CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

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Speaker Biographies

Paper Abstracts

Human Rights, Liberalism, and Flourishing:

Aristotelianism in Conversation with Other Traditions

FRIDAY 19 April 2024

Session 1: 1:00PM-2:30PM

·       Kelvin Knight, Senior Lecturer, London Metropolitan University

o   Religious Roles in the American History of Human Rights

·       Michael O’Neill, Providence College

o   MacIntyre, de Maistre, and the Critique of Liberalism

Session 2: 2:45PM-4:15PM

·       Peter Wicks, Elm Institute, Yale University

o   Can the Idiom of Rights Be Redeemed?

·       Jeffrey Pocock, University of Bristol

o   Human rights as transcendental conditions: Exploring Malakos’s reconstruction of MacIntyre’s rights’ Critique

KEYNOTE: 4:30PM-6:00PM

“Birth, Belonging, and Flourishing:

Autochthonous, Indigenous, and Aristotelian Traditions in Conversation”

Adriel Trott, Professor of Philosophy,

Andrew T. and Anne Ford Chair in the Liberal Arts, Wabash College

·       Adriel M. Trott is Professor of Philosophy and Andrew T. and Anne Ford Chair in the Liberal Arts. Her work focuses on ancient, continental and political philosophy, specifically on how ancient philosophy can be a resource both for analyzing and criticizing contemporary conceptions of political life, of being human, of nature and of gender and for presenting alternatives to these accounts. Trott is the author of Aristotle on the Nature of Community and Aristotle on the Matter of Form: A Feminist Metaphysics of Generation.

·       Trott teaches courses that engage students from classics, gender studies, Black studies and PPE. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) and was the founding Editor of the Women in Philosophy series at the American Philosophical Association (APA) Blog. She blogs at The Trott Line and is an honorary member of the Malcolm X Institute for Black Studies at Wabash. Check out her Chapel Talks here and here.

·       A dedicated amateur runner, Trott qualified for the Boston Marathon in her first ever marathon in California in December 2021 and thinks of running as a metaphor for life.

Session 3: 7:00PM-8:30PM

·       Anna Beresford, University of Waterloo

o   Liberalism, the commons, and the common good

·       Sarah Thomas, Catholic University of America

o   Liberalism and Aristotelianism: Theorizing Human Rights Between Freedom & Destiny

SATURDAY 20 April 2024

Session 4: 9:00AM-10:30AM

·       Christopher Arroyo, Providence College

o   “Is Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism Ableist?

·       Ellie Robson, University of Nottingham

o   Susan Stebbing and Moral Naturalism

Session 5: 10:45AM-12:15AM

·       Charles DeMarco, Clark University

o   Rights in the Shadows of Virtue

·       May Sim, College of the Holy Cross,

o   Rethinking Freedom and Human Rights with Virtue-Oriented Traditions

Session 6: 1:30PM-3:00PM

·       Preston Stovall, Univerzita Hradec Králové

o   “Modern Moral Philosophy, Ancient Theories of Virtue, and Contemporary Social Psychology”

·       Joseph Wilbur, Pennsylvania State University

o   Garrigou-Lagrange & The Challenge Of Anthropocentrism: A Thomistic Inquiry Into Human And Animal Rights

Session 7: 3:15PM-4:45PM

·       Shabeer Zacky, Independent Scholar

o   ‘How might our globalized world benefit from dialogues between the sibling inheritors of Aristotle?’

·       Blythe Green, Providence College

o   Friendship, Value, and Metaphysics in Aristotle

5:00PM-6:30PM: Director’s 1st (only?) Annual Lecture

Nature, Gender, Religion, and the Rejection of Rights:

How Thomistic-Aristotelians Can and Should Defend Communities of Ecological and LGBTQ+ Flourishing

Jeffery Nicholas, Director, CASEP, Providence College

Speaker Biographies (alphabetical)

Christopher Arroyo

is a professor of philosophy at Providence College.  He has published on Kant's moral philosophy, including his book Kant's Ethics and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate: An Introduction (Springer 2017).  He also has published on Catholic sexual ethics.  His current work focuses on the writings of Philippa Foot and Elizabeth Anscombe as they relate to moral philosophy.

Anna Beresford

(PhD social and ecological sustainability, University of Waterloo) is a researcher at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests focus on the role of arts and culture in fostering socio-economic sustainability, community resilience, and human flourishing, and the development of social pattern languages (sensu Christopher Alexander).

C. Wesley DeMarco

(M.A. Catholic University of America 1986, PhD. Vanderbilt University 1991) specializes in systematic metaphysics and ethics. He has taught at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts since 2004.  

Blythe Green

Is an adjunct professor at Providence College. She works in ancient philosophy.

Kelvin Knight

Kelvin is a reader in ethics and politics and the course leader for the Human Rights and International Conflict MA. He is co-founder and General Secretary of the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry. He founded and directed CASEP from 2008-2021.

Michael O’Neill

Received his PhD from the Catholic University of America with distinction. He has been a member of the faculty at Providence College, in Providence, Rhode Island, since 2002. Dr. O’Neill is an associate professor and former chair of the philosophy department with research interests in political philosophy, philosophy of history, aesthetics and recently, philosophy of sport. His current writing projects focus on anti-liberalism, sport as a MacIntyrean practice, and the philosophy of history. He is married and lives with his wife, Lisa, and three children in Franklin, Massachusetts.

Jeffrey Pocock

Is member of teaching staff at University of Bristol, where I supervise Masters and EdD students in the School of Education, participate in an internal research and publications project, and as classroom tutor support the language and literacy needs of international foundation students. I am a community college (FE) lecturer by training, with a specialism in ESL (ESOL) and adult education. I am also currently University and College Union (UCU) branch officer at the University, with special responsibility for temporary and casualised staff and health and safety. I am South West England regional anti-casualisation rep and until recently, I was co-chair of UCU’s national anti-casualisation committee. My doctoral thesis drew heavily on Alasdair MacIntyre’s writings, especially the concept of practice, and I continue to draw on and apply his various concepts in my academic work and activities. I am a member of the International Society for MacIntyrean Enquiry (ISME) and also currently run two online MacIntyre reading groups, a weekly and fortnightly 1-hour meeting, with participants drawn from various disciplines, academic backgrounds, and geographical locations.

Ellie Robson

I am a Teaching Associate at Nottingham University (2023/4) and recently completed by PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. (2019-2023). I am also a Research Fellow at Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP) (2023-2025) and an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London.

May Sim

Received her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. Her dissertation, Aristotle’s Understanding of Form and Universals, was directed by Alasdair C. MacIntyre. She is the contributing editor of The Crossroads of Norm and Nature: Essays on Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics (1995) and From Puzzles to Principles?: Essays on Aristotle’s Dialectic (1999). Her book, Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius, Cambridge University Press (2007), is a comparison of the ethical life in Aristotle and Confucius.  She is currently working on a booklength account of human rights from the Confucian perspective, and a book on Metaphysics and Ethics: East & West. She was the President of the Southwestern Philosophical Society (2006), the current director of the Asian Studies Program at Holy Cross, and the current director of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (BACAP 45th Annual Program 2023-24).  She was also the 62nd President of the Metaphysical Society of America (2013 MSA) and the President of the 49th Annual Conference of the Northern New England Philosophical Association (2019 NNEPA).  Sim is a fellow (2021-23) of the Center for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP).

Preston Stovall

Is an assistant professor in philosophy at the University of Hradec Králové. He works in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and metaphysics, informed by a reading of German and American philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Sarah Thomas

Is a graduate student in Human Rights at The Catholic University of America. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Religious Studies and a minor in Data Science from Stanford University. She also studied theology at the University of Oxford as a visiting student. Sarah has held fellowships from Stanford University, the North American Paul Tillich Society, the religious ethics journal Providence, and the Institute for Human Ecology. Her first peer-reviewed publication, on critical theory and the metaphysics of love, is forthcoming in an edited volume from Liverpool University Press. She has also done research on Paul Tillich’s ethics, drawing out a latent personalist and existentialist theory of natural law in Tillich’s American period. Sarah’s interests are in metaphysics, political theology, the dialogue between natural law and existential phenomenology, and political economy.

Peter Wicks

Is Scholar-in-Residence at the Elm Institute. Educated at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Dr. Wicks came to the United States as Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow at Princeton’s Graduate School before pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of Notre Dame, where he completed his Ph.D. in 2010. After spending a year on a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton, Dr. Wicks taught in the Ethics Program at Villanova University as a Catherine of Siena Fellow before joining the Elm Institute in 2015. His research focuses on the contemporary applications of Aristotelian ethical and political thought, the intellectual foundations of utilitarianism, and the psychology and ethics of argument and persuasion.

Joseph Wilbur

Graduated summa cum laude in December 2023 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he double-majored in Classical Studies and Religious Studies, with a minor in Medieval Studies. Joseph's recent work includes contributions to a forthcoming book titled 'Animals in Medieval Literature and Culture' with Reaktion Press, an archeological exploration of early Christian burial practices in the Oxford Classics Journal, and an analysis of Aquinas' intersections with pagan myths and folklore that he will be presenting at the College English Association Conference and the International Congress on Medieval Studies this spring. His work primarily examines the symbiosis between religion, culture, and the natural world across various historical periods, striving to challenge contemporary understandings of medieval theology and ethics. 

Shabeer Zacky

Completed his BA in philosophy at the University of Melbourne along with a Masters of Teaching with a focus on philosophy education. Concurrently he pursued traditional disciplines of Islamic learning, reading classical texts with their respective scholars in Islamic legal theory, philosophical theology, and ethics. His discovery of the Aristotelian tradition largely after his graduation from analytic philosophy studies led him to drawing out, in and in response to particular modern contexts, what he believes are useful philosophical foundations for grounding and speaking about value between fellow Muslims, fellow theists, and fellow human beings altogether; consequently he wants to discover, through theory and practical trial and error, the efficacy, scope, and limits of contemporary Aristotelianism. 

ABSTRACTS

in order of presentation

Kelvin Knight, “Religious Roles in the American History of Human Rights”

This paper argues that “human rights” names an originally American idea. That origin may be located in William Lloyd Garrison’s use of the term, followed by that of other pre-Civil War abolitionists and, later, Social Gospellers. It was also used by Catholics; most notably, by John Ryan and Charles Coughlin. Most influentially, it was adopted by Jacques Maritain at the time of its diplomatic internationalization by President F.D. Roosevelt. Understanding of the continuing significance of that adoption has been hampered by well-meaning myth-making. This paper is intended to facilitate better understanding of the idea’s genealogy, in the hope of enabling better evaluation of its present and potential significance.

Michael J. O’Neill, “MacIntyre, de Maistre, and the Critique of Liberalism” 

            In this paper, I argue that MacIntyre’s incisive critique of liberal capitalism is in fact a representative type of critique which confronts liberalism repeatedly in its history.  With reference to de Maistre and the Catholic Counter-Enlightenment writers of the 19th century, but with a focus on MacIntyre’s own critique of liberalism, I will show that in its history liberalism has consistently encountered a dialectical “other” as critic (including Counter-Enlightenment, Marxist, Nietzschean, Fascist, Wahabist, Communitarian and Feminist critiques, e.g.).  The central complaints offered by this “other”, and also the issues which show the commonality of these various critiques, derive from the fact that liberalism as a political practice fractures the unity of human experience.  This fracture is at the heart of the design of liberalism, primarily in the public-private distinction, but also in its designed agnosticism regarding the ends of human life.

            The consequences of this fracturing of human experience are articulated in the various critiques of liberalism. Central themes of these critiques include showing how liberalism degrades the means by which citizens can form cohesive communities, it undermines the possibility of coherent practical reasoning, it separates values from action, and makes the ordering of desires and goods impossible. I will argue that both de Maistre and MacIntyre, one addressing liberalism at its beginning and the other at its ‘late’ phase, take up each of these concerns and should be seen as representative members of a multi-traditional set of critiques of liberalism.

The ultimate goal of this analysis is diagnostic. I hope to show that current and future critiques of liberalism will share, and will be able to be recognized by, these concerns.  Further, any development of liberalism beyond its current form, to a perspective beyond this critique, will involve addressing the challenge presented by the fracturing of human experience.

Peter Wicks, “Can the Idiom of Rights Be Redeemed?”

One of the most provocative sections of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue is his treatment of the role played by the language of rights in contemporary moral discourse, including the notorious claim that belief in natural rights is akin to “belief in witches and in unicorns” (AV, 69). Critics of MacIntyre’s treatment of the topic of rights often fail to notice that this skepticism is directed specifically at natural rights which are supposed to have all of the following features:

1) they attach equally to all individuals, whatever their sex, race, religion, talents or deserts,

2) they are more basic than and exist prior to any social institution,

3) they are either self-evident or knowable through intuition or arguments accessible to

any rational being,

4) they explain why certain actions are wrong or right (rather than merely being an

alternative way of expressing claims that certain actions are wrong or right).

One of the reasons why the specificity of the target of MacIntyre’s rights skepticism is often overlooked is that MacIntyre also has a critique of the rhetoric of rights in contemporary moral culture that is significantly broader in scope of rights claims to which it applies, a critique which extends to rights talk that does not involve rights that are claimed to have all of the above features. Distinguishing the “witches and unicorns” argument from MacIntyre’s broader critique of rights talk helps to show some important respects in which many critics have misconstrued his position. I shall consider MacIntyre’s argument in “Community, Law, and the Idiom and Rhetoric of Rights” that even rights rhetoric that is outside the scope of the “witches and unicorns” argument is best avoided for prudential reasons. I examine considerations for or against the use of the “idiom and rhetoric of rights” and conclude that MacIntyre is right to treat this as a prudential matter, but underestimates the cost of foregoing the idiom and rhetoric of rights. I conclude with a consideration of what for MacIntyre would be the most favorable circumstances for the use of the rhetoric of rights without mystification or confusion.

Jeffrey Pocock, “Human rights as transcendental conditions: Exploring Malakos’s reconstruction of MacIntyre’s rights’ critique”

In After Virtue (1981, pp.69-70), Alasdair MacIntyre labels natural or human rights as fictions, see also MacIntyre (2016, pp.77-78), belief in which he compares to belief in unicorns and witches. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the response to this has been voluminous and at times strong. One very recent response, brief but potentially fruitful, is that of Apostolos Malakos (MacIntyre & Moral Philosophy. Chapter 4. Learning from MacIntyre, 2020). Malakos responds to MacIntyre’s attack on human rights in the context of a discussion of the precepts of natural law. In the same way that these precepts should be regarded transcendentally, “as preconditions for the possibility of rational enquiry,” Malakos (2020, p.95) argues MacIntyre’s objection to human rights holds only against human rights “naturalists”, but not against a more transcendental, preconditional understanding of human rights i.e. “as common presuppositions we are necessitated to make in order to provide some norms and standards, without which positive rights cannot be judged.” In this paper I seek to further explore and critically consider this ‘transcendental’ understanding of MacIntyre’s approach to human rights. For further elaboration and clarification, I begin firstly by applying to Malakos’ transcendental interpretation of MacIntyre on rights the distinction Christian Illies (2003) makes between two types of transcendental argument, the “explorational” and the “retorsive”. I next consider Malakos’ interpretation of MacIntyre on rights by comparing it to consideration of human rights found in a number of different intellectual traditions, American pragmatism, Critical Theory, neo-Republicanism, and Transcendental Thomism. Following this discussion, I finish my paper by considering conclusions drawn about Malakos’ interpretation of MacIntyre on rights in light of MacIntyre’s other writings and broader project.

Anna Beresford, “Liberalism, the commons, and the common good”

As a political philosophy, liberalism proposed and justified unprecedented levels of individual autonomy, equality, and freedom of speech and religion, as well as universal human rights as we understand them today. The birth of liberalism was concomitant with the process of modernization, which Polanyi refers to as ‘the great transformation’, during which the individual was emancipated from the social, moral, and familial obligations of traditional society and ‘free’ to become a self-actualizing agent. But, as Nisbet argues, “unconsciously, the founders of liberalism abstracted certain moral and psychological attributes from a social organization and considered these the timeless, natural, qualities of the individual, who was regarded as independent of the influences of any historically developed social organization” (Nisbet, 2019, p. 208). Far from being natural, these attributes espoused by liberalism entail a philosophical anthropology that is dependent upon very specific social, economic, historic, and philosophical circumstances, both for the birth and the maintenance of this ontological individual. These specific circumstances (the process of modernization) continue to erode, undermine, and at times eradicate the commons that are central to human cultures, which are tied up in the patterns of shared ways of life, and were ubiquitous across embedded, pre-modern societies. In this paper, I explore this relationship between liberalism, the commons, and the common good. I argue i) that the commons are paramount for a real conception or understanding of the common good and ii) consequently, that liberalism ultimately undermines our understanding of the common good.

Sarah Thomas, “Liberalism and Aristotelianism: Theorizing Human Rights Between Freedom and Destiny”

This paper will explore the vexed relationship between liberalism and Aristotelianism, advancing a human rights program that reconciles both while raising questions about its metaphysical foundations. First, I turn to Paul Tillich’s ontological polarities of freedom & destiny, dynamics & form, and individuation & participation as a helpful hermeneutic. The first elements in each polarity manifest a drive for self-relation and substantiality, while the second elements in each polarity manifest a drive for belonging, being part of a shared world. As ontological, these tensions permeate all of being, including moral and political life. While Aristotle did not discuss these polarities in his work in the same terms, it can be found in broader Aristotelian-Thomistic thought, particularly the work of modern Thomist philosopher Norris Clarke S.J. In his account of human being as substance-in-relation, Clarke argues that substantiality is the first act while relationality through action is the second act. This impacts how we think about the primacy of individuation and freedom in relation to theorizing an Aristotelian human rights program.

Liberalism, with its emphasis on human liberty, individual rights, and free markets, manifests the drives for freedom, dynamics, and individuation. Aristotelianism, meanwhile, with its emphasis on teleology toward one’s end and the good, manifests the drives for destiny, form, and participation. A consideration of human rights in Aristotelian perspective must reckon with the fundamentally different metaphysical principles animating liberalism and Aristotelianism. Arguably, human rights could be deduced from an Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology that regards the human being as rational, political, and historical substance-in-relation ordered teleologically toward the good. Rights acknowledge that there are essential features of human existence conducive to living a virtuous and dignified life, driving toward the maximally fulfilled human life, Aristotle’s spoudaios. 

Yet an Aristotelian model will inevitably be ordered toward a singular vision of the good life, where human beings achieve their end by actualizing their natures. This exists in tension with the freedom cherished by liberalism. A theory of human rights that engages Aristotelianism and liberalism must honor the ontological polarity between freedom and destiny and drive toward their productive reconciliation. I affirm with Kleinig and Evans that “any conception of human flourishing must leave room for individual, social, and historical contingencies, even while recognizing that such flourishing may have some less contingent aspects and prerequisites” (544). The state should not impose a singular vision of the good life on its constituents through an expansive set of rights and requirements, but rather recognize their constituents’ freedom to pursue their good once equipped with a foundational set of rights.

Turning to applications, I will address the contemporary proliferation of emerging rights claims that depart from natural rights or the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the words of the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights, “transforming every worthy political preference into a claim of human rights inevitably dilutes the authority of human rights” (39). I will demonstrate how a human rights framework that reconciles the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition with liberalism must take a mediating path between solely recognizing natural rights to life, liberty, and property, aligning with liberalism and a thin notion of the good, and acknowledging a more expansive array of positive rights, aligning with Aristotelianism and a thick notion of the good. Peter C. Myers observes that the turn to an extensive array of positive, needs-based rights that highlight the contingency of the human being, and away from faculties-based, natural rights that underscore the high metaphysical dignity of the human being as someone worthy of rights, has been problematic for the rights program. I agree with him to a certain extent, but believe that some of the needs-based positive rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in emerging rights claims can still be salvaged as part of a human rights program oriented toward the good of free persons in community, one which reconciles liberalism and Aristotelianism and their respective drives for freedom and destiny.

Christopher Arroyo, “Is Philippa Foot’s Ethical Naturalism Ableist?”

Scott Woodcock (2006) argues that Phlippa Foot’s account of natural goodness (2001) has an Achilles heel. According to Woodcock, Foot’s “conception of natural goodness and defect in human moral agents faces an acute dilemma: it either sanctions normative claims that are objectionable or else it begs the question of how we identify good human life by tacitly appealing to an independent ethical standpoint to sanitize the theory’s normative implications” (2006, p. 447). Woodcock identifies three such objectionable moral claims, but in this paper I focus on one, namely, his claim that Foot’s view “leads to the morally offensive claim that humans who are disabled, sterile, or lacking in mental capacities are defective members of the species in an admittedly normative sense of the term” (p. 451). In this paper I argue that Woodcock’s critique of Foot is misguided. First, I summarize Woodcock’s arguments about the implications of Foot’s view regarding people with disabilities. Second, I indicate some facts about Foot and her work that make it unlikely that she would develop an account of ethical naturalism that unjustly discriminates against people who are disabled, sterile, or lacking in mental capacities. Third, I defend (a) Foot’s view that “good” is a logically attributive adjective and (b) her rejection of the modern sense of “moral,” and I argue that the force of Woodcock’s criticisms depend largely on a failure to appreciate these features of Foot’s thinking.

Chris Demarco, “Rights in the Shadows of Virtue”

The shadows of virtue, in the intended sense, are action types and character traits in the four sub-virtue categories of NE 7.1. 1 These ‘shadows’ can help virtue-centered theorists frame a centrally important problem that arises in the attempt to understand rights in a virtue-centric way. Stock liberal approaches to rights assert or imply a right to be unvirtuous. But how far should this go? We have become a society that tolerates and celebrates a range of vices in the name of pleasure or freedom. 2 A rights-asserting virtue theorist ought to take a different tack. Any rights-asserting virtue theorist should claim that the first right is the right of the virtuous to exercise virtue. But such a theorist ought also to be concerned with the acquisition and development of virtue. An unvirtuous continent must practice continence in order to improve toward acquiring and developing virtue. A right to be continent and to perform the pertinent deliberations and actions hence seems reasonable, because virtue cannot be acquired without practice that is open to behavioral stretches of mere continence. Hence in the name of the practice of virtue 3 we should claim a right to be continent – even if that implies a right to certain less than virtuous deeds and desires. Does the same rationale apply between continence and incontinence? Is there a right to be incontinent, or a right to vice even if hedged in by law? Should a virtue-centered rights theorist allow for rights to greed and pleonexia, philandering, intoxication, gambling, public angry contemptuous outbursts, and so on, even if limited by law, 4 if the choices required by character development must in the nature of the case be open to these as live options, if in different ways at different levels of development? There is a dilemma here for any virtue-centered rights theorist. For to claim that the only morally justified rights are the rights of the virtuous to exercise virtue is too Procrustean, while to claim rights to the practical conditions of the practice of virtue 5 implies a right to be continent, probably a right to incontinence, and perhaps a right to vice that is, even if limited by law, highly problematic. I describe the inferences that lead to this unacceptable conclusion, provide a diagnosis, and close with a sketch of an alternative account of rights that is, while non-Aristotelian, friendly to Aristotle and his tradition, and which claims to resolve the problem.

May Sim, “Rethinking Freedom and Human Rights with Virtue-Oriented Traditions”

At first blush, it would seem that the Aristotelian tradition isn’t compatible with modern liberal-democratic societies characterized by an individual’s freedom to choose his interests and lifestyle from a diversity of interests and competing conceptions about a flourishing life, which freedom is supported by human rights.  In contrast to such a pluralistic society, Aristotelianism offers a single account of what constitutes the good life.  It’s a tradition centered on perfecting human nature by actualizing the virtues of thought and character that perfect the rational and non-rational parts of the soul, respectively.  Despite the fact that Aristotle’s philosophy lies at the root of modern Western philosophy and culture that emphasizes an individual’s reason and ability to deliberate and make choices, his goal of a virtue-oriented life is more akin to the Confucian tradition (still prevalent in modern Asian nations such as China and S. Korea), which similarly, emphasizes a life of virtue.  These traditions agree in holding that there is a single conception of the good life, respectively, so that any choice that deviates from their accepted account won’t contribute to the good life or enable someone to flourish. 

Both of these ancient traditions also lack the concept of ‘human rights’, not just historically, but also philosophically.  This is because neither an Aristotelian, nor a Confucian, would conceive of a life in which an individual must protect himself from an oppressive state (that is made up of radically different and competing ideas of the good life) to be one that could possibly contribute to his flourishing.  Just as Aristotle subscribes to the idea that the polis is prior to the individual, similar to how a hand separated from a body is no longer a hand such that the whole is required for a part’s existence, Master Kong insists upon a state that already practices the ritual propriety of the Zhou dynasty (‘ritual propriety’ refers to the prescribed behaviors for various roles and relations, to which adherence results in harmonious human relationships that enable people to cultivate and exercise the moral virtues), for an individual to not only survive, but thrive.  What Aristotelians and Confucians share is the view that freedom from a majority’s oppression (e.g., from their imposing their views of the good life on one) isn’t sufficient for one to flourish.  One might be starving to death for instance, and be free from the majority’s imposition of their vegan diet on one. Yet, having such a right to protect one’s belief about the types of food for one’s diet would still not alleviate one’s hunger.  Both Aristotelians and Confucians would agree that one’s daily economic needs, such as food and drink, must be provided before one could flourish. 

Aristotelians and Confucians would also agree that freedom to participate in the state’s implementation of the correct conception of a flourishing life, namely, the life of virtue, is the prerequisite for an individual’s flourishing.  Thus, if human rights can protect an individual’s freedom, Aristotelian and Confucian traditions would endorse the protection of a positive freedom to engage in the sort of activities that enable someone to cultivate and exercise the virtues, rather than a negative freedom that protects one from the interference of the majority so that one can freely choose to pursue whatever interests one has.  Comparing these radically disparate traditions, that nevertheless agree that the virtues contribute to human flourishing, I’ll argue that contemporary Aristotelians and Confucians can offer resources from their common goals in the virtues for justifying a certain type of liberalism (i.e., one that supports positive freedom), and justifying why human rights are compatible with their virtue-oriented accounts of human flourishing. 

Preston Stovall, “Modern Moral Philosophy, Ancient Theories of Virtue, and Contemporary Social Psychology”

Anscombe (1958) famously argued that modern moral philosophy does not corrupt the youth, owing to the fact that modernity has already corrupted the youth by the time they start their studies. In a similar vein, Darwall (2017) has argued that modern moral philosophy focuses on criteria for determining whether something is permitted or forbidden, at the expense of addressing whether a course of action is part of a good or well-lived life. In his reading of Hegel, on the other hand, Brandom (2019) has argued that modernity was an advance over the ancient ethical life, in that modernity substitutes the heteronomy of ancient ethical laws (or norms more generally) with the autonomy of modern ones. In doing so, we moderns replace an immediate identification between ourselves and our community’s norms, typical of the ancient ethical life, with a mediated one providing moderns the space to self-consciously decide what sort of peoples to be. But this necessarily results in the ever-present possibility of modern alienation, or a feeling that there is nothing one is meaningfully required to do or be. According to Brandom, Hegel thinks modern conceptions of morality will ultimately be superseded by a stage in human history that preserves modernity’s autonomy, while reviving the ancient conception of ethics and morality as an immediate identification between a people and their norms. Anscombe and Darwall draw attention to the way modern moral philosophy threatens to distort or obscure ancient theories of human flourishing, at the cost of no longer rendering them intuitive or immediately comprehensible to us. For this reason, any such understanding of ourselves today would have to be a reflective one: for our communities no longer (in general or for the most part) present them as live options to adopt habitually. Against that background, this essay surveys recent work in social psychology concerning the roles of virtue and character in human life. A flurry of research over the last two decades has drawn together a quantitatively sophisticated and conceptually nuanced account of human virtue (e.g., Merritt 2010 and Uhlmann et al. 2015). By situating this research in a broadly Aristotelian theory of virtue, I argue that this research affords a promising basis for addressing the problems of modern ethics that Anscombe and Darwall identify, and I suggest one way in which this research might aid in cultivating the reflective immediacy that Hegel and Brandom think characterize a truly post-modern age.

Joseph Wilbur, “Garrigou-Lagrange & The Challenge Of Anthropocentrism: A Thomistic Inquiry Into Human And Animal Rights”

Beneath the surface of modern Aristotelian discourse, the legacy of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., emerges as a beacon of preconciliar Catholic philosophical thought, inviting a reexamination of his relevance in contemporary debates on human rights and liberalism. This paper seeks to critically examine the theological and philosophical contributions of Garrigou-Lagrange in the context of contemporary Aristotelianism and its dialogue with human rights and liberalism. Despite being branded posthumously as a figure emblematic of theological rigidity, Garrigou-Lagrange's extensive corpus, particularly with the recent English translations of many of his works, reveals a nuanced engagement with Aristotelian-Thomistic thought, especially in relation to human rights. This nuanced engagement challenges the contemporary Aristotelian Alasdair MacIntyre’s relative dismissal of Garrigou-Lagrange, particularly his assessment of Garrigou as ‘largely presenting Aquinas’s philosophy detached from its historical roots.’

My study seeks to answer the specific question: What, if any, contributions can Garrigou-Lagrange make to contemporary discourses on Aristotelian conceptions of human rights? In answering this question, my study is guided by a particular focus on addressing the critiques of anthropocentrism frequently directed at the Thomistic tradition, as represented by Aquinas and further interpreted by Alasdair MacIntyre. I aim to elucidate how Garrigou-Lagrange's philosophical and theological insights might offer nuanced responses to these critiques, thereby enriching the ongoing dialogue concerning the foundation and scope of human rights within an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework. By dissecting Garrigou's interpretations and applications of Thomistic philosophy, the paper will investigate how his thought dialogues with, and diverges from, contemporary critics of human rights, including the anthropocentric critiques. Through this examination, the paper aims not only to challenge the monolithic portrayal of Garrigou-Lagrange as merely a relic of pre-Vatican II theology but also to contribute to the broader discourse on the relevance of Thomistic thought in addressing 21st-century ethical and political dilemmas, such as human rights, liberalism, and the common good.

Shabeer Zacky, “How might our globalized world benefit from dialogues between the sibling inheritors of Aristotle?”

Alasdair MacIntyre states in his After Virtue: “No doctrine vindicated itself in so wide a variety of contexts as did Aristotelianism: Greek, Islamic, Jewish and Christian...”. This paper argues that a core set of concepts at the heart of Aristotelianism is what did in the past and can now in the present enable communication and dialogue between scholarly religious traditions as well as secular interlocutors who are committed to the robust realisms that characterise the constellation of Aristotelian ideas. It asks about key roadblocks and past stumbling blocks on the path to dialogue and engagement by attempting to address the question ‘How might our globalized world benefit from dialogues between Aristotelian and other traditions?’ by posing the question a little closer to home: ‘How might our globalised world benefit from dialogues between the sibling inheritors of Aristotle?’. The settlement of Muslims across virtually all western countries and their continuity now well into its third and fourth generations has led to a burgeoning western Muslim intellectual scene focused on internally working out the sufficiency of classical and post-classical metaphysical systems in dealing with the rapidly multiplying challenges of ultra-modernity. Now with the all pervasive nature of the liberal state and its potentially totalising tendencies we are learning the lesson that past siblings ought to learn to speak to each other again, and how better than to take as our point of departure the historically fertile cross-civilizational educative interchanges furnished by inherited philosophy and systematically and successively built upon through the ages. With what traditions then should contemporary Aristotelianism most dialogue? I wish to present that it is the Muslim civilizations who ought now to be taken as indispensable interlocutors in an ongoing dialogue between contemporary Aristotelians.

Blythe Green, “Friendship, Value, and Metaphysics in Aristotle”

In Nicomachean Ethics XIII and IX, Aristotle famously divides friendship into three types, based on three lovable qualities: friendships of pleasure, friendships of utility, and perfect friendships predicated on the mutual appreciation of virtue. But if the first two of these friendship types are “imperfect,” and friendships only by “analogy” to true, perfect friendship of virtue, how does Aristotle understand the role of these imperfect of friendships? Do they truly constitute friendships in a strict sense? What value – if any – do they provide for the virtuous person? What can we learn from these imperfect friendships about the nature of philia generally for Aristotle? I will attempt to answer these questions in part by looking at Aristotle’s discussion of civic friendship and the relations between fellow citizens in the Politics and Nicomachean Ethics, and his discussion of social animals and their alliance, enmities, and “political” structures in History of Animals. 

Jeffery Nicholas, “Nature, Gender, Religion, and the Rejection of Rights: How Thomistic-Aristotelians Can and Should Defend Communities of Ecological and LGBTQ+ Flourishing”

For centuries, people have claimed various human or natural rights to advance civil liberties and protect human dignity. Human rights are the bedrock of many constitutions, including that of the United States which guarantees the rights to life, liberty, and property. Women advanced their participation in politics and society by fighting for the right to vote, and Blacks for rights in the 1950s and 1960s which were guaranteed under the Equal Rights Amendment signed in 1964. In the 21st Century, members of the LGBTQ+ Community have fought successfully, on some places, for greater freedom, and Indigenous Communities have won protections for aspects of nature through an appeal to rights. In a near century-long tradition, Catholics, including Jacques Maritain and St. Pope John XXIII, have defended rights, even relying on Thomas Aquinas for their arguments. While Paul Weithman has argued that Christians have been at the forefront of successful struggles for human rights, however, it is unlikely that Maritain or John XXIII would defend the rights of nature of of members of the LGBTQ+ community. Yet, neither the defenders of nature or members of the LGBTQ+ community should bemoan that fact; instead, they should look to other resources to extend the flourishing of Nature and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

The theory and history of rights suggest why. Consider any two rights, for example the right to life and the right to self-defense. In a struggle between two individuals or between two states, only the right of the stronger is protected. We recognize this fact not only in the genocide the United State perpetuated against Native Americans, but that going on now in Palestine. Slavoj Zizek has advanced this type of argument, claiming that rights rest on three unjustified assumptions: of fundamentalism, of an identification of two basic rights, and of the presumption of rights as a defense. Agreeing with his overall approach, I contend, from a Thomistic-Aristotelian perspective, that Zizek has missed the metaphysics that underlie those assumptions. Specifically, rights are expressions of white, heteronormative supremacy, grounded in boundaries suited only for the privilege. We will rely on Marx to help us uncover this metaphysics.

From an Aristotelian perspective, justice emerges from the pursuit of the common good as a function of practical reasoning. Practical reasoning is impossible without community, in fact, without the participation of each member of the community. From a Thomistic perspective, justice is an expression of love grounded in the natural law. The natural law, though, is human beings’ participation in God’s law—that is, it requires human interpretation, something possible only in the community of love. To paraphrase Alasdair MacIntyre, the natural law provides the conditions through which human beings achieve their common goods and, as such, is subversive to the status quo. Defenders of Nature and members of the LGBTQ+ Community would better serve their goals of fighting for freedom, not through an appeal to fictional human rights, but through an appeal to key features of human flourishing—the exercise of practical reasoning, the building of communities of love, and the co-construction of common goods.

The argument of this paper aims to reach both the non-religious and the religious believer.