Brief by Finnis and George in the Dobbs Case

By "persons," did those who enacted the 14th Amendment mean human beings at all stages of development and in all conditions, including children in utero? In a Brief in the Dobbs case, Prof. John Finnis and I say yes. Prof. Aaron Tang says no. Our response:https://t.co/5IvjSFllWJ

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) September 21, 2021

Remember the article last week purporting to cast doubt on the "27 states" that prohibited abortion in 1868? Profs. John Finnis and @McCormickProf have penned a withering preliminary reply to Prof. @AaronTangLaw: https://t.co/Ymc0dgZhyw

— Josh Craddock (@joshjcraddock) September 21, 2021

Catholic Herald Interview with John Finnis

Very interesting: ‘I was beyond being damaged’: An interview with philosopher John Finnis https://t.co/n7UuCQdCE9

— Jay W. Richards (@DrJayRichards) October 7, 2020

Catholic Herald

He has recently written “A Radical Critique of Catholic Social Teaching”, a chapter in a new book on CST (published by Cambridge University Press) which aims to undermine the credibility of the whole concept of that teaching. I tell him that it will be explosive, and he laughs: “No, it won’t, because it’s in a book that costs about £150 … it has been largely ignored because of the cost.”

So, for those of us who can’t afford a copy, the gist is that much of what we understand by Catholic Social Teaching is tendentious, and bishops would do better to focus on teaching fundamental Catholic moral principles instead, leaving their application to laypeople who know what they’re talking about. He is especially irritated by bishops’ conferences that issue lengthy guidelines on, for instance, migration or global warming, which are matters of legitimate debate. On climate change, he thinks “the Pope goes beyond his remit – it’s a massively difficult question of fact”.

Most of what the bishops can usefully say on these subjects can, he says, “be put in a few pages”. The expenditure of energy on lengthy policy statements is “worse than a waste of time; it’s a misdirection of energy”. The bishops’ job is in his view to preach the moral norms because “the urgent duty to be informed by and genuinely respectful of these principles [is] scandalously neglected by many Catholics in public life”. He makes clear that negative rules – “thou shalt not kill,” for instance – are categorical, without exceptions, whereas positive ones, such as loving your neighbour as yourself, are far more nuanced.

I think he is correct regarding contemporary use of RCST in episcopal statements or even papal encyclicals.

The End of an Academic Career

Faculty and students celebrate Professor John Finnis as he moves to emeritus status https://t.co/Mf2T1X67vY

— Rick Garnett (@RickGarnett) September 21, 2020

SJWs Won't Rest Until They've Achieved Moral Purity

in everyone else.

Rod Dreher: The John Finnis Line In The Sand
One of world’s leading Christian scholars faces call for expulsion from classroom because of orthodox views on homosexuality

Feser Responds to Finnis

CWR: Unnatural Lawyering: John Finnis’s brief against traditional Catholic teaching on capital punishment

John Finnis is a prominent Catholic law professor and chief apostle of the “new natural law theory” (NNLT) invented by the late Germain Grisez in the 1960s. At Public Discourse, Finnis and I have been [...]

John Finnis Responds to the CCC Revision

Public Discourse (via Ed Feser)

Fr. Z links to a Regina interview with Edward Petin regarding Pope Francis. He also links to an open letter by the two major NNL theorists, John Finnis and Germain Grisez, to Pope Francis regarding Amoris Laetitia, made available by First Things.

Catholic Herald Online

It's not the first time that Germain Grisez has written publicly about/to Pope Francis.

Anscombe Memorial Lecture 2014

Professor John Finnis, "Patriation and Patrimony: The Path to the Charter"

Mirror of Justice: Finnis on Justice - a paper by John Gardner

Two from Mirror of Justice

1. Celebrating John Finnis at Villanova

What's new in the second edition of Natural Law and Natural Rights?

"Adds a substantial postscript by the author developing and refining the theory in response to thirty years of discussion, criticism, and further work in the field"

2. Robert George, The Question of Judicial Supremacy

Reflections of a Questioner: The Palmetto Freedom Forum Revisited
by Robert P. George

John Finnis on the Good of Marriage

Marriage: A Basic and Exigent Good (via Mirror of Justice)

I have something in the works on the difference between "traditional" Thomistic moral theology/philosophy and the New Natural Theology regarding human goods. I maintain that in the former, the good to which we aim or which we intend is understood [primarily or exclusively] as an activity (or action), while it is understood within the NNLT as some sort of state or quasi-habit. This has an impact on the question of whether there is a single good which constitutes human happiness (and how various goods are integrated).

One could ask whether a model of practical reason is descriptive or normative. Some features of human practical reasoning are universal -- means-ends, the relationship of human desire to a (perceived) good (even if this is denied in a particular moral theory), the nature of practical reason as being focused on human action. Some aspects are present only to those educated (or raised) within a specific tradition.

Michael Morland on John Finnis

Spurred by the release of the 5-volume collected essays of John Finnis, Michael Moreland praises Finnis:

Even those who disagree with him must acknowledge that Finnis's work--preeminently Natural Law and Natural Rights but also his other books and these essays--is among the towering achievements in Catholic intellectual life over the past 50 years.

World-wide? Even if one were to limit the area of influence to the United States, it might still be an exaggeration to claim this about the work of John Finnis. Finnis may have had disciples in the Anglophone world, but has he really persuaded non-Catholics of his version of the Natural Law? Aren't there some Catholic intellectuals who might rank a bit higher? Yves Congar? Louis Bouyer? Perhaps they belong too much to the first half of the twentieth century. How about Joseph Ratzinger, then? Or another contemporary theologian. I'm naming people who aren't Dominicans or Thomists, just to emphasize the point-why Finnis? Is he receiving credit (by a disciple) for creating a novel account of natural law and natural law morality? He doesn't present himself as a exponent of the Thomistic tradition in moral theology/philosophy. If this world continues for another 500 years, I'd be surprised if the work of Finnis (or the NNLT) continues to find readers...



Kevin Lee, A Sample of John Finnis

The limits of human law

The Western Confucian juxtaposes the view of the state (and law) given by Nicholas Hosford in The Role of the State with John Finnis's interpretation of Aquinas in his SEP article. According to the latter, "coercive jurisdiction extends to defending persons and property both by force and by the credible threat of punishment for criminal or other unjust appropriation or damage[, b]ut it does not extend to enforcing any part of morality other than the requirements of justice insofar as they can be violated by acts external to the choosing and acting person's will."

In his article dealing with the limits of law, Aquinas writes that law prohibits "only the more grievous vices," chiefly grave forms of injustice. But it is not necessarily limited to prohibiting injustice, as Finnis (and liberals) would maintain. Because of the unity of the virtues, one could argue that law can prohibit those "private" vices which could potentially undermine justice and living up to one's obligations to the community. (Is it not the case that disordered desires can lead to the performing of unjust acts for the sake of fulfilling those desires?) Injustice is a direct threat to communal living, but it seems to me that law can be used to protect all that is ordered to virtuous life with others.


One way to counter this is deny this thesis of the unity of the virtues (as Finnis does, I believe - I will have to double-check). One can separate the acquisition of justice from the acquisition of the other virtues. Finnis does this by weakening the notion of virtue to the point that it is simply habitual rule-following. One of his disciples, Robert George, allows for the extent of law to be greater (so that it encompasses the banning of pornography, for example). I will have to see if he diverges from Finnis in his premises. (Making Men Moral and In Defense of Natural Law.)

6th Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture

Patrick Brennan: More on John Finnis and others at Villanova Law

See also Fr. Rhonheimer is coming to Villanova Law and The Scarpa Conference at Villanova Law: Eskridge, Ferejohn, Finnis, and many others

OUP: The Collected Essays of John Finnis (5 volumes!)

John Finnis on the moral status of the conceptum

The Other F-Word (via The American Catholic)

His arguments concerning the moral status of the fetus are dependent of course on the claim that the embryo is a human person. See my previous posts on that question.

Catholic Dualists

Original posted at The New Beginning. I'm reposting it here, with some small changes.

To deny that there are differences between men and women in how they think, materialists and feminsits must be "subtle" in attacking the data. (One strategem is to argue that since not all of one sex exhibit a trait to the nth degree that therefore this trait is not more exemplary of one sex than another. That is to say, a distribution curve is insufficient--one is needed is two distinct and sharp peaks.) In contrast, it is likely that Catholic egalitariansno matter how much they may criticize Descartes for being a father of modernity, must partially embrace a form of dualism that is similar to his if they are to dismiss the generalizations that have been made about the cognitive differences between men and women. They may claim to accept the hylomorphic account of the relation of soul to body, but on this point they become a dualists. They have to argue that because the soul is equal in all that all reason equally or in the same way.

They may acknowledge that there are differences in the exercise of the intellect or intellectual performance, as some are clearly more intelligent than others, but the power is the same in all. Now I think some distinctions need to be made. While the intellectual power may be the same in all, it is not exercised, in this life, by itself, but in conjunction with the sense powers. It is also influenced by other factors, such as one's emotions. The conjunction of body and soul is not something that is accidental to our way of reasoning in this life. That the body may have a regular (and not necessarily determintal) influence on how we reason may be part of God's design--sex differences in reasoning are "natural."

John Finnis is a Catholic egalitarian, and as far as I know, he has not written specifically about the soul or Descartes. But perhaps his egalitarianism is tied to his understanding of human dignity, and human dignity upon the spiritual nature of man.

Is the public good the same as the common good?

I believe "public good" is used in Dignitatis Humanae rather than the "common good." Can it be identified with the classical notion of the common good, or is it a subordinate good, akin to peace? One could argue that peace is an instantiation of the common good, in so far as it is not merely the absence of strife and violence (and injustice), but caused by the members of a community abstaining from such acts. On the part of the majority, such acts may not result from virtue, but from the fear of punishment--nonetheless, it would be the barest instantiation of the common good, as it is understood in Aristotle and Aquinas, since it can only come about through the compliance of the members with the laws, and the enforcement of the law by the public authorities.

I'm going to have to read Finnis again on the instrumental common good and see how he explains it.