The nihilism of the law of Ireland

Abstract

Three arguments concerning Irish law are advanced in this dissertation. Firstly, it is argued (a) that the earlier jurisprudence of the Irish Supreme Court held that the constitutionally protected natural human rights can be understood in accordance with Saint Thomas Aquinas’s (1224-1274) Christian theological understanding of the natural law, and (b) notwithstanding the references to Aquinas in the earlier jurisprudence, Aquinas’s theological understanding of the natural law is not evident in the judgments of the Supreme Court in cases concerning contraception, abortion, abortion information, euthanasia and blasphemy handed down during the period from 1973 to 1999. Secondly, it is argued that the decisions of the Irish Supreme Court in the cases concerning contraception, abortion, abortion information, euthanasia and blasphemy evidence that which the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) variously identified as the 'Metaphysics of Subjectivity' (Metaphysik der Subjektivitat) and 'Nihilism' (Nihilismus)) Thirdly, it is argued that, notwithstanding the affinities between the "new" natural law theory of Professor John Finnis (b. 1940) and the "theological" natural law theory of Aquinas, Finnis' new natural law theory cannot be reconciled with the theological natural law theory of Aquinas. It is argued that Finnis' new natural law theory presupposes the metaphysics of subjectivity identified by Heidegger. It is argued that the application of Finnis' new natural law theory in interpreting the Constitution of Ireland is not an "antidote" to the metaphysics of subjectivity and the nihilism of contemporary Irish jurisprudence but a participation in the very nihilism unfolding within the law of Ireland.