集美麻豆

Abstract

Professor George will argue that there are irreducible aspects of human well-being and fulfillment that can be understood and affirmed on the basis of rational (if ordinarily informal and even casual) reflection on data provided by our experiences of such activities as friendship, knowledge, and aesthetic appreciation. These 鈥渂asic human goods鈥� are the referents of what Aquinas called the first principles of practical reason and basic precepts of natural law. By attending to the integral directiveness of these principles, it is possible to identify norms of morality distinguishing fully practically reasonable choices (i.e., those compatible with a will towards integral human fulfillment, and thus in line with human dignity) from those that fall short of what reason demands and must, therefore, be judged to be morally deficient. George will consider the skeptical (non-cognitivist) challenge to this understanding of morality advanced by advocates of instrumentalist accounts of practical reason, and he will also explore some significant respects in which his neo-Aristotelian (eudaimonistic) approach to moral judgment is both like and unlike utilitarian and other consequentialist approaches, on the one side, and Kantian or purely 鈥渄eontological鈥� approaches, on the other. In the course of the lecture, he will address the question of religious faith and revealed moral truth in relation to natural law theory and the place of virtues in a comprehensive account of natural law.