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Philosophical Challenges

Standing objections to the Thomistic account of reality, stated in their strongest form and answered from the manuals. Each piece takes a question that was worth asking a century ago and will still be worth asking a century from now, and works it through to the branch where Glenn treats it in full.

psychology

The Human Person

What kind of thing a human being is — soul, intellect, will — and what follows from the answer.

When Does a Human Being Become a Person?

Abortion debates stall on competing intuitions because they skip the prior question. Natural law argues that personhood tracks what a being is by nature, not which capacities it happens to be exercising — and then has to meet the bodily autonomy argument on its own terms.

school Ethics · Philosophical Psychology

balance

The Moral Life

How natural law reasons about action: ends, intentions, and the acts a good end never licenses.

Is Assisted Dying an Act of Compassion?

Not compassion against cruelty, but two accounts of what compassion requires when a life is ending. Why the tradition distinguishes intending death from foreseeing it, and where the argument from autonomy proves too much.

school Ethics

groups

Society & the State

Authority, the common good, and the claims a political community may and may not make.

What Is Government For?

Subsidiarity and solidarity, and why the pair rules out both the minimal state and the state as default provider. Neither principle hands down a policy; together they change what the argument is about.

school Social Philosophy

Does a Nation Have a Right to Control Who Enters It?

Is restricting a border an injustice toward migrants, or an act of justice toward the community receiving them? Natural law argues it can be either, depending on how it is done — and leaves the numbers to prudence rather than principle.

school Social Philosophy · Ethics

4 questions answered. More are added as they are written — see recently added.