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Ethics of Procreation and the Defense of Human Life: Contraception, Artificial Fertilization and Abortion by Martin Rhonheimer (review)
- The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Volume 74, Number 3, July 2010
- pp. 489-493
- 10.1353/tho.2010.0030
- Review
- Additional Information
BOOK REVIEWS 489 theological and philosophical sophistication, all in a remarkably modest manner which accounts for his clarity of expression. Finally, his manner of comparing Islamic with Christian philosophical theology highlights the crucial parallel between the Qur'an and Jesus: where Christians believe that Jesus is the word of God made human, Muslims believe the Qur'an is the Word of God made book. Since this strictly parallel presentation displays substantial differences as well, it allows him to proceed by highlighting similarity-in-difference. His concluding chapter on the venture of comparative study is nothing short of brilliant, with a sustained argument against context-less approaches to "mystical" literature, which he has effectively countered in the work itself by grounding each author's substantive philosophical reflection in his respective revelational tradition. Uganda Martyrs University Nkozi, Uganda University ofNotre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana DAVID BURRELL, C.S.C. Ethics ofProcreation and the Defense ofHuman Life: Contraception, Artificial Fertilization andAbortion. By MARTIN RHONHEIMER. Edited by WILLIAM F. MURPHY, Jr. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010. Pp 309. $39.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1722-2. Martin Rhonheimer has been a key voice in the revival of natural law theorizing and casuistry in recent decades. His work is triply important for this revival. First, Rhonheimer has gone beyond the stereotype of natural law as concerned primarily, in his words, with "nature" and "command" to focus instead on "reason" and "good," as the critical terms of a natural law theory. Second, he has distanced his approach from third-person objective accounts of the human act, in favor of a methodological approach that focuses on the "perspective of the acting agent," that is, the perspective a practical agent adopts in considering, choosing, and carrying out an action. And third, he has developed his natural law approach with a view to concrete application to disputed issues, particularly those surrounding the taking, the preventing, and the creating of human life. 490 BOOK REVIEWS It is the third ofthese contributions that is the focus of this book. Rhonheimer begins with a discussion of his approach to natural law theory, and his action theory, but his sights are set on a defense of three key theses prominently asserted in recent magisterial documents: the teaching of Humanae vitae on the morality of contraception; the teaching of Donum vitae on the morality of procreation apart from the marital act; and the teaching of Evangelium vitae on the morality of abortion. The discussion of the first and third theses also involve a defense of two further claims: first, that the use of contraceptives as a defense against rape is morally permissible; and second, that the moral teaching on abortion has political consequences. Rhonheimer's discussion of the natural law corrects a number of important errors. The natural law is not "natural" because it illicitly reads off norms from a naturally given structure, such as the structure of our biological desires. Rather, it is natural because it is "intrinsic to man as a rational creature" (5). Accordingly, the natural law is itself "the ordering act of human reason itself in the sphere of good and evil" (ibid.). Rhonheimer sounds here much like proponents of the socalled "new" natural law theory, such as Germain Grisez and John Finnis, and I will return to this comparison. And, like the new natural law theorists, Rhonheimer argues that natural inclinations are important to our knowledge of the natural law, even though they are not themselves the natural law. He describes the natural inclinations as a "point of departure" for our understanding of goods, such as the good of marriage and marital sexuality, which need to be integrated into the horizon of reason. But the full moral relevance of a natural inclination such as that towards sexuality is only to be found in reason's grasp of the "flowering of marital chastity, of which the inclination is the seed" (9). From this quotation, one begins to see something that is an important focus of this book, namely, its emphasis on virtue-here, chastity-as central to the norms of the natural law. The picture appears to be this: natural inclinations set us on...