• Hobbes on Law as Command of the Sovereign
    In Aloysius Martinich & Kinch Hoekstra (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes, Oxford University Press. 2013.
    Both Thomas Hobbes and John Austin identify civil law with commands issued by a sovereign; thus it is common to think of Austin’s theory of law as closely continuous with Hobbes’s view. Yet this “command of the sovereign” formulation masks deep differences between Hobbes and Austin, not only in their understandings of command and sovereign but also in the commitments that gave rise to their offering theories of law formulated in these terms. Nor is it correct to think that innovations in Hobbes’…Read more
  •  4
    No abstract available.
  •  7
    What is Justice?: Classic and Contemporary Readings (edited book)
    with Robert C. Solomon
    Oxford University Press USA. 1990.
    What is Justice? Classic and Contemporary Readings, 2/e, brings together many of the most prominent and influential writings on the topic of justice, providing an exceptionally comprehensive introduction to the subject. It places special emphasis on "social contract" theories of justice, both ancient and modern, culminating in the monumental work of John Rawls and various responses to his work. It also deals with questions of retributive justice and punishment, topics that are often excluded fro…Read more
  • Review (review)
    The Thomist 72 167-171. 2008.
  • Freedom: No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed
    with Ken Knisely, Larry Hatab, and David Walsh
    DVD. forthcoming.
    From Locke to Kierkegaard to those annoying car ads that promise “No Boundaries”— Is our use of the word 'freedom' still coherent? Was it ever coherent? Is it significant that this fuzzy term is so often used to carry so much rhetorical force? With Larry Hatab , David Walsh , and Mark Murphy
  •  2
    The natural law tradition in ethics
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2019.
  • Theological voluntarism
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2019. 2019.
  •  2
    Review of Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Morality Without God (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (8). 2009.
  •  13
    The Difference Holiness Makes
    Journal of Analytic Theology 11 470-488. 2023.
    Terence Cuneo & Jada Twedt Strabbing, Samuel Fleischacker, Jonathan Rutledge & Jordan Wessling, and Sameer Yadav have generously engaged with the accounts of divine holiness and its implications offered in my _Divine Holiness and Divine Action_ (2021), criticizing its arguments and in some cases offering attractive alternative accounts. Here I respond to some of their criticisms.
  •  17
    Précis of Divine Holiness and Divine Action
    Journal of Analytic Theology 11 404-410. 2023.
    This article is a précis of Mark C. Murphy’s _Divine Holiness and Divine Action_ (Oxford University Press, 2021), which offers an account of God’s holiness and of the difference this view of God’s holiness should make to our understanding of divine action.
  •  10
    The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings (edited book)
    with Leslie Green, Kent Greenawalt, Nancy J. Hirschmann, George Klosko, John Rawls, Joseph Raz, Rolf Sartorius, A. John Simmons, M. B. E. Smith, Philip Soper, Jeremy Waldron, Richard A. Wasserstrom, and Robert Paul Wolff
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1998.
    The question 'Why should I obey the law?' introduces a contemporary puzzle that is as old as philosophy itself. The puzzle is especially troublesome if we think of cases in which breaking the law is not otherwise wrongful, and in which the chances of getting caught are negligible. Philosophers from Socrates to H.L.A. Hart have struggled to give reasoned support to the idea that we do have a general moral duty to obey the law but, more recently, the greater number of learned voices has expressed …Read more
  •  12
    Is Goodness Without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics
    with Louise Antony, William Lane Craig, John Hare, Donald C. Hubin, Paul Kurtz, C. Stephen Layman, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Richard Swinburne
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2008.
    Is Goodness Without God Good Enough contains a lively debate between William Lane Craig and Paul Kurtz on the relationship between God and ethics, followed by seven new essays that both comment on the debate and advance the broader discussion of this important issue. Written in an accessible style by eminent scholars, this book will appeal to students and academics alike.
  •  4
    Innocence Lost: An Examination of Inescapable Moral Wrongdoing
    Philosophical Books 37 (1): 61-63. 2009.
  •  4
    Review: Natural law modernized (review)
    Mind 111 (444): 833-837. 2002.
  • Two unhappy dilemmas for natural law jurisprudence
    In George Duke & Robert P. George (eds.), The Cambridge companion to natural law jurisprudence, Cambridge University Press. 2017.
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    On the Superiority of Divine Legislation Theory to Divine Command Theory
    Faith and Philosophy 39 (3): 346-365. forthcoming.
    The view that human law can be analyzed in terms of commands was subjected to devastating criticism by H. L. A. Hart in his 1961 The Concept of Law. Two objections that Hart levels against the command theory of law also make serious trouble for divine command theory. Divine command theorists would do well to jettison command as the central concept of their moral theory and, following Hart’s lead, instead appeal to the concept of a rule. Such a successor view—divine legislation theory—has the …Read more
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    From the Editor
    Faith and Philosophy 37 (4): 397-398. 2020.
  •  63
    No Creaturely Intrinsic Value
    Philosophia Christi 20 (2): 347-355. 2018.
    In Robust Ethics, Erik Wielenberg criticizes all theistic ethical theories that explain creaturely value in terms of God on the basis that all such formulations of theistic ethics are committed to the denial of the existence of creaturely intrinsic value. Granting Wielenberg’s claim that such theistic theories are committed to the denial of creaturely intrinsic value, this article considers whether theists should take such a denial to be an objectionable commitment of their views. I argue that t…Read more
  •  50
    An Essay on Divine Authority
    Cornell University Press. 2018.
    In the first book wholly concerned with divine authority, Mark C. Murphy explores the extent of God's rule over created rational beings. The author challenges the view—widely supported by theists and nontheists alike—that if God exists, then humans must be bound by an obligation of obedience to this being. He demonstrates that this view, the "authority thesis," cannot be sustained by any of the arguments routinely advanced on its behalf, including those drawn from perfect being theology, metaeth…Read more
  • Practical Reality (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 55 (2): 388-389. 2001.
    The central thought of Jonathan Dancy’s Practical Reality is that any philosophically adequate account of reasons for action has to preserve the sense of the idea that agents can act for good reasons. Though platitudinous enough, this notion embodies the central difficulty faced in the theory of reasons for action: that the notion of a reason for action serves two roles, that of explaining action and that of justifying it. It is sometimes suggested that there is mere ambiguity here: there are mo…Read more
  •  3
    From the Editor
    Faith and Philosophy 36 (1): 3-3. 2019.
  •  379
    Divine Rationality, Divine Morality, and Divine Love: A Response to Jordan
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (4): 203-211. 2018.
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    Mark C. Murphy addresses the question of how God's ethics differs from human ethics. Murphy suggests that God is not subject to the moral norms to which we humans are subject. This has immediate implications for the argument from evil: we cannot assume that an absolutely perfect being is in any way bound to prevent the evils of this world.
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    Surrender of Judgment and the Consent Theory of Political Authority
    Law and Philosophy 16 (2): 115-143. 1997.
    The aim of this paper is to take the first steps toward providing a refurbished consent theory of political authority, one that rests in part on a reconception of the relationship between the surrender of judgment and the authoritativeness of political institutions. On the standard view, whatever grounds political authority implies that one ought to surrender one's judgment to that of one's political institutions. On the refurbished view, it is the surrender of one's judgment – which can plausib…Read more
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    FINNIS ON NATURE, REASON, GOD: Mark C. Murphy
    Legal Theory 13 (3-4): 187-209. 2007.
    It is often claimed that John Finnis's natural law theory is detachable from the ultimate theistic explanation that he offers in the final chapter of Natural Law and Natural Rights. My aim in this paper is to think through the question of the detachability of Finnis's theistic explanation of the natural law from the remainder of his natural law view, both in Natural Law and Natural Rights and beyond. I argue that Finnis's theistic explanation of the natural law as actually presented can be, with…Read more
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    The Conscience Principle
    Journal 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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    Introduction of the Aquinas Medalist Alasdair MacIntyre
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 84 19-21. 2010.