Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law: An Analytical Reconstruction

Rating:
Summary: beg to disagree
Review: I really feel obliged to disagree with the panning review given above. I am a professional philosopher myself, and while I ultimately would reject natural law theory as a basis for ethics, for many of the problems with it which Lisska identifies and vainly struggles to overcome in his book, I was very impressed by the book itself. I think Lisska situates contemporary natural theory within the various debates over law and ethics over the last century, identifies the key "metaphysical" problem with the theory, namely, its reliance upon the concept of all humans sharing a common nature or essence, and puts forward a reasonable and hardly extravagent functional alternative to Aristotelian essences as a possible basis for furhter natural law theorizing.

No, I was not ulimtatley convinced by the book, but I was very impressed with its clarity and it sophistication. Unlike the other review, this is one of the few books on Aquinas which I would not part with. Someone with an interest in what makes Aquinas a perenially interesting philosopher should buy the other reviewer's copy--I already own one or I would!

Rating:
Summary: beg to disagree
Review: I really feel obliged to disagree with the panning review given above. I am a professional philosopher myself, and while I ultimately would reject natural law theory as a basis for ethics, for many of the problems with it which Lisska identifies and vainly struggles to overcome in his book, I was very impressed by the book itself. I think Lisska situates contemporary natural theory within the various debates over law and ethics over the last century, identifies the key "metaphysical" problem with the theory, namely, its reliance upon the concept of all humans sharing a common nature or essence, and puts forward a reasonable and hardly extravagent functional alternative to Aristotelian essences as a possible basis for furhter natural law theorizing.

No, I was not ulimtatley convinced by the book, but I was very impressed with its clarity and it sophistication. Unlike the other review, this is one of the few books on Aquinas which I would not part with. Someone with an interest in what makes Aquinas a perenially interesting philosopher should buy the other reviewer's copy--I already own one or I would!

Rating:
Summary: Unacceptable on Every Level
Review: The first, fifty-five pages are given over to ubiquitous promises the author intends to make good in the last two-hundred-and-fifty pages, and doesn't. These promises allude to precursors of natural law in its many variegated forms, some of which are not really "natural law" principles at all. Most of the discussion is about how some contemporary Thomists and neo-Thomists have approached the issue, but the reader cannot follow the subtle nuances of this discussion without knowing the meaning of natural law at the outset. The exposition of a reconsidered natural law follows this meandering, often uninteresting, introduction. In another confusion, the author discusses the impact of Moore's naturalistic fallacy on natural law before he describes what Aquinas' "natural law" is. So, over a hundred pages are heuristically inverted, leaving the reader to ponder future promises and anticipate an argument before he knows even the meanings of the terms of the argument drawn. If I did not already possess knowledge of Aquinas' natural law theory, these pages would have been meaningless; as it is, I found the points they may have been trying to make arcane, discursive, and near solipsistic.

Lisska insists upon ten fundamental principles necessary to serve the function of adopting Aquinas' natural law theory. Four of these principles require we accept "essences," a medieval concept wholly foreign in modern philosophy. A fifth principle requires "truth" as a correspondence theory between mind and things (see, Searle, "Construction of Social Reality" for why this is no longer so). The other principles insist that (6) metaphysics of morals is possible, (7) that reason takes precedence over the affective will, &c. In other words, one has to adopt the medieval, which is to say the Aristotlean, metaphysical schema in order for a "modern reconstruction" of Aquinas' natural law to succeed. Lisska writes, "In Aquinas's ontology, the dispositional paradigm holds only for temporal essences" (87), and again, "Divine commands must be in accord with the rational demands of the eternal law" (ibid), but it is precisely those very preconditions that makes Aquinas' natural law inimical to contemporary philosophy in the first place. I don't "see" what Lisska means by an "analytical reconstruction." His writing is the most circumlocutious writing on Thomistic natural law as one can find; it would be better to assimilate it from the source: "Summa Theologica," I-II, q. 90-97, esp. q. 94.

Finally, by page 107, we attain Lisska's definition of the natural law: "Because the end itself determines the well-functioning of the human person. The disposition has, as a part of its very nature, a tendency towards a specific end. This end, when realized, contributes to the well-being of the individual. This is the crux of natural law theory. Nature has 'determined', as it were, the ends which lead to the well-being of the individuals of the natural kind." From this nexus, the rest is downhill, as Lisska then evaluates how different scholastic and neo-scholastic philosophers of this past century have adapted this explication into their working-definitions. It's a tremendous bore, not at all enlightening, and of relative useless speculation on its applicability today. If it weren't for Robert George's excellent work in the field, I would have tossed natural law theory out the window. The book is that bad.

I routinely buy from Oxford University Press based on their unparalleled quality of authors and editors. How this travesty passed its high editorial standards is deeply puzzling. I have highlighted only some of my disappointments with this book, but overall it is one of the worst books I've read in the field of theology, philosophy, or anthropology. My copy is for sale.