The Hart-Feser Debate over Natural Law, Revisited

In "Reason's Faith", David Bentley Hart revisits a series of exchanges in First Things circa 2013, in which he argued (his words):

not that natural-law theory is inherently futile, but rather that its proponents often fail to grasp just how nihilistic the late modern view of reality has become, or how far our culture has gone toward losing any coherent sense of “nature” at all, let alone of any realm of moral meanings to which nature might afford access.

Hart's original post provoked a storm of controversy, with a number of prominent authors rallying to his defense (Michael Potemra, Rod Dreher, Alan Jacobs) as well as bracing rebuttals from the more philosophically inclined, most notably Edward Feser, as rounded-up and chronicled here.

Edward Feser too, revisits the debate in Reasons of the Hart (03/13/15):

... the focus of Hart’s latest piece is the question of the relationship between faith and reason. Hart objects to the charge that he is a fideist, arguing that both fideism and rationalism of the seventeenth-century sort are errors that would have been rejected by the mainstream of the ancient and medieval traditions with which he sympathizes. With that much I agree. I agree too with his claim that the use of reason rests on the “metaphysical presupposition” that there is a natural fit between the intellect and that which the intellect grasps -- an “orientation of truth to the mind and of the mind to truth.” I agree with him when he argues that naturalism cannot account for this fit, that the best it can attribute to our rational faculties is survival value but not capacity to grasp truth, and that this makes it impossible for the naturalist rationally to justify his own position. And I agree with him when he argues that idealism in its various forms also cannot account for this fit -- that if naturalism emphasizes mind-independent truth to such an extent that it cannot account for the mind itself, idealism emphasizes mind to such an extent that it cannot account for mind-independent truth.

All well and good, and indeed a set of points whose importance cannot be overemphasized. What puzzles me, though, is the way Hart characterizes the position he would put in place of these errors -- a way that at least lends itself to a fideist reading, his rejection of the “fideist” label notwithstanding. [Read the whole thing].

Addendum

• D. B. Hart and the “terrorism of obscurantism”, by Edward Feser 05/25/15.

Here and There

• Discussing or Ignoring Thomas Pink’s Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae Rorate Caeli 01/05/15:

  One of the most difficult of the doctrinal points at issue between the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) and the Holy See is the question of religious liberty. The Second Vatican Council’s teaching on this point in Dignitatis Humanae seems to be in clear opposition to the traditional teaching. In 2011 [Rorate Caeli] posted an intervention on the question by Prof. Thomas Pink, in which Pink proposed a reading of Dignitatis Humanae in accord with tradition. At the time, the chairman of the Latin Mass Society, Joseph Shaw, now a Rorate contributor, hailed Pink’s intervention as “truly important article,” and a blogger well acquainted with the SSPX called it a “a game-changing intervention,” that reframed the debate.

  Prof. Pink has since developed his argument further in a number of papers (most of which are available here). But what effect has Pink’s thesis actually had on the debate?

• Thomas Aquinas in China, by William Carroll. Public Discourse 12/11/14. "Thomas Aquinas’s commitment to the importance of reason and its universal role in defining what it means to be human makes him an attractive thinker for contemporary Chinese scholars."

• The Philosopher Who Defied Hitler: Q&A with Alice von Hildebrand, by Sean Salai, S.J. (and in America magazine, of all places!):

  Before her husband [Dietrich von Hildrebrand] died in 1977, she persuaded him to write an autobiographical account of his life. This memoir includes the story of his persecution under the Nazis, who had blacklisted him in 1921 and eventually forced him to flee Europe for the United States during World War II. A portion of the manuscript, newly compiled and translated into English by John Henry Crosby under the title “My Battle Against Hitler: Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich," was published Oct. 21 by Image Books.

  On Oct. 21, I conducted the following email interview with Lady Alice on her career and on the newly translated autobiography of her husband ...

• 'First Things' vs. 'Communio', "Murrayites" and "MacIntyrians"; The Paradox of the "Catholic Libertarian" and Another Kind of Illiberal Catholicism -- A roundup of relevant reading in 2014 - Taking a look back at last year's skirmishes. The Catholic Church and the Liberal Tradition 12/20/14.

• Dr. Ed Peters on antinomianism, moved by the observation that Francis has appointed five more papal electors than Church law authorizes:

  Let me be clear: it does not make a fig’s worth of difference whether 120 or 125 cardinals vote in the next papal conclave, but it does make a fig’s worth of difference, I suggest, if yet another ecclesiastical rule, set out in a major legislative document using terminology indistinguishable from that which conveys many other considerably more important rules, is ignored because this leader or that doesn’t feel like abiding by it. We have processes to reform law in the Church; looking the other way isn’t one of them—at the very least, it’s a very dangerous way to change laws.

  Antinomianism has been a long time spreading, and we are going to be a long, long time repairing the damage it has done to the Church (and the State). Where to start, then, except with the first step: recognizing that antinomianism is the default setting today.

  (HT: Pertinacious Papist, see comments for further discussion).

• Torture: Historical and Ethical Perspectives Unam Catholicam Sanctitam brings refreshing analysis to the torture debate, renewed once more within the Catholic blogging world by the release of . Drawing upon prior historical research from Fr. Harrison, the authors to the following conclusion:

  Understanding these distinctions [between punitive torture, torture for purpose of extraction and extrajudicial torture] means that one could also simultaneously affirm the permissibility of certain kinds of torture (punitive) while uniformly condemning the practices of the CIA, which are extrajudicial.

  The long and short of it is that attempts to make blanket statements about torture qua torture are misguided and prone to end up in contradiction for the simple reason that Tradition does not address torture qua torture, just like we cannot make blanket statements about violence qua violence but only violence under a variety of categories (war, assault, corporal punishment, self-defense, etc.) In the eyes of tradition, putting a man on the rack to extract information, branding a convicted thief with a hot iron, flogging a prisoner, and executing a man in an extremely painful manner (e.g., burning) were all totally different things. To moderns, these are all simply "torture" without disinction, but the Tradition did not view it this way; their distinctions were real distinctions, not mere semantics, and if we hope to understand what the Tradition says to us, we have to accept its distinctions.

  Incidentally, the attempt to ground opposition to all forms of torture in "the dignity of the human person" was not an argument known to tradition and leads to various difficulties. As we have mentioned above in our discussion of Ad Extirpanda and Ad Consulta Vestra, it was only because objections to torture were not grounded in the dignity of the human person that any development of thought here was possible. The argument that all forms of torture are intrinsically evil because they are offenses against the human person is not tenable, at least if we take the Church's tradition seriously.

• Peter J. Leithart and Robert P. George spar over the proper understanding of religion as a "basic human good" worthy of being (freely) pursued - "Basic Goods" (First Things 8/27/14; Reply to Leithart (8/28/14), to which Dr. Mark Latkovick remarks:

  I simply want to add the point – moral rather than anthropological – that contrary to what Leithart implies, the “basic human goods” are not moral directives for choice. This is why, according to the “new natural law” theory (of Grisez, Finnis, Boyle, W.E. May, George, and others), moral principles and moral norms are necessary to guide our free choices so that we choose the various basic goods wisely. The latter are practical in nature, the former are moral in nature.

• How to be a conservative: a conversation with Roger Scruton, John Derbyshire. Prospect Magazine. 09/12/14.

• Raising the Tone: An Interview With Renowned Composer James MacMillan Regina (09/05/14). Mr. MacMillan was Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic from 2000-2009 and Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie until 2013. He is also an outspoken critic of much contemporary Catholic church music, and recently sat down for an exclusive interview with Regina Magazine to discuss his point of view.

• "Ruined by books: My Top 10 Philosophy List", by Artur Rosman (Cosmos In The Lost).

• Lastly, OnePeterFive's "Drunk Catholic History" series covers my spirit of choice: bourbon.

There is no escape.

... The air of paradox resulted from the fact that those theologians who defended the view that revelation provided the only knowledge of God and that reason, in the form of philosophical enquiry, was insufficient in all those areas in which revelation was authoritative, found themselves making use of philosophical argument in order to rebut the claims of the philosophers. And, insofar as they were aware of this, they had therefore to distinguish that in philosophy which can serve in the defense of revelation by providing grounds for this rebuttal and that which must be rejected. And in so doing they too became philosophers.

Alasdair MacIntyre, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition p. 44.

Criticism of the 'New Natural Law' Theory

Via Stephen Long (Thomistica.net):

The Spring 2013 issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly is a special issue devoted to criticism of the New Natural Law Theory (NNLT) for which I was given the honor of being named guest editor. Notwithstanding the clear desire of the NNLT authors—e.g., Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Robert George, and other prominent proponents—to serve the Church, the special issue of the NCBQ outlines areas of grave concern regarding the NNLT in itself, its practical implications, and in its opposition to the traditional Thomistic understanding central to the moral magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. This issue is now available for free download. The table of contents; my brief introduction to the entire issue; essays by Fulvio di Blasi, Matthew B. O’Brien, Michael Pakaluk, and Edward Feser; articles by Rev. Kevin L. Flannery, SJ, myself, and John Goyette—indeed the entire contents of the issue—are now available for free download from the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly here.

David Bentley Hart's "Is, Ought and Nature's Laws" - (Compilation of Reactions and Discussions)

Is, Ought, and Nature’s Laws, by David Bentley Hart. First Things March 2013:

There is a long, rich, varied, and subtle tradition of natural law theory, almost none of which I find especially convincing, but most of which I acknowledge to be—according to the presuppositions of the intellectual world in which it was gestated—perfectly coherent. My skepticism, moreover, has nothing to do with any metaphysical disagreement. I certainly believe in a harmony between cosmic and moral order, sustained by the divine goodness in which both participate. I simply do not believe that the terms of that harmony are as precisely discernible as natural law thinkers imagine.

That is an argument for another time, however. My chief topic here is the attempt in recent years by certain self-described Thomists, particularly in America, to import this tradition into public policy debates, but in a way amenable to modern political culture. What I have in mind is a style of thought whose proponents (names are not important) believe that compelling moral truths can be deduced from a scrupulous contemplation of the principles of cosmic and human nature, quite apart from special revelation, and within the context of the modern conceptual world. This, it seems to me, is a hopeless cause. [...]

[I]nsuperable problems arise when—in part out of a commendable desire to speak to secular society in ways it can understand, in part out of some tacit quasi-Kantian notion that moral philosophy must yield clear and universally binding imperatives—the natural law theorist insists that the moral meaning of nature should be perfectly evident to any properly reasoning mind, regardless of religious belief or cultural formation.

Reactions, Assents and Rebuttals

• 02/03/13 - Michael Potemra (National Review), heralds the post as "A Bracing Challenge to Conservative Natural-Law Theorists":

  Hart’s approach is an important and welcome one, because it challenges the political use of natural law at its most vulnerable point — the shibboleth one so often encounters, usually in a form along the following lines: The moral desiderata of the American political Right are not an attempt to impose religious views in the public sphere, but a desire to make public morality conform to truths accessible to pure reason. But if these truths are in fact accessible to pure reason, why do so many people deny them?

• 02/20/13 - Rod Dreher (The American Conservative) concurs, in Why Natural Law Arguments Fail:

  You have to believe so that you may understand, Hart argues, following St. Anselm. Anything else is question-begging.

  This is why I don’t have any faith in the natural-law-based arguments against same-sex marriage. It’s not that I disagree with them necessarily; it’s that a) they are hard for ordinary people conditioned by our culture’s modes of thought to grasp, and b) partly because of this, they (understandably) prompt a, “So what?” response. This is Hart’s point.

• 02/20/13: Ditto for Alan Jacobs (More on Natural Law Arguments The American Conservative):

  ... some people say that natural law arguments do work with people whose reason is functioning properly, and if those arguments fail, then the fault is with the listener, not with the defender of natural law. Let me, per argumentum, grant that point. My question then is: Now what?

  The unpersuaded people are still there; the social or political problem you’re trying to fix is still there. Is it really the best we can do to say “You fail to meet my standards of rationality; therefore I refuse to debate with you further”? [...] That, in my view, would be neither good politics nor good Christianity.

  So, as I see it, those of us who believe in certain political and moral truths that we see as guaranteed by natural law need to pursue two courses. In the short term we need to find ways to commend our strongly-held views without recourse to natural law arguments; and in the long term we need to think about how the existence of natural law can be made both plausible and appealing to people who now see nothing in it. I don’t see a responsible way out of either pursuit.

• From R.J. Snell, associate professor of philosophy and director of the philosophy program at Eastern University, a two-parter in the Public Discourse, arguing from the contemporary natural law camp, Understanding Natural Law: A Response to Hart and Potemra 02/27/13:

  As a proponent of natural-law thinking, I ought to be somewhat concerned by these “bracing” criticisms. Instead I find myself wondering what theory Hart and Potemra are bludgeoning, for it certainly isn’t one with which I’m familiar. In fact, perhaps Hart insists that “names are not important” when identifying his targets because no one exists to be named. Certainly his objections are non-responsive to “self-described Thomists” such as Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, Martin Rhonheimer, and several scholars on the First Things masthead.

  In today’s article I explain how Hart and Potemra misunderstand natural law thinking. [In Natural Law is neither Useless nor Dangerous: A Response to Hart and Potemra 02/28/13], I argue that natural law thinking is neither useless nor dangerous, even in the “modern conceptual world.”

• 03/01/13: Brandon (Siris) on Hart's Kantian Argument:

  I'm utterly baffled by the argument. Hart argues that natural law theory cannot provide either categorical or hypothetical imperatives adequate to morality, but the two branches of the argument don't seem to cohere. His argument on the categorical imperative side is purely Kantian. But his argument on the hypothetical side is a sensible knave problem put in such strong terms that it would, if problematic for natural law theory, be equally a problem for the Kantian, who also cannot persuade Nietzsche. Perhaps this is why he also sometimes uses language suggesting not Kantianism but fideism? But it seems a little harsh to insist that a theory of practical rationality, which is what natural law theory is, can only be adequate if it is a completely compelling Kantian refutation of Nietzsche. This is a very specific thing to demand, and I'm not sure why it's being demanded.

  (See also: on Hart, again).

• 03/06/13: A Christian Hart, a Humean Head, by Edward Feser. First Things "On the Square":

  I have nothing but respect for Prof. Hart and his work. But this latest article is not his finest hour. Not to put too fine a point on it, by my count he commits no fewer than five logical fallacies: equivocation, straw man, begging the question, non sequitur, and special pleading.

  He equivocates insofar as he fails to distinguish two very different theories that go under the “natural law” label. He also uses terms like “supernatural” and “metaphysical” as if they were interchangeable, or at least as if the differences between them were irrelevant to his argument.

  These ambiguities are essential to his case. When they are resolved, it becomes clear that with respect to both versions of natural law theory, Hart is attacking straw men and simply begging the question against them. It also becomes evident that his conclusion—that it is “hopeless” to bring forth natural law arguments in the public square—doesn’t follow from his premises, and that even if it did, if he were consistent he would have to apply it to his own position no less than to natural law theory.

  Let’s consider these problems with Hart’s argument in order. ...

• 03/07/13: Why Natural Law Is ‘Hopeless’, by Samuel Goldman. The American Conservative.

• 03/07/13: Dylan Pahman – Natural Law, Public Policy, and the Uncanny Voice of Conscience: An Orthodox Response to David Bentley Hart, by Dylan Pahman:

  On the one hand, I am sensitive to Hart’s critique—morality is more than solely what can be deduced by a properly reasoning mind, as some seem to believe. Nevertheless, while I would not necessarily describe myself as a Thomist (like Hart, I am an Orthodox Christian), I take issue with his critique for (1) failing to account for the role of conscience in traditional natural law theory and for (2) confusing the role of reason in natural law theory as a result. ...

• 03/08/13: Natural Law, Bentley Hart, Feser, Et Al. Winged Keel and Crumpet:

  In rejecting a shared, universal rationality, how can Hart and others of his and Milbank’s ilk not avoid, in Steven Wedgeworth’s words, a ”hopeless contest of competing ultimate worldviews.”

  I think Hart’s answer would be a broadly MacIntyrean one: rationalities are always already traditioned and particular, and this precisely does not mean the hopeless end of true dialogue, but rather its beginning. Rival traditions, as MacIntyre argues, will show their superiority by appeal to their own–to coin a bad phrase–particular universality. A tradition will succeed by explaining its rivals’ aporias better than they can themselves, which is quite different to an Enlightenment appeal to universal reason. ...

• 03/14/13: Hart Has Reasons That Reason Cannot Know, by Thaddeus Kozinski. Ethika Politika:

  What is at the heart of the debate over Hart? It is this: both the classical and new natural law schools are wrong if they think that the natural law can be known, lived, and legislated in abstraction from tradition and culture, which is, at heart, theological. The classical view of metaphysics, at least as articulated by Edward Feser, presupposes an extrinsicist understanding of the relation of nature and grace, and reason and Faith, and is, therefore, not Thomistic. It’s as if Feser has not read, or just not digested, the work of John Milbank, Tracey Rowland, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Of course, the error of the new natural law theorists is grave compared to such extrinsicism, namely, the adequacy of practical reason alone to ground and explain ethical theory and practice. But I think David Hart is pointing to the need to transcend both the classical, dare I say, rationalist natural law school, and the Grisezians. In my view, both the classical and the new traditions neglect these four realities: 1) the mutually dependent relation of speculative and practical reason; 2) the subjectivity-shaping role of social practices; 3) the tradition-constituted-and-constitutive character of practical rationality; and 4) the indispensability of divine revelation in ethical inquiry and practice.

  • 03/21/13: On Kozinski on the Hart Debate, by Brandon Watson. Siris
  • 04/03/13: Reply To Kozinski, by Dr. Edward Feser.

• Nature Loves to Hide, by David Bentley Hart. First Things May 2013:

  ... There is an old argument here, admittedly. Somewhere behind Feser’s argument slouches the specter of what is often called “two-tier Thomism”: a philosophical sect notable in part for the particularly impermeable partitions it erects between nature and grace, or nature and supernature, or natural reason and revelation, or philosophy and theology (and so on). To its adherents, it is the solution to the contradictions of modernity. To those of a more “integralist” bent (like me), it is a neo-scholastic deformation of Christian metaphysics that, far from offering an alternative to secular reason, is one of its chief theological accomplices. It also produces an approach to moral philosophy that must ultimately fail.

• Sheer Hart Attack: Morality, Rationality, and Theology, by Dr. Edward Feser. Public Discourse April 24, 2013:

  In my first piece, I claimed that Hart was guilty of several fallacies. His new article repeats some of the same (though he pleads innocent). Worse, where Hart’s arguments are non-fallacious, they are also nonexistent. The article is full of unsupported assertions, put forward in prose so purple that its imperial gravitas is evidently supposed to stand in place of argument.

  But assertions without arguments to back them up are like spitballs: Anyone can make them; anyone can fling them; and while they can annoy their target, they draw no blood whatsoever. ...

  See also: Discerning Thoughts and Intents of Hart 04/29/13:

  In the Letters section of the May issue of First Things, he makes a number of other remarks intended to clarify and defend what he said in his original article on natural law (which I had criticized here). The section is behind a paywall, but I will quote what I think are the most significant comments. Unfortunately, they do nothing to make Hart’s position more plausible, nor even much clearer. ...

• Purpose and Function, by David Bentley Hart. First Things August / September 2013. [Note: article behind subscriber's paywall].

• Hart Stopping, by Edward Feser. July 17, 2013:

  ... I do not have any satisfying explanation for Hart’s persistent ambiguity. He has read his critics and knows that this is one of their complaints (indeed, perhaps their chief complaint). It would be very easy for him to say something like “Let me make it clear that I am only criticizing the ‘new natural law’ of Grisez, Finnis, George, et al.” (if that is indeed the case) or “I am criticizing both approaches, but I realize that the same criticisms don’t apply to both, so let me first raise some criticisms of the ‘new’ approach and then some separate criticisms of the ‘old.’” As it is, he does not even acknowledge his critics’ repeated complaint about his failure clearly to distinguish the “old” and “new” approaches to natural law, much less respond to it.

  Could it be that Hart does not understand the differences between the two approaches? That is hard to believe, given not only how well-read he evidently is, but also how clearly and frequently the differences have been harped on by his critics. One thing is plain, and that is that if Hart were to disambiguate his position, his main objection to natural law theories would entirely collapse. For that objection -- which the new article essentially restates -- has consistently been that modernity’s conception of nature is too metaphysically desiccated for natural law theorists to be able glibly to appeal to nature’s purposes in arguing about morality with secularists. And the problem with this -- to repeat a point I’ve now made many times, in several articles, but which Hart has never answered -- is that it is directed at a straw man.

Ralph McInerny: "Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers"

Every once in a while you encounter a book that reorients your perspective and forever changes you. Dr. McInerny's Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers is one of those books -- any further reading of Henri DeLubac and particularly Etienne Gilson (one of my erstwhile favorite 20th century Thomists) will be through the critical lens of McInerny's 'Praeambula Fidei'. There is no going back.

A summary from the publisher:

In this book, renowned philosopher Ralph McInerny sets out to review what Thomas meant by the phrase and to defend a robust understanding of Thomas's teaching on the subject. After setting forth different attitudes toward proofs of God's existence and outlining the difference between belief and knowledge, McInerny examines the texts in which Thomas uses and explains the phrase "preambles of faith." He then turns his attention to the work of eminent twentieth-century Thomists [De Lubac, Gilson, Chenu] and chronicles their abandonment of the preambles. He draws a contrast between this form of Thomism and that of the classical Dominican commentators, notably Cajetan, arguing that part of the abandonment of the notion of the preambles as philosophical involves a misreading and misrepresentation of Cajetan. McInerny concludes with a positive rereading of Aristotle's Metaphysics and Aquinas's use thereof. In the end, the book argues for a return to the notion of Aristotelico-Thomism--Thomistic philosophy as the organic development of the thought of Aristotle.

As somebody who has read a considerable amount of Gilson's work (and with an interest in neo-Thomism in general) McInerny's exquisite and thorough dismantling of Gilson's reading of Aguinas, and Cajetan-on-Aquinas, made for some painful reading at times.

Reviews

• Review: Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers, by Anthony J. Lisska, Denison University. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 8/19/07.
• Neo-Neo-Thomism. Review by Romanus Cessario. First Things May 2007.
• From Ralph McInerny himself interview with Harm Goris, Thomas Instituut te Utrecht. (July 15, 1998):

  In acknowledging that Thomas in primarily a theologian, we are also acknowledging that he is a philosopher. Any effort to remove Aristotle, or philosophy, from Thomism puts me in mind of the joke about two men painting a wall. One says to the other, “Hang on to your brush, I’m taking away the ladder.”

• Ralph McInerny (1929-2010)

Critical Responses to Tracey Rowland's "Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II"

I had the opportunity recently to read Tracey Rowland's Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II

Readers wholly unfamiliar with Rowland are encouraged to read her two-part interview with Zenit:

• Part I: Benedict XVI, Vatican II and Modernity: Tracey Rowland on the Pope's Interpretation of the Council (July 24, 2005).
• Part II: Benedict XVI, Thomism and Liberal Culture: Tracey Rowland on the Church's Response to Modernity (July 25, 2005).

and a compact but substantial summary of the key themes and arguments of her book is provided in a review by Jason Paul Bourgeois.

I freely admit that my outlook as a new Catholic convert was largely shaped by Richard Neuhaus, Michael Novak and George Weigel -- appreciators of John Courtney Murray, SJ -- and as such, participants in an ongoing debate with Dr. Rowland, David Schindler, Alisdair MacIntyre that has been characterized by Dr. Rowland herself a conflict between "Whig Thomists and Augustinian Thomists."

According to Rowland, the Whig Thomists maintain that the Thomist tradition can be reconciled with the culture of modernity and that "liberalism is the logical outgrowth of the classical-theistic synthesis", while Augustinian Thomists contend that "the liberal tradition represents its mutation and heretical reconstruction, and they tend to agree with Samuel Johnson that the devil -- not Thomas Aquinas -- was the first Whig." (For a more substantial examination of the precise sense in which Thomas was heralded as the harbinger of "Catholic Whiggery", see: Aquinas:"First Whig?" Religion and Liberty September 21, 2005).

So, as you can see, possessing this bias I was not predisposed to like Rowland. Nonetheless, I did find it to be stimulating reading and a text I'll return to time and again in future explorations of this debate.

Unlike other more "scholarly" bloggers, I cannot boast a particular command of the subject -- nor can I fall back on a resources and training of a graduate school education. My 'continuing education' is done piecemeal, largely on my own time, reading while commuting to/from work and in between fatherly duties.

And so, for my own personal benefit but perhaps for the edification of a few interested readers, I'd like to compile some criticisms of Rowland's Culture and the Thomist Tradition culled from various reviews around the web -- with which I found myself in agreement, and which I also would hope that Dr. Rowland might actually address in the future.

Robert P. George: "reigning brain of the Christian right"

David D. Kirkpatrick's profile of Robert P. George -- "The Conservative-Christian Big Thinker (New York Times Magazine) -- is surprisingly fair, managing to detail his natural law philosophy and present it in such a way that even the catty responses from his critics ("Liberals ... generally argue that the meaning of marriage is in the partners’ love, not their loins") cannot elude his reason ("To which George counters that they offer no definition that would exclude polygamy"). As Kirkpatrick notes:

For 20 years, George has operated largely out of public view at the intersection of academia, religion and politics. In the past 12 months, however, he has stepped into a more prominent role. With the death of the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran minister turned Roman Catholic priest who helped bring evangelicals and Catholics together into a political movement, George has assumed his mantle as the reigning brain of the Christian right. And he is in many ways the public face of the conservative side in the most urgent culture-war battle of the day.

Lots of interesting personal tidbits as well (he teaches a 'great books' seminar with Cornel West; his wife, Cindy, is Jewish; and who knew Glenn Beck was a fan?) and then there's this:

George once won two terms as governor of the West Virginia Democratic Youth Conference in high school and even served as an alternate delegate to the 1976 Democratic convention. He moved right in the 1980s, initially over the issue of abortion, which eventually took him back to politics. On the day of the Pennsylvania primary in the 1992 presidential campaign, Bob Casey, then the state’s governor (and the father of the current Senator Casey) surprised George with a phone call to talk about George’s criticisms of Mario Cuomo. Later that year, when Bill Clinton denied Casey a chance to speak about abortion at the 1992 Democratic convention, it was George who had helped to write Casey’s speech.

Some classic articles by George which I've referred to in the past:

• The Failure of Catholic Political Leadership Crisis 18 no. 4 (April 2000): 17-22.
• "God's Reasons" on the question: "Do appeals to religious authority have a role in public policy debates?"(Remarks at American Political Science Association Convention, 1998).
• A Clash of Orthodoxies (First Things August/September 1999).

Update!

Ryan T. Anderson (National Review) notes"the Times' profile did misunderstand one pretty important aspect of George’s work":

Throughout the article, George is depicted as having manufactured an entirely new moral and political philosophy, which he now “sells” to the leading Evangelicals and Roman Catholic bishops of America to advance social-conservative causes.

Without a doubt, George and the other so-called “new natural lawyers” are innovative, but their innovations are in the service of reviving and refining what Isaiah Berlin called the central tradition of Western philosophy, the tradition that runs through Aristotle and Aquinas. Rather than manufacturing novel philosophical theories, George and his colleagues see themselves as appropriating and building on the wisdom of the ages to tease out the purposes and meanings of various social practices. In other words, this is philosophically critical conservative thought at its best.

[...]

While he certainly would not have been installed in one of Princeton’s most celebrated professorial chairs without having produced more than a few important insights and powerful original arguments, his contributions build on the wisdom of those who have gone before — Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Locke and Montesquieu, Coke and Blackstone. They are certainly contributions that justify the Times in calling him “the Conservative-Christian Big Thinker.”

"The Line Through the Heart" - J. Budziszewski

The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction Intercollegiate Studies Institute; 1 edition (May 15, 2009)

I received this in the mail over the summer from ISI Press. I am making my through it, howbeit slowly -- the bulk of my evening time these days spent with a rambunctious two-year-old who (rightly) demands his father's attention. Still, with my gratitude to ISI for their granting me a preview, the least I could do is give it a mention:

Natural law is a fact about human beings, and a theory that humbles itself before this fact. Yet it is something else as well—a sign of contradiction, something that exasperates, offends, and enrages. The transient cause of such rage is the suicidal proclivity of our time to deny the obvious, but a more enduring cause is the Fall of Man. Our hearts are riddled with desires that oppose their deepest longings, and we demand to have happiness on terms that make happiness impossible.

In The Line Through the Heart, popular philosopher J. Budziszewski threads a path between these various abysses. Among his questions are how the knowledge of good is related to the knowledge of God, how things that seem to run against the grain of human nature can become "second nature", and whether natural law can be reconciled with Darwinian evolution. Turning to politics, he takes up such topics as who counts as a human person, whether human dignity is compatible with capital punishment, what courts have made of the United States Constitution, and how an ersatz state religion can be built in the name of Toleration. Written in Budziszewski's usual crystalline style The Line Through the Heart makes the natural law and its implications clear for both scholars and general readers.

A Line Through the Heart has received high praise from the likes of Peter Kreeft, James V. Schall, Ralph McInerney and Russell Hittinger (among others).

A former Evangelical, Budziszewski spoke with Ignatius Insight on the "objections, obstacles, and acceptance" which culminated in his becoming a Catholic. He is currently professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Related

• ISI interview with the authordiscussing The Line through the Heart.
• "The Natural, The Connatural and the Unnatural" -- on the question: "Can the unnatural become natural to us?" Presented at the conference "St. Thomas and the Natural Law," Jacques Maritain Center, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, July, 2004 (a version of which is reproduced in the book).
• "The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World" First Things April 2003