# Retrieving the Natural Law ![rw-book-cover](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41TjYz2eUuL._SY160.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[J. Daryl Charles]] - Full Title: Retrieving the Natural Law - Category: #books ## Highlights - The positivist position holds that the state, as a collection of equally autonomous wills, establishes law qua law.35 Since there is no accountability to a "higher" law or authority, the positivist approach to legal theory is bleached of any metaphysical or moral analysis.36It assumes that law is constructed rather than discovered or preserved. ([Location 209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=209)) - Peter Singer, it will be recalled, states categorically that "membership of the human species is not morally relevant." ([Location 2087](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2087)) - abiding consensus ([Location 2092](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2092)) - Thomas Aquinas offers a definition of personhood that simultaneously ([Location 2114](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2114)) - accords with the consensus of classical philosophy and is distinctly Christian. "Person" signifies the individual substance of a rational nature. ([Location 2114](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2114)) - Humans possess an intrinsic dignity by virtue of their being human. ([Location 2117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2117)) - then their value would rise or fall according to the development or deterioration of their functions. ([Location 2118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2118)) - In historic Christian theology, the significance of the doctrine of the imago Dei is that every human creature points toward a Creator. ([Location 2154](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2154)) - The common good may be properly defined as the sum total of social conditions that allow people, whether as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment as human beings within society.e Thus, it is concerned to protect all people. ([Location 2490](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2490)) - three components to the common good: ([Location 2491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2491)) - First, the common good presupposes respect for the person as such. ([Location 2491](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2491)) - Second, the common good requires the social well-being and development of the group itself. Development is the epitome of all social duties. ([Location 2493](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2493)) - Finally, the common good requires peace, that is, the stability and security of a just order. ([Location 2495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2495)) - the thinly veiled totalitarian spirit in Western democratic nations that results from the toxic mix of democratic pluralism and moral relativism. ([Location 2497](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2497)) - "as history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism" (no. 101). Only through "obedience to universal moral normsdoes man find full confirmation of his personal uniqueness and the possibility of authentic moral growth" ([Location 2502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2502)) - Because human rights belong to persons, any discussions of "rights" are meaningless apart from a nonfluid - i.e., objective - understanding of personhood. And because one's understanding of "the common good" depends on one's view of rights, the common good in a society stands or falls on society's views of personhood and rights. ([Location 2504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2504)) - philosopher-activist Peter Singer. ([Location 2864](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2864)) - "culture of death," ([Location 2866](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2866)) - John Paul II, who has articulated with considerable eloquence a "culture of life." ([Location 2866](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2866)) - lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of living") in German academic thought that occurred in the forty-year period roughly between 1890 and 1933, ([Location 2902](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2902)) - totalitarian tendencies require preparation. ([Location 2903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2903)) - "right-to-die" ([Location 2925](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2925)) - Ernst Haeckel. In 1899 ([Location 2928](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2928)) - Wilhelm Ostwald. ([Location 2931](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2931)) - In his 1895 book Das Recht auf den Tod (The Right to Death) '29 Jost set forth the argument - almost forty years in advance of Nazi prescriptions - that the "right" to kill existed in the context of the higher rights possessed by the state, since all individuals belonged to the social organism of the state. ([Location 2932](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2932)) - Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens: Ihr Mass and ihre Form,33 ([Location 2944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2944)) - Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche.34 ([Location 2945](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2945)) - Binding-Hoche ([Location 2947](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2947)) - "no longer merits full legal protection."37 ([Location 2949](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2949)) - "life unworthy of living" had a therapeutic goal. ([Location 2951](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2951)) - Notice how Binding's argument proceeds. "Natural law," having been bleached of its metaphysical basis, becomes the grounds for a "right" to kill those who suffer. What's more, the right of persons to kill themselves is to be protected legally.44 Moreover, this "right" is "transferable" to "all so-called accomplices who act with the suicide's express consent" ("Permission," 236-37).45 ([Location 2967](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2967)) - In truth it is a purely healing act' ([Location 2971](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2971)) - "the hopelessly ill" ([Location 2974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=2974)) - Rights, in their purest form, go beyond charity, which is to be understood as voluntary aid to others. A "right to die" would obligate others, involuntarily, to aid or in some way support acts that are deemed morally repugnant. ([Location 3068](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001GIOC4K&location=3068))