What is required for God to be distributively just? Not very much, according to Thomas Aquinas. It is sufficient that God create a world that makes sense, that obeys reasonable laws, containing things that are well-designed, although never perfectly designed: “Hence Dionysius says (Div. Nom. viii, 4): ‘We must needs see that God is trulyContinue reading “God is Just, and Life Still Isn’t Fair”
Category Archives: Causal Powers
Normative Normality: An Aristotelian Account
Happiness consists, for Aristotelians, in the actualization of all of our unconditional and essential causal potentialities. But none of our powers are absolutely unconditional. They all depend on two things: on our internal constitution being in a healthy and intact state, and on our being located in a normal environment (that is, an environment thatContinue reading “Normative Normality: An Aristotelian Account”
Causal Powers and Natural Teleology
This is second in a series of posts on teleology and the natural law. In my previous post, I sketched the difference between the new natural law and classical Aristotelian-Thomist natural law. Once one has causal power in one’s ontology, one also has teleology. Each causal power is essentially forward-looking: it refers to a possibleContinue reading “Causal Powers and Natural Teleology”
The Analytic Thomist 