Natural Law and Natural Rights in the Early Protestant Tradition

Saccenti’s volume belongs to the category of Begriffsgeschichte, the history of concepts, and more particularly to the debate over the existence or nonexistence of a conceptual shift in ius naturale to encompass a subjective notion of natural rights. The author argues that this issue became particularly relevant in mid-twentieth century, first, because of the desire to delimit the totalitarian implications of legal positivism chez Hans Kelsen; second, in response to Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being and its progeny; and third, as a result of a revival of neo-Thomistic and neo-scholastic perspectives sometimes labelled “une nouvelle chrétienté.”

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God, New Natural Law Theory, and Human Rights

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel12080613 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (8) ◽

pp. 613

Author(s):

Christopher Tollefsen

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Natural Law ◽

Two Dimensions ◽

Natural Rights ◽

Creative Activity ◽

Adequate Account ◽

Full Theory ◽

Natural Law Theory ◽

Epistemological Dimension

Critics of the “New” Natural Law (NNL) theory have raised questions about the role of the divine in that theory. This paper considers that role in regard to its account of human rights: can the NNL account of human rights be sustained without a more or less explicit advertence to “the question of God’s existence or nature or will”? It might seem that Finnis’s “elaborate sketch” includes a full theory of human rights even prior to the introduction of his reflections on the divine in the concluding chapter of Natural Law and Natural Rights. But in this essay, I argue that an adequate account of human rights cannot, in fact, be sustained without some role for God’s creative activity in two dimensions, the ontological and the motivational. These dimensions must be distinguished from the epistemological dimension of human rights, that is, the question of whether epistemological access to truths about human rights is possible without reference to God’s existence, nature, or will. The NNL view is that such access is possible. However, I will argue, the epistemological cannot be entirely cabined off from the relevant ontological and motivational issues and the NNL framework can accommodate this fact without difficulty.

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Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend, Achenwall and the Role of the State

Kant Yearbook ◽

10.1515/kantyb-2021-0003 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 49-71

Author(s):

Mike L. Gregory

Keyword(s):

Political Philosophy ◽

Sustained Attention ◽

Natural Law ◽

The State ◽

Natural Rights ◽

Law System ◽

Role Of The State ◽

The Will ◽

Subjective Rights

Abstract Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend has recently gained more sustained attention for its role in clarifying Kant’s published positions in political philosophy. However, too little attention has been given to the lecture’s relation to Gottfried Achenwall, whose book was the textbook for the course. In this paper, I will examine how Kant rejected and transforms Achenwall’s natural law system in the Feyerabend Lectures. Specifically, I will argue that Kant problematizes Achenwall’s foundational notion of a divine juridical state which opens up a normative gap between objective law (prohibitions, prescriptions and permissions) and subjective rights (moral capacities). In the absence of a divine sovereign, formal natural law is unable to justify subjective natural rights in the state of nature. In the Feyerabend Lectures, Kant, in order to close this gap, replaces the divine will with the “will of society”, making the state necessary for the possibility of rights.

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Rights

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199238804.003.0030 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Kenneth Pennington

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Natural Law ◽

Natural Rights ◽

Legal Positivism ◽

Individual Rights ◽

Legal Systems ◽

Human Beings ◽

Group Rights ◽

Constitutional Jurisprudence ◽

Theological Thought

One of the most notable characteristics of Western societies has been the development of individual and group rights in legal, theological, and philosophical thought of the first two millennia. It has often been noted that thinkers in Non-Western societies have not had the same preoccupation with rights. The very concept of rights is laden with numerous problems. Universality is the most basic and difficult. If human rights are only a product of Western ideas of justice, they cannot have universality. In an age that is dominated by conceptions of law embracing some form of legal positivism, many scholars recognize only individual rights that have been established by the constitutional jurisprudence of individual countries or their legal systems. Historically, the emergence of rights in European jurisprudence is intimately connected with the terms ius naturale and lex naturalis in Western jurisprudence and theological thought. Human beings may never agree on universal rules of a natural law, but they might agree on universal precepts that shape the penumbra of rights surrounding natural rights.

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John Finnis y la defensa ética del «Rule of Law». «Natural Law and Natural Rights» y otros escritos posteriores

Persona y Derecho ◽

10.15581/011.83.004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 435-461

Author(s):

Carlos-I. Massini-Correas

Keyword(s):

Rule Of Law ◽

Natural Law ◽

Natural Rights ◽

John Finnis

En el presente artículo, escrito en homenaje a los 40 años de la aparición de la primera edición de Natural Law and Natural Rights de John Finnis, se estudian varias de las versiones elaboradas por el iusfilósofo australiano para analizar, explicitar, desarrollar y defender la noción de rule of law. Luego de este desarrollo, se efectúa una valoración de las aportaciones de Finnis en este punto, en especial las referidas al carácter principalmente ético de ese instituto, y a la maestría con la que ha sabido integrar la tradición clásico-realista del iusnaturalismo, los planteos metodológicos de la analytical jurisprudence y la reflexión contemporánea sobre la idea del gobierno limitado por el derecho.

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On what a theory of natural law is supposed to be

Persona y Derecho ◽

10.15581/011.82.007 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 167-200

Author(s):

Michael Pakaluk

Keyword(s):

Natural Law ◽

Natural Rights ◽

Philosophical Work ◽

Natural Teleology ◽

Law And Morality ◽

The Law ◽

John Finnis ◽

The Many ◽

Locus Classicus

A theory may properly be called a theory of natural law, if either it functions as such a theory is expected to function; or it has the expected content; or it is a plausible interpretation of a theory generally acknowledged to be in the tradition of natural law. It functions as such a theory if it supports appeals to natural law intended to ‘contextualize’ human law. It has the expected content, if it adverts to providential, natural teleology as the basis for a law given to us prior to convention. It would clearly be located in the tradition, and rightly accounted as such a theory, if it were a plausible interpretation of Aquinas’ Treatise on Law, which is the locus classicus for the philosophical treatment of natural law. But the ‘New Natural Law,’ first expounded in Natural Law and Natural Rights (NLNR) of John Finnis, meets none of these criteria. NLNR seems best construed, then, as a contribution to the «law and morality » debate, not a theory of natural law. It gives merely another ‘method of ethics’ along with the many others put forward in the 20th c. If so, the philosophical work needed for a persuasive, contemporary revival of natural law still remains to be done.

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El «ius» y la gramática de los derechos en «Natural Law and Natural Rights». Cuestiones problemáticas

Persona y Derecho ◽

10.15581/011.83.003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 397-433

Author(s):

Felipe Widow-Lira

Keyword(s):

Natural Law ◽

Natural Rights

La adopción, por parte de Finnis, de la gramática de los derechos tal como había sido propuesta por Hohfeld, y la aspiración de traducir la teoría clásica de la ley natural a este lenguaje moderno, revelan una comprensión del ius divergente de aquella de Tomás de Aquino, en tanto implica la primacía del derecho subjetivo sobre la ipsa res iusta y la consecuente afirmación de los derechos con un carácter abstracto e intrínsecamente ilimitado, de manera que se constituyen como expresión jurídica de la libertad individual.

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THE CONVERGENCE OF TECHNOLOGIES, HUMAN REPRODUCTION AND NATURAL LAW: THE PHILOSOPHY OF TRANSHUMANISM

Bulletin of Kemerovo State University Series Humanities and Social Sciences ◽

10.21603/2542-1840-2017-2-100-105 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2017 (2) ◽

pp. 100-105 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

О. Рыбаков ◽

O. Rybakov ◽

С. Тихонова ◽

S. Tikhonova

Keyword(s):

Natural Law ◽

Technological Development ◽

Natural Rights ◽

Human Reproduction ◽

Philosophy Of Law ◽

Biomedical Technology ◽

Natural Right ◽

Starting Point ◽

Convergence Of Technologies

<p>The article deals with analysis of transhumanist prospects for the philosophy of law. Modern transhumanists consider morphological freedom as a concept, revealing the natural right to happiness. The authors take this idea as a starting point and consider the logic of the convergent biotechnology development. They believe that the extension of natural law has the character of a dialectical strategy of assumptions and tactics of the local bans in the sphere of human reproduction. This situation is typical of biomedical technology in general. The legislator authorizes a technology by endorsing forms of reproductive relationships and blocking technologies that support immoral forms. As a result, it gradually enhances understanding of how technology must be applied to ensure the human natural rights. Convergence of technologies makes real a hypothetical design of rights to reproduction, while the conflict of morality and the imperatives of technological development can be resolved from the standpoint of the primacy of natural law.</p>

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