This book diagnoses why natural law theory is becoming an increasingly fragmented discourse by illustrating how natural law theorists are caught in a relationship with 'secular' discourses.
This book argues that natural law – when construed as an epistemological and trans-cultural lingua franca, adjudged capable of legitimating the rational intelligibility and universal applicability of specific Christian moral principles within contemporary “secular” discourse – has failed.
Through a detailed analysis of the contributions of three prominent natural law theorists who are located within a shared philosophical-theological tradition, namely, John Finnis, Jean Porter, and John Milbank, the text illuminates the extent to which this failure is as much intramural as it is extramural.
Morgan explores how new horizons open up for natural law if the theological “unsaid(s)” are allowed to surface and the disremembering power of the secular mythos is overcome. The final chapter(s) of the book addresses one such horizon- that the theoretical fulcrum of the natural law lies not in its perceptual self-evidence or in its immanent secularity; but rather in its subtle provision of an immanent eschatology.
Arvustused
Gregory Morgan's volume makes a cunning contribution to T&T Clark's Ressourcement Catholic Theology and Culture series. Less about finding ignored golden nuggets in the long tradition of Christian thinking, Morgan takes natural law and plays it off against contemporary thinkers in both Analytic and Continental philosophical theology. The upshot is that he usefully expands the types of questions one can pose about the framework of natural law reflection. * Graham McAleer, Loyola University Maryland, USA * This book defends a bold thesis: that the most preeminent contemporary defenders of natural law theory in fact carry water for the secular mythos they otherwise seek to outwit. The author makes the compelling case that most attempts to defend natural law today remain spellbound by the modern requirement that law remain unpolluted by any theological a priori. But this merely ties any prophetic possibility of the natural law to the secular pragmatism of pure reason or to political and ecclesiastical monisms. The alternative is exciting: through a deconstructive work of memory, Morgan proposes a way to hear anew the soteriological and eschatological voice of natural law untranslated, unnarrated, and unfictionalised by present prejudices. An absolute must-read read for any scholar hopeful that natural law might again find relevance beyond the reign of artificial foundationalisms. * Conor Sweeney, Christendom College, USA *
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This book diagnoses why natural law theory is becoming an increasingly fragmented discourse by illustrating how natural law theorists are caught in a relationship with 'secular' discourses.
Part One: Deconstruction
Introduction
Chapter One
The Windy Mysticism
Chapter Two
On (New) Natural Law: John Finnis Analytical Response to its Cultured
Despisers
Chapter Three
Jean Porters Scholastic Defence of Ethical Naturalism: Natural Law as a
Theological Locus for Contemporary Moral Reflection
Chapter Four
John Milbanks Genealogical Riposte: Natural Law as a Hylozoistic
Re-Narration of Divine Government
Part Two - Reconstruction
Chapter Five
Deconstructing the Secular Mythos
Chapter Six
An Eschatological and Anamnetic: Re-narration of Natural Law
Bibliography
Index
Gregory Morgan is Parish Priest of St Catherine Labouré Catholic Church, Australia. He is also Adjunct Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, Australia, and at the Catholic Institute of Sydney.
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