Talk:John Finnis

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Contents 1 Then What is HLA Hart? 2 Marriage 3 Controversy section 4 Links to last two articles removed 5 WikiProject class rating

[edit] Then What is HLA Hart?

It's a little outside my areas of competence, but I'm not sure "drawing both on Oxonian and Catholic Thomistic philosophical traditions to challenge the dominant Anglo-positivist approach to legal philosophy taken by John Austin and H.L.A. Hart" makes a whole lot of sense. Austin and Hart were both from Oxford. If there were an Oxonian tradition in the philosophy of law at the time Finnis was writing, /surely/ that tradition is to be identified with Hart. I think I know what the writer intends to imply; he wishes to note a connection between Finnis and Anscombe and Foot (the latter of who are Oxonians) but they're already covered by the use of 'Catholic Thomistic Philosophical traditions' so it just looks like an unfortunate error. I speak from ignorance, however, of whether there was e.g. a prominent natural law legal philosophy promulgated in 19th century Oxford, so I haven't made the change myself. That not being the case, I think someone really should. DuncanCrowe (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 15:49, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Marriage

Finnis does not consider marriage a basic human good but rather sees marriage as the instantiation of a number of basic human goods, including friendship and life. Other basic human goods include knowledge, practical reasonableness, religion, aesthetic experience, and play.

Yes. i've removed marriage and clarified the actual 7 basic goods which Finnis discusses in his book The Fundamentals of Ethics

And yet, in his article on marriage and sex he does get awfully close to elevating marriage to a good in itself.212.219.158.202 10:52, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe that Finnis has changed his view, and now does consider Marriage a basic good in accord with his current understanding of Aquinas. See his Founder's Aquinas, p. 82. Finnis writes, "In an earlier work he [Aquinas] had spoken of an inclination to a single though complex good which is naturally attractive to our reason, a good which includes both personal sexual union and the procreation and education of children: the 'natural inclination to marriage'.

[edit] Controversy section

It seems the entire objective of this article is to highlight controversies rather than actually provide biographical information. Bkennnedy 14:03, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The controversy section, at least, reads like an extended plea against his critics. Sentences asserting that Finnis says his critics haven't tried to understand his argument convey no substantive information about the argument itself.--ScottForschler (talk) 20:54, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Links to last two articles removed

The links for the last two articles listed do not work —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.35.34.25 (talk) 09:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 04:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)