In April I published a new article in The Thomist that may interest some Patheos readers. Entitled, “Thomistic Essentialism, Racism, and Secular Accounts of Human Equality,” what follows is the abstract:
This article makes a case for why human equality and the wrongness of racism are best accounted for by the philosophical anthropology derived from Thomistic Essentialism. After presenting this
view and explaining its contemporary application in the American civil rights struggle, the author briefly reviews three major secular alternatives–Ruse and Wilson’s Darwinian account; Rawlsian social contract theory; and Dworkinian ungrounded realism. He shows how the advocates of each, in their own way, rely on notions that are more at home with Thomistic Essentialism, even though each is offered by its champions as a way to ground human equality without appealing to the sort of rich metaphysical and theistic beliefs that Thomistic Essentialism entails and King and his allies took for granted.
The article can be accessed via subscription here. If you don’t have a subscription, please email or private message me.
The entire issue in which the article appears is devoted to the topic of Thomas Aquinas and Racial Justice. Other contributors include my Baylor colleague, Thomas S. Hibbs, and the renowned Notre Dame Aquinas scholar, Therese Scarpelli Cory. Honored and humbled to be included in that bunch.
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