Self-Determination is the first volume in the two-volume The Ethics of Action. Self-Determination... more Self-Determination is the first volume in the two-volume The Ethics of Action. Self-Determination will be published by Oxford University Press in late 2016/early 2017 – December in UK, and January in US. The attached file from Self-Determination is the book’s introduction and summary.
Self-Determination looks at whether action involves distinctive powers or capacities – such as a power to determine for ourselves what we do – that might give action a special place in moral life. Do we have control of how we act, so that we are free to act in more than one way, and does it matter to morality whether we do? At the heart of Self-Determination is the problem of what kind of power we have over our action, and of the ethical significance of power.
Self-Determination argues that what matters to morality is not in fact the freedom to do otherwise, but something more primitive - a basic capacity or power to determine for ourselves what we do. This capacity might or might not take the form of a freedom to act in more than one way, and it might or might not be compatible with causal determinism. What really matters to morality is that it is we who determine what we do. What we do must not simply be a function of powers or capacities for which we are not responsible, or a matter of mere chance.
A second volume Normativity, to be published later, will examine the ways that moral standards make a call on us to meet them; in particular, can there be kinds of standard – such as duty or obligation – that peculiarly address and govern action? Central to the book is David Hume’s attempt to make sense of normativity apart from reason. Can Hume’s project succeed – and what might its success or failure imply, both about the role of reason within normativity and about the place of action in ethics?
A revised paper, just published on The Josias, of a response given at the American Catholic Philo... more A revised paper, just published on The Josias, of a response given at the American Catholic Philosophical Association in Houston in November 2023 to Kevin Vallier’s 'All the Kingdoms of the World'
Vallier makes an important justice argument against integralism – how can the Church be forbidden to coerce the unbaptised into the faith, but permitted to coerce the baptised to remain? This paper shows how the Church justly has this authority by explaining how she is exactly what Leo XIII taught her to be – a potestas for faith. Misunderstanding of the Church’s coercive authority over the baptised is shown to depend on a model of legal authority as coordinatory that is as implausible for the state as it conflicts with Catholic teaching about the Church.
This is a revision of an article in The Lamp for November 2022, now fully referenced and with sch... more This is a revision of an article in The Lamp for November 2022, now fully referenced and with scholarly apparatus. It discusses the moral duty of Catholics to obey the laws of the church and of the pope. Catholic theologians once supposed that papal law made for the whole church was infallible – it could not conflict with faith and morals. This theology of papal legislative infallibility was based on an important and defensible general model of legal authority and legislation as educative – as a form of teaching.
But the theology of papal legislative infallibility is still false. Laws made by popes can perfectly well conflict with faith and morals, and actually have done. The evidence lies in the church law that over many centuries governed the conduct of Catholics towards the Jewish people. The article examines the implications of this both for Pastor Aeternus and for the current duty of Catholics to the pope, such as in relation to recent legislation on the liturgy.
Free Will - Historical and Analytic Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan), 2021
Hume thought that actions undetermined causally by prior events would happen by mere chance. But ... more Hume thought that actions undetermined causally by prior events would happen by mere chance. But we think that such actions need not happen by mere chance. The actions could be still determined - by their agents; they could therefore be free. What does this belief in freedom involve?
Is it simply the theory that substances, in the form of agents, can be causes, and not just events? The paper argues that this is not so. Our conception of freedom is of a power radically unlike ordinary causation, not simply in respect of the bearer of the power, but in the way that the power determines outcomes. A cause determines an outcome only when its power excludes alternatives. But freedom is a power that far from excluding alternatives, makes them available. The paper explores this difference between the two kinds of power, and the implications of Hume’s failure to distinguish them.
in Harald E. Braun, Erik De Born, and Paolo Astorri (eds), The Companion to the Spanish Scholastics (Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition) (Leiden: Brill, 2021 / forthcoming), 2021
Explanation in terms of final causes is explanation in terms of ends or goals. Is such explanatio... more Explanation in terms of final causes is explanation in terms of ends or goals. Is such explanation essential to the theory of nature in general, or only to the theory of rational nature – in so far as outcomes are aimed at and produced as the goals of deliberate agents? Do final causes operate in natural processes in themselves, or only in and through the mind?
Some claim that the early modern Jesuit restriction of final causation to rational nature anticipated an ‘enlightenment’ retreat from appeals to teleology in metaphysics. Not so. The Jesuit theory of general nature remained robustly teleological, but final causation was largely reserved for something metaphysically distinctive - goodness as a productive force of practical reason. This theory of power in normative form - power as a force of reason - was not an anticipation of the ‘enlightenment’ but the development of a very traditional metaphysics of humanity as bearing the image of God - as created rational nature. This theory was vital to Jesuit moral and political theory, and to theology. Its metaphysics of normative power met the systematic opposition of Thomas Hobbes.
This is an expanded version of an online paper on The Josias. It defends my Leonine interpretatio... more This is an expanded version of an online paper on The Josias. It defends my Leonine interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae, the declaration of the Second Vatican Council that teaches a moral right of the individual, based on their human dignity, to religious liberty. The declaration, I have claimed, was an application for modern times of the magisterial teaching on church and state of Leo XIII. This leaves the declaration’s right to religious liberty strictly consistent with previous church teaching.
In another paper on The Josias Thomas Storck objects that I employ what was at best a political theology of the counter-reformation, the theology of Suarez and Bellarmine. According to Storck this theology was not shared by Leo XIII, was never magisterially taught, and had nothing to do with the drafting of Dignitatis Humanae.
Storck’s claims are false. From 1964 the drafting commission explained Dignitatis Humanae by appeal to Leo XIII's teaching that the church alone was the sovereign legal authority over religion on this earth. This view of church authority came to Leo XIII from Suarez, and dominated official theology within the Catholic church up to Vatican II. It was common property to a Vatican II conservative such as Cardinal Ottaviani, to the progressives who were preparing and explaining the declaration in its final draft, to Paul VI under whose authority this final draft was being prepared, and to Jacques Maritain, to whose theology Paul VI adhered.
The road to Hume's scepticism about practical reason - how Hume tried to save morality itself fro... more The road to Hume's scepticism about practical reason - how Hume tried to save morality itself from scepticism.
To be moral is to be moved to act by reason; and to be moved to act by reason is to be moved by the good. But if reason moves us, what is the nature of its power to move? And what role does goodness play?
These questions about rational motivation became a matter of fierce contention in the early modern period. An established theory of how reason moves us – the theory defended by late scholastics such as Suarez – met destructive opposition, from Hobbes, and this opposition eventually put the very possibility of rational motivation in doubt. Two questions were debated. The first was about power. Was there a power of reason to move us or was all power ordinary causation? The second was about the relation between morality as a motivating source of direction, and morality as a set of appraisive standards. Is one of these two aspects of morality primary and explanatory of the other as secondary to it? Or is one of these aspects even an illusion? Hobbes’ answers to these two questions threatened a complete ethical scepticism. Hume avoided this complete ethical scepticism, but at the price of a scepticism about practical reason in particular.
Suarez seems to view the state as arising from some form of contract. Does that mean, as Quentin ... more Suarez seems to view the state as arising from some form of contract. Does that mean, as Quentin Skinner has suggested, Suarez is a herald of modern contract theory - of Hobbes and Locke? This paper argues not. There is a deep discontinuity between Suarez and later political theory, arising from a radically different metaphysics of reason and the self. For Suarez, the state does not simply channel or restrain human desires. The state acts as a conduit for, and teacher on behalf of normative power - the power of truth and goodness to move us with the force of reason. The state channels reason rather as the Church channels grace - normative power at the supernatural level. The radical differences between Suarez and modern political theory arise from a profound naturalisation of political theory after Suarez - and a pioneer naturaliser was Hobbes.
Freedom or control of how we act is often understood as a kind of power - a power to determine fo... more Freedom or control of how we act is often understood as a kind of power - a power to determine for ourselves how we act. Is freedom so conceived possible, and what kind of power must it be? The paper argues that power takes many forms, of which ordinary causation is only one; and that if freedom is indeed a kind of power, it cannot be ordinary causation. Scepticism about the reality of freedom as a power can take two forms. One, found in Hume, assumes incompatibilism, and concludes from incompatibilism that freedom cannot exist, as indistinguishable from chance. But another scepticism, found in Hobbes, assumes instead that the only possible form of power is ordinary causation, concluding that freedom cannot for this reason exist as a form of power. This scepticism is more profound - it is in fact presupposed by Hume's scepticism - and far more interesting, just because freedom cannot plausibly be modelled as ordinary causation.
In a reply to me in his festschrift 'Reason, Morality, and Law' (Oxford 2013) John Finnis claimed... more In a reply to me in his festschrift 'Reason, Morality, and Law' (Oxford 2013) John Finnis claimed that the Council of Trent never taught doctrinally in support of the legal coercion of heretical baptised back into fidelity. This paper shows that in condemning Erasmus in its decree on baptism Trent did indeed do just that - doctrinally endorse coercion of faith in the baptised. The paper shows that Finnis's argument is a mixture of anachronism and serious misinterpretation of the Council Acta. Finnis' 'alternative history' is linked to a wider tendency in 'conservative' Catholicism since Vatican II to rewrite the Church's past.
The paper, published by The Josias, argues that whether or not Vatican II introduced inconsistenc... more The paper, published by The Josias, argues that whether or not Vatican II introduced inconsistency into magisterial teaching, it has led to a crisis in official theology. Official theology is asserted by Church office holders in execution of their roles while not meeting conditions for counting as magisterial teaching. The nature of official theology is explored, and the problematic nature of the post-conciliar official theology of baptism examined. This theology is inconsistent with the historical magisterium, and affects the liturgy and views of grace, the role of sacraments in salvation, Church and state, Jewish salvation, marriage and family teaching, and conditions for communion as debated in relation to Amoris Laetitia.
Samuel Moyn in his ‘Christian Human Rights’ argues that the Catholic Church’s endorsement of huma... more Samuel Moyn in his ‘Christian Human Rights’ argues that the Catholic Church’s endorsement of human rights in 20th century was a tactical appropriation of an ideology alien to Catholicism – and it was designed to stop Communism. In a 2016 symposium with him, I took a different view. Belief in human rights, this paper argues, was central to traditional Catholic moral and political theology – in particular, the Church’s use of human rights to oppose religious coercion by states had a clear basis within the Catholic tradition. The new factor was not simply fear of Communism, but a central feature of Vatican II - a novel complacency about the effects on human nature of the Fall. Published in King's Law Journal, 2017
Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II did not contradict previous Catholic teaching on religious liber... more Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II did not contradict previous Catholic teaching on religious liberty. So I have argued, appealing to the teaching on Church and state of Leo XIII. The authority to direct religion coercively always belonged to the Church, not the state. And Dignitatis Humanae says nothing to deny the Church’s authority to coerce religiously. This paper shows that the commission at Vatican II that drafted the declaration gave the very same interpretation as me – from 1964 on consistently invoking the teaching of Leo XIII, admitting that religion is subject to the coercive authority of the Church, and denying that this authority is in any way addressed by the declaration. My interpretation of the declaration was the official interpretation at the Council.
Published in ‘Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium’ Dialogos Institute Volume 1, eds Thomas Crean OP and Alan Fimister, (Dialogos Institute 2017) pp105-46.
From 'The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence', eds George Duke and Robert George (C... more From 'The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence', eds George Duke and Robert George (Cambridge University Press 2017)
David Hume denied that there was more than a verbal difference between virtue, or moral goodness, and talent, or goodness in relation to arts and skills. Hume used this view to construct a new theory of moral normativity – one that detached moral normativity from reason, and that explained it instead in terms of the appraisal of people as good and bad.
The paper argues that Hume was to a degree right in his view of virtue and talent - and only because of this is natural law theory as traditionally conceived possible. Hume, the supposed foe of practical reason in ethics, uncovered similarities between virtue and talent that, correctly understood, allow practical reason to take the distinctive form of a moral law.
From Sandis, C. (ed.) Philosophy of Action from Suarez to Anscombe (Routledge 2018)
This new p... more From Sandis, C. (ed.) Philosophy of Action from Suarez to Anscombe (Routledge 2018)
This new paper charts the route from Hobbes' attack on Suarez's theory of reason and power to Hume's reason scepticism.
The action theories of Suarez and Hobbes gave very different accounts of the purposiveness that distinguishes agency. But they also provided opposing theories of power - of capacities to determine outcomes. In Suarez humans possess both a capacity for reason and a capacity for self-determination. Each capacity involves a kind of power radically different from ordinary causation as now understood. Hobbes denied the existence of any power other than ordinary causation - but in so doing he opposed common sense psychology, which is very clearly committed to such powers; and in so doing Hobbes paved the way for Hume's scepticism about practical reason.
Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae forbids the state to use coercion for specifically religious ends... more Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae forbids the state to use coercion for specifically religious ends, because the state lacks authority in matters of religion. But the nineteenth-century popes, Leo XIII included, called for the state to coerce for religious ends, to protect religious truth. A contradiction in Catholic teaching? The contradiction is only apparent. Leo XIII called on the state to coerce religiously - but only as an agent of the Church and under her authority. The paper shows that the commission drafting Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II explicitly appealed to Leo XIII's theology to avoid clashing with nineteenth century teaching, and called on the Council fathers to understand the declaration in terms of Leo XIII's teaching. Far from contradicting the nineteenth century popes, the Vatican II declaration is an application of Leonine teaching for a new situation - where the state is detached from the Church.
The debate can be found on YouTube with the title:
Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedom: Revision, Reform, or Continuity?
Published in The Oxford Companion to Consciousness, (Oxford University Press 2009,) eds Tim Bayne, Axel Cleeremans, Patrick Wilken.
The reality of free will has sometimes been argued for by appeal to a consciousness we are suppos... more The reality of free will has sometimes been argued for by appeal to a consciousness we are supposed to have of our own freedom. But equally there are modern writers who claim that a proper understanding of consciousness will show free will to be wholly or partly an illusion. And finally many philosophers, especially in the English-language tradition, have taken the view that the question of free will has nothing to do with consciousness. For them the free will problem is about the correct semantic analysis of the expression ‘could have done otherwise’; and such an analysis is to be provided simply by considering concepts or sentence meanings, without any reference to consciousness or experience. So given this wide variety in approach, what might the real connexion be between free will and consciousness?
Self-Determination is the first volume in the two-volume The Ethics of Action. Self-Determination... more Self-Determination is the first volume in the two-volume The Ethics of Action. Self-Determination will be published by Oxford University Press in late 2016/early 2017 – December in UK, and January in US. The attached file from Self-Determination is the book’s introduction and summary.
Self-Determination looks at whether action involves distinctive powers or capacities – such as a power to determine for ourselves what we do – that might give action a special place in moral life. Do we have control of how we act, so that we are free to act in more than one way, and does it matter to morality whether we do? At the heart of Self-Determination is the problem of what kind of power we have over our action, and of the ethical significance of power.
Self-Determination argues that what matters to morality is not in fact the freedom to do otherwise, but something more primitive - a basic capacity or power to determine for ourselves what we do. This capacity might or might not take the form of a freedom to act in more than one way, and it might or might not be compatible with causal determinism. What really matters to morality is that it is we who determine what we do. What we do must not simply be a function of powers or capacities for which we are not responsible, or a matter of mere chance.
A second volume Normativity, to be published later, will examine the ways that moral standards make a call on us to meet them; in particular, can there be kinds of standard – such as duty or obligation – that peculiarly address and govern action? Central to the book is David Hume’s attempt to make sense of normativity apart from reason. Can Hume’s project succeed – and what might its success or failure imply, both about the role of reason within normativity and about the place of action in ethics?
A revised paper, just published on The Josias, of a response given at the American Catholic Philo... more A revised paper, just published on The Josias, of a response given at the American Catholic Philosophical Association in Houston in November 2023 to Kevin Vallier’s 'All the Kingdoms of the World'
Vallier makes an important justice argument against integralism – how can the Church be forbidden to coerce the unbaptised into the faith, but permitted to coerce the baptised to remain? This paper shows how the Church justly has this authority by explaining how she is exactly what Leo XIII taught her to be – a potestas for faith. Misunderstanding of the Church’s coercive authority over the baptised is shown to depend on a model of legal authority as coordinatory that is as implausible for the state as it conflicts with Catholic teaching about the Church.
This is a revision of an article in The Lamp for November 2022, now fully referenced and with sch... more This is a revision of an article in The Lamp for November 2022, now fully referenced and with scholarly apparatus. It discusses the moral duty of Catholics to obey the laws of the church and of the pope. Catholic theologians once supposed that papal law made for the whole church was infallible – it could not conflict with faith and morals. This theology of papal legislative infallibility was based on an important and defensible general model of legal authority and legislation as educative – as a form of teaching.
But the theology of papal legislative infallibility is still false. Laws made by popes can perfectly well conflict with faith and morals, and actually have done. The evidence lies in the church law that over many centuries governed the conduct of Catholics towards the Jewish people. The article examines the implications of this both for Pastor Aeternus and for the current duty of Catholics to the pope, such as in relation to recent legislation on the liturgy.
Free Will - Historical and Analytic Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan), 2021
Hume thought that actions undetermined causally by prior events would happen by mere chance. But ... more Hume thought that actions undetermined causally by prior events would happen by mere chance. But we think that such actions need not happen by mere chance. The actions could be still determined - by their agents; they could therefore be free. What does this belief in freedom involve?
Is it simply the theory that substances, in the form of agents, can be causes, and not just events? The paper argues that this is not so. Our conception of freedom is of a power radically unlike ordinary causation, not simply in respect of the bearer of the power, but in the way that the power determines outcomes. A cause determines an outcome only when its power excludes alternatives. But freedom is a power that far from excluding alternatives, makes them available. The paper explores this difference between the two kinds of power, and the implications of Hume’s failure to distinguish them.
in Harald E. Braun, Erik De Born, and Paolo Astorri (eds), The Companion to the Spanish Scholastics (Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition) (Leiden: Brill, 2021 / forthcoming), 2021
Explanation in terms of final causes is explanation in terms of ends or goals. Is such explanatio... more Explanation in terms of final causes is explanation in terms of ends or goals. Is such explanation essential to the theory of nature in general, or only to the theory of rational nature – in so far as outcomes are aimed at and produced as the goals of deliberate agents? Do final causes operate in natural processes in themselves, or only in and through the mind?
Some claim that the early modern Jesuit restriction of final causation to rational nature anticipated an ‘enlightenment’ retreat from appeals to teleology in metaphysics. Not so. The Jesuit theory of general nature remained robustly teleological, but final causation was largely reserved for something metaphysically distinctive - goodness as a productive force of practical reason. This theory of power in normative form - power as a force of reason - was not an anticipation of the ‘enlightenment’ but the development of a very traditional metaphysics of humanity as bearing the image of God - as created rational nature. This theory was vital to Jesuit moral and political theory, and to theology. Its metaphysics of normative power met the systematic opposition of Thomas Hobbes.
This is an expanded version of an online paper on The Josias. It defends my Leonine interpretatio... more This is an expanded version of an online paper on The Josias. It defends my Leonine interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae, the declaration of the Second Vatican Council that teaches a moral right of the individual, based on their human dignity, to religious liberty. The declaration, I have claimed, was an application for modern times of the magisterial teaching on church and state of Leo XIII. This leaves the declaration’s right to religious liberty strictly consistent with previous church teaching.
In another paper on The Josias Thomas Storck objects that I employ what was at best a political theology of the counter-reformation, the theology of Suarez and Bellarmine. According to Storck this theology was not shared by Leo XIII, was never magisterially taught, and had nothing to do with the drafting of Dignitatis Humanae.
Storck’s claims are false. From 1964 the drafting commission explained Dignitatis Humanae by appeal to Leo XIII's teaching that the church alone was the sovereign legal authority over religion on this earth. This view of church authority came to Leo XIII from Suarez, and dominated official theology within the Catholic church up to Vatican II. It was common property to a Vatican II conservative such as Cardinal Ottaviani, to the progressives who were preparing and explaining the declaration in its final draft, to Paul VI under whose authority this final draft was being prepared, and to Jacques Maritain, to whose theology Paul VI adhered.
The road to Hume's scepticism about practical reason - how Hume tried to save morality itself fro... more The road to Hume's scepticism about practical reason - how Hume tried to save morality itself from scepticism.
To be moral is to be moved to act by reason; and to be moved to act by reason is to be moved by the good. But if reason moves us, what is the nature of its power to move? And what role does goodness play?
These questions about rational motivation became a matter of fierce contention in the early modern period. An established theory of how reason moves us – the theory defended by late scholastics such as Suarez – met destructive opposition, from Hobbes, and this opposition eventually put the very possibility of rational motivation in doubt. Two questions were debated. The first was about power. Was there a power of reason to move us or was all power ordinary causation? The second was about the relation between morality as a motivating source of direction, and morality as a set of appraisive standards. Is one of these two aspects of morality primary and explanatory of the other as secondary to it? Or is one of these aspects even an illusion? Hobbes’ answers to these two questions threatened a complete ethical scepticism. Hume avoided this complete ethical scepticism, but at the price of a scepticism about practical reason in particular.
Suarez seems to view the state as arising from some form of contract. Does that mean, as Quentin ... more Suarez seems to view the state as arising from some form of contract. Does that mean, as Quentin Skinner has suggested, Suarez is a herald of modern contract theory - of Hobbes and Locke? This paper argues not. There is a deep discontinuity between Suarez and later political theory, arising from a radically different metaphysics of reason and the self. For Suarez, the state does not simply channel or restrain human desires. The state acts as a conduit for, and teacher on behalf of normative power - the power of truth and goodness to move us with the force of reason. The state channels reason rather as the Church channels grace - normative power at the supernatural level. The radical differences between Suarez and modern political theory arise from a profound naturalisation of political theory after Suarez - and a pioneer naturaliser was Hobbes.
Freedom or control of how we act is often understood as a kind of power - a power to determine fo... more Freedom or control of how we act is often understood as a kind of power - a power to determine for ourselves how we act. Is freedom so conceived possible, and what kind of power must it be? The paper argues that power takes many forms, of which ordinary causation is only one; and that if freedom is indeed a kind of power, it cannot be ordinary causation. Scepticism about the reality of freedom as a power can take two forms. One, found in Hume, assumes incompatibilism, and concludes from incompatibilism that freedom cannot exist, as indistinguishable from chance. But another scepticism, found in Hobbes, assumes instead that the only possible form of power is ordinary causation, concluding that freedom cannot for this reason exist as a form of power. This scepticism is more profound - it is in fact presupposed by Hume's scepticism - and far more interesting, just because freedom cannot plausibly be modelled as ordinary causation.
In a reply to me in his festschrift 'Reason, Morality, and Law' (Oxford 2013) John Finnis claimed... more In a reply to me in his festschrift 'Reason, Morality, and Law' (Oxford 2013) John Finnis claimed that the Council of Trent never taught doctrinally in support of the legal coercion of heretical baptised back into fidelity. This paper shows that in condemning Erasmus in its decree on baptism Trent did indeed do just that - doctrinally endorse coercion of faith in the baptised. The paper shows that Finnis's argument is a mixture of anachronism and serious misinterpretation of the Council Acta. Finnis' 'alternative history' is linked to a wider tendency in 'conservative' Catholicism since Vatican II to rewrite the Church's past.
The paper, published by The Josias, argues that whether or not Vatican II introduced inconsistenc... more The paper, published by The Josias, argues that whether or not Vatican II introduced inconsistency into magisterial teaching, it has led to a crisis in official theology. Official theology is asserted by Church office holders in execution of their roles while not meeting conditions for counting as magisterial teaching. The nature of official theology is explored, and the problematic nature of the post-conciliar official theology of baptism examined. This theology is inconsistent with the historical magisterium, and affects the liturgy and views of grace, the role of sacraments in salvation, Church and state, Jewish salvation, marriage and family teaching, and conditions for communion as debated in relation to Amoris Laetitia.
Samuel Moyn in his ‘Christian Human Rights’ argues that the Catholic Church’s endorsement of huma... more Samuel Moyn in his ‘Christian Human Rights’ argues that the Catholic Church’s endorsement of human rights in 20th century was a tactical appropriation of an ideology alien to Catholicism – and it was designed to stop Communism. In a 2016 symposium with him, I took a different view. Belief in human rights, this paper argues, was central to traditional Catholic moral and political theology – in particular, the Church’s use of human rights to oppose religious coercion by states had a clear basis within the Catholic tradition. The new factor was not simply fear of Communism, but a central feature of Vatican II - a novel complacency about the effects on human nature of the Fall. Published in King's Law Journal, 2017
Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II did not contradict previous Catholic teaching on religious liber... more Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II did not contradict previous Catholic teaching on religious liberty. So I have argued, appealing to the teaching on Church and state of Leo XIII. The authority to direct religion coercively always belonged to the Church, not the state. And Dignitatis Humanae says nothing to deny the Church’s authority to coerce religiously. This paper shows that the commission at Vatican II that drafted the declaration gave the very same interpretation as me – from 1964 on consistently invoking the teaching of Leo XIII, admitting that religion is subject to the coercive authority of the Church, and denying that this authority is in any way addressed by the declaration. My interpretation of the declaration was the official interpretation at the Council.
Published in ‘Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium’ Dialogos Institute Volume 1, eds Thomas Crean OP and Alan Fimister, (Dialogos Institute 2017) pp105-46.
From 'The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence', eds George Duke and Robert George (C... more From 'The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Jurisprudence', eds George Duke and Robert George (Cambridge University Press 2017)
David Hume denied that there was more than a verbal difference between virtue, or moral goodness, and talent, or goodness in relation to arts and skills. Hume used this view to construct a new theory of moral normativity – one that detached moral normativity from reason, and that explained it instead in terms of the appraisal of people as good and bad.
The paper argues that Hume was to a degree right in his view of virtue and talent - and only because of this is natural law theory as traditionally conceived possible. Hume, the supposed foe of practical reason in ethics, uncovered similarities between virtue and talent that, correctly understood, allow practical reason to take the distinctive form of a moral law.
From Sandis, C. (ed.) Philosophy of Action from Suarez to Anscombe (Routledge 2018)
This new p... more From Sandis, C. (ed.) Philosophy of Action from Suarez to Anscombe (Routledge 2018)
This new paper charts the route from Hobbes' attack on Suarez's theory of reason and power to Hume's reason scepticism.
The action theories of Suarez and Hobbes gave very different accounts of the purposiveness that distinguishes agency. But they also provided opposing theories of power - of capacities to determine outcomes. In Suarez humans possess both a capacity for reason and a capacity for self-determination. Each capacity involves a kind of power radically different from ordinary causation as now understood. Hobbes denied the existence of any power other than ordinary causation - but in so doing he opposed common sense psychology, which is very clearly committed to such powers; and in so doing Hobbes paved the way for Hume's scepticism about practical reason.
Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae forbids the state to use coercion for specifically religious ends... more Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae forbids the state to use coercion for specifically religious ends, because the state lacks authority in matters of religion. But the nineteenth-century popes, Leo XIII included, called for the state to coerce for religious ends, to protect religious truth. A contradiction in Catholic teaching? The contradiction is only apparent. Leo XIII called on the state to coerce religiously - but only as an agent of the Church and under her authority. The paper shows that the commission drafting Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II explicitly appealed to Leo XIII's theology to avoid clashing with nineteenth century teaching, and called on the Council fathers to understand the declaration in terms of Leo XIII's teaching. Far from contradicting the nineteenth century popes, the Vatican II declaration is an application of Leonine teaching for a new situation - where the state is detached from the Church.
The debate can be found on YouTube with the title:
Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedom: Revision, Reform, or Continuity?
Published in The Oxford Companion to Consciousness, (Oxford University Press 2009,) eds Tim Bayne, Axel Cleeremans, Patrick Wilken.
The reality of free will has sometimes been argued for by appeal to a consciousness we are suppos... more The reality of free will has sometimes been argued for by appeal to a consciousness we are supposed to have of our own freedom. But equally there are modern writers who claim that a proper understanding of consciousness will show free will to be wholly or partly an illusion. And finally many philosophers, especially in the English-language tradition, have taken the view that the question of free will has nothing to do with consciousness. For them the free will problem is about the correct semantic analysis of the expression ‘could have done otherwise’; and such an analysis is to be provided simply by considering concepts or sentence meanings, without any reference to consciousness or experience. So given this wide variety in approach, what might the real connexion be between free will and consciousness?
The paper explores theories of moral obligation from those of late scholastics such as Francisc... more The paper explores theories of moral obligation from those of late scholastics such as Francisco Suarez and Gabriel Vasquez to those of Samuel Pufendorf and John Locke. The theories of Pufendorf and Locke are contrasted. Although these two theories appear similar, there is a profound difference between them. In Pufendorf as in a scholastic such as Suarez, practical reason is seen as involving two distinct kinds of justificatory force or modes of justificatory support, recommendation and demand; and moral obligation is identified, not as a reason-giving property of actions, but as one of these justificatory forces, the force of demand, a force that directly binds the will. Whereas in Locke there is only one justificatory force, that of recommendation; and moral obligation is no more than a reason-giving property, the property of being commanded by a punitive God, among the many that generate this force. In Locke as in much subsequent English-language philosophy, moral obligation ceases to be a justificatory force that directly binds the will, and comes to be no more than a reason-giving property of the voluntary actions that the will causes and motivates. The paper expresses doubts about whether this development has been a genuine conceptual advance, and explores the problems it raises.
in "Mind, Self and Person, ed. Anthony O'Hear (Cambridge University Press 2015) - It is often tho... more in "Mind, Self and Person, ed. Anthony O'Hear (Cambridge University Press 2015) - It is often thought that as human agents we have a power to determine our actions for ourselves. And a natural conception of this power is as freedom - a power over alternatives so that we can determine for ourselves which of a variety of possible actions we perform. But what is the real content of this conception of freedom, and need self- determination take this particular form? I examine the possible forms self-determination might take, and the various ways freedom as a power over alternatives might be constituted. I argue that though ordinary ethical thought, and especially moral blame, may be committed to our possession of some capacity for self-determination, the precise nature of this power is probably ethically underdetermined - though conceptions of the nature of the power that come from outside ethics may then have important implications for ethics.
Published in "Legge e Natura I dibattiti teologici e giuridici fra XV e XVII secolo" ed Riccardo ... more Published in "Legge e Natura I dibattiti teologici e giuridici fra XV e XVII secolo" ed Riccardo Saccenti and Cinzia Sulas (Arricia: Aracne editrice 2016) pp287-332
Suarez and Bellarmine viewed both Church and state not just as coercive authorities but as coercive teachers. Legal direction and punishment, in their view, is importantly educative in function. This theory of the Church as a coercive teacher was founded on the scriptural idea of the bishop as a shepherd. Thomas Hobbes used Leviathan to oppose their idea of coercion as directly educative, and thereby initiated a profound change in conceptions of coercion and the state.
Published in The Thomist vol 79, 2015, pp1-42. This paper, originally a lecture given at Mundelei... more Published in The Thomist vol 79, 2015, pp1-42. This paper, originally a lecture given at Mundelein in October 2013, examines Jacques Maritain's "Man and the State' and its impact on Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae. Maritain helped contribute to a post-concilar 'official theology' endorsing Church-state separation. This official theology is not magisterially taught in Dignitatis Humanae, and is (a) internally incoherent, and (b) in clear conflict with Leo XIII's endorsement as an ideal of a soul-body union of Church and state. The official theology drastically underestimates the gulf that lies between secular political theory and the view of religion and the state taken by Dignitatis Humanae. Far from initiating a more harmonious concord with the secular world, Dignitatis Humanae marks the initiation of profound conflict between the secular state and the Church.
With Peter Adamson on his history of philosophy podcast I discuss medieval theories of freedom, a... more With Peter Adamson on his history of philosophy podcast I discuss medieval theories of freedom, action and the will - link to podcast here
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Books by Thomas Pink
Self-Determination looks at whether action involves distinctive powers or capacities – such as a power to determine for ourselves what we do – that might give action a special place in moral life. Do we have control of how we act, so that we are free to act in more than one way, and does it matter to morality whether we do? At the heart of Self-Determination is the problem of what kind of power we have over our action, and of the ethical significance of power.
Self-Determination argues that what matters to morality is not in fact the freedom to do otherwise, but something more primitive - a basic capacity or power to determine for ourselves what we do. This capacity might or might not take the form of a freedom to act in more than one way, and it might or might not be compatible with causal determinism. What really matters to morality is that it is we who determine what we do. What we do must not simply be a function of powers or capacities for which we are not responsible, or a matter of mere chance.
A second volume Normativity, to be published later, will examine the ways that moral standards make a call on us to meet them; in particular, can there be kinds of standard – such as duty or obligation – that peculiarly address and govern action? Central to the book is David Hume’s attempt to make sense of normativity apart from reason. Can Hume’s project succeed – and what might its success or failure imply, both about the role of reason within normativity and about the place of action in ethics?
Papers by Thomas Pink
Vallier makes an important justice argument against integralism – how can the Church be forbidden to coerce the unbaptised into the faith, but permitted to coerce the baptised to remain? This paper shows how the Church justly has this authority by explaining how she is exactly what Leo XIII taught her to be – a potestas for faith. Misunderstanding of the Church’s coercive authority over the baptised is shown to depend on a model of legal authority as coordinatory that is as implausible for the state as it conflicts with Catholic teaching about the Church.
But the theology of papal legislative infallibility is still false. Laws made by popes can perfectly well conflict with faith and morals, and actually have done. The evidence lies in the church law that over many centuries governed the conduct of Catholics towards the Jewish people. The article examines the implications of this both for Pastor Aeternus and for the current duty of Catholics to the pope, such as in relation to recent legislation on the liturgy.
Is it simply the theory that substances, in the form of agents, can be causes, and not just events? The paper argues that this is not so. Our conception of freedom is of a power radically unlike ordinary causation, not simply in respect of the bearer of the power, but in the way that the power determines outcomes. A cause determines an outcome only when its power excludes alternatives. But freedom is a power that far from excluding alternatives, makes them available. The paper explores this difference between the two kinds of power, and the implications of Hume’s failure to distinguish them.
Some claim that the early modern Jesuit restriction of final causation to rational nature anticipated an ‘enlightenment’ retreat from appeals to teleology in metaphysics. Not so. The Jesuit theory of general nature remained robustly teleological, but final causation was largely reserved for something metaphysically distinctive - goodness as a productive force of practical reason. This theory of power in normative form - power as a force of reason - was not an anticipation of the ‘enlightenment’ but the development of a very traditional metaphysics of humanity as bearing the image of God - as created rational nature. This theory was vital to Jesuit moral and political theory, and to theology. Its metaphysics of normative power met the systematic opposition of Thomas Hobbes.
In another paper on The Josias Thomas Storck objects that I employ what was at best a political theology of the counter-reformation, the theology of Suarez and Bellarmine. According to Storck this theology was not shared by Leo XIII, was never magisterially taught, and had nothing to do with the drafting of Dignitatis Humanae.
Storck’s claims are false. From 1964 the drafting commission explained Dignitatis Humanae by appeal to Leo XIII's teaching that the church alone was the sovereign legal authority over religion on this earth. This view of church authority came to Leo XIII from Suarez, and dominated official theology within the Catholic church up to Vatican II. It was common property to a Vatican II conservative such as Cardinal Ottaviani, to the progressives who were preparing and explaining the declaration in its final draft, to Paul VI under whose authority this final draft was being prepared, and to Jacques Maritain, to whose theology Paul VI adhered.
To be moral is to be moved to act by reason; and to be moved to act by reason is to be moved by the good. But if reason moves us, what is the nature of its power to move? And what role does goodness play?
These questions about rational motivation became a matter of fierce contention in the early modern period. An established theory of how reason moves us – the theory defended by late scholastics such as Suarez – met destructive opposition, from Hobbes, and this opposition eventually put the very possibility of rational motivation in doubt. Two questions were debated. The first was about power. Was there a power of reason to move us or was all power ordinary causation? The second was about the relation between morality as a motivating source of direction, and morality as a set of appraisive standards. Is one of these two aspects of morality primary and explanatory of the other as secondary to it? Or is one of these aspects even an illusion? Hobbes’ answers to these two questions threatened a complete ethical scepticism. Hume avoided this complete ethical scepticism, but at the price of a scepticism about practical reason in particular.
Published in ‘Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium’ Dialogos Institute Volume 1, eds Thomas Crean OP and Alan Fimister, (Dialogos Institute 2017) pp105-46.
David Hume denied that there was more than a verbal difference between virtue, or moral goodness, and talent, or goodness in relation to arts and skills. Hume used this view to construct a new theory of moral normativity – one that detached moral normativity from reason, and that explained it instead in terms of the appraisal of people as good and bad.
The paper argues that Hume was to a degree right in his view of virtue and talent - and only because of this is natural law theory as traditionally conceived possible. Hume, the supposed foe of practical reason in ethics, uncovered similarities between virtue and talent that, correctly understood, allow practical reason to take the distinctive form of a moral law.
This new paper charts the route from Hobbes' attack on Suarez's theory of reason and power to Hume's reason scepticism.
The action theories of Suarez and Hobbes gave very different accounts of the purposiveness that distinguishes agency. But they also provided opposing theories of power - of capacities to determine outcomes. In Suarez humans possess both a capacity for reason and a capacity for self-determination. Each capacity involves a kind of power radically different from ordinary causation as now understood. Hobbes denied the existence of any power other than ordinary causation - but in so doing he opposed common sense psychology, which is very clearly committed to such powers; and in so doing Hobbes paved the way for Hume's scepticism about practical reason.
The debate can be found on YouTube with the title:
Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedom: Revision, Reform, or Continuity?
Self-Determination looks at whether action involves distinctive powers or capacities – such as a power to determine for ourselves what we do – that might give action a special place in moral life. Do we have control of how we act, so that we are free to act in more than one way, and does it matter to morality whether we do? At the heart of Self-Determination is the problem of what kind of power we have over our action, and of the ethical significance of power.
Self-Determination argues that what matters to morality is not in fact the freedom to do otherwise, but something more primitive - a basic capacity or power to determine for ourselves what we do. This capacity might or might not take the form of a freedom to act in more than one way, and it might or might not be compatible with causal determinism. What really matters to morality is that it is we who determine what we do. What we do must not simply be a function of powers or capacities for which we are not responsible, or a matter of mere chance.
A second volume Normativity, to be published later, will examine the ways that moral standards make a call on us to meet them; in particular, can there be kinds of standard – such as duty or obligation – that peculiarly address and govern action? Central to the book is David Hume’s attempt to make sense of normativity apart from reason. Can Hume’s project succeed – and what might its success or failure imply, both about the role of reason within normativity and about the place of action in ethics?
Vallier makes an important justice argument against integralism – how can the Church be forbidden to coerce the unbaptised into the faith, but permitted to coerce the baptised to remain? This paper shows how the Church justly has this authority by explaining how she is exactly what Leo XIII taught her to be – a potestas for faith. Misunderstanding of the Church’s coercive authority over the baptised is shown to depend on a model of legal authority as coordinatory that is as implausible for the state as it conflicts with Catholic teaching about the Church.
But the theology of papal legislative infallibility is still false. Laws made by popes can perfectly well conflict with faith and morals, and actually have done. The evidence lies in the church law that over many centuries governed the conduct of Catholics towards the Jewish people. The article examines the implications of this both for Pastor Aeternus and for the current duty of Catholics to the pope, such as in relation to recent legislation on the liturgy.
Is it simply the theory that substances, in the form of agents, can be causes, and not just events? The paper argues that this is not so. Our conception of freedom is of a power radically unlike ordinary causation, not simply in respect of the bearer of the power, but in the way that the power determines outcomes. A cause determines an outcome only when its power excludes alternatives. But freedom is a power that far from excluding alternatives, makes them available. The paper explores this difference between the two kinds of power, and the implications of Hume’s failure to distinguish them.
Some claim that the early modern Jesuit restriction of final causation to rational nature anticipated an ‘enlightenment’ retreat from appeals to teleology in metaphysics. Not so. The Jesuit theory of general nature remained robustly teleological, but final causation was largely reserved for something metaphysically distinctive - goodness as a productive force of practical reason. This theory of power in normative form - power as a force of reason - was not an anticipation of the ‘enlightenment’ but the development of a very traditional metaphysics of humanity as bearing the image of God - as created rational nature. This theory was vital to Jesuit moral and political theory, and to theology. Its metaphysics of normative power met the systematic opposition of Thomas Hobbes.
In another paper on The Josias Thomas Storck objects that I employ what was at best a political theology of the counter-reformation, the theology of Suarez and Bellarmine. According to Storck this theology was not shared by Leo XIII, was never magisterially taught, and had nothing to do with the drafting of Dignitatis Humanae.
Storck’s claims are false. From 1964 the drafting commission explained Dignitatis Humanae by appeal to Leo XIII's teaching that the church alone was the sovereign legal authority over religion on this earth. This view of church authority came to Leo XIII from Suarez, and dominated official theology within the Catholic church up to Vatican II. It was common property to a Vatican II conservative such as Cardinal Ottaviani, to the progressives who were preparing and explaining the declaration in its final draft, to Paul VI under whose authority this final draft was being prepared, and to Jacques Maritain, to whose theology Paul VI adhered.
To be moral is to be moved to act by reason; and to be moved to act by reason is to be moved by the good. But if reason moves us, what is the nature of its power to move? And what role does goodness play?
These questions about rational motivation became a matter of fierce contention in the early modern period. An established theory of how reason moves us – the theory defended by late scholastics such as Suarez – met destructive opposition, from Hobbes, and this opposition eventually put the very possibility of rational motivation in doubt. Two questions were debated. The first was about power. Was there a power of reason to move us or was all power ordinary causation? The second was about the relation between morality as a motivating source of direction, and morality as a set of appraisive standards. Is one of these two aspects of morality primary and explanatory of the other as secondary to it? Or is one of these aspects even an illusion? Hobbes’ answers to these two questions threatened a complete ethical scepticism. Hume avoided this complete ethical scepticism, but at the price of a scepticism about practical reason in particular.
Published in ‘Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium’ Dialogos Institute Volume 1, eds Thomas Crean OP and Alan Fimister, (Dialogos Institute 2017) pp105-46.
David Hume denied that there was more than a verbal difference between virtue, or moral goodness, and talent, or goodness in relation to arts and skills. Hume used this view to construct a new theory of moral normativity – one that detached moral normativity from reason, and that explained it instead in terms of the appraisal of people as good and bad.
The paper argues that Hume was to a degree right in his view of virtue and talent - and only because of this is natural law theory as traditionally conceived possible. Hume, the supposed foe of practical reason in ethics, uncovered similarities between virtue and talent that, correctly understood, allow practical reason to take the distinctive form of a moral law.
This new paper charts the route from Hobbes' attack on Suarez's theory of reason and power to Hume's reason scepticism.
The action theories of Suarez and Hobbes gave very different accounts of the purposiveness that distinguishes agency. But they also provided opposing theories of power - of capacities to determine outcomes. In Suarez humans possess both a capacity for reason and a capacity for self-determination. Each capacity involves a kind of power radically different from ordinary causation as now understood. Hobbes denied the existence of any power other than ordinary causation - but in so doing he opposed common sense psychology, which is very clearly committed to such powers; and in so doing Hobbes paved the way for Hume's scepticism about practical reason.
The debate can be found on YouTube with the title:
Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedom: Revision, Reform, or Continuity?
Suarez and Bellarmine viewed both Church and state not just as coercive authorities but as coercive teachers. Legal direction and punishment, in their view, is importantly educative in function. This theory of the Church as a coercive teacher was founded on the scriptural idea of the bishop as a shepherd. Thomas Hobbes used Leviathan to oppose their idea of coercion as directly educative, and thereby initiated a profound change in conceptions of coercion and the state.
http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/will-pink