The article aims to articulate and defend St. Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the transcendence of the political common good and argues against the new natural law theory’s view of the common good as limited, instrumental, and ordered toward the private good of families and individuals. After a summary of John Finnis’s explanation of the common good in Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory, the article presents an analysis of the political common good in Aquinas’s Summa theologiae and De regno. This (...) analysis shows, contrary to Finnis, that for Aquinas the political common good transcends the private good of individuals and families, that it consists in the virtuous life of the political multitude, and that the family is insufficient to lead men to virtue apart from the civitas. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.1 (Spring 2013): 133–155. (shrink)

John Earman’s book is divided into two parts. In part 1 he argues that Hume’s essay “Of Miracles” is mostly unoriginal and, even where original, falls far short of Hume’s claim to provide “an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures.” Part 2 contains a selection of primary texts providing the context of the eighteenth-century debate over miracles, including a nice selection of Hume’s contemporary critics.

Philip Devine argues for a return to natural law as the best, and perhaps only, solution to the current moral crisis that threatens to undermine modern life. Natural law, however, needs updating. To this end, he proposes a natural law theory that “assimilates some post-Kantian epistemological insights”. Such a theory will appeal not only to believing Christians but also to atheists, feminists, and citizens of modern liberal democracy. While agreeing with many of the conclusions of Aristotle and Aquinas, his theory (...) has the advantage of presupposing neither the existence of God nor a naturally knowable moral code. (shrink)