Marriage and The Matrix

Suppose a bizarre skeptic seriously proposed -- not as a joke, not as dorm room bull session fodder, but seriously -- that you, he, and everyone else were part of a computer-generated virtual reality like the one featured in the science-fiction movie The Matrix.  Suppose he easily shot down the arguments you initially thought sufficient to refute him.  He might point out, for instance, that your appeals to what we know from common sense and science have no force, since they are (he insists) just part of the Matrix-generated illusion.  Suppose many of your friends were so impressed by this skeptic’s ability to defend his strange views -- and so unimpressed by your increasingly flustered responses -- that they came around to his side.  Suppose they got annoyed with you for not doing the same, and started to question your rationality and even your decency.  Your adherence to commonsense realism in the face of the skeptic’s arguments is, they say, just irrational prejudice.

No doubt you would think the world had gone mad, and you’d be right.  But you would still find it difficult to come up with arguments that would convince the skeptic and his followers.  The reason is not that their arguments are rationally and evidentially superior to yours, but on the contrary because they are so subversive of all rationality and evidence -- indeed, far more subversive than the skeptic and his followers themselves realize -- that you’d have trouble getting your bearings, and getting the skeptics to see that they had lost theirs.  If the skeptic were correct, not even his own arguments would be any good -- their apparent soundness could be just another illusion generated by the Matrix, making the whole position self-undermining.  Nor could he justifiably complain about your refusing to agree with him, nor take any delight in your friends’ agreement, since for all he knew both you and they might be Matrix-generated fictions anyway.

So, the skeptic’s position is ultimately incoherent.  But rhetorically he has an advantage.  With every move you try to make, he can simply refuse to concede the assumptions you need in order to make it, leaving you constantly scrambling to find new footing.  He will in the process be undermining his own position too, because his skepticism is so radical it takes down everything, including what he needs in order to make his position intelligible.  But it will be harder to see this at first, because he is playing offense and you are playing defense.  It falsely seems that you are the one making all the controversial assumptions whereas he is assuming nothing.  Hence, while your position is in fact rationally superior, it is the skeptic’s position that will, perversely, appear to be rationally superior.  People bizarrely give him the benefit of the doubt and put the burden of proof on you.

This, I submit, is the situation defenders of traditional sexual morality are in vis-à-vis the proponents of “same-sex marriage.”  The liberal position is a kind of radical skepticism, a calling into question of something that has always been part of common sense, viz. that marriage is inherently heterosexual.  Like belief in the reality of the external world -- or in the reality of the past, or the reality of other minds, or the reality of change, or any other part of common sense that philosophical skeptics have challenged -- what makes the claim in question hard to justify is not that it is unreasonable, but, on the contrary, that it has always been regarded as a paradigm of reasonableness.  Belief in the external world (or the past, or other minds, or change, etc.) has always been regarded as partially constitutive of rationality.  Hence, when some philosophical skeptic challenges it precisely in the name of rationality, the average person doesn’t know what to make of the challenge.  Disoriented, he responds with arguments that seem superficial, question-begging, dogmatic, or otherwise unimpressive.  Similarly, heterosexuality has always been regarded as constitutive of marriage.  Hence, when someone proposes that there can be such a thing as same-sex marriage, the average person is, in this case too, disoriented, and responds with arguments that appear similarly unimpressive.

Like the skeptic about the external world (or the past, or other minds, or change, etc.) the “same-sex marriage” advocate typically says things he has no right to say consistent with his skeptical arguments.  For example, if “same-sex marriage” is possible, why not incestuous marriage, or group marriage, or marriage to an animal, or marriage to a robot, or marriage to oneself?  A more radical application of the “same-sex marriage” advocate’s key moves can always be deployed by a yet more radical skeptic in order to defend these proposals.  Yet “same-sex marriage” advocates typically deny that they favor such proposals.  If appeal to the natural ends or proper functions of our faculties has no moral significance, then why should anyone care about whether anyone’s arguments -- including arguments either for or against “same-sex marriage” -- are any good?  The “same-sex marriage” advocate can hardly respond “But finding and endorsing sound arguments is what reason is for!”, since he claims that what our natural faculties and organs are naturally foris irrelevant to how we might legitimately choose to use them.  Indeed, he typically denies that our faculties and organs, or anything else for that matter, are really for anything.  Teleology, he claims, is an illusion.  But then it is an illusion that reason itself is really for anything, including arriving at truth.  In which case the “same-sex marriage” advocate has no business criticizing others for giving “bigoted” or otherwise bad arguments.  (Why shouldn’t someone give bigoted arguments if reason does not have truth as its natural end?  What if someone is just born with an orientation toward giving bigoted arguments?)  If the “same-sex marriage” advocate appeals to current Western majority opinion vis-à-vis homosexuality as a ground for his condemnation of what he labels “bigotry,” then where does he get off criticizing past Western majority opinion vis-à-vis homosexuality, or current non-Western moral opinion vis-à-vis homosexuality?   Etc. etc.

So, the “same-sex marriage” advocate’s position is ultimately incoherent.  Pushed through consistently, it takes down everything, including itself.  But rhetorically it has the same advantages as Matrix-style skepticism.  The “same-sex marriage” advocate is playing offense, and only calling things into doubt -- albeit selectively and inconsistently -- rather than putting forward any explicit positive position of his own, so that it falsely seemsthat it is only his opponent who is making controversial assumptions. 

Now, no one thinks the average person’s inability to give an impressive response to skepticism about the external world (or about the reality of the past, or other minds, etc.) makes it irrational for him to reject such skepticism.  And as it happens, even most highly educated people have difficulty adequately responding to external world skepticism.  If you ask the average natural scientist, or indeed even the average philosophy professor, to explain to you how to refute Cartesian skepticism, you’re not likely to get an answer that a clever philosopher couldn’t poke many holes in.  You almost have to be a philosopher who specializes in the analysis of radical philosophical skepticism really to get at the heart of what is wrong with it.  The reason is that such skepticism goes so deep in its challenge to our everyday understanding of notions like rationality, perception, reality, etc. that only someone who has thought long and carefully about those very notions is going to be able to understand and respond to the challenge.  The irony is that it turns out, then, that very few people can give a solid, rigorous philosophical defense of what everyone really knows to be true.  But it hardly follows that the commonsense belief in the external world can be rationally held only by those few people.

The same thing is true of the average person’s inability to give an impressive response to the “same-sex marriage” advocate’s challenge.  It is completely unsurprising that this should be the case, just as it is unsurprising that the average person lacks a powerful response to the Matrix-style skeptic.  In fact, as with commonsense realism about the external world, so too with traditional sexual morality, in the nature of the case relatively few people -- basically, traditional natural law theorists -- are going to be able to set out the complete philosophical defense of what the average person has, traditionally, believed.  But it doesn’t follow that the average person can’t be rational in affirming traditional sexual morality.  (For an exposition and defense of the traditional natural law approach, see “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument,” in Neo-Scholastic Essays.) 

Indeed, the parallel with the Matrix scenario is even closer than what I’ve said so far suggests, for the implications of “same-sex marriage” are very radically skeptical.  The reason is this: We cannot make sense of the world’s being intelligible at all, or of the human intellect’s ability to understand it, unless we affirm a classical essentialist and teleological metaphysics.  But applying that metaphysics to the study of human nature entails a classical natural law understanding of ethics.  And that understanding of ethics in turn yields, among other things, a traditional account of sexual morality that rules out “same-sex marriage” in principle.  Hence, to defend “same-sex marriage” you have to reject natural law, which in turn requires rejecting a classical essentialist and teleological metaphysics, which in turn undermines the possibility of making intelligible either the world or the mind’s ability to understand it.  (Needles to say, these are large claims, but I’ve defended them all at length in various places.  For interested readers, the best place to start is, again, with the Neo-Scholastic Essays article.) 

Obviously, though, the radically skeptical implications are less direct in the case of “same-sex marriage” than they are in the Matrix scenario, which is why most people don’t see them.  And there is another difference.  There are lots of people who believe in “same-sex marriage,” but very few people who seriously entertain the Matrix hypothesis.  But imagine there was some kind of intense sensory pleasure associated with pretending that you were in the Matrix.  Suppose also that some people just had, for whatever reason -- environmental influences, heredity, or whatever -- a deep-seated tendency to take pleasure in the idea that they were living in a Matrix-style reality.  Then, I submit, lots of people would insist that we take the Matrix scenario seriously and some would even accuse those who scornfully rejected the idea of being insensitive bigots.  (Compare the points made in a recent post in which I discussed the special kind of irrationality people are prone to where sex is concerned, due to the intense pleasure associated with it.)

So, let’s add to my original scenario this further supposition -- that you are not only surrounded by people who take the Matrix theory seriously and scornfully dismiss your arguments against it, but some of them have a deep-seated tendency to take intense sensory pleasure in the idea that they live in the Matrix.  That, I submit, is the situation defenders of traditional sexual morality are in vis-à-vis the proponents of “same-sex marriage.”   Needless to say, it’s a pretty bad situation to be in.

But it’s actually worse even than that.  For suppose our imagined Matrix skeptic and his followers succeeded in intimidating a number of corporations into endorsing and funding their campaign to get the Matrix theory widely accepted, to propagandize for it in movies and television shows, etc.  Suppose mobs of Matrix theorists occasionally threatened to boycott or even burn down bakeries, restaurants, etc. which refused to cater the meetings of Matrix theorists.  Suppose they stopped even listening to the defenders of commonsense realism, but just shouted “Bigot!  Bigot!  Bigot!” in response to any expression of disagreement.  Suppose the Supreme Court of the United States declared that agreement with the Matrix theory is required by the Constitution, and opined that adherence to commonsense realism stems from an irrational animus against Matrix theorists. 

In fact, the current position of opponents of “same-sex marriage” is worse even than that.  Consider once again your situation as you try to reason with Matrix theorists and rebut their increasingly aggressive attempts to impose their doctrine via economic and political force.  Suppose that as you look around, you notice that some of your allies are starting to slink away from the field of battle.  One of them says: “Well, you know, we have sometimes been very insulting to believers in the Matrix theory.  Who can blame them for being angry at us?  Maybe we should focus more on correcting our own attitudes and less on changing their minds.”  Another suggests: “Maybe we’ve been talking too much about this debate between the Matrix theory and commonsense realism.  We sound like we’re obsessed with it.  Maybe we should talk about something else instead, like poverty or the environment.”  A third opines: “We can natter on about philosophy all we want, but the bottom line is that scripture says that the world outside our minds is real.  The trouble is that we’ve gotten away from the Bible.  Maybe we should withdraw into our own faith communities and just try to live our biblically-based belief in external reality the best we can.”

Needless to say, all of this is bound only to make things worse.  The Matrix theory advocate will smell blood, regarding these flaccid avowals as tacit admissions that commonsense realism about the external world really has no rational basis but is simply a historically contingent prejudice grounded in religious dogma.  And in your battle with the Matrix theorists you’ll have discovered, as many “same-sex marriage” opponents have, that iron law of politics: that when you try to fight the Evil Party you soon find that most of your allies are card-carrying members of the Stupid Party.

So, things look pretty bad.  But like the defender of our commonsense belief in the external world, the opponent of “same-sex marriage” has at least one reliable ally on his side: reality.  And reality absolutely always wins out in the end.  It always wins at least partially even in the short run -- no one ever is or could be a consistent skeptic -- and wins completely in the long run.  The trouble is just that the enemies of reality, though doomed, can do a hell of lot of damage in the meantime. 

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There’s no such thing as “natural atheology”

In his brief and (mostly) tightly argued book God, Freedom, and Evil, Alvin Plantinga writes:

[S]ome theologians and theistic philosophers have tried to give successful arguments or proofs for the existence of God.  This enterprise is called natural theology… Other philosophers, of course, have presented arguments for the falsehood of theistic beliefs; these philosophers conclude that belief in God is demonstrably irrational or unreasonable.  We might call this enterprise natural atheology.  (pp. 2-3)

Cute, huh?  Actually (and with all due respect for Plantinga), I’ve always found the expression “natural atheology” pretty annoying, even when I was an atheist.  The reason is that, given what natural theology as traditionally understood is supposed to be, the suggestion that there is a kind of bookend subject matter called “natural atheology” is somewhat inept.  (As we will see, though, Plantinga evidently does not think of natural theology in a traditional way.)

Start with the “theology” part of natural theology.  “Theology” means “the science of God,” in the Aristotelian sense of “science” -- a systematic, demonstrative body of knowledge of some subject matter in terms of its first principles.  Of course, atheists deny that there is any science of God even in this Aristotelian sense, but for present purposes that is neither here nor there.  The point is that a science is what theology traditionally claims to be, and certainly aims to be. 

Take the Scholastic theologian’s procedure.  First, arguments are developed which purport to demonstrate the existence of a first cause of things.  Next, it is argued that when we analyze what it is to be a first cause, we find that of its essence such a cause must be pure actuality rather than a mixture of act and potency, absolutely simple or non-composite, and so forth.  Third, it is then argued that when we follow out the implications of something’s being purely actual, absolutely simple, etc. and also work backward from the nature of the effect to the nature of the cause, the various divine attributes (intellect, will, power, etc.) all follow.  Then, when we consider the character of the created order as well as that of a cause which is purely actual, simple, etc., we can spell out the precise nature of God’s relationship to that order.  (For Aquinas this entails the doctrine of divine conservation and a concurrentist account of divine causality, as opposed to an occasionalist or deist account.)  And so forth.

Even someone who doubts that this sort of project can be pulled off can see its “scientific” character.  The domain studied is, of course, taken to be real, and its reality is defended via argumentation which claims to be demonstrative.  Further argumentation of a purportedly demonstrative character is put forward in defense of each component of the system, and the system is very large, purporting to give us fairly detailed knowledge not only of the existence of God, but of his essence and attributes and relation to the created order.  Moreover, the key background notions (the theory of act and potency, the analysis of causation, the metaphysics of substance, etc.) are tightly integrated into a much larger metaphysics and philosophy of nature, so that natural theology is by no means an intellectual fifth wheel, arbitrarily tacked on for merely apologetic purposes to an already complete and self-sufficient body of knowledge. 

Rather, its status as the capstone of human knowledge is clear.  The natural sciences as we understand them today (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) are grounded in principles of the philosophy of nature, whose subject matter concerns what any possible natural science must take for granted.  Philosophy of nature in turn rests on deeper principles of metaphysics, whose subject matter is being as such (rather than merely material or changeable being, which is the subject matter of philosophy of nature; and rather than the specific sort of material or changeable world that actually exists, which is the subject matter of natural science).  Natural theology, in turn, follows out the implications of the fundamental notions of philosophy of nature and metaphysics (the theory of act and potency, etc.) and offers ultimate explanations. 

Again, you don’t have to think any of this works in order to see that what it aspires to is a kind of science.  By contrast, what Plantinga calls “atheology” could not possibly be any kind of science, and doesn’t claim to be.  For the “atheologian” doesn’t claim to be studying some domain of reality and giving us systematic knowledge of it.  On the contrary, his entire aim is to show that there is no good reason to think the domain in question is real.  You can have a “science” only of what exists, not of what doesn’t exist.  Otherwise “aunicornology” would be just as much a science as ichthyology or ornithology is.  Ichthyology and ornithology are sciences because there are such things as fishes and birds, and there is systematic knowledge to be had about what fishes and birds are like.  “Aunicornology” is not a science, because there is in the strict sense no such thing as a systematic body of knowledge of the nonexistence of unicorns, or of the nonexistence of anything else for that matter.  Suppose someone denied the existence of fishes and tried to offer arguments for their nonexistence.  It would hardly follow that he is committed to practicing something called “aichthyology” in the sense of a systematic body of knowledge of the nonexistence of fish.

Note that I am not saying anything here that an atheist couldn’t agree with.  The claim is not that one couldn’t have solid arguments for atheism (though of course I don’t think there are any).  The point is rather that even if there were solid arguments, they wouldn’t give you any kind of “science” in the sense of a systematic body of knowledge of some domain of reality.  Rather, what they would do is to show that some purported domain of reality doesn’t really exist.

So, it is inept to think that if there is such a thing as theology, then there must be some bookend subject matter called “atheology” -- again, at least if we are using “theology” the way it has traditionally been understood.  Now let’s turn to the “natural” part of natural theology.  “Natural” as opposed to what?  Well, the usual answer, of course, is “natural as opposed to revealed.”  The idea is that whereas some knowledge about God and his nature is available to us because he has specially disclosed it to us through (say) the teachings of a prophet whose authority is backed by miracles -- where such knowledge constitutes “revealed theology” -- there is other knowledge about God and his nature that is available to us just by applying our natural powers of reason to understanding the world, say by reasoning from the existence of contingent things to a necessary being as their cause (or whatever).  That’s where “natural theology” comes in.

So, if that’s what natural theology is, what would “natural atheology” be?  “Natural” as opposed to what?  As opposed to “revealed atheology”?  But of course, the idea of “revealed atheology” would be absurd.  It makes no sense to say that there is such a thing as knowledge of the non-existence of God which has been revealed to us by God.  The “natural versus revealed” distinction simply doesn’t apply to anything an atheist might affirm, the way it does apply to what the theist would affirm.  So, again, it is inept to suppose that if there is such a thing as natural theology, then there must be some bookend field of study we might label “natural atheology.” 

To be sure, there is another possible reading of the “natural” in natural theology.  We might think of it on analogy with the “natural” in natural law.  The idea of natural law, of course, is the idea that what is good or bad and right or wrong for us is grounded in our nature, and that knowledge of good and bad and right and wrong can therefore be derived from the study of that nature.  So, perhaps we might also think of natural theology as knowledge of God that is available to us given our nature.  In particular, we might say that since the natural end or final cause of reason is to know the causes of things, and the ultimatecause of things is God, the ultimateend of reason is to know God.  Indeed, Scholastic thinkers like Aquinas would say exactly this.

Could there be such a thing as “natural atheology” in some parallel sense?  But that would entail that “atheology” -- denial of the existence of God -- is in some sense the natural end of reason.  And certainly no Scholastic would say that.  Plantinga himself, though he is no Scholastic, would not say that.  Indeed, I can’t think of any proponent of natural theology or revealed theology who would say that denying God’s existence is or could be the naturalend of reason.  (I suppose some of them might say that fallen reason tends toward atheism, but that’s a very different idea from the claim that the natural tendency of reason is toward atheism.)  So, once again, it’s hard to see what it could mean to describe something as “natural” atheology. 

So, the expression “natural atheology” is inept.  But is this a big deal?  Well, I don’t know if it’s a big deal, and, if so, how big exactly.  But it’s not insignificant.  Because the problem is not just that the expression is, for the reasons given, semantically awkward.  There is also a substantive issue implicit in what I’ve been saying.  The expression “natural theology” is, as what I’ve said indicates, rich in meaning.  Historically, it conveyed, and was meant to convey, something important about our knowledge of God -- again, that that knowledge is scientific in the sense described above, and that much of it can be had apart from revelation.  Plantinga’s neologism obscures all that.  Consider what else he says in the passage quoted earlier:

The natural theologian does not, typically, offer his arguments in order to convince people of God’s existence… Instead the typical function of natural theology has been to show that religious belief is rationally acceptable.  (p. 2)

The idea here seems to be that natural theology is essentially a grab bag of moves one might make in order to counter atheist accusations to the effect that belief in God is irrational.  Its point is essentially defensive, rather than something that makes a positive and fundamental contribution to human knowledge. 

Now, this might be an accurate description of the Alvin Plantinga approach to natural theology.  But it is most definitely notan accurate description of the approach taken to natural theology by pagan philosophers like Aristotle or Plotinus, medieval philosophers like Maimonides, Avicenna, and Aquinas, modern rationalists like Leibniz and Wolff, or most other proponents of natural theology historically -- who thought that the key arguments of natural theology could and should be convincing even to someone who does not initially believe that God exists, and who thought that natural theology does provide a positive, fundamental contribution to the body of human knowledge.

Now, if you think that “natural theology” is nothing more than a label for the religious believer’s unsystematic grab bag of apologetic arguments, then it is clear why you might also think that “natural atheology” is an apt label for an atheist’s own grab bag.  But from the point of view of those who endorse the traditional and much more robust understanding of natural theology, you will thereby perpetuate a mistaken understanding of what natural theology is, and obscure that older conception.  (You will also encourage the pop apologist in his bad habit of deploying any old argument he thinks might win converts, whether or not it’s actually a good argument at the end of the day -- thereby helping to perpetuate the mistaken idea that apologetics is essentially an intellectually dishonest form of rhetoric rather than genuine philosophy.  I criticized this kind of apologetics in an earlier post.)

While I’m on the subject of God, Freedom, and Evil, I might as well note a couple of other peeves.  In the introduction to the book, Plantinga alludes to:

supersophisticates among allegedly Christian theologians who proclaim the liberation of Christianity from belief in God, seeking to replace it by trust in “Being itself” or the “Ground of Being” or some such thing. (p. 1)

This appears to be a reference both to the then-trendy “Death of God theology” and to the existentialist theology of Paul Tillich.  Naturally, like Plantinga, I am not a fan of either one.  However, the derisive reference to “’Being itself’ or the ‘Ground of Being’ or some such thing” is telling.  The “some such thing” makes it sound as if “Being itself” and related notions are flakey novelties introduced by modernist theologians.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Indeed, that God is “Subsistent Being Itself” rather than merely one being alongside others is at the heart of classical theism as expressed by thinkers like Aquinas and other Scholastics.  (As I discussed in an earlier post, while Tillich’s use of these notions is highly problematic, he is merely borrowing this language, perfectly innocent in itself, from the classical tradition.)  In fact it is Plantinga’s own “theistic personalism” (to borrow Brian Davies’ label for Plantinga’s view), which rejects the core doctrines of classical theism, which is the novelty.  (I’ve discussed the stark differences between classical theism and theistic personalism in a number of posts.) 

Then there is Plantinga’s discussion in God, Freedom, and Evil of Aquinas’s Third Way.  He is very critical of the argument, but in my view badly misunderstands it.  Plantinga wonders whether, by a “necessary being,” Aquinas means one that exists in every possible world; puzzles over what it could possibly mean to say that something derives its necessity from another; accuses Aquinas of committing a quantifier shift fallacy; and so on.  As I show at pp. 90-99 of my book Aquinas, when one reads the Third Way in light of the background Aristotelian-Scholastic metaphysics Aquinas is working with, it is clear that all of this is quite misguided.  (Even J. L. Mackie’s discussion of the argument in The Miracle of Theismis in my view better than Plantinga’s treatment here.  Though in fairness to Plantinga, he offers a more substantive treatment in God and Other Minds.) 

None of this is meant to deny the importance of the central themes of God, Freedom, and Evil -- namely, Plantinga’s distinctive treatments of the ontological argument and of the problem of evil -- which are, of course, very clever and philosophically interesting.  But even here, Thomists and other classical theists will find much to disagree with, and it cannot be emphasized too often that the basic philosophical assumptions that inform much contemporary philosophy of religion are radically different from those that guided the greatest philosophical theists of the past.

(See also my post on Plantinga’s ontological argument, my review of his book Where the Conflict Really Lies, and my remarks on his review of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos.) 

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Love and sex roundup

Current events in the Catholic Church and in U.S. politics being as they are, it seems worthwhile to put together a roundup of blog posts and other readings on sex, romantic love, and sexual morality as they are understood from a traditional natural law perspective. 

First and foremost: My essay “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument” appears in my new anthology Neo-Scholastic Essays.  It is the lengthiest and most detailed and systematic treatment of sexual morality I have written to date.  Other things I have written on sex, romantic love, and sexual morality are best read in light of what I have to say in this essay.

A brief summary of its contents might be useful.  The essay has five sections.  After the first, which is the introduction, the second section provides an overview of traditional natural law theory and its metaphysical foundations.  The third section spells out the general approach that traditional natural law theory takes toward sex and romantic love, and shows how the key claims of traditional sexual morality vis-à-vis adultery, fornication, homosexuality, etc. follow from that approach.  As I also explain there, however, understanding certain specific aspects of traditional sexual morality (such as the absolute prohibition of contraception) requires an additional thesis, which is where the perverted faculty argument -- which is (contrary to the usual caricatures) not the whole of the traditional natural law approach to sex, but rather merely one element of it -- comes into play.  Section four provides a detailed exposition and defense of that argument, answering all of the usual objections.  Along the way, there is substantive discussion of questions about what is permitted within marital sexual relations, and it is shown that the perverted faculty argument is not as restrictive here as liberals and more rigorist moralists alike often suppose.  Finally, in the fifth section, I argue that purported alternative Catholic defenses of traditional sexual morality -- personalist arguments, and “new natural law” arguments -- are not genuine alternatives at all.  Invariably they implicitly presuppose exactly the traditional natural law “perverted faculty” reasoning that they claim to eschew.  Moreover, the “new natural law” arguments have grave deficiencies of their own.

An excerpt from this essay appeared under the title “The Role of Nature in Sexual Ethics” in The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly in 2013.  A longer excerpt was presented under the title “Natural Law and the Foundations of Sexual Ethics” in the talk I gave at the Princeton Anscombe Society in April of this year.  But those interested in seeing the complete essay should get hold of Neo-Scholastic Essays.  (I also presented some of the relevant ideas in The Last Superstition, at pp. 132-53.  But the new essay goes well beyond what I had to say there.) 

Over the years I’ve addressed various aspects of these issues here at the blog.  Here are the main posts:

The metaphysics of romantic love [A discussion of sexual desire and romantic longing from the point of view of natural law and Catholic theology]

The metaphysics of Vertigo [A philosophical and theological reflection on the nature of romantic obsession, with Hitchcock’s Vertigo as a case study]

What’s the deal with sex? Part I [On three aspects of sex which clearly give it special moral significance, contra contemporary “ethicists” like Peter Singer]

What’s the deal with sex? Part II [A discussion of the effects of sexual vice on one’s character, whether the disorder be one of excess -- which results in what Aquinas calls the “daughters of lust” -- or one of deficiency, which involves what Aquinas calls a “vice of insensibility”]

Sexual cant from the asexual Kant [On the trouble with Kantian and personalist approaches to sex and sexual morality]

Alfred Kinsey: The American Lysenko [A 2005 article from the online edition of City Journal]

I’ve also written several posts over the years about controversies over sexual morality as they have arisen in the U.S. political context, and in the Catholic context:

Some thoughts on the Prop 8 decision [On the “same-sex marriage” controversy, its unavoidable connection to deeper disagreements about sexual morality, and the phoniness of liberal neutrality]

Contraception, subsidiarity, and the Catholic bishops [On the way in which the failure of Catholic bishops to uphold Catholic teaching on contraception and subsidiarity facilitated the U.S. federal government’s attempted contraceptive mandate]

Hitting Bottum [On the incoherence of conservative Catholic writer Joseph Bottum’s attempt to justify capitulating on “same-sex marriage”]

Nudge nudge, wink wink [How some churchmen’s ambiguous statements on homosexuality, divorce, etc. inevitably “send the message” that Catholic teaching on these matters can and will change, whether or not these churchmen intend to send that message]

The two faces of tolerance [On “same-sex marriage,” the sexual revolution more generally, and the totalitarian tendencies of egalitarianism]

Marriage and the Matrix [On the radically skeptical implications of arguments for “same-sex marriage,” and how they give its advocates a rhetorical advantage despite the incoherence of their position]

Marriage inflation [How expanding the application of the term “marriage” strips it of its value as an honorific, thereby undermining one of the purported goals of the “marriage equality” movement]

Though the natural law defense of traditional sexual morality is the most fundamental defense, there are other approaches to defending it.  One of these is the appeal to the wisdom embodied in tradition in general, as that idea has been spelled out by writers like Edmund Burke and F. A. Hayek.  In my 2003 Journal of Libertarian Studiesarticle “Hayek on Tradition,” I expound and defend this approach to tradition and discuss how it applies to questions about sexual morality.

Finally, for you completists out there, some additional golden oldies.  Ten years ago, at the long defunct Right Reason group blog, I wrote up a series of posts on natural law and sexual morality, which can still be accessed via archive.org:

Natural ends and natural law, Part I                                 

Natural ends and natural law, Part II

The posts got a fair amount of attention.  Andrew Sullivan politely and critically responded to them in his book The Conservative Soul, and I offered a reply to Sullivan here:

Reply to Sullivan on natural law

I wouldn’t now formulate some of the key metaphysical points exactly the way I did in those decade-old posts, however, so -- again -- see “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument” in Neo-Scholastic Essays for an up-to-date treatment.

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