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Pope affirms natural law in UN address

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:39:18 GMT

New York, Apr. 18, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Human rights must be established on the firm and unchanging principles of natural law, Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) told world leaders in an April 18 address to the UN's General Assembly.

The papal speech-- which he opened with several paragraphs in French before switching to English-- underlined the importance that Pope Benedict attaches to the recognition of natural law as the basis for human rights. Commenting on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Pontiff remarks that those rights, codified by the UN 60 years ago, "are based on the natural law inscribed on human hears and present in different cultures and civilizations."

The UN speech was perhaps the most important address scheduled during the Pope's visit to America. Indeed the plans for the papal voyage began to take shape only after the Holy Father accepted an invitation to address the General Assembly.

The Pope opened his remarks by praising the founding principles of the UN, saying that they "express the just aspirations of the human spirit and constitute the ideals that should underpin international relations." He reminded the delegates that Popes Paul VI and John Paul II had addressed the UN, acknowledging the consistent Vatican support for the organization.

The existence of an multi-state body committed to upholding the principles of international law is vital, the Pope continued, in order to guard against unilateral action by major powers. "This is all the more necessary," he said, "at a time when we experience the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world's problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community." The London Times interpreted this passage as a subtle criticism of the US decision to go to war in Iraq-- a decision that the Holy See had opposed, 5 years ago, on the ground that the US policy was not clearly justified by international law.

Pope Benedict went on to offer an expansive vision of the duties of the UN. The international organization, he said, should help to coordinate aid to the poor and weak countries of the world, offering economic assistance and ensuring the rights of the people in those nations. He added that international efforts should be made to safeguard the environment and to intervene when "the human person and the family are robbed of their natural identity."

Continuing his discussion of international intervention, the Pope argued strongly that the UN should become actively involved-- even overriding concerns about state sovereignty-- when individual nations fail to protect their own people. He said:

If states are unable to guarantee such protection, the international community must intervene with the juridical means provided in the United Nations Charter and in other international instruments. The action of the international community and its institutions, provided that it respects the principles undergirding the international order, should never be interpreted as an unwarranted imposition or a limitation of sovereignty. On the contrary, it is indifference or failure to intervene that do the real damage.
In extreme cases, the Pope said, international organizations are required to protect the very basis of political order. He reminded the UN delegates that the organization was established after the "profound upheavals" of World War II. At that time, he said, thoughtful world leaders recognized that the widespread denial of human rights "threatens the objective foundations of the values inspiring and governing the international order."

In that context the Pope explained the critical importance of a strong and enduring basis for the recognition of human rights. The Universal Declaration, he observed, "was the outcome of a convergence of different religious and cultural traditions." In spite of differences on other political and social issues, these traditions converged to recognize the natural law "inscribed on human hearts," he said. The Pope warned that a failure to recognize the natural-law basis for human rights would be a dangerous mistake:

Removing human rights from this context would mean restricting their range and yielding to a relativistic conception, according to which the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary and their universality would be denied in the name of different cultural, political, social and even religious outlooks.
As it stands, with its strong foundation in natural-law reasoning, the Universal Declaration remains a genuine expression of an unchanging moral consensus, the Pope said. He pointed out that the document "has enabled different cultures, juridical expressions and institutional models to converge around a fundamental nucleus of values, and hence of rights." Citing St. Augustine, the Pope observed that the Golden Rule "cannot in any way vary according to the different understandings that have arisen in the world."

Later in his presentation, Pope Benedict put forward a case for an expansive UN guarantee of religious freedom. This freedom, he said, should properly be understood to embrace not only a private right to individual worship but also a right to affirm religious principles in public life. "It is inconceivable," the Pope insisted, "that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves-- their faith-- in order to be active citizens. It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one's rights."

As he concluded his lengthy presentation, the Holy Father explained the connection between religious freedom and all other human rights. These rights, he said, "are grounded and shaped by the transcendent nature of the person, which permits men and women to pursue their journey of faith and their search for God in this world."

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the way to Christ is simple

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:01:44 GMT

God's Blessings often benefit all people. But many of His promises are only for His own children. If you're not sure that you're a part of God's family, He offers you this invitation. The way to Christ is simple:

1. Admit that you have a need.

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Romans 3:23

2. Believe that Jesus is God, the Son, who paid the wages of your sin.

For the wages of sin is death [eternal separation from God]; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 6:23

3. Call upon God.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Romans 10:9

King James Version

The Holy Bible

ISBN 978-1-58660-198-0

Barbour Publishing

www.barbourbooks.com

posted in Aristotle - 1 reply

Friendship

august — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 08:09:50 GMT

Aristotle lists three reasons why people have friends. They can be seen as three types of friend, some friends cover more then one of these. They are as follows:

1.) good. (inherent goodness)

2.) pleasure.

3.) usefulness.

Friends that are good cover the other catagories as they will be useful and will bring pleasure. So, good means inherently good. It is not always the case that a friend who brings you pleasure is one which is useful. An example of this would be a comic that might by funny but not useful. The same goes for a friend that is useful, they might not always bring you pleasure. Some co-workers or employees are hard working people and they are good to work with, but you might not find their company all that great out side of work, and this might be why.

The idea is to be good not because it is rewarding but just because, and it is rewarding. All people are looking for goodness.

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What are the top ten Aristotelian memes we use every day?

kanch_bud — Fri, 20 May 2005 04:57:16 GMT

1. "Energy".
2. Reductionistic knowledge.
3. "Substance".
4. The hot wax metaphor of memory.
5. "Every story has a beginning middle and end."
6. "Every story has surprises, reversals, and disasters."
7. "Intellectual virtues".
8.
9.
10.

posted in Aristotle - 3 replies

Introduce yourself

barce — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 07:05:47 GMT

greetings, feel free to introduce yourself, and feel free to bring up the story behind your interest in aristotle.

posted in Aristotle - 7 replies

Are all things one?

barce — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 07:57:51 GMT

Parmenides argued that all things are one from the proposition that nothing comes from nothing. If there are things, our beliefs regarding things involve becoming. An acorn becomes a tree; a tree becomes a table; a table becomes fuel for a fire. But becoming is the notion of something coming into existence from having been nothing before. Therefore, there are not things. If there are not things, then there must be a thing, and this thing is being.

Aristotle takes the pain to refute Parmenides' argument that all things are one in Physics I.iii.

"[H]e treats 'being' as having only one meaning, whereas in reality it has several." (186a27)

Being can mean having existence. E.G. That creature has being.

Being can also mean existing in a particular way. E.G. That creature is a being (of some sort).

Every thing has being in the sense of having existence, but that does not make all things one. All things may belong to the category of being.

Every thing has being in the sense of being what it is, or existing in a particular way.

How could anyone argue that all things are one to begin with?

posted in Aristotle - 3 replies

Aristotle on virtue

kanch_bud — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 14:43:16 GMT

What's the best book to read of Ari's on the subject of virtue?

posted in Aristotle - 1 reply

Metaphyikx! Book I, II, and III.

kanch_bud — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 09:45:50 GMT

Metaphysics, Book One. Ari reviews theories of stuff.

Aristotle begins talking about how we love our senses, particularly sight, and how all humans are curious by nature.

He then asks, What is wisdom?

He reviews philosophers before him on the subject, notably the poet Hesiod and the Pythagoreans, teaching dualistic categories of principles.

“The One is substance,” Aristotle seems to be saying.

Other philosophers have posited materialism and other ‘causes’ but they are not the ‘substance’.

He rejects Plato’s Forms as hard to prove, and the Pythagorean number as being in the order of "effect" and not causal. Furthermore, Plato’s understanding of the One describes it as undifferentiated, when in fact the Forms are manifold; Aristotle charitably supposes that there needs must be more definitions of One.

So, to summarise Book One, Aristotle says that past philosophers have concerned themselves with the physical, not the metaphysical, so far in looking for causes of reality.

Book Two is about method. Aristotle says nature, the physical world, is either understandable by math or by reasoning, and so he decides to define nature better to find out which method will work best.

Book Three is about categories. Universals, principles, elements – these are the word bandied about. What categories do things go in? Categories of characteristic, or of their substance? The highest category must be principles, it turns out.

On the other hand, if everything physical is infinitely individualized then how can you be said to know anything? They all have irreducibly different characteristics. A unifying principle presupposes that they share commonalities of SOME kind, but this principle needs must be universal to Aristotle.

Then I stopped reading because I found his presuppositions of objectivity and cause-effect relationship tiresome and disagreeable.

More to come.

posted in Aristotle - 0 replies

A radical suggestion

kanch_bud — Wed, 25 May 2005 04:45:01 GMT

Let's study him! Let's get to know Aristotle and chat about him. Let's understand what this guy was on about!

I'm suggesting we get inspired by Aristotle's ability to relieve human suffering and advance human civilisation. And I'm suggesting also that we abandon vain intellectualism in favor of a more heartfelt understanding of the values of Aristotle.

Does Aristo have a first name? a nickname? Ari? Harry? Happystotle?

Was he single, married, a lover or gay?

What kind of university did he run?

When he says prudence is the common virtue to civic and intellectual virtue-set, does that make it better or more significant? What's the differences and commonalities between prudence and discretion?

Has anyone else read Robert Dilt's modelling of Aristotle's reductionism in his brilliant "Strategies of Genius"? He does a pictorial model of reductive knowledge which makes Aristotle's metathinking strategy immediately apprehendable.

So... I think that should get us started :-)

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Does void exist?

barce — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 04:17:44 GMT

In 214a, Aristotle writes that if void is defined as "that in which there is nothing that is either heavy or bouyant," then a point is a void. However, points as locations in space do exist, right? If this is so, then there can be no void.

Moreover, the atomists believe that void is necessary so that there can be motion. "But the truth is that the self-existence of vacuity is not involved in any way whatever in the fact of motion. This needs no proof, if 'motion' be taken as the typical and inclusive expression for every kind of 'passing from this to that,' for a plenum might undergo qualitative modification without the aid of any vacuum." (214a26 - 214a30)

Even if we consider the vacuum created by putting mercury in a tube, and turning the tube upside down while submerged under mercury on a platter, that vacuum still has EM waves passing through it. So, it seems the stronger argument goes to void not existing. Agree or disagree? Is the issue more complicated than that?

posted in Aristotle - 2 replies

suicide

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:08:03 GMT

In Book V, section 11 of the Nic. Ethics, Aristotle asserts that a suicide acts unjustly toward the state. Can anyone shed some light on his argument?

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presocratics tribe

Tue, 25 May 2004 03:53:57 GMT

jus for the hell of it, i started a presocratics tribe. you are all invited:

http://www.tribe.net/tribe/servlet/template/pub%2CTribeCard.vm?tribeid=8549dd40-0910-43fd-a061-f173c37176fc&_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5B8549dd40-0910-43fd-a061-f173c37176fc%5D

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Last Aristotle that You Read

barce — Mon, 03 May 2004 02:19:18 GMT

What was the last thing you read by Aristotle? For me it was Physics I, 1 -4, the part where Aristotle tries to figure out space. If whatever exists, exists in a space, then in what sense does space exist?

posted in Aristotle - 2 replies