Aquinas and the Natural Law

Recent decades have seen a shift away from the traditional view that Aquinas's theory of the natural law is meant to supply us with normative guidance grounded in a substantive theory of human nature. In the present essay, I argue that this is a mistake. Expanding on the suggestions of Jean Porter and Ralph McInerny, I defend a derivationist reading of ST I‐II, Q. 94, A. 2 according to which Aquinas takes our knowledge of the genuine goods of human life and their proper ordering to one another to be self‐evident only to the wise who are able to discern the truth about our God‐given human nature. I then show that this reading provides a better account of Aquinas's view than two recent alternatives: John Finnis's brand of inclinationism and Daniel Mark Nelson's virtue‐based interpretation.     

Let my people go! Sayyid Qutb and the vocation of Moses

Moses is a great figure of moral and social liberation. His role in the Muslim tradition has been as multifaceted as in Judaism and Christianity. This essay attempts to explore his importance in the ideology of radical Islam by exploring Sayyid Qutb's responses to a number of the Moses scenes of the Qur'an in his work Fi zilal al‐qur'an. Qutb's treatment reveals aspects of the ideological structure that informs his writing, his love of Egypt and his spirituality. It shows, also, how he had a vision of Islam that went far beyond the boundaries of a nation state and regarded Nasser as a betrayer of this vision. He saw the Egyptians suffering under him as they had suffered under Pharoah.     

Citizenship Rights of Non-Muslims in the Islamic State of H # kimiyya Espoused by Sayyid Qutb

In the late twentieth century, the ultimate goal of the Egyptian thinker and activist Sayyid Qutb was to establish an Islamic order; that is, an Islamic state supervised and guided by h # kimiyya . For him, h # kimiyya, practically, is the Shar I 'a (Islamic Code). It comprises the clear-cut commands and prohibitions conveyed in the Qur' # n and the traditions (Hadith) of the Prophet of Islam. With those commands, the h # kimiyya deals with the individuals and groups, links them to the society and defines the individual's rights within the limits of the community. In Qutb's view, the non-Muslim minority in the Islamic state is not outside of the jurisdiction of the ' h # kimiyya ', which regulates the relationship between the state and its citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims and individuals and groups. Thus the rights of non-Muslim minorities in the Islamic state of h # kimiyya, how they should be treated and the question of whether they should enjoy equal citizenship rights and responsibilities with Muslims have increasingly come to be one of the pressing and 'sensitive' issues in the debate. Contributing to the debate, this paper intends to investigate the issue of citizenship rights of non-Muslim minorities in the Islamic state of h # kimiyya espoused by the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb, the key figure of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose works were considered as the manual of the Islamic groups, al-Jam # ' # t al-Isl # miyya, in Egypt and abroad. In so doing, the paper will begin with some background to the issue, and then outline the essential points of Qutb's concept of justice as central to his view on citizenship rights and responsibilities. It follows that the right to freedom of belief for non-Muslims, and also for Muslims who want to change their religion, will be examined. Equality between Muslims and non-Muslims in matters related to finance, benefits and amenities with the focus on taxation will be outlined. The rights of non-Muslims to hold public office will also be investigated. It will be seen at the end that Qutb's concept of citizenship rights is centered on the concepts of justice, complete human equality and firm social solidarity in their broadest sense. His discussion stresses the notion of universality and humanism as one of the characteristics of the Islamic system. Qutb's views on the subject were grounded in the authoritative texts, namely the Qur' # n and the traditions of the Prophet, but in essence they were an attempt to assuage the concerns of the non-Muslim minorities themselves. In the light of the aim of Islamic activism for which Qutb was and perhaps continues to be the ideologue, Qutb's view on the status of non-Muslims in an Islamic state, specifically through the prism of h # kimiyya, lends this study special importance.     

Theological Ethics, Moral Philosophy, and Natural Law

The article deals with the relationship between theological ethics and moral philosophy. The former is seen as a theoretical reflection on Christian ethics, the latter as one on secular ethics. The main questions asked are: (1) Is there one and only one pre-theoretical knowledge about acting rightly? (2) Does philosophy provide us with the theoretical framework for understanding both Christian and secular ethics? Both questions are answered in the negative. In the course of argument, four positions are presented: theological ‘unificationism’, philosophical ‘unificationism’, theological ‘separationism’ and Lutheran ‘dualism’. It is argued that the latter position is most convincing. It is dual in the sense of being both a theory of Christian ethics and of including a recognition of natural law. Hence, it unites a particularistic and a universalistic point of view. In the last section a reformulation of the Lutheran position is attempted in making use of the ethical theory of Knud E. Løgstrup's The Ethical Demand.     

Doing What Comes Naturally: Recent Work on Thomas Aquinas and the New Natural Law Theory

John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, xxi+385 pp., $55.00 (hardback) ISBN 0 19 87808 42, $18.95 (paperback) ISBN 0 19 878085 0.

Robert P. George, In Defense of Natural Law. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, 343 pp., $65.00 (hardback) ISBN 0 19 82677 11, $19.95 (paperback) ISBN 0 19 92429 92     

Aquinas on Natural Law and the Virtues in Biblical Context Homosexuality as a Test Case

Marriagelike homosexual relationships expose a division among ethicists following Aquinas. Those emphasizing natural law may call such relationships unnatural; those emphasizing the virtues may approve of relationships fostering love and justice. Natural law, the virtues, and homosexuality all show up in Aquinas's Commentary on Romans —untranslated and hardly cited. Romans 1:18 opens a discussion of justice. Verse 20 provides Aquinas's chief warrant for natural law. Verse 26 applies virtue and law to the vice against nature. But Aquinas's account also depends on Paul as an exemplar of virtue and on Aquinas's high regard for the Bible. Aquinas deploys natural law as a mode of biblical exegesis, not an alternative to it. In the De potentia , Aquinas considers how to proceed when nature and Scripture seem to conflict. The account does not settle, but rather makes more room for, dispute.     

God,Mixed Modes,and Natural Law: An Intellectualist Interpretation of Locke's Moral Philosophy

The goal of this paper is to explicate the theological and epistemological elements of John Locke's moral philosophy as presented in the ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ and ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity’. Many detractors hold that Locke's moral philosophy is internally inconsistent due to his seeming commitment to both the intellectualist position that divinely instituted morality admits of pure rational demonstration and the competing voluntarist claim that we must rely for our moral knowledge upon divine revelation. In this paper I argue that Locke is guilty of no such contradiction. In doing so, I attempt to accommodate Locke's position in the ‘Essay’ that moral principles are demonstrable a priori with his views on the sanctity of Christian revelation. I then consider Locke's conception of moral ideas as a species of mixed modes, or arbitrarily constructed complex ideas, and attempt to navigate the mechanism whereby human understanding can recognize these ideas as conforming to, or straying from, divinely appointed natural law. I conclude that despite Locke's failure to actually provide a full-fledged moral theory, he lays a rationally coherent groundwork for the fulfilment of such a project that accommodates a-priori rational reflection and divine revelation as complementary paths to moral understanding.     

Perfectionist Liberalism,Tolerance And American Law

I attempt to show that toleranceis part of the idea of American law: for any legalsystem must incorporate the capacity toaccommodate differences in order to meet theminimal standards necessary to apply a rule. There are multiple forms of tolerance, however, some ofwhich are inconsistent with liberal principles.By examining several lines of jurisprudencerelating to speech and privacy, I show thatAmerican law reflects elements of bothliberalism and conservative communitarianism. I attempt to reconcile these by suggesting they actuallyreflect a perfectionist foundation of liberalautonomy. That is to say, American law doesnot value moral autonomy and reasoned discoursebecause they protect neutrality betweendifferent ideas of the good life: rather, thelaw reflects an idea of the good life that seesmoral autonomy as advancing well being.This perfectionist liberal foundation oftolerance reflects the evolution of Americanlaw. Through slavery, sexism and the controlof erotic speech we see how it expanded theideas of who is capable of rationaldiscourse and what activities incorporatethe exercise of reasoned moral autonomy;and how the law imposes this autonomouscapacity on individuals as the price ofcitizenship, even if they belong to groups whodeny the value of reason or autonomy.     

Defending a Law of Peoples: Political Liberalism and Decent Peoples

In this paper I reconstruct and defend John Rawls' The Law of Peoples, including the distinction between liberal and decent peoples. A “decent people” is defined as a people who possesses a comprehensive doctrine and uses that doctrine as the ground of political legitimacy, while liberal peoples do not possess a comprehensive doctrine. I argue that liberal and decent peoples are bound by the same normative requirements with the qualification that decent peoples accept the same normative demands when they are reasonably interpreted and from their comprehensive doctrine, not from political liberalism. Normative standards for peoples appear in a law of peoples in two places: as internal constraints carried forward from political liberalism which regulate domestic affairs and as principles derived from a second original position that provide the normative ground for a society of peoples. This first source of normative standards was unfortunately obscured in Rawls' account. I use this model to defeat the claim that Rawls has accommodated decent peoples without sufficient warrant and to argue that all reasonable citizens of both liberal and decent peoples would accept the political authority of the state as legitimate. Although my reconstruction differs from Rawls on key points, such as modifying the idea of decency and rejecting a place for decent peoples within a second original position, overall I defend the theoretical completeness of political liberalism and show how a law of peoples provides reasonable principles of international justice. This paper explores theoretical ideas I introduced in embryonic form in a paper presented at the International Conference on Human Rights: Theoretical Foundations of Human Rights, 17–18 May, 2003, Mofid University (Qom, Iran). That paper, “Political Liberalism and Religious Freedom: Asymmetrical Tolerance for Minority Comprehensive Doctrines” (forthcoming in the Proceedings of the conference), addressed specific issues related to religious toleration, but left unexplored theoretical questions regarding the status of decent peoples. I wish to thank participants in the conference for their helpful feedback on my interpretation of Rawls' international political theory, especially Jack Donnelly, Michael Freeman, Stephen Macedo, Samuel Fleishacker, Omar Dahbour, Yasien Ali Mohamed, and Saladin Meckled-Garcia. In addition, I wish to offer my sincere appreciation to the Executive Committee of the Conference and especially to Sayyed Masoud Moosavi Karimi, Nasser Elahi, and Mohammad Habibi Modjandeh.