Clearing things up …

… A Christian Hart, a Humean Head | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… a non-Humean view of practical reason is controversial—though I defend it in Aquinas, and other classical natural law theorists have defended it as well—but the fact that it is controversial is completely irrelevant to the dispute between Hart and natural law theory. For no natural law theorist denies that somecontroversial metaphysical conclusions have to be defended in order to defend natural law theory. That is true of any moral theory, including secular theories, and including whatever approach it is that Hart favors. Certainly it is true of the Humean thesis about “facts” and “values,” which is just one controversial metaphysical claim among others. Having to appeal to controversial metaphysical assumptions is in no way whatsoever a special problem for natural law theorists.