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Episode 134 -- Natural Law (Patreon)

Published:
2026-05-05 05:09:05
Edited:
2026-05-05 05:09:39
Imported:
2026-09

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Content

In this episode Moira and Adrian discuss the natural law tradition -- its origins, its long varied history, the many uses to which it has been put, and the way conservatives are trying to revive it in our own day. This one's got everything: The Book of Job! Aristotle! Martha Nussbaum! Isaac-binding! Nastiness, Brutishness, Shortness! The name "Pufendorf"!

Comments

Z F

Yes! I've been waiting since 2023! -------- (one hour later) Great episode! I'm an ex-catholic who went to catholic school, and on the one hand, I always appreciated the baked-in assumption that the ethics they were teaching us was something we should be able to logically understand (as opposed to something we had to take on faith from the bible). On the other hand, their reasoning would periodically reach an insane conclusion, often in the realm of sex and gender. The Church currently denies the existence of intersex people, and I'm not sure if that comes from some Natural Law derivation, or if that’s a place where they're turning to scripture. I'm gonna read that Christine Pierce article and puzzle on this some more. Not sure if Adrian's offer of a series on this topic was a joke, but if serious, I'd be super interested

Nomi Storm

The comparison with someone experiencing a psychosis is interesting, because TERFs are extremely prone to conspiracy theories, and a lot of the TERFisms are very conspiracy theory adjacent. I'm in Denmark and our own little homegrown group of TERFs had this thing some years ago where they kept going on about a PC based app called Shinagami Eyes that would colour TERFy people and links red on Facebook, which in the imagination of the TERFs became that actually "trans activists" were building out a hit list that they were now all on. This actually got published, too.

Charley

Me seeing Moria & Adrian doing ‘Natural Law’ on my Spotify 🎉😀🥳 Re clones - Adrian’s comment reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun, where he writes from POV of characters who are themselves clones or androids/AI but don’t quite realise it.

Charley

Doesn’t surprise me. I still can’t grasp how terfs are so susceptible to “natural law” BS when they say they’re feminists 🤔🤔🤔

Nevrosiel

Felt like a Date Night, on my very first date with my Husband we talked about Thomas of Aquinas and Medieval Philosophy/Church Science as it was. I will make him listen to this when he is back from his worktrip but I couldn't wait any longer 😝

A Felt

Two new episodes in one day?! We’ve been blessed

Tim Olson

This reminds me of the video from unlearning economics about the labor theory of value, which is used all over the place to justify economic models and seems like the most empirical expression of economic truth, but is actually a maleable tool that doesn’t have a ton of use other than to justify preconceived beiefs.

Siera H

Yeeeeees! I'm a law student at Brandeis law, University of Louisville, where there is a professor who considers himself 'The Natural Law Guy'. There's an entire study abroad in Hungary focused on natural law, and several seminar classes and it's so dark sided to me and I keep trying to explain to my classmates why it's whack. I have been WAITING for this episode. 🙌🏻🤩💚

Amanda Lyman

I love this. I came up through the evangelical church and anti intellectualism, so Christian philosophers have been new for me.

lentil_butch

Begging for an episode on Elizabeth Anscombe! If Phyllis Schlafly was a Catholic philosopher...

Rosie

Great episode! Weirdly made me more sympathetic to natural law, at least historically. Perhaps if we were all a bit better at natural science (not to mention social sciences), we would be living in less of a nightmare

Erin L

Note on the Akedah/Binding of Isaac from a Jewish perspective- The story holds significance partly because human sacrifice was practiced in the ancient world, like animal sacrifice. While Jews did practice animal sacrifice and give other offerings, similar to other ancient peoples, we were told NOT to sacrifice humans. In this story, HaShem basically says, “Appreciate that you are willing to go this far, but actually, we’re not going to do that.” Obviously, this hits different to modern readers who cannot fathom that the thought would even cross a religious parent’s mind.

Erin L

This is one of the many reasons Christianity did not completely subsume Judaism. Plenty of Jews felt, and still feel, that the idea of the sacrifice of Jesus could not be reconciled with this story.

Beth McWilliams

I could listen to ten more hours of this - very well done!!

Karen Cox

I thought the last Patreon episode was the finest one possible, but this one was even better. Really, this is absolutely brilliant. Please, can you give us a reading list? A bibliography? I want to read these books!!

testosteronefemme

to the point abt using natural law for deduction: i think one example is the idea that if a plant looks like a certain organ it must be helpful for that organ (which also wound up being the knowledge that got written down... in comparison to what contemporary midwives mightve known or used about those plants).

Joy

This is such a good episode, I’m glad you kept us waiting for 3 years! Did not expect myself to be bursting into laughter listening to the natural law episode!

testosteronefemme

okay now update: this episode *i think* has been answering something ive been rotating in my head about how i tend to use scientific & historical research re: gender - I've been thinking that i may be doing a version of appeal to nature arguments, because i sometimes point to things like adverse health outcomes in response to chronic stress due to being at the bottom of the hierarchy. and i think on the one hand, it's arguable that i'm doing that because i am personally reasoning it out based on the evidence i can find. but on the other hand, i'm not necessarily saying "gender egalitarianism is natural" or something, my argument tends to be more "gender egalitarianism is an input that if selected for can produce improved health outcomes" (as an example). however on the third hand, it's arguable that i am essentially making a prescription from evidence provided by "nature" - i'm just coming to extremely different conclusions. back onto the microwave plate this concept goes.

Jamie Madden

Old Irish law is a good lens to think about this natural law and national law conversation. It was a system based on hospitality, reparation for harm, and (unfortunately) upholding hierarchy while being concerned with losing power to account. The law existed across and somewhat independent of the political jurisdictions across the island.

Astraea

For what it's worth, that doesn't sound quite like "appeal to nature" to me - that just sounds like observation. "These people are considered the bottom of the social hierarchy, and they have worse health outcomes," is just an observation. "These worse health outcomes are due to the stress of being at the bottom of the social hierarchy" is a testable hypothesis (which, fwiw, actually has pretty good evidence in modern health research, from what I understand).

James Talley

Been reading Dineen rant vaguely in natural law tones about "progressive liberalism" and thinking about Jaffa's contributions on equality, ruined, I think, because he couldn't bear to part with some version of natlaw bigotry re gays. Like, two roads diverged in a wood, and both these assholes chose a bad path. Also: will my halo for waiting since 2023 be shipped soon?

Odella

Restarting my 3 year timer for the Aristotle episode.

William Knight

As a non Catholic I feel free to appreciate Thomas (Aquinas) as a weirdo obsessive who wanted to understand everything in a really regularized and defined way. RIP Tommy you would have loved trains.

William Knight

I feel like for some folks (certain strains of Neo Orthodox Marxists among others) it is a way of getting around the is-ought problem, by sidestepping the ultimately subjective basis of value (that people want something) and focusing on the production of it.

William Knight

RE: Hobbes I always felt like he was a pseudo pragmatic philosopher, he is deeply invested with some fairly theoretical ideas of what we owe to the state, social contracts etc, and if you reject either his individualism or his view of human nature his philosophy doesn’t work very well. Now Machiavelli, on the other hand, Discourses on Livy is pure pragmatism (which incidentally indicates relatively equitable republics are the best.)

Karen Cox

Could you recommend a good book about Aquinas and natural law theory?

Astraea

As someone in the natural sciences...yes. One of the more important lessons you learn when doing actual research on the physical universe is that "certainty" is a myth. We quantify how accurate we think we are within a given range (this is what scientists mean by "uncertainty" in scientific papers), but NO responsible scientist would ever exhibit the die-hard, cult-like certainty that most right-wing "natural law" folks do today. There are complications and exceptions to *every* rule, scientific discovery is hilariously non-linear, and there is always, ALWAYS something you don't know, so don't go shooting your mouth off. The fact that we know anything about the universe well enough to call it a "Law" is the product of literally thousands of years of collective effort - and even then, we still don't actually have e.g. gravity totally figured out, we've just got it good enough for most modern applications. I would love for more people to be comfortable with the uncertainty that comes with actually studying the world as it is. It is true that we know many things with high confidence, and I believe we will come to know many more, but there is a difference between high confidence and absolute certainty. That difference is the heart and soul of good science. See also Jacob Bronowski's famous Auschwitz segment from the "Knowledge and Certainty" episode of The Ascent of Man. Seeing it was a very formative experience for me as a young scientist. (Sorry for the accidental novel, thank you for coming to my TED talk....)

Astraea

P.s. I love your profile picture :)

Andrew Carlson

Part 2! Part 3! Do it! Do it! Do it! Educate us perverts!

Rosie

Ah nice! I am a pure mathematician, which is comfortably certain, until real scientists get a hold of it ;-P Or until you follow the money. A good statistics education has helped me get better with uncertainty, though - it's purpose built for making meaningful statements with uncertainty. The main problem is when people equate "random" with "uniformly distributed"... Hope you have a nice day filled with nice science :-)

Maral

Haven’t finished listening yet but my older brother, a Christian 4chan conservative (with some nuance if possible?), who is very private about his views, randomly mentioned a long time ago that he thinks Thomas Aquinas is a great thinker. So this tracks

Rachel K

The Elizabeth Anscombe who translated my edition of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as G.E.M. Anscombe?

Colleen

This is so insightful, thank you for sharing!