Reading Time: 4 minutes Laws like Roe vs. Wade that many secular people hold dear are under threat. Much of how they are threatened is down to the partisan nature of American politics, but it is also underwritten by thinkers who provide an ethical framework from which certain political factions can structure their legal assault. Edward Feser is an […]
Natural Law
Posted inGeneral
Ontology, Essentialism, Faulty Foundations and, Well, Racism.
Reading Time: 16 minutes Make a cup of tea: it’s a big one. But a necessary one. I have let a thread flow on Emma Raducanu and subtle racism exhibited, unsurprisingly, by the British media. Enter stage right a bunch of race realists racists. But here’s the thing. You may get bored of me banging on about “conceptual nominalism” […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Religion
Deism and Existential Inertia Revisited
Reading Time: 8 minutes As many of you will know, I recently edited a book by Gunther Laird called The Unnecessary Science, a book that counters the claims of Aristotle, Aquinas and recently Ed Feser on Natural Law Theory, a particularly religious moral value system. The context of the piece below is that Gunther produced a piece for Arc Digital called […]
Posted inBooks, Philosophy
Debunking Natural Law Theory – The Unnecessary Science: A Useful Summary
Reading Time: 3 minutes This is the summary of a book by Gunther Laird (criticising natural law theory) that I recently edited. The summary has been written up by the author for your delectation. While The Unnecessary Science: A Critical Analysis of Natural Law Theory [UK] is written with an eye to philosophy, by no means is it of interest […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Actuality, Abortion and the SCOTUS
Reading Time: 19 minutes Here is a guest piece from author Gunther Laird, who recently wrote The Unnecessary Science: A Critical Analysis of Natural Law Theory (UK), which I edited and consulted on. Please grab a copy! This piece is particularly pertinent given what is going on in the Supreme Court right now. Actuality and Abortion Gunther Laird As readers of A […]
Posted inArts, Books, Ethics and Morality
Mano Singham on The Unnecessary Science
Reading Time: 4 minutes Mano Singham, over at Freethought Blogs, has recently kindly reviewed a book I edited by Gunther Laird, The Unnecessary Science: A Critical Analysis od Natural Law Theory (UK). The book is particularly prevalent now as Natural Law Theory forms the foundation upon which conservative lawyers, lawmakers and justices stake their claims, and we have the whole debacle concerning […]
Posted inReligion, Sex & Gender
Contraceptive Causality: Natural Law & Sexual Ethics
Reading Time: 7 minutes Gunther Laird has recently written a superb refutation of Natural Law Theory (NLT), as espoused these days by Christian thinkers such as Edward Feser who build upon work of Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. This kind of worldview underwrites conservative lawmakers who try to utilise NLT to underwrite modern jurisprudence. Therefore, whilst some might see a […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
The Problems of Pure Act
Reading Time: 7 minutes This is a guest post from Gunther Laird, whose superb new book The Unnecessary Science: A Critical Analysis of Natural Law Theory (UK), a devastating critique of Ed Feser, Thomas Aquinas and Natural Law Theory, is out now. Over to Laird: The philosopher Edward Feser, in most of his published books and articles (such as The Last […]
Posted inBooks, Ethics and Morality
The Unnecessary Science
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Unnecessary Science: A Critical Analysis of Natural Law Theory (Onus Books) is a cracking book tackling the work of Edward Feser in his defences and use of Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle in trying to establish natural law theory and its connected areas of essentialism and so on. It is written by Gunther Laird and is just […]
Posted inUncategorized
Feser vs Oppy: Can We “Prove” that God Exists?
Reading Time: < 1 minute In editing a book called The Unnecessary Science, I have been looking into natural law theory and Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. Here, natural law’s big modern proponent, Ed Feser (at whom the book is aimed as a critique) locks horns with Graham Oppy. My issue for such debates like this, that are very narrow and metaphysical in nature, […]