This book shows how Lewis was interested in the truths and falsehoods about human nature and how these conceptions manifest themselves in the public square.
Natural law has long been a cornerstone of Christian political thought, providing moral norms that ground law in a shareable account of human goods and obligations. Despite this history, twentieth and twenty-first-century evangelicals have proved quite reticent to embrace natural law, casting it as a relic of scholastic Roman Catholicism that underestimates the import of scripture and the division between Christians and non-Christians. As recent critics have noted, this reluctance has posed significant problems for the coherence and completeness of evangelical political reflections. Responding to evangelically-minded thinkers’ increasing calls for a re-engagement with natural law, this volume explores the problems and prospects attending evangelical rapprochement with natural law. Many of the chapters are optimistic about an evangelical re-appropriation of natural law, but note ways in which evangelical commitments might lend distinctive shape to this engagement.
Author Alberto M. Piedra lucidly illustrates the notion of 'natural law' through the examination of economic, social, political, and cultural issues. In this work Piedra draws on classical and Christian sources as well as his personal experience as an economist, diplomat, and lecturer on world politics to address philosophical views in a constructive and morally guided exegesis of natural law and economics. This innovative book shows the value of appeals to a governing, natural law and attendant principles such as the common good, subsidiarity, hierarchy, spiritual welfare, the reciprocity of freedom and authority, and the cultivation of personal moral and intellectual virtue. Natural Law will appeal to scholars, professionals, and others interested in the cultivation of personal moral and intellectual virtue.
The law of nature -- The common law -- The adoption of written constitutions -- The separation of law and religion -- The explosion in law publishing -- The two-sidedness of natural law -- The decline of natural law and custom --Substitutes for natural law -- Echoes of natural law.
Contemporary liberal thinkers commonly suppose that there is something in principle unjust about the legal prohibition of putatively victimless immoralities. Against the prevailing liberal view, Robert P. George defends the proposition that `moral laws' can play a legitimate, if subsidiary, role in preserving the `moral ecology' of the cultural environment in which people make the morally significant choices by which they form their characters and influence, for good or ill, the moral lives of others. George shows that a defence of morals legislation is fully compatible with a `pluralistic perfectionist' political theory of civil liberties and public morality.
After Humanity is a guide to one of C.S. Lewis's most widely admired but least accessible works, The Abolition of Man, which originated as a series of lectures on ethics that he delivered during the Second World War. These lectures tackle the thorny question of whether moral value is objective or not. When we say something is right or wrong, are we recognizing a reality outside ourselves, or merely reporting a subjective sentiment? Lewis addresses the matter from a purely philosophical standpoint, leaving theological matters to one side. He makes a powerful case against subjectivism, issuing an intellectual warning that, in our "post-truth" twenty-first century, has even more relevance than when he originally presented it. Lewis characterized The Abolition of Man as "almost my favourite among my books," and his biographer Walter Hooper has called it "an all but indispensable introduction to the entire corpus of Lewisiana." In After Humanity, Michael Ward sheds much-needed light on this important but difficult work, explaining both its general academic context and the particular circumstances in Lewis's life that helped give rise to it, including his front-line service in the trenches of the First World War. After Humanity contains a detailed commentary clarifying the many allusions and quotations scattered throughout Lewis's argument. It shows how this resolutely philosophical thesis fits in with his other, more explicitly Christian works. It also includes a full-color photo gallery, displaying images of people, places, and documents that relate to The Abolition of Man, among them Lewis's original "blurb" for the book, which has never before been published.
Selected from sermons delivered by C. S. Lewis during World War II, these nine addresses offer guidance and inspiration in a time of great doubt.These are ardent and lucid sermons that provide a compassionate vision of Christianity.
Wesley Kort's Reading C. S. Lewis: A Commentary is a captivating collection of essays on individual works by C. S. Lewis that separates itself from the opinions of his fans and critics by examining Lewis's life and work as a whole.
Natural law, according to Thomas Aquinas, has its foundation in the evidence and operation of natural, human reason. Its primary precepts are self-evident. Awareness of these precepts does not presuppose knowledge of, or even belief in, the existence of God. The most interesting criticisms of Thomas Aquinas’s natural-law teaching in modern times have been advanced by the political philosopher Leo Strauss and his followers. The purpose of this book is to show that these criticisms are based on misunderstandings and that they are inconclusive at best. Thomas Aquinas’s natural-law teaching is fully rational. It is accessible to man as man.