The title of this book is too modest. In his Disputationes on the text of the Summa of St. Thomas, Gabriel Vazquez draws upon a very wide reading of the theological literature of his own and previous ages. His conclusions present a synthesis, not without originality, of the speculation of the 15th and 16th centuries. The problem here considered, that of the obligation of civil law, raises the great issues of civil obedience and the limits of human authority. The book, (...) then, is more than a monograph on a single author; it is an important study in the history of moral philosophy and theology. (shrink)

One is tempted to dismiss this book as having little or no philosophical content. It consists of three parts—two series of aphorisms separated by a short reportage, ‘Journey from Sharpeville to Selma’, on a human rights manifestation. The aphorisms of Part I, ‘Journey Toward Fidelity’ and Part III, To Limbo and Back: A Latin-American Journey’ range from the pithy and paradoxical to a paragraph or a page that develops an insight. It is dedicated, committed writing, the expression of a saeva (...) indignatio; but it is not a connected whole. If asked to what philosophical category this writing belongs one would have to put it with the Pensées of Pascal or the ‘Diapsalmata’ that make up the first part of Kierkegaard’s Either/or, or even Niezsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra! It is, indeed, possible that the modern world prefers its philosophy so. But how review Pascal, or Kierkegaard or Nietzsche? (shrink)

This work appeared in 1964. That it remains a significant contribution to this fast-moving controversy of our times is an index of its value; for not many defences of the natural law prohibition of contraception have survived the documents of the Second Vatican Council and John T Noonan’s magisterial history of contraception.

This book is the joint work of a moralist, a sociologist and a psychologist arguing, as the sub-title indicates, for the abolition of capital punishment. Fr Tidmarsh’s essay provides the ‘Theoretical Framework’ of the discussion. He examines the notion of punishment as retributive, reformative and deterrent. He refuses to be drawn into the kind of detailed discussion that finds its place in the two essays that follow; but what he says is clarifying and indispensable. He points the difficulty of formulating (...) a ‘pure’ retributive theory of punishment; and the fact that ‘considerations of retribution may yield negative criteria—they may prevent our punishing the innocent and they may prevent our allowing considerations of expediency from too easily outweighing the general rule that the guilty are to be punished—but they have little, if any, positive contribution to make to the assessment of just punishments’. He remarks the different meanings given to reformation; does it mean the actual betterment of the offender’s frame of mind, or merely the fact that he refrains from crime in the future? And how, in fact, does punishment operate reform? And there is the paradox of the deterrent view of punishment—‘those crimes ought to be the more heavily punished that are the more difficult to refrain from committing, since it needs a greater motive for fear to restrain those tempted to them than is needed from those temptations more easily resisted. Passion, provocation, inadvertence, become not extenuating but exacerbating circumstances... ‘. (shrink)

This book is the joint work of a moralist, a sociologist and a psychologist arguing, as the sub-title indicates, for the abolition of capital punishment. Fr Tidmarsh’s essay provides the ‘Theoretical Framework’ of the discussion. He examines the notion of punishment as retributive, reformative and deterrent. He refuses to be drawn into the kind of detailed discussion that finds its place in the two essays that follow; but what he says is clarifying and indispensable. He points the difficulty of formulating (...) a ‘pure’ retributive theory of punishment; and the fact that ‘considerations of retribution may yield negative criteria—they may prevent our punishing the innocent and they may prevent our allowing considerations of expediency from too easily outweighing the general rule that the guilty are to be punished—but they have little, if any, positive contribution to make to the assessment of just punishments’. He remarks the different meanings given to reformation; does it mean the actual betterment of the offender’s frame of mind, or merely the fact that he refrains from crime in the future? And how, in fact, does punishment operate reform? And there is the paradox of the deterrent view of punishment—‘those crimes ought to be the more heavily punished that are the more difficult to refrain from committing, since it needs a greater motive for fear to restrain those tempted to them than is needed from those temptations more easily resisted. Passion, provocation, inadvertence, become not extenuating but exacerbating circumstances... ‘. (shrink)

One is tempted to dismiss this book as having little or no philosophical content. It consists of three parts—two series of aphorisms separated by a short reportage, ‘Journey from Sharpeville to Selma’, on a human rights manifestation. The aphorisms of Part I, ‘Journey Toward Fidelity’ and Part III, To Limbo and Back: A Latin-American Journey’ range from the pithy and paradoxical to a paragraph or a page that develops an insight. It is dedicated, committed writing, the expression of a saeva (...) indignatio; but it is not a connected whole. If asked to what philosophical category this writing belongs one would have to put it with the Pensées of Pascal or the ‘Diapsalmata’ that make up the first part of Kierkegaard’s Either/or, or even Niezsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra! It is, indeed, possible that the modern world prefers its philosophy so. But how review Pascal, or Kierkegaard or Nietzsche? (shrink)