion, entitled "Why God Matters", shows how even the philosophical assumptions of the natural law depend on a personal God.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, History, Religion

309 pages, Paperback

Published March 7, 2016

Reviews

[Amora · Rating 4 out of 5]

The decline of Aristotle’s teleology has had vast consequences on morality. The philosopher Alasdair Macintyre has, for example, pointed out that the decline in Aristotelianism has made our culture an emotivist culture, even though emotivism is false. What Hill argues here is that the decline of Aristotle’s teleology has made us stray away from natural law theory, which has moved us in a utilitarian and relativist direction.

The consequence of moving away from natural law theory is that we’ve lost the foundation for our modern moral and political values.

Hill places the blame on the decline of natural law theory on the philosophies of Hobbes, Ockham, and Locke. Ockham and Hobbes challenged the teleology of Aristotle. Furthermore, Hobbes believed in materialism, which has no place for teleology.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned in Hill’s book is that, even though natural law thinking was around a thousand years before Aquinas, no other thinker did more to distill, synthesize, and refine the idea of natural law. As the book states, “if St. Augustine Christianized Plato, Aquinas baptized Aristotle.”

Overall, I found the thesis presented quite convincing. A trenchant defense of natural law theory!

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant argument on behalf of the classical views that undergird the foundations of Western Civilization. It is transcendental in nature in that its thesis claims that to abandon the presuppositions on which a civilization is built is to necessarily destroy the civilization.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heavy lifting for the likes of me. But enjoyable by the end when I understood the intent. Very well organized and delivered. A comprehensive guide through a Catholic lens.

[Scott MacDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book can be described as a philosophical history of thought surrounding questions of personal existence, meaning, epistemology and metaphysics that marches 2500 years from pre-Socratic thinkers up through our current moral theorists of the 20th century. He draws bright lines between materialist and theistic worldviews throughout and ultimately calls for a return to the classical natural law worldview to recover from the degradation of our current moral and political order. I give it four stars for the incredible range of thinkers he covers. It's a pretty challenging book with a seemingly endless list of "isms" but rewarding for those who make it through. It's well organized, with plenty of summary statements and accessible footnotes that provide background and clarification (plus a beefy topical index).

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It does all come down it seems to what worldview one choose's to embrace. It was a very interesting read...I don't understand all of it, but feel that it really is a crucial thing to understand and will keep reading about it...it really, really relates to and explains all that is happening around us.

[J T · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should probably be read by anyone who wants to study natural law theory, but if I knew someone who was just starting out to seriously study Western Philosophy, I would give this book to them. It might not work as an introductory text, but it could be put to good use on many topics and used along with an introductory text or original writings of Aristotle, Aquinas, and so on.

[John Hodgson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hill makes a potentially dry subject very understandable and readable, a well-marked roadmap tracing the 2400 year old foundations of Western philosophy and law to the current era.

[Melodie Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

With little philosophical background, I found Professor Hill’s historical and informative account of philosophy’s great thinkers passionate and piquant. Moreover, the dissonance between Faith and the Scientific evolution of Philosophy challenges the societal “givens” of today. 5 stars from the cheap seats Professor Hill. Carry on your good work.