Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart

Traditionalist conservatives and classical liberals need Charles Darwin. They need him because a Darwinian science of human nature supports Burkean conservatives and Lockean liberals in their realist view of human imperfectibility, and in their commitment to ordered liberty as rooted in natural desires, cultural traditions, and prudential judgments. Arnhart's email address is larnhart1@niu.edu.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

The Aristotelian Biology of Thomistic Natural Law (2)

Eric Johnston's dissertation is a valuable study of how Aristotelian biology supports Thomas Aquinas's account of the natural law of...

Saturday, August 27, 2011

The Aristotelian Biology of Thomistic Natural Law

In some of my recent posts, I have argued that Thomas Aquinas's teaching on natural law is rooted in Aristotle's biology, that this ...

Friday, August 19, 2011

Tomasello on the Chimpanzee Theory of Mind and Social Ontology

In an email message responding to my previous post, Michael Tomasello has observed that it's not quite true that his research produces m...

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

More on the de Waal/Tomasello Debate in Primate Research

In my previous post, I briefly surveyed some of the issues in the debate between Frans de Waal and Michael Tomasello in comparing the social...

Friday, August 12, 2011

The de Waal/Tomasello Debate in Primate Studies

As hard as it is to read the minds of our fellow human beings, it is even harder to read the minds of other animals. Aristotle's bio...

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Thomistic Natural Law as Darwinian Natural Right: An APSA Paper

On September 1, at 2:00 pm, I will be on a panel ("Biology and Rights") at the 2011 Meetings of the American Political Science Ass...

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Mind Is Not the Only Possible First Cause of All Things: Hume, Darwin, and Strauss

The most common objection to my arguments for Darwinian natural right is that Darwinian science fails to see that the only possible first ca...

Friday, July 29, 2011

John Locke's Biological Naturalism

Leo Strauss and many of those influenced by Strauss have assumed that John Locke's political philosophy rejected the rule of nature in f...

Monday, July 25, 2011

Does Gay Marriage Perform the Functions of Marriage?

The "Sunday Styles" section of yesterday's New York Times has a collection of articles on how gays are responding to the lega...

Friday, July 22, 2011

Cicero, Aquinas, and Intelligent Design Anthropomorphism

Darwinian natural right is the natural fulfillment of Thomistic natural law, because it shows how natural law can be truly natural in so far...

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Are Honeybees Created in God's Image?

In commenting on my previous post on Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism, "Empedocles" pointed out that...

Friday, July 15, 2011

Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

One of the primary doctrines of traditional theism is that God created human beings in His image. And if God is pure Mind, that suggests tha...

Monday, July 11, 2011

Thomistic Nihilism, Greek Naturalism, and the Problem of Natural Right

The problem of natural right is the problem of whether nature has a intelligible order that can be known by human beings and followed as a g...

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