bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
IsandOughtin Aquinas
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractNatural inclinations are not the ground of the truth or intelligibility of practical reason's first principles, which direct us to the basic aspects of human flourishing. But inclinations are proximate to the nature which is the ontological ground of the truth of those principles, whose epistemological basis, however, is the goods (perfections) which we understand in understanding those principles. For the nature of a dynamic reality is understood by knowing its capacities, which are understood by knowing their actuations, which are understood by knowing their objects — which in the case of humanly willed acts are the intelligible intrinsic basic goods. Along these lines we can then understand why Aquinas insisted on the indemonstrability of practical first principles, that is, on the non-derivability of ought from is. This chapter proceeds by a close study of relevant passages in Aquinas on first principles, and on the transition from these to moral precepts.
Commensuration and Public Reason
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

Abstract‘Measure’ is highly analogous, and some assertions about incommensurability are unwarranted. Relativist, Kantian, and intuitionist objections to utilitarianism's claims about commensurability are inadequate, but sound objections remain and are developed in this extended survey of the elements of commensurability and incommensurability in the goods and bads in alternative available courses of action. The survey considers the irreducible distinction between the cultural-technical and the moral domains; the significance of choice as free and as lasting in the acting person's character, the open-ended horizon of individual and social life, and the relevance of risk; the integral directiveness of practical reason's first principles, and the availability of standards for comparing options without impossible commensurations; the rationality of refusing to do evil for the sake of good; and the sub-rational factors involved in applying the rational Golden Rule.
Pornography
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter is an unpublished 1973 essay which explores the role of spaces of meaning in valuable forms of life such as political philosophizing, marriage, and friendship between man and women. The Song of Songs is taken as exemplary, and the idea of depraving and corrupting used in English obscenity law is defended against the propaganda in Oh! Calcutta and the argumentation of Jonathan Miller.
Law, Universality, and Social Identity
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
How should we understand Aquinas's thesis that laws are universal propositions of practical reason? And should we accept the popular modern claim that to prefer one set of forms of human character, relationship, and conduct to certain others, and consequently to restrict the conduct of persons with those other preferences, is wrongfully to deny those persons' equality of entitlement to concern and respect, and/or to insult them? Answering the first question involves showing how legal norms transcend the intentions of their makers, draw upon considerations of ‘natural reason’, and depend for their subsisting on the subsisting of the community whose norms they are. The conditions for the community's subsisting turn out to depend, in turn, on aspects of the public good the upholding of which is an intention which absolves those who act upon it from Dworkin's charges that they are flouting equality of respect and Raz's charges that they are insulting those whose conduct those actions bear upon. Multiculturalism will often be a menace to public good, justice, and peace.
‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect’ in Action
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
This chapter provides a fundamental examination of the reality of intention, and of its distinction from knowing causing of side effects. Many hypothetical but realistic cases are considered, along with testimony such as Daube's about ancient awareness, albeit inarticulate, of the distinction, and the recent affirmation of its relevance by the US Supreme Court. The teaching of the encyclical Veritatis Splendor about the nature and significance of the ‘object’ is explained and related to Aquinas's critique of Peter Lombard on moral absolutes. The failure of neo-scholastic theologians in recent centuries to understand intention adequately (resulting in the would-be distinction between direct and indirect) is illustrated by a thorough discussion of craniotomy. Jean Porter's critique of Grisez on the analysis of action is carefully examined and refuted.
Duties to Oneself in Kant
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThe chapter's examination of the foundations of Kant's moral and legal theory is prefaced with critiques of the objections to (broadly speaking) paternalism, and the ‘harm principle’ and/or the doctrine of state ‘neutrality’, offered by Rawls, Dworkin, and (claiming Kantian auspices) David Richards. The examination of Kant shows the severe limits to the ‘autonomy’ and ‘rights to freedom’ espoused by Kant, and its radical differences from that espoused by Richards and Robert P. Wolff. Kant is shown to have included duties to oneself within his framing of ‘juridical duties’, and an effort is made to explain how and why this could be so. The limitations of Kant's ethical theory are indicated, along with his acceptance of some of the factual claims involved in classical paternalism. An endnote qualifies some of the chapter's statements of that paternalism.
Boundaries
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter is a response to Richard Tuck's paper on making and unmaking boundaries in a natural law perspective. It vindicates (in principle) the establishing of colonial territories, with boundaries, as a humanitarian intervention against tyranny and other injustices in lands not subject to the rule of law made possible by state government and law. The relation between state government (and law) and the division of the world into territories with boundaries is more indeterminate, in classical natural law thought (Aquinas, Vitoria) than Tuck recognizes, and the positive-law iusgentium on such issues has changed and is changing.
Retribution: Punishment's Formative Aim
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter examines Nietzsche's influential account of punishment in his On the Genealogy of Morals, and traces its connection with his (mis)understanding of conscience and (un)concern for truth, as well as its confusion of genealogy with justification and its assumption (shared by Bentham and Hart) that punishment is fundamentally an infliction of pain. The justice of retribution is considered in relation to a Vietnam War atrocity, and the reimportation of a retributive justifying aim for punishment is studied in its development by students of Hart on the basis of the account of restorative justice in The Concept of Law. That theory of punishment's aim is stated with some precisions and an allusion to the doctrine of hell.
The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
This chapter, written in 1973, offers a response to Judith Thomson's famous proto-feminist attempt to vindicate abortion by a thought-experiment which accepts the humanity of the unborn child. It begins by showing that casting the issue in terms of rights (to life verses to decide what happens in one's body) obscures the underlying question, which (as she belatedly concedes) is about what is morally required. But abortion, at least in most cases, cannot reasonably be assimilated to the range of Good Samaritan problems. The traditional moral discussion of killing is traced, and the traditional casuistry distinguishing justifiable terminations of pregnancy from ‘direct’ abortions is critically analysed (with a partly defective concept of intention). Arguments of Jonathan Bennett and Philippa Foot are considered along the way, as well as Thomson's incidental comparison of the embryo to an acorn. An endnote points the way to rectifying the account of intention.
Marriage: A Basic and Exigent Good
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
This chapter is the author's fullest single treatment of marriage, as an act, a state and way of life, and as an institution. Its starting point is the way in which marriage is a basic human good, with a twofold point: procreation and friendship — the most far-reaching form of togetherness possible for human beings and the most radical and creative enabling of another person to flourish by bringing that person into existence. The marital act is a mating which actualizes, expresses, and enables the spouses to experience their marriage itself in each of its essentials dimensions. Modern myths about mediaeval attitudes to pleasure in marital intercourse are cleared away. ‘Same-sex marriage’ is no marriage, as invalid arguments are no argument and quack medicines not medicinal, but modern civil, dissoluble marriage is highly defective, as is the polygamy for which ‘same-sex marriage’ clears the way.
Sex and Marriage: Some Myths and Reasons
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
This chapter discusses those myths that, in varying ways, John T. Noonan, John Boswell, Andrew Koppelman, and others have advanced about the sex ethics of Aquinas and thus of the Western tradition. They are refuted by a close study of many texts of Aquinas. The rest of the chapter develops a new fundamental approach to the ethics of sexual acts, building on strands of thought deployed by Aquinas, and pivoting on the idea of conditional intention and the conditions under which the basic human good of marriage can be actualized, expressed, and experienced in marital acts and life.
Law's Authority and Social Theory's Predicament
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter explores a central enterprise of legal theory: the explanation and justification of law's presumptive moral authority. Section I shows that Raz's rejection of it rests on an unwarranted assumption of social consensus. Section II surveys partly historically and partly systematically some main aspects of the struggle of contemporary social theories — notably Economic Analysis of Law, Game Theory, and Rational Choice Theory, with discussion also of Hobbes, Bentham, Kant, and Rawls — to make do with emaciated conceptions of practical reasonableness in relation to (in a broad sense) coordination problems. The critique suggests a better conception, and Section III returns to legal authority and the full conception of fairness that explains why a particular law can reasonably be judged morally binding even by those who regard it as unwise.
Introduction
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis introductory chapter reflects on Francis Bacon's discussion of the causes and (im)plausibility of atheism; on Cicero's assessment of Roman religion; on the history of the phrase ‘public reason’; on the threat of religious wars and civil strife; and above all on the provisional but attractive resolution of the problem of religion and state that has been adopted since the 17th century. This resolution leaves open the question what is to be done about religions that openly and strongly reject it. The section on Bases for Accepting Revelation points to the weakness in Hume's argument against miracles. The section on Conscience and Faith underlines the link between conscience and truth. The section on Controversies stresses the needed reflective equilibrium (not Rawlsian, however) between the givens of revelation and what would be judged reasonable without those givens. In outlining the context of the final chapter, on hell, the Introduction returns to Bacon and the reason why he did not need to pay much attention to the problem of evil.
Political Neutrality and Religious Arguments
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter presents a commentary on the Rawlsian argument by Janos Kis, in a then unpublished paper, that political institutions and policies must be based on neutral, i.e., publicly accessible (and non-‘comprehensive’) arguments. The chapter explores the public accessibility of ‘Catholic’ arguments about the humanity of the early embryo and about the Resurrection, and (with Raz) affirms that accessibility. A footnote discusses the use of ‘liberal’ in political theory.
Faith, Morals, and Thomas More
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
This chapter details the (moral) reason why Thomas More refused to swear to uphold the statute of 1534 declaring Henry VIII's marriage void, and his reasons for rejecting Luther's and other's revolt against Catholic teaching. The chapter explores the modern misunderstanding of conscience, the modern corruptions of moral theology, the forgery of Church history by modern liberal Catholic reformers, the proper development of moral doctrine, and the true nature of hope and the divine warnings of hell.
On Creation and Ethics
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter explores a number of ways in which the ethics implicit in practical reason bear on, illuminate, and are illuminated by the truth that everything of which we have experience (including the whole set of first principles of practical reason) is the result of a transcendent act of creation by a reality that, unlike all other realities, needs no explanation. Since that transcendent act cannot have been other than intelligent, free, and thus personal, there is a basic human good of religio as a harmony between human persons and that transcendent personal reality, and every human choice should be regarded as involving (coherently or incoherently) a willingness to cooperate with the Creator (the fundamental natural love of God). We are each an imago Dei by a freedom of will more radical than that affirmed by modern philosophers or non-Biblical religions. Proportionalist moral theology is incompatible with divine providence and replaces a sound understanding of the significance of intention in Creation and in ethics with a concept (incompatible with divine holiness) of undifferentiated responsibility by causation.
St Cuthbert's Faith and the Bishop of Durham's Unbelief
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter is the English text of the 1987 university Latin sermon, in honour of the patron saint of the author's college, who died in 687. The chapter meditates on St Cuthbert's faith and his unique way of actualizing the capacity celebrated in Oxford University's motto Dominus illuminatio mea and its objective correlate: the world as enarratio Dei, an intelligible (because intelligently created) telling-forth of God. And on the foundations of the hope nurtured by the saint of the ultimate kingdom of Christ, a hope dependent on Christ's bodily resurrection, denied by the present (1987) holder of the see established for St Cuthbert's remains, and by others, on the basis of unsound arguments.
This World and the Next
Authors: Finnis John 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter is the text of an unpublished 1980 college Evensong sermon on what kind of heaven is the subject of Christian hope, in response to Robert Mugabe's claim that in Christianity material things don't matter. The sermon founds on what happened to be the text for a reading at Evensong that day, linked to verses in the same Pauline epistle that are foundational for the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on the relation between good works in this world and their transfigured existence in Christ's completed kingdom.
3 ‘We Ought to Obey God rather than Man’: Women, Anti-Slavery, and Nonconformist Religious Cultures
Authors: Twells Alison 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter explores the involvement of English Baptist and Congregational women in the anti-slavery movement in the 1820s and 1830s. Focusing on Mary-Anne Rawson (1801-1887), a Congregationalist in Sheffield, and Maria Grace Saffery (1772-1858) and Anne Whitaker (1774-1865), Baptists from rural Wiltshire, the chapter examines the different articulations of abolitionist commitment by women: in public societies, school teaching, poetry and devotional writing. The chapter argues that a closer attention to piety and to local denominational cultures will yield a deeper understanding of the terms of women's engagement with anti-slavery and the wider missionary reform movement of which it was a part.
Are Agreements between States and Non-State Entities Rooted in the International Legal Order?
Authors: Olivier Corten , Pierre Klein 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
Can peace agreements concluded between a State and a non-State entity produce legal effects in the international sphere, as mentioned in Article 3 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties? Could it be considered that, following the conclusion of such agreements, some areas that were traditionally conceived as pertaining to the national jurisdiction of States (such as the use of violence within national borders, or the choice of a political system) are as of now governed by international law? On the basis of numerous agreements reviewed in this study, a clearly affirmative answer would appear excessive. As far as the international legal effects of such instruments are concerned, much will depend on the specificities of each agreement and on the way it has been implemented. Most of these agreements prove to be rather ambiguous, a significant portion of their components evidencing their rooting in the domestic legal order. This ambiguity finds confirmation in the very pragmatic treatment of peace agreements by the Security Council and States when they call for compliance with these instruments. In the vast majority of cases, such demands are made in the name of the maintenance of international peace and security, without much attention being paid to the characterization in legal terms of the parties' undertakings under these agreements. It therefore appears difficult to reach clear-cut conclusions as to the legal effects of such peace agreements in the international sphere — and, as a consequence, as to their possible characterization as ‘treaties’ under international law.
Subsequent Practice as a Means of Interpretation in the Jurisprudence of the WTO Appellate Body
Authors: Nolte Georg 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
While the general interpretative approach of the WTO Appellate Body has been much discussed, its use of ‘subsequent practice’ as a means of interpretation has so far been less focused on. This chapter gives an overview of the pertinent pronouncements by the Appellate Body, relates them to the jurisprudence of the ICJ, and discusses the possible relevance of subsequent practice as an element of interpretation within the WTO system in the future.
Treaties Establishing Objective Regimes
Authors: Salerno Francesco 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
The issue of treaties establishing objective regimes has been neglected by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Building on the principle of relativity of treaties, the Convention only deals with the effects of specific treaty rules on third states. This chapter argues that third states never acquire the same status of states parties, even when they consent to the specific treaty rules that affect them. Analysing the significance of treaties establishing objective regimes under general international law, it clarifies that such treaties may affect third states even when they do not embody rules of customary law. Due to the relevance for the international legal order of the unique erga omnes regime created by the treaty, the situation regulated by it can no longer fall within the scope of the absolute ‘freedom’ previously accorded to third states.
Invalidity of Treaties: Anything New in/under the Vienna Conventions?
Authors: Verhoeven Joe 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
This chapter analyses the alleged customary character of the grounds of invalidity as provided for in articles 46–53 of the Vienna Convention. It considers both merits and deficiencies. It asks: What are the other possible grounds of invalidity? The chapter also covers the originality of the procedural mechanism as organized in articles 65–67. Further topics include: validity of (direct or indirect) reservations to those articles, especially to article 66.a; analysis of states entitled to claim invalidity; and the effects of invalidity (ratione materiae, ratione personae, and ratione temporis).
Coercion as a Ground Affecting the Validity of Peace Treaties
Authors: Forlati Serena 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
The rule enshrined in Article 52 of the Vienna Convention is not a mere statement of principle: international practice confirms that it reflects a customary rule which, however, does not play a significant role as regards coerced peace treaties. Cases such as those concerning the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement between Congo and Uganda or the Military and Technical Agreement between Serbia and KFOR show that victims of coercion tend to waive their claim as to the validity of peace treaties, since they have a strong interest in their implementation. The possibility of such a waiver is discussed in the light of Article 45 of the Vienna Convention and of the peremptory nature of the prohibition of the use of force.
Invalidity and Termination of Treaties and Rules of Procedure
Authors: Ciampi Annalisa 
Published: October 2011

Abstract
As a rule, treaties do not come to an end automatically but entitle the injured state or all states parties to the treaty (as the case may be) to plead on the basis thereof the invalidity or termination of a treaty. In principle, therefore, it is up to the discretion of the party(ies) concerned to make the relevant choices. In this respect, no general role of the judiciary can be grounded in specific national provisions, application by analogy of the rules on the treaty-making power, or the courts' power to interpret the applicable law. A customary rule, however, has emerged on the basis of which courts of the parties concerned are under an obligation to impeach the validity, or terminate the operation, of treaties concluded under the threat of use of force or conflicting with jus cogens. It is also reasonable to conceive a rule of customary law allowing any third party to invoke invalidity or termination in accordance with Article 52, 53, or 64 (or the corresponding customary rules).
The FirstHomeric Hymnto Dionysus
Authors: West Martin 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter examines carefully the fragmentary remains of the first Homeric Hymn to Dionysus and provides a reconstruction of the poem's narrative, which, it is argued, told the story of Hera's binding and Dionysus' successful arrival on Olympus. Detailed attention is given to the possible interaction of this narrative with the narratives found in other early hexameter poetry, particularly the Iliad and Odyssey. It is suggested that the Hymn's narrative may have served as a model.
TheHomeric Hymnsas Poetic Offerings
Authors: Calame Claude 
Published: October 2011

AbstractThis chapter considers, from the point of view of enunciative modes, the nature of the Homeric Hymns as musical offerings to the divinities which they celebrate. The formal constituents of the Hymns, which are shown to consist of the evocatio, epica laus, and preces are treated in detail in three separate sections. Particular attention is given to the portrayal of musical performance in the Homeric Hymns and it is argued that the Hymns serve as poetic contracts between gods and mortals. Attention is throughout given to the performance context of the Hymns in ancient Greece.