Conscience and Human Rights in Thomas Aquinas and Some Predecessors

Oct 7, 2021

Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture

1025 E 58th St.
Chicago, IL 60637

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Free and open to the public. Registration is required. Contact us with any questions. Note the time for this event has been changed from 4:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

In discussions of the history of the philosophy of human rights, typically a distinction is made between theories that understand rights as objective and those that understand them as subjective (or, to use a more contemporary term, more “personalistic”). This talk relates this issue to the history of reflection, especially by Christian thinkers leading up to the thirteenth century, regarding conscience. It argues ultimately that Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of conscience, influenced as it is by Aristotle, entails an understanding of human rights that is primarily objective. It concludes with a few remarks about the advantages of such an understanding.

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