Natural Law & the Secular Mythos

Gregory Morgan’s volume makes a cunning contribution to T&T Clark’s Ressourcement Catholic Theology and Culture series. Less about finding ignored golden nuggets in the long tradition of Christian thinking, Morgan takes natural law and plays it off against contemporary thinkers in both Analytic and Continental philosophical theology. The upshot is that he usefully expands the types of questions one can pose about the framework of natural law reflection. * Graham McAleer, Loyola University Maryland, USA *This book defends a bold thesis: that the most preeminent contemporary defenders of natural law theory in fact carry water for the secular mythos they otherwise seek to outwit. The author makes the compelling case that most attempts to defend natural law today remain spellbound by the modern requirement that law remain unpolluted by any theological a priori. But this merely ties any prophetic possibility of the natural law to the secular pragmatism of pure reason or to political and ecclesiastical monisms. The alternative is exciting: through a deconstructive “work of memory,” Morgan proposes a way to hear anew the soteriological and eschatological voice of natural law untranslated, unnarrated, and unfictionalised by present prejudices. An absolute must-read read for any scholar hopeful that natural law might again find relevance beyond the reign of artificial foundationalisms. * Conor Sweeney, Christendom College, USA *

Gregory Morgan is Parish Priest of St Catherine Labouré Catholic Church, Australia. He is also Adjunct Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, Australia, and at the Catholic Institute of Sydney.