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)

Swiss-born Emer de Vattel was one of the last eminent thinkers of natural law. He shaped the later part of early-modern natural jurisprudence. At the time, the subject had become a fashionable academic sub-discipline in both jurisprudence and philosophy. Vattel's considerable impact on statesmen, political thinkers, diplomats and lawyers during his lifetime and after rested primarily on the fact that his The Law of Nations transformed natural law into the basis of a more comprehensive and practicable theory of interstate relations. (...) His ideas served to promote reform programmes whose comprehensive natures spanned the domains of economic reform, constitutionalism and international diplomacy and foreign trade policy. Vattel's conception centred round the principle that defined all sovereign states as nations composed of societies of free men and profoundly influenced legal and political debates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) appropriated the early modern tradition of political thought to his own juridical and political writings. By examining Schmitt's use of this tradition, it is possible to decipher the structure of his own political philosophy and better understand his polemic. This article therefore discusses the key sources and concepts that informed his understanding of the state and interstate relations. The main focus is on Schmitt's engagement with Hobbes, Bodin and Gentili. It becomes clear that Schmitt's appropriation of their (...) thought is selective and that his deliberate silence about certain aspects of Hobbes's or Gentili's theories in particular is almost as telling as his deliberate use of their arguments. (shrink)

The four-principles-approach of Tom Beauchamp and Jim Childress has been very influential in bioethics in the last decades. It has proven well although mid-level principles in general and this approach in particular are highly contested by ethicists who would prefer approaches rather based on rules, virtues or personal relations. The author of this study systematically discusses the origin, method and criticism of the Beauchamp and Childress approach. Finally he argues that the applicability of this approach for ethical challenges in the (...) biomedical setting should stimulate a principled approach for ethical challenges of public health as well. Such an approach can utilize the method from Beauchamp and Childress. Principles for public health ethics, as presented in a concise set by the author, however, must be different in scope and content to meet the ethical challenges of public health. (shrink)

Along the entire course of that seventeenth century, the great principles of representative government and the rights of conscience were passing through the anguish of conflict and fiery trial (De...