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The Evolution of Natural Law: Toward a New Basis for Human Values (Sciencewriters)
The Evolution of Natural Law Toward a New Basis for Human Values - Sciencewriters Author:Frederick Turner At the bottom of many of our current controversies is a deep, hidden, and partly unconscious debate about natural law. — Frederick Turner updates natural law in the light of the theory of evolution. Natural law once provided a basis for our legal and moral systems; it has not been updated since before Darwin’s discoveries, and is in urgent need ... more »of repair. If this can be done, the book claims, new, surprising, and more robust foundations for law, market, and state can be found. We can address in a fresh way many of our current problems, such as abortion, cloning, gene therapy, parental morality and sexual freedom, free markets and regulation, government and the social contract, private property and public takings, environmental responsibility, human rights and religious culture, just war, the interpretation of the Constitution, and the nurture of our higher values. In a time when our nation and culture are more divided than at most times in our history, such an approach offers much common ground.
The book begins with a review of the history of the idea of natural law from Aristotle and Aquinas through Locke, Rousseau, and the American Federalists, to today. It then presents a case for the full reconciliation and consilience of religious and scientific accounts of the universe. It defends the thesis that our nomadic past is relevant to our technological present. Commonsense policies and moral norms for abortion, cloning, stem cell research, gay civil unions, etc, emerge from a good understanding of our embryonic development, our biologically inherited moral emotions, and our nature as social animals. Classic issues of political philosophy and political economy--property, government, religion and state, war, and human excellence are re-founded upon an understanding of our natural moral emotions. The book concludes by suggesting a system for the discovery and testing of natural-law principles.« less