The Calvinist International
We haven’t had a Hemmingsen post in a while, and I know how it has made you pine. Fret not; I’m here for you. In their discussion of the virtues, the magisterial Reformers followed the classical tradition in considering religion to fall under the category of, or to be a part of, justice, which can […]
I recently wrote about Steven D. Smith’s arguments in The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, and more specifically, about how he demonstrates the vacuity of many of the Western world’s central political buzzwords, such as equality and freedom. In the course of his critique of Martha Nussbaum, he mentions another one that I thought deserved its own […]
Steven D. Smith’s The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse is one of the most piercing works in political philosophy I’ve read in a long while. Though it’s brief, by the end of it Smith has turned inside out some of the modern Western world’s most repeated fundamental values, and shown that appeals to them are actually […]
Dr. Feser has been writing on the doctrine of hell and punishment these days. I wanted to highlight some very useful arguments he makes connecting punishment to natural law. He says in his recent post, “Does God damn you?“: Now, given what has been said, happiness – which is, again, the realization of the ends […]
In De Civitate Dei, book XIX chapter 27, Augustine of Hippo makes the following statement about the attainment of peace for individuals, and the justice that comes with this. The key is the obedience of man to God’s commands. In this life, therefore, justice in each individual exists when God rules and man obeys, and when […]
I appreciated Andrew Fulford’s recent essay on the relationship between the classic Protestant understanding of supererogatory works and civil polity. He gets down to the basic theological and philosophical distinctions that the older Protestant thinkers made regarding law, justice, charity, and the political life of the commonwealth. However, I was left feeling that Mr. Fulford had […]
Today we go back in time to Cicero’s Laws 1.42-5. There he elucidates the necessary foundation for positive law, which is justice. Without it, there is merely opinion and power. Laws are not ultimately “established” by will and the decisions of the powerful. If they were, one could say that there is a “right” to theft, […]
For Niels Hemmingsen in the De lege naturae, as for the classical tradition in general, “religion” is one part of the more general, and chief, virtue of justice. Without it, he says, there is no trust between men, no fellowship between men–indeed, no justice at all. “No justice, no peace” is a popular protest saying; […]
About 33 years ago Peter Westen wrote a seminal article for the Harvard Law Review, “The Empty Idea of Equality”. Though he uncovered some profound flaws in the way modern legal discourse conceptualizes the term, to this day none of his warnings have been heeded. The following will summarize some of the more perennial aspects […]
The About page of TCI describes one aspect of our activity, which we aim to continue: Working from the political philosophy of the Reformers, we have begun to turn the conversation from “high church” to “high commonwealth,” caring for the city and providing for non-apocalyptic solutions to civic concerns. One recent book on what one […]