A Universal Rule of Law for a Pluralist World Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Nijman
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
World Order ◽  
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Universal Rule

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was committed to the idea of a universal rule of law that governed sovereign powers, and he argued that European rulers should learn from Chinese moral and political philosophy and from the Chinese emperor, who was in his view more successful in being the moral and responsible political ruler that the law required. Leibniz’s universal rule of law is an ideal for a pluralist world. China and Europe were different yet equal and they needed each other to critically assess and perfect themselves and humanity as a whole. Leibniz’s interest in Chinese moral and political thought testifies to his conviction that natural law—grounded on justice as ‘wise charity’—is universal and that it governs the inner life of human beings, whether sovereign or subject. If internalized through a rational practice of self-cultivation and self-perfection, a rule of law as justice guides and constrains acts towards the perfection of the individual self as well as towards the realization of ‘the empire of reason’, ie a world order based on a universal rule of natural law and justice.

The Universal Rule of Natural Law and Written Constitutions in the Thought of Johannes Althusius

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Witte
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Universal Theory ◽  
Government Contracts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Universal Rule

Calvinist jurist Johannes Althusius (1557–1638) developed what he called a ‘universal theory’ of law and politics for war-torn Europe. He called for written constitutions that separated the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of cities, provinces, nations, and empires alike and that guaranteed the natural rights and liberties of all subjects. To be valid, he argued, these constitutions had to respect the universal natural law set out in Christian and classical, biblical, and rational teachings of law, authority, and rights. To be effective, these constitutions had to recognize the symbiotic nature of human beings who are born with a dependence on God and neighbour, family and community, and who are by nature inclined to form covenantal associations to maintain liberty and community. Althusius left comprehensive Christian theory of rule of law and politics that anticipated many of the arguments of later Enlightenment theorists of social and government contracts.

Leibniz’s Doctrine of Toleration

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Rosa Antognazza
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Substantive Theory ◽  
Moral Qualities

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is not usually regarded as a thinker who had a substantive theory of toleration. This chapter pieces together the scattered evidence to suggest otherwise. It is argued that Leibniz did have a doctrine of toleration, which operated on philosophical, theological, and pragmatic levels as part of his project for religious unification. The structure of Leibniz's philosophical arguments reflected his dependence on an idea of natural law that acted to support conceptions of toleration, in some ways far more inclusive than those of contemporaries such as Pufendorf and Locke. By reference to the primary, inalienable moral qualities of human beings, Leibniz was able to suggest that the coercion of individuals for almost any form of sincere belief was fundamentally illegitimate. There were limits to Leibniz's toleration — doctrines against natural law were emphatically not to be tolerated — but their effect was to create an unusually wide doctrine of toleration.

The Philosophy and Ideals of Islamic Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mujadad Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Education ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Moral Exemplar ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self

The philosophy of Islamic education covers a wide range of ideas and practices drawn from Islamic scripture, metaphysics, philosophy, and common piety, all of which accumulate to inform discourses of learning, pedagogy, and ethics. This provides a definition of Islamic education and yet also of Islam more generally. In other words, since metaphysics and ontology are related to questions of learning and pedagogy, a compendious and indigenous definition of “education” offers an insight into a wider spectrum of Islamic thought, culture, and weltanschauung. As such, there is no singular historical or contemporary philosophy of Islamic education which avails all of this complexity but rather there exists a number of ideas and practices which inform how education plays a role in the embodiment of knowledge and the self-actualization of the individual self to ultimately come to know God. Such an exposition may come to stand as a superordinate vision of learning framing Islamic educational ideals. Questions of how these ideas are made manifest and practiced are partly answered through scripture as well as the historical, and continuing, importance of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam; as paragon and moral exemplar in Islamic thought. Having said “I was sent as a teacher,” his life and manner (sunnah) offer a wide-ranging source of pedagogic and intellectual value for his community (ummah) who have regarded the emulation of his character as among the highest of human virtues. In this theocentric cosmology a tripart conception of education emerges, beginning with the sacred nature of knowledge (ʿilm), the imperative for its coupling with action (ʿamal), in reference to the Prophet, and finally, these foundations supporting the flourishing of an etiquette and comportment (adab) defined by an equanimous state of being and wisdom (ḥikma). In this sense, the reason for there being not one identifiable philosophy of Islamic education, whether premodern or in the modern context, is due to the concatenations of thoughts and practices gravitating around superordinate, metaphysical ideals. The absence of a historical discipline, named “philosophy of education” in Islamic history, infers that education, learning, and the nurturing of young minds is an enterprise anchored by a cosmology which serves the common dominators of divine laudation and piety. Education, therefore, whether evolving from within formal institutional arenas (madrasas) or the setting of the craft guilds (futuwwa), help to enunciate a communality and consilience of how human beings may come to know themselves, their world, and ultimately God.

THE MANY-SIDED HUMANISM OF LATVIAN LATGALIAN AND BRASILIAN JESUIT PHILOSOPHER STAŅISLAVS LADUSĀNS

Via Latgalica ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Māra Kiope
Keyword(s):  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
Spiritual Culture ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Individual

The famous Latvian born Brasilian philosopher Staņislavs Ladusāns (1913-1993) due to the Soviet occupation could not return to Latvia any more, – as it had been envisaged – to take up a post in the Catholic Faculty of Theology at the University of Latvia. Thus he started his mission in Brazil (1946), where he became a Christian philosopher, known all over the world, especially because of his work “Many-sided gnoseology”, in which he synthesizes phenomenology and Thomism. Specialists in the history of philosophy of Brazil point out that activities initiated by S. Ladusāns brought a profound change in the development of the intellectual culture in Brazil. During the seventies of the 20th century Ladusāns was tackling the philosophical problematics of many-sided humanism. This notion clearly indicates that human understanding is based on a plurality of principles. Thus, in order to describe a human being, one has to illuminate several dimensions, or to perform various types of measurements. Father Ladusāns distinguishes the following dimensions that are of importance for the investigation of the human being: first of all it is gnoseology or the theory of the human capacity for cognition. Above that a human being is to be considered as possessing of immortal soul that determines personal self-esteem. A human being obtains intrinsic value amidst all the other values of economic or technological character. A human being exists in the community; a human being is to be viewed through a vertical dimension revealing the existence of God as the highest being, and through a supra-natural dimension that connects philosophical humanism with the Christian faith, thus providing for spiritual renewal of people. Human beings obtain wishes that go beyond the possibilities offered by the material world; these may be realized only through intensive spiritual life. Such life praxes are accessible only in Christianity; these correspond to the existence of the soul as an immortal spiritual substance encompassed by space and time. The starting point of metaphysics is the thirst of the human being for happiness. The further argumentation of Ladusāns, based on the openness of reason towards Revelation, postulates that God as the Highest Good reveals Himself as love, thus providing our need for inner peace, as it is testified by our inner experience. A person reaches out for infinite Goodness, for the Highest Good, which is the Reality, transcending all other realities. The result of the question of happiness is a practical one – by following the voice of conscience the human being performs choices and acts to deepen the unity with the Highest Good. In doing good things a human being acquires peace. Ladusāns points out that the notion of culture is analogical – that “culture” is equivocally formed and subjectively experienced act of the inner spiritual culture of the person. Equivocal designation means that the inner culture, the spiritual life is attributively used with reference to various manifestations of spirit, forms of artistic expression, etc. – which bear the name of “culture”. By cultivating one’s inner life and the immortal life of the soul, a person reaches such a level of critical competency, which allows to evaluate and to produce new forms of culture. The many-sided spiritual culture provides for personal and national elevation to a much higher level of fullness – reaching the status of love. However, a person is incapable of reaching such a task on his own; one needs cooperation with God. The individual person and a nation has to open up within the spiritual self-identity in the culture of love, so as to reach an increasing pulsation of culture, in order to take a stand against the inhuman ideology – saturated philosophy of modernity and post-modernity.

The Supreme Court of Israel: Present Trends and Concepts

1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 175-181
Author(s):  
Meir Shamgar
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Evolutionary Approach ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The Individual

Our concepts and values are part and parcel of a philosophy broader than law, according to the expression used by Justice Robert Jackson in his description of the place of the Supreme Court as a unit in the complex and interdependent scheme of the democratic system of government. Drawing from the multitude of conceptions and ways of thought which characterize the Weltanschauung of the protagonists of a system of law based on the belief in the rights of the individual and in the rule of law, I would like to mention three aspeots and dwell on two of them in some detail. The first is represented by the evolutionary approach in the interpretation of the law; the second aspect is the permanent concern for judicial independence, and the third is transmuted into the ongoing mission of the court to enable human beings, as such, to confront the problems created by the effacing effects of modern society. The three above-mentioned aspects are separate but, in my opinion, not only do they overlap when we try to classify the phenomena representing them, but they are at least co-related and often even interdependent. Let us turn first of all to what I termed the evolutionary approach.

scholarly journals SELF-PRESERVATION, AS SPINOZA’S PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid C Bernard
Keyword(s):  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Geometrical Method ◽  
Philosophical View ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self

This article explicates Spinoza’s terms of self-preservation1 as his philosophical view in his book “Ethics”2 (published in 1677), written in a geometrical method. Generally, self-preservation refers to attention on the needs or desires of an individual self. The term self-preservation is often used simply to denote the attitude of caring about one’s own good. It is a view that human beings are always motivated by self-preservation, which is a necessity view of life. Spinoza has a broader view of the term. He identified self-preservation as the ultimate aim and proper motive of morality. His philosophical view of self-preservation is a more enlightened self-preservation, which shows that acting for one's own self-preservation can also serve others. Spinoza emphasized that the concepts of good, virtue, into perfection, have a ground in every human being, whilst evil is a condition in which virtue in ordinary people is still in its early unfoldment. Ordinary individuals tend not to undergo rigorous life and therefore they become preys for their passive emotions. According to Spinoza: evil actions are the result of ignorance. Therefore, he emphasized that individuals good potentials must be developed. The higher the individual understanding is, the more the individual has the power to propel himself from within, to enlighten himself, but also to help and bring happiness to others. He argued that an individual’s goodness will inspire others to achieve contenment. The difference of self-preservation term with other philosophical views of it can be observed through his propositions in his “Ethics”. Spinoza’s understanding of the importance of self-preservation, by improving one’s rational ability, is an exclusive view in his era, and can still be an inspiration to individuals today.

scholarly journals Canadian Constitutional Law in a Nutshell

1969 ◽  
pp. 605
Author(s):  
David Beatty
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Oriented Approach

This article examines two recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions and provides an analysis of the reasons employed by the court. The author argues that the two cases illustrate the inadequate and subjective reasoning employed by the court to reach what they consider to be a just decision. This "results oriented" approach is criticized by the author and used to examine how cases with similar legal principles can be decided in diametrically opposed ways so as to reach the desired result. While the author does not disagree with the results reached in the two cases, he does take exception to the reasoning used. Using the Hydro-Quebec case the author argues the correct legal decision could have been reached without invoking new subjective tests of constitutionality. Specifically, he argues that the use of the provincial inability test could have led to the same result. Further, he asserts that the reasoning invoked in the decisions reinstates the old rigid categories that have long been discarded. These categories, he feels, can be used to allow judges to make purely subjective decisions more easily. He argues, jurisprudentially, that Hydro- Quebec establishes a dangerous precedent, one that could threaten the rule of law and our federal structure. The Eldridge case, according to the author, also makes false distinctions and categorizations in order to reach the results desired by the court. The author criticizes this as leading to legal decisions based on the personal and political views of the individual judges. Further, he argues that the judges ignored their own pronouncements and precedent in reaching their decision. The author asserts that new categorical distinctions were used merely as a means to an end. He concludes that although the reasoning employed in the cases is flawed, they still prove that the law and justice can coincide. Finally, the author asserts that just and equitable decisions can be reached by an impartial judiciary using sound legal principles

Hugo Grotius and the Universal Rule of Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Stumpf
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Universal Rule ◽  
Modern Sense ◽  
The Ideal

In this chapter, it is argued that Hugo Grotius’s system of international law is informed by a profound concept of a ‘rule of law’. While there is a strong tradition of reading Grotius’s works in a ‘liberal’ sense, as propagating a supposedly ‘modern’ sense of minimalist international law set apart from morality, this chapter follows an interpretation first put forward by Martin Wight according to which Grotius conceives of a ‘dual’ or ‘concentric’ system of international relations: hence, there is an inner circle of nations following the ideal of a society of Christian nations in the sense of the respublica Christiana following Christian law, and a wider circle of nations united by the universal fellowship among human beings governed by natural law. The chapter first analyses Grotius’s categorization of legal norms, then his views on the setup of States, and finally his perception of the rule of law in war.

“Utopia First!” A Machiavellian Conception of Solidarity in More's Utopia

Moreana ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (Number 209) (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Phélippeau
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Farm Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Difficulties ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
Communal Organization

This paper shows how solidarity is one of the founding principles in Thomas More's Utopia (1516). In the fictional republic of Utopia described in Book II, solidarity has a political and a moral function. The principle is at the center of the communal organization of Utopian society, exemplified in a number of practices such as the sharing of farm work, the management of surplus crops, or the democratic elections of the governor and the priests. Not only does solidarity benefit the individual Utopian, but it is a prerequisite to ensure the prosperity of the island of Utopia and its moral preeminence over its neighboring countries. However, a limit to this principle is drawn when the republic of Utopia faces specific social difficulties, and also deals with the rest of the world. In order for the principle of solidarity to function perfectly, it is necessary to apply it exclusively within the island or the republic would be at risk. War is not out of the question then, and compassion does not apply to all human beings. This conception of solidarity, summed up as “Utopia first!,” could be dubbed a Machiavellian strategy, devised to ensure the durability of the republic. We will show how some of the recommendations of Realpolitik made by Machiavelli in The Prince (1532) correspond to the Utopian policy enforced to protect their commonwealth.

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