Project MUSE®: The Journal of Natural Law - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in The Journal of Natural Law.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2025) through current issueLatest Articles: The Journal of Natural LawTWOProject MUSE®The Journal of Natural Law3070-81683070-815XLatest articles in The Journal of Natural Law. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editor's Introduction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984909
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Ours is an age marked by profound intellectual losses and gains. Dazzled by progress in the empirical sciences, and perhaps hoping to emulate it, many philosophers and theologians cast aside their patrimony in favor of novelty. Nowhere is this more visible than in moral philosophy, which has seen the construction of an edifice at once highly sophisticated and manifestly barren. While moral philosophers have stubbornly resisted the corrosive effects of moral relativism, the normative conclusions drawn can be even more startling.1 Nearly a quarter-century ago, The New Yorker dubbed Peter Singer the most influential philosopher alive.2 His influence has only grown as the intellectual grandfather of the increasingly
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallEditor's Introduction2026-03-12text/htmlen-USEditor's Introduction2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®123862026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12The Strict Account of Intention and Vital Conflict Cases
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984910
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The question of what is encompassed within an agent's intention in acting, and what is accepted as a side effect only is central to the resolution of so-called "vital conflict" abortion cases, that is, those in which a mother's life is saved by actions which directly impinge physically upon the child's body.1 Historically, craniotomy is the most obvious kind of such case; more recently, the Phoenix abortion case is still a subject of controversy, as are certain ways to address ectopic pregnancies, particularly by salpingostomy or the administration of methotrexate. In each case, a neo-Thomist understanding of intention or "closeness" identifies the harms to the child as intended, since they are visited physically
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallThe Strict Account of Intention and Vital Conflict Cases2026-03-12text/htmlen-USThe Strict Account of Intention and Vital Conflict Cases2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®744042026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12On the Zookeeper
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984911
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Introduced the zookeeper case in Pruss (2013) to show a limitation of typical formulations of the Principle of Double Effect. Imagine that an eccentric rich person offers to donate a vast sum for famine relief, thereby saving many lives, on the condition that you go to a zoo that the eccentric person owns and shoot and kill the first mammal you see. You go and the first mammal you see is a zookeeper. It seems possible at this point to shoot the zookeeper while intending only to kill this mammal, foreseeing but not intending that one will thereby kill an innocent human. I claimed that the fact that the mammal is a human is irrelevant to one's goals, either as a means or as an end, and hence does not enter into one's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallOn the Zookeeper2026-03-12text/htmlen-USOn the Zookeeper2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®95362026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12A Metaphysician's Take on Strict vs. Narrow Conceptions of Intention
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984912
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I approach these questions as a metaphysician and philosopher of nature, working within a broadly Aristotelian framework. The conflict between new natural lawyers like Tollefsen and what Tollefsen's calls "neo-Thomists" like Jensen comes down to the very different conceptions of the relationship between the mind and the world found in the Aristotelian and the "modern" or Cartesian traditions. Tollefsen relies on a dualistic or even angelistic theory of the operation of the human will, a theory that alienates the human being both from the body and from one's social situation.The word 'intention' has its roots in scholastic Latin, where it means simply a "stretching toward" something. As used by Thomas Aquinas
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallA Metaphysician's Take on Strict vs. Narrow Conceptions of Intention2026-03-12text/htmlen-USA Metaphysician's Take on Strict vs. Narrow Conceptions of Intention2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®188872026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12The Despotism of Descriptions: Tollefsen's Ultra-Strict Account of Intention
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984913
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So-called vital conflict cases raise the following dilemma for some opponents of abortion:
1It is never permissible to intentionally kill an innocent human being.
2It is permissible to perform fetal dismemberment1 on a living fetus if it is the only way to save the mother's life.
These two propositions are apparently inconsistent, so the pro-life advocate must choose one to reject. Pro-life advocates who accept (1) commonly escape this dilemma by suggesting that, with the advent of modern cesarean delivery and other techniques, fetal dismemberment is never necessary to preserve the mother's life (e.g. Saad 2022).It is never permissible to intentionally kill an innocent human being.It is permissible to perform
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallThe Despotism of Descriptions: Tollefsen's Ultra-Strict Account of Intention2026-03-12text/htmlen-USThe Despotism of Descriptions: Tollefsen's Ultra-Strict Account of Intention2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®209192026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12At the Cradle of Consequentialism: Scholastic Contributions 1630s–1650s
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984914
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The middle decades of the seventeenth century hold a particular significance for the early history of consequentialist ethics.1 Historians studying utilitarianism, the earliest form of modern consequentialist ethics, frequently highlight Richard Cumberland's 'A Treatise of the Laws of Nature' (1672) as the foundational work that paved the way for classical utilitarianism in the eighteenth century.2 Moreover, Thomas Hobbes, in his works 'De Cive' (1642) and 'Leviathan' (1651), linked individual interests to the consequences of actions for self-preservation and security. Hobbes's ideas quickly gained widespread attention, particularly among writers on natural law from both Protestant and Catholic perspectives. His
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallAt the Cradle of Consequentialism: Scholastic Contributions 1630s–1650s2026-03-12text/htmlen-USAt the Cradle of Consequentialism: Scholastic Contributions 1630s–1650s2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®1199712026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Response to Schuessler
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984915
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In "At the Cradle of Consequentialism" Rudolf Schuessler presents and argues for a mostly forgotten lineage of modern moral philosophy. On the standard view, utilitarianism originates in a Protestant author: Thomas Hobbes, Richard Cumberland, Francis Hutcheson, or John Gay. There are several reasons for the restriction of the origin of utilitarianism to Protestant thinkers, none of which are compelling. There is the false assumption that all originality in Scholastic thought ended with Francisco Suárez. There is the purely pragmatic issue that the bar of entry for reading late Scholastic thinkers is high. There is the persistence of the wrongheaded belief, despite many attempts to undermine it, that Catholic and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallResponse to Schuessler2026-03-12text/htmlen-USResponse to Schuessler2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®111062026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Remarks on All The Kingdoms of the World by Kevin Vallier
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984916
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The publication of All The Kingdoms of the World by Kevin Vallier is a positive development. It is important that the integralist conversation is not exclusively internal with the only external voices being shouts of abuse. It is important that the interlocutors do not speak at cross purposes. There is enough speaking at cross purposes even within that conversation something which arises from the very broad range of motivations and interests that led the participants into it in the first place.Unfortunately, however, there is a good deal of speaking at cross purposes going on between Vallier and the 'theorists' he identifies in All The Kingdoms of the World. This undoubtedly arises from the very powerful (but for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallRemarks on All The Kingdoms of the World by Kevin Vallier2026-03-12text/htmlen-USRemarks on All The Kingdoms of the World by Kevin Vallier2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®565432026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Defending Integralism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984917
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In our view, integralism is a broad thesis: namely, that natural authority is rightly ordered to both natural and supernatural ends. For authority should be exercised toward the complete good of those it oversees. Hence, an institution is integralist to the degree that it deliberately exercises its authority for the supernatural good of those it oversees. Not that natural institutions are all fitted equally in their contribution to promoting supernatural goods. Integralist policy is diverse, varied by practical circumstances and prudential considerations. Such circumstances include varied ways in which a social order—and the institutions that comprise it—best contributes to the complete good of its constituents.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallDefending Integralism2026-03-12text/htmlen-USDefending Integralism2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®333492026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12How Free Are the Baptized? A Response to Kevin Vallier
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984918
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In publishing All the Kingdoms of the World, Kevin Vallier has offered his readers a way into thinking about some of the problems that contemporary politics is currently facing. Chief among them for our purposes is the problem of liberalism, and an increasingly vocal minority that seeks to establish a post-liberal framework for political and social engagement in the public square.1 Taking the post-liberal response seriously is among the volume's chief virtues.To set all my cards on the table, I confess that I would consider myself an integralist in only the broadest and most non-committal of terms—that is, holding the conviction that the temporal order must be subordinated to the spiritual in light of man's
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallHow Free Are the Baptized? A Response to Kevin Vallier2026-03-12text/htmlen-USHow Free Are the Baptized? A Response to Kevin Vallier2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®303292026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Integralism Is Infeasible and Immoral: A Reply to My Critics
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984919
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Catholic integralism has reemerged as a significant challenge to modern liberalism. This pre-modern approach to politics appeals to Catholics disillusioned with modernity, especially younger Catholics. Unlike many liberals, I am a Christian who shares some of this disillusionment, but I do not think integralism can allay it. Integralism chooses the wrong means to pursue corporate union with Christ. This essay defends my criticisms of integralism in my recent book, All the Kingdoms of the World, reinforcing my conclusion that integralism is both infeasible and immoral (Vallier 2023).As I understand it, integralism claims that God has authorized the Church and the state to govern their respective goods—spiritual and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallIntegralism Is Infeasible and Immoral: A Reply to My Critics2026-03-12text/htmlen-USIntegralism Is Infeasible and Immoral: A Reply to My Critics2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®444702026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Natural Law Liberalism and the Malaise of Modernity by Stephen Boulter (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984920
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Since the middle of the twentieth century, the liberal tradition has been developed and defended in two main forms, a left-wing version represented by egalitarians like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin and a right-wing version represented by libertarians such as F.A. Hayek and Robert Nozick. Both of these versions of liberalism, and the broader liberal tradition from which they derive, have in recent years come under attack from postliberal thinkers such as Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, John Milbank, and Adrian Pabst.1 Postliberals typically find inspiration in Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and the natural law tradition in general, along with traditional Christian philosophical anthropology and moral theology. They
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallNatural Law Liberalism and the Malaise of Modernity by Stephen Boulter (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USNatural Law Liberalism and the Malaise of Modernity by Stephen Boulter (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®188722026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Law Is a Moral Practice by Scott Hershovitz (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984921
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On discovering that I was reading a book titled Law is a Moral Practice, a stranger asked me incredulously, "How is it not a moral practice?" Legal positivists would be quick to inform us that law is a matter of social facts, not moral facts and is therefore distinct from morality. On this view, law is a set of applied rules. On the other hand, natural "lawyers" of the Thomistic sort will recognize truth in the claim that law is a moral practice by showing that human law is a participation in natural law which is in turn a reflection of eternal law. Morality is a matter of rationally intelligible first principles. Our present text's author, Scott Hershovitz (University of Michigan), sets out to defend a third
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallLaw Is a Moral Practice by Scott Hershovitz (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USLaw Is a Moral Practice by Scott Hershovitz (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®153072026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Natural Law: A Short Companion by David VanDrunen (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984922
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This book is part of B&H Academic's series, Essentials in Christian Ethics, whose coeditors (C. Ben Mitchell and Jason Thacker) cite Lutheran theologian Christoph Ernst Luthardt to put their series into proper theological and devotional perspective: "God first loved us is the summary of Christian doctrine. We love Him is the summary of Christian morality." Instead of seeing morality or ethics as a mere application of theology, the two are deeply intertwined. Ethics, the coeditors insist, is discipleship (xii), and this series "is designed to model for readers how the biblical ethic applies to every area of life both as a distinct theological and philosophical discipline in the context of the Christan moral
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallNatural Law: A Short Companion by David VanDrunen (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USNatural Law: A Short Companion by David VanDrunen (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®158842026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Natural Law and Thomistic Juridical Realism: Prospects for a Dialogue with Contemporary Legal Theory by Petar Popović (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984923
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The influential American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once warned of the danger of "confounding morality with law, and the trap which legal language lays for us on that side of our way." To avoid this confusion, he advises that it would be "a gain if every word of moral significance could be banished from the law altogether." This sentiment strikes one, from one perspective, as quite sensible since there is a real difference between the realm of morality and that of public law. Indeed, even Thomas Aquinas acknowledges that human law should neither repress all vices nor prescribe all acts of virtue. On the other hand, the sentiment strikes one as rather extreme, for people intuit that there must be some
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallNatural Law and Thomistic Juridical Realism: Prospects for a Dialogue with Contemporary Legal Theory by Petar Popović (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USNatural Law and Thomistic Juridical Realism: Prospects for a Dialogue with Contemporary Legal Theory by Petar Popović (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®179282026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Common Law and Natural Law in America: From the Puritans to the Legal Realists by Andrew Forsyth (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984924
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The excellence of Forsyth's book is best perceived by appreciating how minor its defects are. Forsyth provides a history of American natural law theory from the Puritans to the twentieth-century legal realists, offering readers a valuable introduction to the four ages of American law (Langdell's formalism, Holmes's realism, Posner's law and economics approach, and critical legal studies). The book is profitably read in light of the second edition of The Ages of American Law, and both clarifies and enriches that narrative (Forsyth cites this text on pp. 121 and 142).The book's first shortcoming is its title. The book fundamentally concerns the history of legal education in the United States. Unfortunately, readers
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallCommon Law and Natural Law in America: From the Puritans to the Legal Realists by Andrew Forsyth (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USCommon Law and Natural Law in America: From the Puritans to the Legal Realists by Andrew Forsyth (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®103742026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Self-Defense and New Natural Law Theory
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984942
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I agree with most of what Christopher Tollefsen has written, both in his contribution to this journal and in his other writings, so I will focus on his analysis of self-defense, which depends on the rule against intending to destroy, damage, or impede an instance of a basic human good, including the good of life and health. This rule is a cornerstone of new natural law theory, but I hope that we can reject the rule without denying the many insights of Tollefsen and other new natural law theorists.According to Tollefsen, one way to intend to damage an instance of health is by intending to deprive a person of bodily integrity (2015, 411). This rule seems to prohibit using a weapon in self-defense, because someone who
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/894/image/coversmallSelf-Defense and New Natural Law Theory2026-03-12text/htmlen-USSelf-Defense and New Natural Law Theory2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®191192026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12