Last year, the Lyceum Institute hosted Dr. Daniel De Haan (Frederick Copleston Senior Research Fellow & Lecturer in Philosophy & Theology in the Catholic Tradition Blackfriars and Campion Hall / Research Fellow, Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford) for a colloquium presentation on “The Centrality of Noble Goods (Bona Honesta) for Human Flourishing”. The lecture of this colloquium is now available below.
Lyceum Institute Colloquium
The Centrality of Noble Goods (Bona Honesta) for Human Flourishing
ABSTRACT: In this talk I present an account of noble goods (bona honesta) which situates them within a broadly Thomistic account of the natural law, human flourishing, and the virtues. This account of noble goods is elaborated within a developmental and phronetic approach to the natural law. We need to understand human flourishing as developmental consisting of distinct forms of flourishing within different developmental phases of human life (toddler, juvenile, adolescent, young adult, senescence, etc), which require developmentally inflected ways of identifying the precepts of the natural law, virtues, and noble goods. This approach to the natural law also differs from classical and new natural law, by maintaining that we practically receive culturally mediated moral endoxa of rules, goods, and virtues, which are thick concepts. Our practical and even theoretical reflection on why one’s moral inheritance is or is not true in various respects engenders the aspiration to practical wisdom, the virtue for discerning the natural law. Among the moral endoxa tested by this aspiration to practical wisdom are those concerning what goods are worthwhile in themselves, i.e., which are truly noble goods? In this talk I set out some criteria for answering this question and showing how noble goods partially constitute human flourishing.
The recorded Q&A session is exclusive to enrolled Lyceum Institute members.
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