Ultimate Normative Foundations

Rose Mary Hayden Lemmons is associate professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Ultimate Normative Foundations: The Case for Personalist Natural Law Across the Globe explores the indefeasibility and universality of certain moral obligations and proscriptions. Rose Mary Hayden Lemmons defends the personalist natural law formulated by Aquinas as a normative foundation that is able to both meet those objections and specify interpersonal obligations as well as juridical obligations concerning inalienable rights, religious liberty, and Just War theory. Academics concerned with philosophy, theology, or law will find this book indispensable.

Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Introduction Part 3 Part One. Problematic Sources of Normativity Chapter 4 Chapter One. Rational Intuitionism: Ross or Maritain Chapter 5 Chapter Two. Human or Divine Will: Kantianism or Divine Prescriptivism Chapter 6 Chapter Three. Natural Inclinations as a Voluntarist Naturalism Chapter 7 Chapter Four. Indispensable Social Goods Chapter 8 Chapter Five. Autonomous Virtues Chapter 9 Chapter Six. Eudaimonic Pluralism (the GBF Paradigm) Part 10 Part Two. Thomistic Normativity Chapter 11 Chapter Seven. Aquinas on Truth, Goodness, and Eudaimonia Chapter 12 Chapter Eight. Privileging the Love Precepts Part 13 Part Three. Thomistic Puzzles Chapter 14 Chapter Nine. Basic Questions and Responses Chapter 15 Chapter Ten. Whether Personalist Natural Law is a Thomistic Abomination? Part 16 Part Four. Classical and Contemporary Metaethical Challenges Chapter 17 Chapter Eleven. Challenges to Natural Law's Normativity, Objectivity, and Specificity Chapter 18 Chapter Twelve. The Challenges of Agnostic and Athestic Moral Eudaimonism Chapter 19 Chapter Thirteen. The Challenges of Voluntarist Liberty, and the Nietzschean Will to Power Part 20 Part Five. Love Precepts: Their Normativity and Specifications Chapter 21 Chapter Fourteen. Love's Normativity, and Love's Virtues Chapter 22 Chapter Fifteen. Neighborly Love: Personalist and Juridical Obligations Chapter 23 Chapter Sixteen. Loving God: Proportional Obligations Chapter 24 Chapter Seventeen. Updating the Parameters of War and Punishment With Love Part 25 Part Six. Global Challenges and Thomistic Responses Chapter 26 Chapter Eighteen. The Reality of Moral Diversity Chapter 27 Chapter Nineteen. The Globe, Feminism, and Aquinas Chapter 28 Chapter Twenty. Personalist Natural Law: Normative Advantages Chapter 29 Conclusion Chapter 30 Appendix. A Historical Sketch of Natural Law