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Displaying: 81-100 of 2560 documents


session 3: ethics
81. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Alexander R. Pruss Counseling Lesser and Proportionate Evils: A Principled Defense
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It is widely thought that it can be permissible to persuade someone set on a greater evil to commit a lesser evil instead, though the question is not without controversy. I argue that a version of this kind of Principle of Counseling Lesser Evil can be derived from the Principle of Double Effect and some considerations about the way human choices work. As an application, I argue that giving bribes to officials who otherwise would not do their job might be considered a special case of this counseling principle.
82. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Jason T. Eberl, Christopher Ostertag Conscience, Compromise, and Complicity
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Debate over whether health care institutions or individual providers should have a legally protected right to conscientiously refuse to offer legal services to patients who request them has grown exponentially due to the increasing legalization of morally contested services. This debate is particularly acute for Catholic health care providers. We elucidate Catholic teaching regarding the nature of conscience and the intrinsic value of being free to act in accord with one’s conscience. We then outline the primary positions defended in this debate and respond to critics of Catholic teaching. In so doing, we show how Catholic health care providers’ claims to conscientiously refuse to offer specific health care services are not essentially faith-based, but are founded upon publicly defensible reasons. We also address the question of whether conscientiously refusing health care providers may become complicit in moral wrongdoing or potentially cause scandal by means of disclosure or referral to another provider.
session 4: natural law
83. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
J. W. Schulz Is Purely Practical Agreement Possible? Maritain’s Mexico City Thesis Answers Some MacIntyrian Challenges
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In 1947, Jacques Maritain argued before the UN that “men mutually opposed in their theoretical conceptions can come to a merely practical agreement regarding a list of human rights.” Maritain justified this thesis using a progressive theory of the natural law which rests on a distinction between the natural law as operative in human nature and the natural law as known and articulated. Drawing on Maritain’s 1951 Man and the State, this essay defends a MacIntyrian reading of Maritain’s thesis and its plausibility against four objections from Ralph McInerny, Charles Taylor, and Alasdair MacIntyre himself.
84. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Francis Feingold Is the Institution of Private Property Part of the Natural Law? Ius gentium and ius naturale in Aquinas’s Account of the Right to “Steal” When in Urgent Need
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Is the institution of private property part of the natural law? Leo XIII seems to say simply that it is, and many modern Catholic thinkers have followed suit. Aquinas presents a more nuanced view. On the one hand, he denies that the institution of private property is “natural” in the strict sense—unlike the ordering of physical goods to general human use. On the other hand, he maintains that private property does belong to the ius gentium, which is founded directly upon natural law in the strict sense. I argue that this relegation of private property to the ius gentium is necessary in order for Aquinas to coherently maintain that it is licit to “steal” when in dire need, but that this relegation nonetheless does not deprive private property of the kind of “natural” character which Leo XIII ascribes to it.
session 5: man and the cosmos
85. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Steven Baldner Thomas Aquinas and Natural Inclination in Non-Living Nature
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Thomas Aquinas recognizes natural inclination to be present everywhere in nature, and this inclination is always toward what is good both for the natural thing itself and also for the universe as a whole. Thomas’s primary example of natural inclination is found in the four simple elements, which have natural inclinations to their natural places. The inclination of these non-living elements is then the basis for understanding that natural human inclinations are towards goods for the human person and that the whole world shows a universal intelligent ordering toward what is good. I argue, however, that the natural inclination of non-living, natural bodies to ends that are good for the elements themselves makes good sense in Thomas’s cosmology, but not in ours. Natural substances still show finality in our cosmos, but in a more restricted way than what Thomas was able to find.
86. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
John G. Brungardt Is Personal Dignity Possible Only If We Live in a Cosmos?
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The Catholic Church has increasingly invoked the principle of human dignity as a way to spread the message of the Gospel in the modern world. Catholic philosophers must therefore defend this principle in service to Catholic theology. One aspect of this defense is how the human person relates to the universe. Is human dignity of a piece with the material universe in which we find ourselves? Or is our dignity alien in kind to such a whole? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between? The metaphysics of creation properly locates the human being in the universe as a part, ordered to the universe’s common good of order and ultimately to God. Human dignity is possible only in a cosmos; that this is concordant with modern scientific cosmology is briefly defended in the conclusion.
session 6: the common good
87. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Leonard Ferry Bound by the Good: The Common Good as Ground of Political Obligation in Aquinas’s Political Theory
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Political authority is not eliminable, even if in a globalizing world order the particulars of its exercise might be undergoing a transformation. What matters to political philosophy is whether or not its existence and exercise can be justified. In this paper I begin by contrasting two paradigmatic approaches to justifications of political authority and political obligation: political naturalism and political voluntarism. Having set the stage for the debate, I connect Aquinas’s account of political authority with the former—though one will not find a full-fledged version of that account in this paper (it appears elsewhere). More importantly, I connect Aquinas’s naturalist defense of political obligation to a non-instrumental account of the common good, though the bulk of the paper deals with what I argue are failed attempts to offer non-naturalist accounts of the common good as alternative natural law defenses of political authority.
88. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
V. Bradley Lewis Is the Common Good Obsolete?
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The idea of the common good has been a signature feature of Catholic social teaching and so of modern Catholic engagement in public affairs. It has recently been suggested that the notion is now obsolete due to changes in the culture and politics of the West. In keeping with this suggestion, some argue that Catholics should abandon it in favor of an appeal based on lower intermediate goods in a manner more related to Augustine’s engagement with the largely pagan culture of his time than to Aquinas’s categories tailored to an integrally Christian society. I argue that such a solution misreads aspects of the tradition and of the present political and cultural situation and I suggest some alternative grounds on which Catholic engagement with contemporary public life should proceed and that thinking again about the common good is a necessary part of such engagement.
session 7: objectivity of the good
89. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Jonathan Fuqua Metaethical Mooreanism and Evolutionary Debunking
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In this paper I will apply the Moorean response to external world skepticism to moral skepticism, specifically to the evolutionary debunking argument against morality. I begin, in section 1, with a discussion of Mooreanism. In section 2, I proceed to a discussion of metaethical Mooreanism, which is the view that some moral facts are Moorean facts. In section 3 I apply metaethical Mooreanism to the evolutionary debunking argument against morality. If the arguments of the paper hold up it will turn out that it is no more rational to abandon the existence of moral facts than it is to deny that one knows that one has hands.
90. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Catherine Peters The Objective Relativity of Goodness: A Rapprochement between Peter Geach and Thomas Aquinas
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Peter Geach claims in Good and Evil that there can never be “just good or bad, there is only being a good or bad so-and-so” and thereby denies that goodness can ever be used in a non-relative sense. Although his rejection of absolute goodness might initially seem to be a startling and mistaken departure from the Thomistic understanding, I argue that an examination of Thomas’s texts reveal a strong agreement between them, one grounded in a common rejection of univocal goodness. For both, “good” is relative to the nature of a being. To defend the relativity of goodness, I consider two objections: first, that relativizing goodness leads to subjectivism. Second, that divine goodness is absolute and non-relative. In answering these objections, I show that in both Thomas’s medieval and Geach’s modern accounts “good” is an analogical perfection relative to a nature. In this way, then, goodness is objectively relative.
session 8: anthropology
91. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Gaston G. LeNotre ‘In the Human Heart’: A Premodern Philosophy of Race and Racism in Thomas Aquinas
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A premodern philosophy of race and racism in Thomas Aquinas resolves some seeming oppositions between the three most current theories of race. Thomas’s generational account of race is primary. It affirms the racial naturalist view that there are biological differences between people, and some of which stem from a characteristic genotype and geography. Thomas’s individual account of race is secondary but nevertheless a necessary clarification of the generational account. It affirms the racial skeptic view that these racial characteristic properties are individual properties, not essential or specific properties, and as such cannot lead to a definite, essential being that is a ‘race.’ Thomas’s intersubjective account of race is tertiary, insofar as it presumes the generational and individual accounts, and yet crucially explains a peculiar social reality. It affirms the racial constructionist view that the intention by which we understand the notion of race is a socially constituted object, a mind-dependent reality informed by experience.
92. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Phillip Berns The Ethical Impermissibility of Cross-Sex Hormone Therapy in Gender-Dysphoric Minors
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Gender dysphoria in children has become a hot-button topic; however, clinical data still remain sparse on the effects of hormone therapy and transitional surgery on the physical and psychological well-being of those children. The American College of Pediatricians (as opposed to the American Academy of Pediatrics) cites studies indicating that anywhere from 77 to 94 percent of boys and 73 to 88 percent of girls desist in GD; that is, following puberty the majority of children who experience GD will identify with their assigned biological sex. After reviewing the clinical studies, this paper addresses the notion of gender from a Thomistic perspective, locating gender as a differentiation in the matter of the person flowing from the essence of the soul, resulting from the power of generation as opposed to other differences such as sight, which functions the same regardless of material differences. As a result, the paper concludes that hormone therapy cannot be morally licit for children.
acpa reports and minutes
93. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Mirela Oliva Minutes of the 2018 Executive Council Meeting
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94. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Mirela Oliva Secretary’s Report (2018)
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95. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Treasurer’s Report (2017)
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96. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
American Catholic Philosophical Association Financial Statements: Years Ended December 31, 2017 and 2016
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97. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Necrology (2018–2019)
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98. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 92
Available Back Issues of the Proceedings
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presidential address
99. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 91
Thomas Hibbs LAUDATO SI, Modernity, and Catholic Aesthetics
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presentation of the aquinas medal
100. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Volume > 91
William A. Frank Linda Trinkhaus Zagzebski, 2017 Aquinas Medalist
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