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From Human Dignity to Natural Law shows how the whole of the
natural law, as understood in the Aristotelian Thomistic tradition,
is contained implicitly in human dignity. Human dignity means
existing for one's own good (the common good as well as one's
individual good), and not as a mere means to an alien good. But
what is the true human good? This question is answered with a
careful analysis of Aristotle's defini tion of happiness. The
natural law can then be understood as the pre cepts that guide us
in achieving happiness. To show that human dignity is a reality in
the nature of things and not a mere human invention, it is
necessary to show that human be ings exist by nature for the
achievement of the properly human good in which happiness is found.
This implies finality in nature. Since contem porary natural
science does not recognize final causality, the book ex plains why
living things, as least, must exist for a purpose and why the
scientific method, as currently understood, is not able to deal
with this question. These reflections will also enable us to
respond to a common criticism of natural law theory: that it
attempts to derive statements of what ought to be from statements
about what is. After defining the natural law and relating it to
human or positive law, Richard Berquist considers Aquinas's
formulation of the first prin ciple of the natural law. He then
discusses the commandments to love God above all things and to love
one's neighbor as oneself as the first precepts of the natural law.
Subsequent chapters are devoted to clar ifying and defending
natural law precepts concerned with the life is sues, with sexual
morality and marriage, and with fundamental natural rights. From
Human Dignity to Natural Law concludes with a discussion of
alternatives to the natural law.
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