The study of natural law theories is presently one of the most fruitful areas of research in the studies of early modern intellectual history, and moral and political theory. Likewise the historical significance of the Enlightenment for the development of `modernisation' in many different forms continues to be the subject of controversy. This collection therefore offers a timely opportunity to re-examine both the coherence of the concept of an `early Enlightenment', and the specific contribution of natural (...) law theories to its formation. The works of major thinkers such as Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Malebranche, Pufendorf and Thomasius are reassessed, and the appeal and importance of the discourse of natural jurisprudence both to those working inside conventional educational and political structures and to those outside - such as in the Huguenot diaspora - is evaluated. This volume will therefore be of importance to all those readers concerned to study the character of the debates in the period 1650-1750 surrounding moral and political agency, sovereignty and obligation, and the legitimation of religious toleration in the divergent states and patriotic contexts of Europe. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Traditional Natural Law Theory Modern Natural Law Theory Conclusion References.

Contemporary social theory and natural law : Jurgen Habermas -- A natural-law critique of modern social theory : Karl Lowith, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin -- Natural law and the question of universalism -- Modern natural law I : Hobbes and Rousseau on the state of nature and social life -- Modern natural law II : Kant and Hegel on proceduralism and ethical life -- Classical social theory I : Marx, Tonnies and (...) Durkheim on alienation, community and society -- Classical social theory II : Simmel and Weber on the universality of sociability and reasonableness -- Social theory as the natural law of 'artificial' social relations. (shrink)

Philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries who worked within the tradition of modern natural law became interested in political economy in part as they attempted to reconcile two conflicting images of economic activity. On the one hand, from the legal point of view economic activity was understood as a morally neutral and benign activity that could be regulated by simple and clear rules of justice. On the other hand, it was seen as a realm of political struggle, (...) manipulation, deceit and the exercise of hidden forms of domination. This article examines the legal and moral contexts of Adam Smith's excursion into political economy by interpreting the roles played by these two images of the market in the theory of value articulated in book I of The Wealth of Nations. (shrink)

Johannes Althusius, a German legal theorist and political thinker in the early 1600s, attempts in his Politica to create a chain of increasingly large communal associations that could constitute a universally applicable political order. He founds this system on a natural law theory of behavioral guidelines. Many elements of his body of work, from its federalist structure to the granting of a right of sovereignty to the people, bear marks of an early connection to modern Western thought meriting (...) further exploration. Upon close inspection, the natural law theory at play in Politica also contains oddities and inconsistencies worthy of note. His Theory of Justice, a work on law and ethics, contains a similar theory with slight yet significant variations at the core level. Ultimately owed to weaknesses in the derivation of duties to self and a lack of evidence for the reasoning of the hierarchy of duties to others in Politica, the Theory of Justice model, though not without its own internal inconsistencies in the moral authority of positive law, is found to present a more philosophically sound model. (shrink)

Abstract. For the past two decades, I have been developing an integrative Christian marriage theory, based in part on a grounding concept of natural law and an overarching theory of covenant. The natural law part of this theory starts with an account of the natural facts, conditions, interests, needs, and qualities of human life, interaction, and generation—what I call the “premoral” goods or realities of life. It then identifies the natural inclinations of humans to form enduring (...) and exclusive monogamous marriages and to preserve these units as the central site for intimacy, procreation, and nurture of children. In this paper, I first summarize this natural law theory of marriage and then compare it to the formulations of other modern Christian thinkers. I also defend this theory against various modern critics of natural law—in part by reinterpreting some traditional natural law teachings that in my view have been misunderstood, in part by looking at the interesting convergences between the insights into sex, marriage, and family life offered by contemporary Christian theological ethicists and by evolutionary biologists and biological anthropologists. (shrink)

The past in which theory of this kind had its origins is notably similar to the present. For this is theory–practical theory–which articulates a critique of critiques, and the critiques it criticizes, rejects and replaces have much in common whether one looks at them in their fifth century B.C. Hellenic (Sophistic) or their modern (Enlightenment, Nietzschean or postmodern) forms.

In this book, Buckle provides a historical perspective on the political philosophies of Locke and Hume, arguing that there are continuities in the development of seventeenth and eighteenth-century political theory which have often gone unrecognized. He begins with a detailed exposition of Grotius's and Pufendorf's modern natural law theory, focussing on their accounts of the nature of natural law, human sociability, the development of forms of property, and the question of slavery. He then shows that Locke's political (...) theory takes up and develops these basic themes of natural law. The author argues further that, rather than being a departure from this tradition, the moral sense theory of Hutcheson and Hume represents a not entirely successful attempt to underpin the natural law theory with an adequate moral psychology. (shrink)

This paper argues that the founding fathers of the tradition of Scottish Enlightenment natural jurisprudence, Gersholm Carmichael (1672–1729) and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), articulated a view of rights that is pertinent to the contemporary dominance of the language of rights. Maintaining a metaphysical foundation for rights while drawing upon the early-modern Protestant natural law tradition, their conception of rights is more significantly indebted to the pre-modern scholastic natural law tradition than often realized. This is illustrated by (...) exploring some of the background to their respective theories of rights, detailing the precise reasoning that Carmichael and Hutcheson brought to bear upon their conception of rights, and then exploring their application of their understanding of rights to the question of property. (shrink)

Chapter one argues for the important contribution that a natural law based framework can make towards an analysis and assessment of key controversies surrounding the practices of suicide, assisted suicide, and voluntary euthanasia. The second chapter considers a number of historical contributions to the debate. The third chapter takes up the modern context of ideas that have increasingly come to the fore in shaping the 'push' for reform. Particular areas focused upon include the value of human life, the (...) value of personal autonomy, and the rejection of double effect reasoning. Chapter four engages in the task of pointing out structural weakness in utilitarianism and deontology. The thesis argues that major systemic weaknesses in both approaches can be overcome by a teleology of basic human goods. John Finnis' work becomes the underpinning of subsequent applied natural law analysis. Chapter five proceeds to argue for the defence of the intrinsic good of human life from direct attack. The thesis holds out for the proposition "that it is always a serious moral wrong to intentionally kill a human person, whether self or another, regardless of a further appeal to consequences or motive." In support of this, it defends the validity of double effect reasoning as an indispensable part of applied moral decision making. Chapter six critically assesses the arguments of anti-perfectionists that it is not the business of the state to enforce deep or substantive conceptions of the 'good life.' The chapter moves on to argue that the natural law conception of the person in society, centred on the common good, provides a solid framework for assessing both the justification for, as well as the limits on, the role of the state to use its power to legally impose certain moral standards. Chapter seven addresses the concrete relationship between natural law and legal policy by exploring the issue of assisted suicide in the constitutional context of the United States.















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Aquinas’ natural law theory contains a set of basic goods, such as survival, reproduction and the pursuit of truth. However, whether and how there is a hierarchical relationship among these goods remains disputed. Given the importance of Aquinas’ natural law theory for Christianity and the philosophy of law, this issue merits a closer investigation. By carefully examining various modern scholars’ theories and Aquinas’ texts, it is demonstrated that according to Aquinas, firstly, there are hierarchies of basic (...) goods and sins; secondly, these hierarchies are horizontal and vertical according to the order of participation and the dignity of substances, respectively.Contribution: This research reconsiders the modern debate over Aquinas’ hierarchical theory of basic goods and provides a more authentic understanding of Aquinas’ own view, which can be applied to his theory of sin. Aquinas’ natural law theory can hence be clarified in a more profound way. (shrink)

This is a book about the theory of the city or commonwealth, what would come to be called the state, in early modern natural law discourse. Annabel Brett takes a fresh approach by looking at this political entity from the perspective of its boundaries and those who crossed them. She begins with a classic debate from the Spanish sixteenth century over the political treatment of mendicants, showing how cosmopolitan ideals of porous boundaries could simultaneously justify the freedoms of (...) itinerant beggars and the activities of European colonists in the Indies. She goes on to examine the boundaries of the state in multiple senses, including the fundamental barrier between human beings and animals and the limits of the state in the face of the natural lives of its subjects, as well as territorial frontiers. Drawing on a wide range of authors, Brett reveals how early modern political space was constructed from a complex dynamic of inclusion and exclusion. Throughout, she shows that early modern debates about political boundaries displayed unheralded creativity and virtuosity but were nevertheless vulnerable to innumerable paradoxes, contradictions, and loose ends.Changes of State is a major work of intellectual history that resonates with modern debates about globalization and the transformation of the nation-state. (shrink)

These essays address some of the most intriguing questions raised by natural law theory and its implications for law, morality, and public policy. some of the essays explore the implications that natural law theory has for jurisprudence, asking what natural law suggests about the use of legal devices such as constitutions and precedents. Other essays examine the connections between natural law and various political concepts, such as citizens' rights and the obligation of citizens to obey their (...) government. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:102 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and removal of the social self, through the devaluation of values and de-culturation, to the objectivizatlonof the ego, the state of oneness and unity with all. The remaining sections of the book give an analysis of Rumi, the universal man of the Eas~, and an analysis of Goethe, the universal man of the West. The Rumi chapter contains impressive translations of RumPs poems and the (...) Goethe study offers a very pertinent critique of K. R. Eissler's psychoanalytic interpretation of the great man. Added is a case history of a young man who lived in two cultures, and after many errors and meanderings obtained full integration. The final section offers an application of the transcultural state to health, social change and leadership. A most rewarding and challenging work, marred only by an incredible number of typographical errors and a sometimes uneven English due to misunderstandings of the Dutch printers. Hg~RY WALTESBRANN Washington, D. C. Natural Law and Modern Society. Essays by John Cogley, Robert M. Hutchins, John Courtney Murray, SJ., Scott Buchanan, Philip Selznick, Harvey Wheeler, and Robert Gordis. (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1966. Pp. 285. Meridian Books. $1.75.) This group of essays has been discussed from time to time at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California. The essays provide an excellent survey of the various contexts in which the idea of natural law is functioning today: in jurisprudence, political theory, sciences, religions, and philosophies of culture. Though the emphasis is on "modem society," there is a large amount of history in this collection, going back to the ancients, and one of the most valuable features of the analysis is the evidence here offered that "natural law" has meant and still means many different things, and that this flexibility of meaning gives the idea an enduring vitality and relevance. This is the particular theme of Scott Buchanan's "Natural Law and Teleology", which chapter reviews almost the whole history of philosophy to show how the content of natural law has varied for teleological reasons. Since it is impossible to review this whole story, it seems simplest and least distorting to quote a series of passages from the essays so that the reader can estimate the range of subject-matter and the kind of observations in the volume : The natural lawyer who lacks a sense of history, a factual sense, is as seriously deficient as the one who has been victimmed by the historical setting of his own time. Social scientists are concerned with digging up and evaluating exactly the kind of factual material the conscientious natural lawyer needs (Cogley, pp. 24, 26). We are free, with the deference that is due previous laborers in the vineyard, to work out the ~pplication of the principles of natural law to the conditions of our own time. The ends of uman life are heldto be unchanging; the search for the best way of achieving them is continuous and adapted to changing conditions and new knowledge. The search for a revival of natural law--not necessarily, or even principally pitched in Thomistic terms but projected more generally on a ~us gent~um, pluralistic basis--may well be the dominant theme of American legal philosophy over the second half of the century (Hutchins, pp. 34, 37, 46). Plato saw an epitome of the legal and political crisis of the city-state in the trial and death of Socrates.... The sophists are operators in opinion and power.... Plato sets out to find the truth in science and the good of the state.... There is no doctrinal answer to the quest.... The Dialogues practice what they preach, a relentless dialectical exposure of ideas masquerading in dogmas and opinions.... The endless mutual persuasions in any community could result in good laws if the formal processes of government provided insights for the citizens and magistrates alike.... Neither Plato nor Aristotle commonly uses the phrase 'natural law'.... For the Stoics what Plato had described as the "community of ideas," which was only the notion of the interpenetration of BOOK REVIEWS 103 mutual implication of ideas, became the Logos, the perhaps infinite total of... (shrink)

This major contribution to the history of philosophy provides the most comprehensive guide to modern natural law theory available, sets out the full background to liberal ideas of rights and contractarianism, and offers an extensive study of the Scottish Enlightenment. The time span covered is considerable: from the natural law theories of Grotius and Suarez in the early seventeenth century to the American Revolution and the beginnings of utilitarianism. After a detailed survey of modern (...) class='Hi'>natural law theory, the book focuses on the Scottish Enlightenment and its European and American connections. Knud Haakonssen explains the relationship between natural law and civic humanist republicanism, and he shows the relevance of these ideas for the understanding of David Hume and Adam Smith. The result is a completely revised background to modern ideas of liberalism and communitarianism. (shrink)

This book is the first extended attempt to explain Plato's ethics of natural law, to place it accurately in the history of moral theory, and to defend it against the objections that it is totalitarian. Wild provides a clarification of Plato's ethical doctrine and a defense of that doctrine based not only of his analysis of the dialogues but on the belief that Plato must acknowledged as the founder of the Western tradition of the philosophy of natural law. (...) The book begins with a presentation of the major objections raised against Plato by modern authors, Toynbee, Karl Popper and others, who have condemned the so called totalitarianism of Plato's thought. Wild answers these objections point by point and with a wealth of evidence taken from Plato's own arguments. He then presents a historical study of the ethics of natural law, defining the theory and showing through an examination of relevant dialogues that Plato held such a theory. The work concludes with a systematic study of his realistic ethics and its bearing on contemporary problems. This is a reprint of the 1953 Chicago edition. (shrink)

The problem area of distributive justice includes at its core questions about what ought to be owned, how it can be owned and who ought to own it. A fundamental assumption behind recent attempts to address these questions is that the power to shape the property institutions of a society lies entirely in that society's laws. This view, I argue, is mistaken. In this dissertation I provide an account of how property institutions are related to other social practices in a (...) society. A consequence of this account is that property law does not solely determine what property looks like in a society. ;The analysis begins with the observation of Enlightenment-era natural rights theorists that property is, first and foremost, a conventional social norm. I then turn to modern developments in game theory and social psychology to propose a novel account of how conventional social norms guide agents. On this account, a norm guides an agent by influencing their practical reasoning in one of two ways: either rationally, by generating a belief that behavior in those circumstances is required by that norm, or sub-rationally, by structuring the agent's practical reasoning, without the agent being aware of it, in such a way that ensures the formation of intentions to act in a manner required by the norm. This second form of norm guidance, which I call 'passive norm guidance', provides grounds for the claim that property norms can exist and function independently of recognition by the law. I go on to show how the independent existence of property norms can support a robust natural law account of property rights according to which property rights exist independent of recognition by the law. The dissertation ends by show how this account, while radical, is also consistent with the dominant Twentieth Century analytic jurisprudence accounts of property. (shrink)

Now available Open Access! See the Bloomsburycollections URL below. -/- Correct bibliographical information is as follows: Gottfried Achenwall, _Natural Law: A Translation of the Textbook for Kant's Lectures on Legal and Political Philosophy_, edited by Pauline Kleingeld, translated by Corinna Vermeulen, with an Introduction by Paul Guyer. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. -/- As the first translation into any modern language of Achenwall’s Ius naturae, from the 1763 edition used by Immanuel Kant, this is an essential work for anyone interested in (...) Kant, the natural law tradition or the history of legal and political theory. For over twenty years, Kant used this book as the basis for his lectures on natural law. It influenced his legal and political philosophy as well as his ethics, and it is indispensable for understanding Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law and his Metaphysics of Morals. -/- Articulating his theory of natural law with clear definitions and precise distinctions, Achenwall offers a lucid account that includes instructive comparisons with the work of Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Wolff and others. The volume also contains an Introduction by the eminent Kant scholar Paul Guyer, comparing Achenwall’s theory to the legal and political philosophy of Kant’s Doctrine of Right, and a concordance correlating Achenwall’s Natural Law to Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law. (shrink)

The "natural law" worldview developed over the course of almost two thousand years beginning with Plato and Aristotle and culminating with St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. This tradition holds that the world is ordered, intelligible and good, that there are objective moral truths which we can know and that human beings can achieve true happiness only by following our inborn nature, which draws us toward our own perfection. Most accounts of the natural law are based on (...) a God-centered understanding of the world. After the Natural Law traces this tradition from Plato and Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and then describes how and why modern philosophers such as Descartes, Locke and Hobbes began to chip away at this foundation. The book argues that natural law is a necessary foundation for our most important moral and political values – freedom, human rights, equality, responsibility and human dignity, among others. Without a theory of natural law, these values lose their coherence: we literally cannot make sense of them given the assumptions of modern philosophy. Part I of the book traces the development of natural law theory from Plato and Aristotle through the crowning achievement of Thomas Aquinas. Part II explores how modern philosophers have systematically chipped away at the only coherent foundation for these values. As a result, our most important moral and political ideals today are incoherent. Modern political and moral thinkers have been led either to dilute the meaning of such terms as freedom or the moral good – or abandon these ideas altogether. Thus, modern philosophy and political thought are leading us either toward anarchy or totalitarianism. The conclusion, entitled "Why God Matters", shows how even the philosophical assumptions of the natural law depend on a personal God. (shrink)

This paper will try to test the plausibility of interweaving a conception of politics with the nature of the conflict which politics is supposed to regulate, by looking at a specific case in the history of Western political thought. I wish to consider the interpretation of modern social relations that sees conflict as arising from the unequal distribution of (relatively) scarce resources. It is my aim to analyse the origins of this conception. But first I would like to note (...) the success of this line of thought, which permeates both everyday conversations and theoretical works. When we argue that the unequal distribution of scarce resources is the main source of conflict, we use �resources� mainly to refer to all goods and commodities that are indispensable to the production of socially desirable items. The term �resources� carries a distinctive economic flavour; and as the main threat to social cohesion is seen to stem from disagreements over the allocation of those �resources�, the solution to the problem is mainly seen in terms of reaching an equilibrium, by relying on the devices of political economy. (shrink)

Natural law has long been considered the traditional source of Roman Catholic canon law. However, new scholarship is critical of this approach as it portrays the Catholic Church as static, ahistorical, and insensitive to cultural change. In its attempt to stem the massive loss of effectiveness being experienced by canon law, the church has to reconsider its theory of legal foundation, especially its natural law theory. Church Law in Modernity analyses the criticism levelled at the church and puts (...) forward solutions for reconciling church law with modernity by revealing the historical and cultural authenticity of all law, and revising the processes of law making. In a modern church, there is no way of thinking of the law without the participation of the faithful in legislation. Judith Hahn therefore proposes a reformed legislative process for the church in the hope of reconciling the natural law origins of church law with a new, modern theology. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel developed a new understanding of natural law that departs from both traditional and more contemporary accounts. Natural lawyers defend standards that are external to the law in order to survey the merits of law. Call these accounts theories of natural law externalism. Hegel offers a very different account where we survey the merits of law through a standard that is internal to law. This essay will explain Hegel’s natural law internalism and (...) whether it marks an advance on existing natural law accounts. I will argue that Hegel offers us a novel understanding of natural law that is compelling, but ultimately unstable and problematic. -/- This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Classical Natural Law Modern Natural Law Hegel's Natural Law Internalism Natural Law Internalism or Externalism? Conclusion Notes References. (shrink)

By the sixth century of the modern era, and after centuries of refinement and skillful application by Roman jurists, the core principles appear in Justinian's Institutes, where it is simply taken for granted, without benefit of analysis or argument, that.

Hedley Bull, in the passage in The Anarchical Society which introduces the ‘three competing traditions of thought’ associated with the articulation of the modern states-system, cited Otto von Gierke as the originator of this influential way of organising international theory. This article examines Gierke's work in order to assess the extent of the influence on the English School that can be ascribed to him. It argues that in fact Gierke's version of the three traditions bears little resemblance to that (...) of Bull, and that by ‘international society’ Gierke was referring to confederal structures of political power. Through an analysis of a significant strand of American revolutionary thought, the paper seeks to demonstrate the potential that further attention to the Gierkean understanding of international society could have for advancing the English School's research programme and building on its achievements. (shrink)

By the sixth century of the modern era, and after centuries of refinement and skillful application by Roman jurists, the core principles appear in Justinian's Institutes, where it is simply taken for granted, without benefit of analysis or argument, that.

"Public reason" is one of the central concepts in modern liberal political theory. As articulated by John Rawls, it presents a way to overcome the difficulties created by intractable differences among citizens' religious and moral beliefs by strictly confining the place of such convictions in the public sphere. Identifying this conception as a key point of conflict, this book presents a debate among contemporary natural law and liberal political theorists on the definition and validity of the idea of (...) public reason. Its distinguished contributors examine the consequences of interpreting public reason more broadly as "right reason," according to natural law theory, versus understanding it in the narrower sense in which Rawls intended. They test public reason by examining its implications for current issues, confronting the questions of abortion and slavery and matters relating to citizenship. This energetic exchange advances our understanding of both Rawls's contribution to political philosophy and the lasting relevance of natural law. It provides new insights into crucial issues facing society today as it points to new ways of thinking about political theory and practice. (shrink)

The classical view of natural law, often traced to Aquinas' statement that "unjust law is no law at all," finds few defenders today. Even those most sympathetic to natural law theories do not embrace the classical account, but, instead, convert Aquinas' claim into a claim of political theory or construct new "natural law" accounts about the connection between legal and moral principles in a theory of adjudication. In this paper, I defend the view that extreme injustice (...) disqualifies otherwise valid official directives from counting as "law”. Indeed, I suggest that modern positivism's characterization of the normative claims that typify legal systems leads inevitably to the conclusion that "law," as a conceptual matter, must be understood by insiders who employ the term to admit moral limits on what can count as "law." I proceed as follows. First, I begin with some preliminary clarifying comments about methodology and the precise issue under discussion. Second, I describe four leading theories about the nature of law and consider how central ideas in each theory can be seen to generate opposing ideas that lead in turn to opposing models of law. Third, I state briefly the affirmative case for thinking that the classical natural law view is correct. Fourth, I identify basic mistakes in current approaches to the question about the nature of law that help explain why modern positivism has overlooked the manner in which it leads logically to the classical natural law view. Finally, I add some brief remarks about why it matters: what practical consequences follow from acknowledging that there are moral limits on what can count as law. (shrink)

The author emphasizes the leading role of Kant's philosophy and neo-Kantianism in spreading the theory of natural law on Ukrainian territory. The article emphasizes that the idea of natural law was considered in the circles of the Ukrainian intelligentsia as a component of the general system of idealistic views. The intelligentsia was critical of positive law and called for the correction of its defects with the help of moral goals. The author compares rationalist and religious-ethical approaches to issues (...) of ethical origin and natural human rights. (shrink)

"Human beings are a part of nature and apart from it." The argument of Natural Law and Justice is that the philosophy of natural law and contemporary theories about the nature of justice are both efforts to make sense of the fundamental paradox of human experience: individual freedom and responsibility in a causally determined universe. Professor Weinreb restores the original understanding of natural law as a philosophy about the place of humankind in nature. He traces the (...) natural law tradition from its origins in Greek speculation through its classic Christian statement by Thomas Aquinas. He goes on to show how the social contract theorists adapted the idea of natural law to provide for political obligation in civil society and how the idea was transformed in Kant's account of human freedom. He brings the historical narrative down to the present with a discussion of the contemporary debate between natural law and legal positivism, including particularly the natural law theories of Finnis, Richards, and Dworkin. Professor Weinreb then adopts the approach of modern political philosophy to develop the idea of justice as a union of the distinct ideas of desert and entitlement. He shows liberty and equality to be the political analogues of desert and entitlement and both pairs to be the normative equivalents of freedom and cause. In this part of the book, Weinreb considers the theories of justice of Rawls and Nozick as well as the communitarian theory of Maclntyre and Sandel. The conclusion brings the debates about natural law and justice together, as parallel efforts to understand the human condition. This original contribution to legal philosophy will be especially appreciated by scholars, teachers, and students in the fields of political philosophy, legal philosophy, and the law generally. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction by Anthony J. LisskaV. Bradley LewisAnthony J. Lisska. Aquinas’s Theory of Natural Law: An Analytic Reconstruction. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. xv + 320. Paper, $24.95.This volume aims to provide an explication of the natural law theory of St. Thomas Aquinas “consistent with the expectation of philosophers in the analytic tradition” (10–11, 17). Accordingly, the author begins, (...) in the first three chapters, by reviewing the recent history of Anglo-American metaethics, aligning himself broadly with those critics of analytic ethics like G. E. M. Anscombe, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Finnis, Martha Nussbaum, and Henry Veatch, who have argued for a recovery of Aristotelian moral theory, against varieties of intuitionism, non-cognitivism, and neo-Kantianism. Lisska’s principal objective is to present a reconstructed natural law theory based primarily on Aquinas’s discussion in questions 90–97 of the prima secundae of the Summa theologiae (a translation of these questions is appended to the book). This he offers mostly in the fourth, fifth and eighth chapters of the book. The sixth chapter is a critique of John Finnis’s account of natural law and the seventh is an exposition of the views of Henry [End Page 526] Veatch. The ninth chapter presents some suggestions on how the author’s account can illuminate controversies over the grounding of human rights, and the tenth is a brief conclusion.The three introductory chapters consist mainly of a review and endorsement of the critics of academic ethics since Moore’s Prıncipia Ethıca. Having accepted arguments for the inadequacy of modern ethics, Lisska argues for the recovery of Aquinas’s views which he sees as in fundamental continuity with Aristotelian ethics (84, 89, 100, 102–105, 108, 134–36). His central thesis is that natural law is a “second-order inquiry” based on a realist metaphysics of the human person as defined by a set of dispositional properties, the realization of which constitutes Aristotelian eudaimonia and Thomistic beatitudo (17, 104–106, 131–37, 152–55, 186, 195–201). Moreover, Lisska contends that Aristotelian “eudaimonism” constitutes an adequate account of moral obligation: what he calls, after Veatch, “obligatory teleology” (107–109, 121, 202–205, 235).At the core of Lisska’s account, then, is a metaphysical dispute that pits Aristotelian essentialism against modern reductionist ontology. This metaphysical core is separated from any theological implications in the fifth chapter (especially 119–23, 137) and Lisska reinforces his metaphysical thesis by appealing to Saul Kripke’s discussion of natural kinds and the early work of Hilary Putnam (97–99, 125, 206–209). Given the centrality of metaphysical argument, a critique of Finnis’s theory goes without saying, and Lisska devotes a chapter to it, adding another to expound Henry Veatch’s contrary view.While this book undertakes an important effort to recover a workable natural law theory—especially in its commendable stress on metaphysical questions—it is, as a whole, less satisfactory than it might have been. A good part of this owes to the book’s abstraction from historical questions. No sustained attention is devoted to the problems that accompanied the reception of Aristotle by Christian theologians, nor to the place of natural law in Aquinas’s overall understanding of morality. The former point is not so surprising, given the book’s analytic concerns; the latter, however, carries more serious theoretical implications. Why is it, for example, that natural law takes up so little space compared to the questions on happiness, human acts, and the habits and virtues in the prima secundae, not to mention the detailed treatments of the virtues and vices in the secunda secundae? Similarly, where Aquinas stresses that natural law as law is directed to the common good (Iallae 90.2), Lisska treats it mostly as a guide to “self-realization.”This issue suggests the tensions between Aristotle and Aquinas, tensions that seem to show themselves precisely in Aquinas’s discussion of the very notion of natural law, a notion that has no equivalent in Aristotle. This question hangs over Lisska’s brief treatment of obligation, in particular, since that concept is also lacking explicit treatment in... (shrink)

The Natural Law Reader features a selection of readings in metaphysics, jurisprudence, politics, and ethics that are all related to the classical Natural Law tradition in the modern world. Features a concise presentation of the natural law position that offers the reader a focal point for discussion of ancient and contemporary ideas in the natural law tradition Draws upon the metaphysical and ethical categories put forth and developed by Aristotle and Aquinas Points to the historical (...) significance and contemporary relevance of the Natural Law tradition Reflects on a revival of interest in the tradition of virtue ethics and human rights. (shrink)

There is a story about the connection between the rise of consent theories of political obligation and the fall of natural law theories of political obligation that is popular among political philosophers but nevertheless false. The story is, to put it crudely, that the rise of consent theory in the modern period coincided with, and came as a result of, the fall of the natural law theory that dominated during the medieval period. Neat though it (...) is, the story errs doubly, for it supposes both that consent did not play a key role in natural law theories of political authority offered in the medieval period (a supposition falsified by close inspection of the view of Aquinas, perhaps the paradigmatic natural law theorist) and that natural law theory did not play a key role in the consent theories of political authority offered in the modern period (a supposition falsified by close inspection of the views of Hobbes and Locke, perhaps the paradigmatic consent theorists).Footnotes* I owe thanks to Pat Káin, Paul Weithman, Bob Roberts, and Henry Richardson for instructive criticisms. John Hare was particularly helpful both in criticism and in conversation. I was supported by a fellowship from the Erasmus Institute while this essay was drafted. (shrink)

As moral standards, natural law and the notion of properly functioning human nature have persisted in Western cultures from the dawn of civilization. Medieval Christians developed it in their theologies. However, Enlightenment criticism of medieval thought undermined the credibility of natural law and its authority for modern man. Jacques Maritain developed a rational foundation for natural law and sought to provide objectivity to natural law precepts. His theory also reestablishes the divine authority of natural (...) law for a world without faith. Maritain locates the primary disclosure of natural law in the conscience’s moral reflection in a controversial act of pre-conceptual or non-conceptual knowledge called connatural knowledge. (shrink)