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5Natural Law and Moral Philosophy (review)American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71 (4): 635-638. 1997.
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55Suárez’s “Best Argument” and the Dependence of Morality on GodQuaestiones Disputatae 5 (1): 30-42. 2014.I want to begin by expressing misgivings about a standard way of making out a claim for the dependence of morality on God, misgivings that I do not have about a somewhat less standard way of arguing for this dependence. I will then consider a guiding maxim for how to proceed along this less standard way, a maxim that I draw from Suárez’s account of the relationship between divine activity and the activity of secondary causes. I then sketch one way of conceiving the dependence of morality on God …Read more
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45Pruss on the Requirement of Universal LoveRoczniki Filozoficzne 63 (3): 21-30. 2015.Throughout his excellent book One Body, Alex Pruss relies upon the view that there is a requirement of universal love: each and every one of us is required to love each and every one of us. Although he often appeals to revealed truth in making arguments for his various theses, he supports the requirement of universal love primarily through a philosophical argument, an argument that I call the “argument from responsiveness to value.” The idea is that all persons bear a sort of nonrelational value…Read more
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1Philosophical Anarchism and the Possibility of Political ObligationDissertation, University of Notre Dame. 1993.Philosophical anarchism is the thesis that there is no moral requirement to obey the law. I challenge philosophical anarchism by showing that there is a consent account of political obligation, two proponents of which are Hobbes and Aquinas, that manages to avoid criticisms leveled by the philosophical anarchists against consent theories as a class. ;The philosophical anarchists purport to have refuted every plausible account of political obligation; they also claim that no important practical c…Read more
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8Introduction to Alasdair MacIntyreIn Alasdair Macintyre, Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-9. 2003.
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106 Maclntyre's Political PhilosophyIn Alasdair Macintyre, Cambridge University Press. pp. 152. 2003.
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Natural Law, Impartialism, and Others’ GoodThe Thomist 60 (1): 53-80. 1996.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NATURAL LAW, IMPARTIALISM, AND OTHERS' GOOD* MARK C. MURPHY Georgetown University Washington, D.C. The title of a recent article by Henry Veatch and Joseph Rautenberg asks "Does the Grisez-Finnis-Boyle Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?'"; the answer that the text of that article produces is, unsurprisingly, "Yes." Veatch and Rautenberg argue that despite superficial similarities between the moral theory defended by Germain Grisez, …Read more
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13Innocence Lost: An Examination of Inescapable Moral WrongdoingPhilosophical Books 37 (1): 61-63. 1996.
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132Restricted Theological VoluntarismPhilosophy Compass 7 (10): 679-690. 2012.In addressing objections to the theological voluntarist program, the consensus response by defenders of theological voluntarism has been to affirm a restricted theological voluntarism on which some, but not all, important normative statuses are to be explained by immediate appeal to the divine will. The aim of this article is to assess the merits and demerits of this restricted view. While affirming the restricted view does free theological voluntarism from certain objections, it comes at the co…Read more
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44Hobbes on Tacit CovenantsHobbes Studies 7 (1): 69-94. 1994.Tacit consent theories of political obligation have fallen into disfavor. The difficulties that plague such accounts have been well-known since Hume's "Of the Original Contract"1 and have recently been forcefully reformulated by M. B. E. Smith, A. John Simmons, and Joseph Raz.2 In this article, though, I shall argue that Hobbes' version of the argument from tacit consent escapes the criticisms leveled by Hume, Smith, Simmons, and Raz against tacit consent theories as a class. Crucial to my defen…Read more
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43Functioning and FlourishingProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 73 193-206. 1999.
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58Morality and divine authorityIn Thomas P. Flint & Michael C. Rea (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophical theology, Oxford University Press. 2008.This article examines morality and divine authority in the context of the question of whether God – that is, God's existence, nature, or activity – explains morality. It begins with some clarifying remarks about the meaning of ‘God’, ‘morality’, and ‘explains’. The article then evaluates the Theistic Explanation of Morality: for every moral fact, there is some fact about God that explains it. Defences of this thesis might appeal to rather different sorts of relationship between moral and theisti…Read more
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94The Common GoodReview of Metaphysics 59 (1): 133-164. 2005.NATURAL LAW ARGUMENTS CONCERNING the political order characteristically appeal, at some point or other, to the common good of the political community. To take the clearest example: Aquinas, perhaps the paradigmatic natural law theorist, appeals to the common good in his accounts of the definition of law, of the need for political authority, of the moral requirement to adhere to the dictates issued by political authority, and of the form political authority should take. But while united on the po…Read more
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86Natural Law in Jurisprudence and PoliticsCambridge University Press. 2006.Natural law is a perennial though poorly represented and understood issue in political philosophy and the philosophy of law. In this 2006 book, Mark C. Murphy argues that the central thesis of natural law jurisprudence - that law is backed by decisive reasons for compliance - sets the agenda for natural law political philosophy, demonstrating how law gains its binding force by way of the common good of the political community. Murphy's work ranges over the central questions of natural law jurisp…Read more
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31Hobbes on Conscientious DisobedienceArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 77 (3): 263-284. 1995.In _Leviathan Hobbes offers an argument for the conclusion that one is bound to obey one's sovereign even when one judges that obedience to the sovereign's command would require one to disobey a law of God. The basis for Hobbes's argument is his contention that the covenant that institutes sovereignty includes the renunciation of the right to act in accordance with one's private conscience. In this paper I show that Hobbes's argument fails because one that takes the law of the sovereign to be co…Read more
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258Divine Command, Divine Will, and Moral ObligationFaith and Philosophy 15 (1): 3-27. 1998.In this article I consider the respective merits of three interpretations of divine command theory. On DCT1, S’s being morally obligated to φ depends on God’s command that S φ; on DCT2, that moral obligation depends on God’s willing that S be morally obligated to φ; on DCT3, that moral obligation depends on God’s willing that S φ. I argue that the positive reasons that have been brought forward in favor of DCT1 have implications theists would find disturbing and that the positive reasons brought…Read more
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44Reply to AlmeidaReligious Studies 40 (3): 335-339. 2004.Michael J. Almeida offers two criticisms of the argument of my ‘A trilemma for divine command theory’. The first criticism is that I mistakenly assume the validity of the following inference pattern: property A is identical to property B; property B supervenes on property C; therefore, property A supervenes on property C. The second criticism is that I have misinterpreted the moral-supervenience thesis upon which I rely in making this argument. The first of Almeida's criticisms is completely unt…Read more
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Alasdair Macintyre (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2003.The contribution to contemporary philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre is enormous. His writings on ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of the social sciences and the history of philosophy have established him as one of the philosophical giants of the last fifty years. His best-known book, After Virtue, spurred the profound revival of virtue ethics. Moreover, MacIntyre, unlike so many of his contemporaries, has exerted a deep influence beyond the bourns of academic philos…Read more
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214Not Penal Substitution but Vicarious PunishmentFaith and Philosophy 26 (3): 253-273. 2009.The penal substitution account of the Atonement fails for conceptual reasons: punishment is expressive action, condemning the party punished, and so is not transferable from a guilty to an innocent party. But there is a relative to the penal substitution view, the vicarious punishment account, that is neither conceptually nor morally objectionable. On this view, the guilty person’s punishment consists in the suffering of an innocent to whom he or she bears a special relationship. Sinful humanity…Read more
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6Hobbes' Shortsightedness Account of ConflictSouthern Journal of Philosophy 31 (2): 239-253. 2010.
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96The Conscience PrincipleJournal of Philosophical Research 22 387-407. 1997.My aim is to defend the conscience principle: One ought never to act against the dictates of one’s conscience. In the first part of this paper, I explain what I mean by “conscience” and “dictate of conscience,” and I show that the notion that the conscience principle is inherently anti-authoritarian or inherently fanatical is mistaken. In the second part, I argue that the existence of mistaken conscience does not reduce the conscience principle to absurdity. In the third part, I present two argu…Read more
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81Divine authority and divine perfectionInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 49 (3): 155-177. 2001.
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20Philosophy of lawBlackwell. 2007.The Philosophy of Law is a broad-reaching text that guides readers through the basic analytical and normative issues in the field, highlighting key historical and contemporary thinkers and offering a unified treatment of the various issues in the philosophy of law. Enlivened with numerous, everyday examples to illustrate various concepts of law. Employs the idea of three central commonplaces about law - that law is a social matter, that law is authoritative, and that law is for the common good -…Read more