Cardiff University Natural right constitutionalism: A theory of political liberalism expounded from contemporary Thomistic resources

Natural right constitutionalism: A theory of political liberalism expounded from contemporary Thomistic resources This thesis outlines a species of political liberalism and an understanding of human rights developed from contemporary interpretations of Thomas Aquinas’s moral, legal and political theory. Working from a reading of Aquinas’s ethics that stresses both its eudaimonism and the capacity of practical reason to immediately apprehend certain human goods, the work builds on this ethical understanding by propounding a substantive approach to justice and natural right in the legal-political domain. It is argued that a Thomistic conception of justice and natural right is consistent with the notion of subjective human rights, including both fundamental human rights and certain ‘liberty ’ or ‘choice ’ rights. The thesis demonstrates that Aquinas’s innovative approach to justice and the political common good is useful in addressing key points in debates in political theory on human rights practice, ideal theory and forms of social criticism. Such an approach to natural right is developed into a particular species of political liberalism