Timothy,

This is Civis. I know this is has nothing to do with your post, but I was looking at your Curriculum Vitae. Very impressive indeed. I see you are interested in Natural Law. I’ve read here and there on Natural Law and did a paper on the “new natural law”, but have never done a serious study of traditional natural law.

You may have noticed that I am trying to find fellow travelers for my reading journeys. I don’t know if you are light years ahead of me on this topic, if you have time, or if it piques your interest at the moment, but in a few weeks I may start reading on that topic. Would you be interested in reading or discussing with me? I have a list of books and articles. With the articles (I’d say I have a couple hundred articles from academic and legal journals though I’ll never read them all) I could scan and e-mail some of them to you. With books we could see if we have any of the same titles. Or we could each read what piques his interest and just discuss, or we could just discuss.

Tell me if you’re interested. Oh, BTW, I saw the word “y’all” on this blog! I have to tell you, in talking with the fellows on Confessions of a Seminarian I have been holding my hand over my mouth to suppress vomiting as I say “you guys” so they will know what I’m talking about.

Oh and sorry about the reductio ad hitlerum on COAS.

Hi Civis, thank you! And thanks for stopping over at Asisaid. Fellow travelers, ah yes. That phrase happens to come from one of my favorite poets!

Yes, I am very interested in natural law. Sure, I would be interested in seeing what you have in mind. Admittedly, my reading time is rather crunched at the moment with my seminary reading list, but I’d be willing to see if I could fit some of that in — I need to keep my philosophical appetite feed lest it become starved while I’m busy with other matters!

I do let an occasional “y’all” in over here. Feel free to use “y’all” in comments. I’ve never been much of a “you guys” guy, either.

And no problem with the reductio ad hitlerum. I find it more amusing than anything that Godwin’s Law actually seems to work in its prediction of the positive correlation of conversation length and likelihood of an example related to Nazis.

Timothy,

I was thinking that you probably have a full plate with your theological studies. I wonder if there would be a way that reading natural law could overlap, like your reading could be useful for one of your classes or papers.

One thing that has bugged me about natural law is that on the one hand it seems like it might be an avenue for people in a secular society to have a basis for objective morality (And then maybe that could a step toward being society back to its senses) but most traditonal natural law thinkers say that NL theory depends/does not work without the existence of God. Perhaps that could be an angle. “If God is dead, everything is permissible?”

RE: Hitler

Hitler is useful as he is the one thing that people with a relativist mindset have to admit is bad. People are so desensitized, his name is sometimes the only thing that will wake them up. So I like to use Hitler as an example when speaking with relativists, I’ll have to admit that. But I shouldn’t have drawn a connection b/w your ideas and his—not calculated to thoughtful discussion.

Is there an aspect of NL that intersts you specifically? If you have read a lot about it, you may not be interested in anything that is general/on the popular level. I have pretty much read all I want on the popular level because they tend to pretty vague and IMHO a lot of the time seem kind of relativistic: Natural law appears to be what they think just has to be right. Nevertheless, there is a book by Henirich Rommen

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Law-Social-History-Philosophy/dp/0865971609/ref=sr_1_1/103-2794042-8217430?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189692684&sr=1-1

that looks promising and is more general, and I plan to read. It is probably in your seminary library or it can be purchased for about $8.

On the other hand, if you want to take one aspect, like the “Is-Ought” objection/problem I have a file folder with several articles. If you have another aspect that piques your interest, I’ll see what I have. If you are on a budget but want to have your own copy of what you read (to mark up/ take notes) This might be a good way to go.

I also have some “articles” that are about natural law generally.

Some of these article you can access on the net. For example, the American Journal of Jurisprudence has a lot of articles on the net and they are generally high quality. But even if it is on the net, I can always scan and e-mail. I have close to a full file drawer of articles on NL, broken down topically. I’ve been collecting them for about 5 years now, but most of them came from the a paper I did—Sucking out quotes/points/arguments that were useful without really reading the article.

Oh, I’m going to show my ignorance of poety. Did you write September Moon?

Hi Civis, I’ll shoot you an e-mail about the reading list.

Regarding the poem, yes, that’s my poem. I usually post a poem or three a month on here. Mostly haiku, but my preferred longer from is the sonnet, such as the one above. This one is a little different for me, however, as I used the Italian sonnet form which has a different rhyme scheme than the typical “Shakespearean”/English sonnet. I’m also trying to refine my use of apostrophe (addressing inanimate objects).

Wow, I’m impressed.

Thanks, Civis!

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