Natural Law Modernized

Jay Newman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. His
most recently published works include Biblical Religion and Family
Values: A Problem in the Philosophy of Culture, Competition in Religious
Life, Religion vs. Television: Competitors

Political philosopher David Braybrooke turns here to medieval natural
law theory, particularly that of St. Thomas Aquinas. Disagreeing with
those who regard this theory as a quaint artifact of a distant culture,
Braybrooke argues that the core of the theory was substantial enough to
be salvaged and refined by the most influential early modern political
philosophers—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Hume. He proposes that it
remains, in its essentials, viable even today, and draws attention to
themes in David Copp’s work. But unlike Finnis, Grisez, and other
Thomist philosophers, Braybrooke sanctions divesting Aquinas’s natural
law theory of its distinctive theological features. Though some
Christian moralists may be pleased to see a favorite theory defended by
an accomplished analytical philosopher with apparently hardly any
religious sensibility, many will feel that Braybrooke’s account of
natural law is a pale, attenuated version of the genuine article.

This overlong volume brings together pieces already published
elsewhere. Braybrooke has added new material, and most of the book is
unified by his effort to establish the durability and adaptability of
medieval natural law theory. Still, Braybrooke’s editors should have
encouraged him to leave out marginally relevant material on moral
education, the formalization of Hobbes’s views, and Islamic and
Chinese theories, especially since much of this material is not by
Braybrooke himself. They should also have pressed him to simplify his
overly technical presentation of Hobbes’s axiomatic system.

Braybrooke’s exposition of classic texts is sometimes illuminating,
particularly when he relates these texts to contemporary issues; but his
extraordinary devaluation of theology and religion, both in Aquinas’s
model and in culture generally, undermines his enterprise. Most
historians of philosophy already know that Aquinas greatly influenced
the early modern philosophers—including Renaissance thinkers whom
Braybrooke ignores—but indicating influences and affinities does not
by itself establish the modernity of a medieval outlook intimately
related to a theological worldview. Moreover, much that remains relevant
in medieval natural law theory is mainly the legacy of ancient Greek
political philosophers. Braybrooke’s book is suitable for libraries at
universities with graduate programs in philosophy and political science.