After the Natural Law a Review Essay on J. L. Hill's Account of the Classical Worldview

Abstract

J. L. Hill's After the Natural Law (2016) diagnoses the condition of a civilization that keeps the fruit of the classical worldview while felling the tree that bore it. This essay reviews Hill's argument, traces its chronological march from Plato and Aristotle through Aquinas to the architects of modern thought, and weighs his claim that modern moral and political commitments cannot survive the removal of God from the account. The essay affirms Hill's central diagnosis, tests it against Kant's attempt to ground human dignity in autonomous reason, and extends it where the political and institutional implications remain thin. Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Hooker, and Calvin show that natural law is a covenantal claim as well as a philosophical one. The law written on the heart endures. It is rightly read by those who remember who wrote it.