The controversy over law and morality between positivists and normativists is largely a result of failure on both sides to understand the idea of authority. The author argues that Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Hobbes held a common notion of legal authority that was distinctively moral. They all saw the virtue of law (and the source of legal obligation) in the equal protection it provides for all against the disorder to which passion makes men vulnerable, and not in the justice of (...) its provisions. Michael Oakeshott, among contemporary theorists, best illustrates this approach to a resolution of the differences between positivists and normativists. (shrink)

One of the most widely accepted explanations for the peculiarity of the modern European is his addiction to the ideal of romantic love. Its invention is supposed to have so radically transformed ethics, imagination and daily life, that we can hardly imagine the mental world of the ancients or the Orient where such an ideal of love is unknown. In the classic source for this view, The Allegory of Love , C. S. Lewis traces the modern ideal back to medieval (...) tales of courtly love. But he sees the devotion to romantic love as a distinguishing mark of the modern individualistic consciousness, which began, he says, with a new interest in ‘the inner workings of the human heart’. (shrink)

The question that I propose to consider is the ghost in modern philosophy. Its step has been heard more distinctly at some times than at others. But it has never rattled its chains so loudly as during the recent popularity of Existentialism. The question is: How is man related to the universe? All philosophers who pride themselves on being modern reject the ancient answer to the question. The most emancipated modern philosophers refuse to hear the question. Nevertheless some answer to (...) this question is presupposed by all philosophy. (shrink)

The question that I propose to consider is the ghost in modern philosophy. Its step has been heard more distinctly at some times than at others. But it has never rattled its chains so loudly as during the recent popularity of Existentialism. The question is: How is man related to the universe? All philosophers who pride themselves on being modern reject the ancient answer to the question. The most emancipated modern philosophers refuse to hear the question. Nevertheless some answer to (...) this question is presupposed by all philosophy. (shrink)

On the History of the Idea of Law is the first book ever to trace the development of the philosophical theory of law from its first appearance in Plato's writings to today. Professor Letwin finds important and positive insights and tensions in the theories of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Hobbes. She finds confusions and serious errors introduced by Cicero, Aquinas, Bentham, and Marx. She harnesses the insights of H. L. A. Hart and especially Michael Oakeshott to mount a devastating attack (...) on the late twentieth-century theories of Ronald Dworkin, the Critical Legal Studies movement, and feminist jurisprudence. In all of this, Professor Letwin finds the rule of law to be the key to modern liberty and the standard of justice. This is the final work of the distinguished historian and theorist Shirley Robin Letwin, a major figure in the revival of Conservative thought and doctrine from 1960 onwards, who died in 1993. (shrink)