Search results for ""Author Steven J. Jensen""

The Human Person presents a brief introduction to the human mind, the soul, immortality, and free will. While delving into the thought of Thomas Aquinas, it addresses contemporary topics, such as skepticism, mechanism, animal language research, and determinism. Steven J. Jensen probes the primal questions of human nature. Are human beings free or determined? Is the capacity to reason distinctive to human beings or do animals also have some share of reason? Have animals really been taught to use language? The Human Person touches on topics that bear upon the very fabric of the universe. Are human beings merely well-ordered collections of chemicals or do they have a soul that gives them life and understanding? Is there any element in human beings that survives death? Can human minds get in touch with the objective world or just forever dwell in the domain of their subjective experiences? The book closes by considering the most fundamental question of all: are human beings merely cosmic accidents with no purpose or is there some meaning to human life? In this book, beginners of philosophy will learn the wonders of their own nature by studying Aquinas's thought on the human person.

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Recent discussions of Thomas Aquinas's treatment of natural law have focused upon the ""self-evident"" character of the first principles, but few attempts have been made to determine in what manner they are self-evident. On some accounts, a self-evident precept must have, at most, a tenuous connection with speculative reason, especially our knowledge of God, and it must be untainted by the stain of ""deriving"" an ought from an is. Yet Aquinas himself had a robust account of the good, rooted in human nature. He saw no fundamental difference between is-statements and ought-statements, both of which he considered to be descriptive.Knowing the Natural Law traces the thought of Aquinas from an understanding of human nature to a knowledge of the human good, from there to an account of ought-statements, and finally to choice, which issues in human actions. The much discussed article on the precepts of the natural law (I-II, 94, 2) provides the framework for a natural law rooted in human nature and in speculative knowledge. Practical knowledge is itself threefold: potentially practical knowledge, virtually practical knowledge, and fully practical knowledge.This distinction within practical knowledge, typically overlooked or underutilized, reveals the steps by which the mind moves from speculative knowledge all the way to fully practical knowledge. The most significant sections of Knowing the Natural Law examine the nature of ought-statements, the imperative force of moral precepts, the special character of per se nota propositions as found within the natural law, and the final movement from knowledge to action.

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An ever-increasing demand for organs, with over 100,000 people on waiting lists, has driven a relentless search for new sources of organs. In 1995 the American Medical Association supported taking organs from anencephalic infants, children born without brains. In 1999 the Chinese government began removing organs from members of the politically outcast religious group Falun Gong, making a lucrative profit from sales to foreigners. Recently in Belgium physicians have euthanised a patient by removing her organs.The search for fresh organs began much earlier, in 1968, when death was redefined, so that well-preserved organs could be removed from brain-dead individuals. The early 1990s saw the introduction of donation after cardiac death, in which organs are taken from individuals whose hearts could still be resuscitated. Over the past two decades various countries have attempted markets in the sale of organs.Each of these sources of organs raises ethical concerns. Is brain death truly death, or by taking the heart of the brain-dead individual do we thereby kill him? When a person’s heart stops beating is it permissible to prepare his organs for transplantation, even though we could choose to resuscitate him? Can we take organs from an infant without a brain? If a woman no longer wishes to live, can she donate her organs to others in an act of beneficent suicide? Is a market in organs acceptable?These questions and others are thoughtfully probed in this collection of essays, which features articles from theologians, philosophers, physicians, biomedicial ethicists, and an attorney.

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From Human Dignity to Natural Law shows how the whole of the natural law, as understood in the Aristotelian Thomistic tradition, is contained implicitly in human dignity. Human dignity means existing for one’s own good (the common good as well as one’s individual good), and not as a mere means to an alien good. But what is the true human good? This question is answered with a careful analysis of Aristotle’s defini­tion of happiness. The natural law can then be understood as the pre­cepts that guide us in achieving happiness. To show that human dignity is a reality in the nature of things and not a mere human invention, it is necessary to show that human be­ings exist by nature for the achievement of the properly human good in which happiness is found. This implies finality in nature. Since contem­porary natural science does not recognize final causality, the book ex­plains why living things, as least, must exist for a purpose and why the scientific method, as currently understood, is not able to deal with this question. These reflections will also enable us to respond to a common criticism of natural law theory: that it attempts to derive statements of what ought to be from statements about what is. After defining the natural law and relating it to human or positive law, Richard Berquist considers Aquinas’s formulation of the first prin­ciple of the natural law. He then discusses the commandments to love God above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself as the first precepts of the natural law. Subsequent chapters are devoted to clar­ifying and defending natural law precepts concerned with the life is­sues, with sexual morality and marriage, and with fundamental natural rights. From Human Dignity to Natural Law concludes with a discussion of alternatives to the natural law.

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