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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Natural-Law Judaism?: The Genesis Of Bioethics In Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss And Leon Kass, Lawrence A. Vogel May 2006

Natural-Law Judaism?: The Genesis Of Bioethics In Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss And Leon Kass, Lawrence A. Vogel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Leon Kass is much misunderstood. He is not simply a Republican ideologue who tailored his ideas to break out of the ivory tower and into the halls of power. Nor does he look simply to use human nature as a moral guide. When the full range of his writings is considered and set in the tradition of his teachers, Hans Jonas and Leo Strauss, what emerges is a natural law position colored by religious revelation.


Natural Justice, Lawrence B. Solum Jan 2006

Natural Justice, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Justice is a natural virtue. Well-functioning humans are just, as are well-ordered human societies. Roughly, this means that in a well-ordered society, just humans internalize the laws and social norms (the nomoi)--they internalize lawfulness as a disposition that guides the way they relate to other humans. In societies that are mostly well-ordered, with isolated zones of substantial dysfunction, the nomoi are limited to those norms that are not clearly inconsistent with the function of law--to create the conditions for human flourishing. In a radically dysfunctional society, humans are thrown back on their own resources--doing the best they can in …