What do we mean by inalienable human rights? What is the basis for those rights? These 24 lectures explore the concept of human nature and how it forms the basis for natural rights philosophy. Throughout, you'll consider the arguments for natural law, the serious objections that have been raised against it, and the ways, despite all overt criticisms, it remains a vital and even pervasive force in political, moral, and social life today, even while traveling under another name. Shaping this historical treatment is an appreciation of just how much thought, effort, and brilliance went into formulating and defending the crucial insights of natural law theory. You'll start in the ancient world, where Father Koterski reconstructs the virtual dialogue that took place between the Ionian scientists, the Sophists, and their great interlocutors, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. From there, you'll witness the rise of Stoic philosophy, with its emphasis on universal human dignity and divine providence, and the powerful contributions made by biblical religion. Next, you'll investigate the major developments that natural law thinking has undergone since the inception of the modern period about half a millennium ago, including its revolution in the hands of Hobbes and Locke, the ways America's Founding Fathers poured natural law thinking into the foundations of the republican experiment, and the ways natural law arguments might apply to a range of hotly debated contemporary issues.
Natural Law and Human Nature
01: The Philosophical Approach
As far back as Sophocles' and as recently as the Nuremberg Trials and Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, humans have appealed to unwritten, universal standards of justice that laws must respect. What does it mean to think philosophically about these experiences?
02: The General Nature of Ethics
Here you will learn how to locate natural law within the larger universe of theories about ethics, and consider both the basic assumptions of natural law thinking and the basic challenges that have been raised against them.
03: Law, Nature, Natural Law
If you're going to talk about natural law, you need a clear understanding of just what you mean by "nature" and just what you mean by "law." Thomas Aquinas gave classic definitions of each, which offer a starting point for thinking through.
04: Principles of Natural Law Theory
The history of thought confronts you with a profusion of ";natural law" theories. This lecture is designed to help you see the basics - the family resemblances, if you will, that allow us to group together all the theories for which the name "natural law" makes sense.
05: Greek Ideas of Nature and Justice
If the natural law is unwritten, how did it ever come to be known? The story (like all stories about the philosophical way of grappling with basic questions about being and human life) begins in the ancient Greek world with some pioneering Ionian thinkers, their thoughtful critic Socrates, and his student Plato.
06: Aristotle's Clarification of "Nature"
Plato's student Aristotle described four types of causes (material, formal, efficient, and final) at work in the world. His notion of "nature" as the dynamic inner principle of a being's structure, development, and typical activities played a key role in his own thought, and would prove hugely influential thereafter.
07: Aristotle on Justice and Politics
Despite his importance to the natural law tradition and his own use of the concept of "nature" in his great works on ethics and politics, Aristotle cannot be called a "natural law" thinker. How, then, does he think about "nature" and "law" as they apply to moral and political (that is to say, to human) life?
08: The Stoic Idea of Natural Law
What did the Greek Stoics teach about moral order, human life, and "right reason" that made them giants in the history of natural law thinking? How did the Roman statesman Cicero give supreme expression to their insight, as for instance when he distinguished between just and unjust warfare?
09: Biblical Views of Nature and Law
We know of course that the concept of "law" is a major one in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, but how about the concept of "nature?" Does it make an appearance, and if so, where? Do any Scriptural books use anything like the idea of natural law?
10: Early Christians, Nature, and Law
How did Christians adapt the philosophical concept of nature generally to their own religious beliefs? Why did they find the specific premises of natural law theory compatible with their beliefs about creation, sin, grace, and redemption?
11: Roman, Canon, and Natural Law
Roman law and through it the thought of the Stoics exercised an enormous practical and theoretical influence over natural law thinking. What led the Roman jurist Ulpian (died ca. A.D. 228), to find slavery contrary to natural law despite the Roman tendency to identify natural law with the "law of nations" that had always allowed slaveholding?
12: The Thomistic Synthesis
Why does Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) see natural law as one type of law among several, and natural law thinking formed as one important strand in the larger tapestry of ethics? How does he work with the newly rediscovered works of Aristotle to argue that natural law goes well with a "virtue-based" approach to human excellence?
13: Late Medieval and Early Modern Views
How did natural law go from being part of a larger hierarchical vision to being a part of ideologies of political and social transformation, or even revolution? Why did some early Protestant thinkers take the view that natural law can be shown to be binding whether or not one believes in a God who authors nature?
14: Hobbes and Locke
How does Hobbes, with his famous "state of nature," understand natural law as a set of rules for survival? Why does Locke refocus natural law on a theory of natural rights? How does Locke's notion of the social contract rest on the defense of such rights?
15: Natural Law and the Founding Fathers
What led the American founders to call upon "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" in declaring independence, and to write a Constitution whose very status as the supreme law of the land rests upon its stated purpose of "establish[ing] Justice?"
16: Descartes, Rousseau, and Kant
Modern thinkers such as Descartes with his methodological skepticism, Rousseau with his social contract, and Kant with his categorical imperative and insistence on the autonomy of human reason appear on the surface to be among the tougher critics of the natural law tradition. But is that the whole story?
17: Can Rights Exist Without Natural Law?
Though the fact isn't noticed much today, when you hear appeals to "human rights" based on claims about what "human dignity" requires, you are hearing natural law reasoning - whether anyone calls it this or not.
18: The Question of Evolution
What are some of the questions that the modern natural sciences, and especially evolutionary biology, raise for natural law theory? How are "natural law"; and the scientific concept of "aws of nature" related, and how are they distinct?
19: The Paradox of Cultural Relativism
In the 20th century, anthropology was often an arrow in the rhetorical quiver of relativism. But recent studies have cast doubt on the accuracy of even famous researchers such as Margaret Meade. Is the tide turning toward a position closer to something like what natural law theory has long claimed?
20: The Problem of God
Does natural law count as evidence for the existence of God? Or should you put it the other way around and reason that universal moral duties can only be said to follow from rather than establish God's existence? Or do you, even if you are a believer, need to bring God into the argument at all?
21: Current Applications—Jurisprudence
Are courts and judges purely creatures of positive law? Can they ever use natural law principles? These questions have come up in Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominees. Less controversially, we can see natural law principles at work in tort law, penal law, and the graduated income tax.
22: Current Applications—Bioethics
This field is replete with some of the most heated and complex debates in our public life today. How does natural law ethics understand and weigh these controversies?
23: Current Applications—Social Ethics
In modern societies, vast differences of opinion over a slew of issues are a fact of life. In such a situation, just finding a common basis for reasoned discussion can be a major achievement. Does natural law theory have anything to offer here?
24: The Eternal Return of Natural Law
Although modern political theorists change some terms (human rather than natural rights, etc.), they are still arguing by positing an ideal concept of what it means to be human. In other words, whether they admit it or even realize it or not, they are still doing natural law reasoning.
About
