NYU

7:30 pm

The Catholic Center at NYU (238 Thompson St, New York, NY 10012)

A lecture by Prof. J. Budziszewski (University of Texas, Austin)

Free and open to the public

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Catholic Center at NYU

Speaker Bio:

J. Budziszewski (Ph.D. Yale, 1981) is a professor of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin.  An authority on the classical natural law tradition, he is especially interested in the ethical foundations of law, politics, and society.  His two most recent books are Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law and Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics (Cambridge University Press), and he is working on a book about happiness and ultimate purpose.
 

Lecture Description:

There are good reasons to respect and obey the law, because without law there is not much justice either.  But what if the law itself is unjust?  What makes the problem difficult is that some ways of responding to injustice themselves threaten justice.   So what may we do, and what must we not do?  May we disobey unjust laws?  May we use violence against them?  What is justice, anyway?  Should an unjust law really be considered a law at all?  And does it make a difference how an unjust law goes wrong?