Does Nature Make Laws?: An Introduction to the Natural Law Tradition | Prof. Raymond Hain

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2020

⏱️ 64 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on October 17, 2019.

About the speaker: Professor Raymond Hain is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Providence College and Associate Director of the Providence College Humanities Program. He received his BA in Philosophy from Christendom College and his MA and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied under Ralph McInerny and David Solomon. He works primarily in moral philosophy in the Thomistic tradition, as well as topics in applied ethics (especially bioethics and the ethics of architecture) and connections between philosophy and literature. As part of the Humanities Program, he directs the Providence College Humanities Forum and the Providence College Humanities Reading Seminars.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	My presentation this evening is going to be mostly philosophical, but since I'm speaking under the
0:06.0	auspices of the Thomistic Institute, it's fitting, I think, to begin with some consideration of the
0:11.4	official views of the Catholic Church regarding natural law in order to give you a sense of how
0:17.8	the church thinks about it, and more generally how we might think about the relationship between faith and reason.
0:24.4	It'd be hard to overestimate, I think, the importance of the natural law to the Catholic
0:29.6	Church.
0:30.6	Her modes of argumentation, her moral teachings, many of her greatest thinkers, reams of her
0:37.1	official documents.
0:38.3	All are steeped in the natural law tradition.
0:41.3	Just last month, for example, the Supreme Court of the Philippines
0:45.3	dismiss a petition asking the court to declare articles one and two of the family code
0:51.3	unconstitutional.
0:53.3	These provisions limit in the Philippines' marriage to a union between one man and one woman.
0:59.0	The court did say, however, that the country's 1987 constitution does not define or restrict
1:04.0	marriage on the basis of sex, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity, or expression,
1:10.0	and that Congress could therefore legalize
1:12.2	same-sex marriage through the legislative process.
1:16.0	This is the latest skirmish in the debate on same-sex marriage in the Philippines.
1:20.4	Three years ago when Ireland voted overwhelmingly to approve same-sex marriage, a Philippines
1:25.4	archbishop warned his countrymen not to jump on the bandwagon,
1:30.1	he said.
1:31.3	Same-sex marriage is against the natural law.
	...

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