De Veritate

Grotiana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-94
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
Religious Controversy

Grotius always claimed that De veritate was not a controversial work, but it was not as innocuous nor as straightforward as Grotius would have his reader believe. It was the theological counterpart to his groundbreaking De iure belli ac pacis and it offered a distinctive version of Christianity which could complement his system of natural and international law. Both works were built upon a particular conception of human nature and natural law, one which was not shared by many of Grotius’ contemporaries. In De veritate, Grotius emphasised that human beings could and should embrace Christianity voluntarily, in response to the revelation they found in the Scriptures. In this way, Grotius provided a way of understanding Christianity which did not appeal to any innate notion of God, and which removed the Christian religion from the sphere of nature and from the shared civic life which was built upon natural foundations. His aim was to shield civic life from the potentially destabilising effects of religious controversy and to promote Christian morality, but his ethical reading of Christianity brought with it important political and theological consequences. This article will show both the novelty, and the instability, of Grotius’ conception of Christianity.

Pufendorf, Samuel (1632–94)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.D. Ford
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Science ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
University Professor ◽  
The Law

Pufendorf was the first university professor of the law of nature and nations. His De iure naturae et gentium (On the Law of Nature and Nations) (1672) and De officio hominis et civis iuxta legem naturalem (On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law) (1673) greatly influenced the handling of that subject in the eighteenth century. As a result Pufendorf has been recognized as an important figure in the development of the conception of international law as a body of norms commonly agreed to have universal validity by sovereign states. He regarded himself as an exponent of a new moral science founded by Hugo Grotius which transformed the natural law tradition by starting from identifiable traits of human nature rather than ideas about what human beings ought to be.

Epilogue and Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 268-272
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Church

This chapter draws together the themes of the book and looks forward to the later-seventeenth century. It argues that for much of the sixteenth century politics was subordinate to religion; temporal authorities needed the additional sanctions provided by religious belief if they were to exert any power over the consciences of individuals. The effect was to entangle temporal power in the deepening conflicts over religious truth, and thus to reveal the brittleness of any conception of political authority which relied on the support of the Church. At the same time, older traditions of political thought did not go away and often became stronger. The circulation of classical ideas, the discovery of new peoples, the growing interest in historical change and development all suggested alternative ways of legitimizing political power, often using natural law and avoiding any reliance on specifically Christian commitments. What happened in the early-seventeenth century, and most obviously in the writing of Hugo Grotius, was a move not only to ground political society in a particular conception of human nature (conceived of juridically, as a source of rights and obligations) but also to detach Christianity from that view of human nature. It was this understanding of human beings which enabled the development of a social contract tradition through the seventeenth century and beyond, and became an important source for modern liberalism. The questions it raised would help to shape the thought of the next century.

The Spark That Still Shines: John Calvin on Conscience and Natural Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Y Lee
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Moral Discernment ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Sufficient Knowledge

Abstract John Calvin (1509–64), a central figure in Reformed theology, is perhaps best known for his bleak doctrine of total human depravity. This dismal view of human reason has commonly overshadowed his statement that ‘some sparks still shine’. This article proposes that Calvin’s account of conscience, by conserving an illuminated space in human nature, makes possible a formal doctrine of natural law. Calvin enlists the interconnectedness between the knowledge of God and human reason to frame his anthropology. According to this, human reason was originally created to perfectly access knowledge of God but after the Fall, can only attain imperfect access. Within this broader framework, by adopting a dialectic of dual perspectives, Calvin maintains that, however fallen, human nature still partially reflects the Imago Dei as first intended. As through a glass darkly, this divine image is reflected in human conscience endowing it with sufficient knowledge for moral discernment. Calvin’s emphasis on ‘common grace’ in the preservation of this knowledge allows him to simultaneously maintain human ignorance and their universal accountability to objective norms. In this way, Calvin’s account of conscience enables him to hold both apparent extremes in tension: the immanent fallibility of human beings with the external normative standards they ought to pursue.

Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–86)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Arkush
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience

A Jewish disciple of Leibniz and Wolff, Mendelssohn strove throughout his life to uphold and strengthen their rationalist metaphysics while sustaining his ancestral religion. His most important philosophic task, as he saw it, was to refine and render more persuasive the philosophical proofs for the existence of God, providence and immortality. His major divergence from Leibniz was in stressing that ‘the best of all possible worlds’, which God had created, was in fact more hospitable to human beings than Leibniz had supposed. Towards the end of his life, the irrationalism of Jacobi and the critical philosophy of Kant shook Mendelssohn’s faith in the demonstrability of the fundamental metaphysical precepts, but not his confidence in their truth. They would have to be sustained by ‘common sense’, he reasoned, until future philosophers succeeded in restoring metaphysics to its former glory. While accepting Wolff’s teleological understanding of human nature and natural law, Mendelssohn placed far greater value on human freedom and outlined a political philosophy that protected liberty of conscience. His philosophic defence of his own religion stressed that Judaism is not a ‘revealed religion’ demanding acceptance of particular dogmas but a ‘revealed legislation’ requiring the performance of particular actions. The object of this divine and still valid legislation, he suggested, was often to counteract forces that might otherwise subvert the natural religion entrusted to us by reason. To resolve the tension between his own political liberalism and the Bible’s endorsement of religious coercion, Mendelssohn argued that contemporary Judaism, at any rate, no longer acknowledges any person’s authority to compel others to perform religious acts.

scholarly journals Grotius’ Imago Dei Anthropology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne E. Nijman
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Hugo Grotius

In the standard account Hugo Grotius secularized international law by grounding it on human nature. This chapter argues we should not stop at the standard account, but rather should dig deeper and examine the theological anthropology grounding Grotius’ ideas on the law of nature and nations. With some attention for the influence of both (neo-)scepticism and (neo)stoicism in analyses of Grotius’ understanding of human nature and natural law, this chapter examines Grotius’ ideas through the lens of the Christian theological notion of imago Dei—the idea that human beings are different from other animals in that they are created in ‘the image and likeness of God’. The chapter relates the concept of the imago Dei briefly to the early seventeenth-century theological and political debates in the Dutch Republic and discusses the Arminian interpretation of the imago Dei along the lines of three dimensions generally set apart: ontological, teleological, and functional.

Two Theories of Natural Justice in Plato’s Gorgias

Elenchos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-228
Author(s):  
Leo Catana
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Natural Justice ◽  
Alternative Concept ◽  
Theory Of Human Nature

Abstract In Plato’s Gorgias 482c4–484c3, Callicles advances a concept of natural justice: the laws of the polis must agree with nature, that is, human nature. Since human nature is characterised by its desire to get a greater share (pleon echein), nature itself makes it legitimate that stronger human beings get a greater share than weaker ones. Socrates objects: Callicles’ theoretical approach to civic life poses a threat to the polis’ community, its citizens, and to the friendship amongst its citizens. However, Socrates accepts Callicles’ premise, that the laws of the polis must agree with nature (again, human nature). Still, he disagrees with Callicles about the nature of human nature and proposes an alternative theory of human nature, eventually leading to his alternative concept of natural justice. The article explains the arguments underpinning these two concepts of natural justice, including the conflicting understandings of human nature.

Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
Good And Evil

Francis Hutcheson was an Irish–Scottish moral philosopher. He is best known for his epistemological claim that a disinterested moral sense is the source of our ideas of moral good and evil, and for his psychological claim that human beings are naturally motivated by disinterested benevolence, and not by self-love alone. At the dawn of the Scottish Enlightenment, these claims carried considerable philosophical and theological weight – Hutcheson’s optimism regarding the moral capacities of human nature is particularly noteworthy. Hutcheson’s arguments in moral epistemology for the reality of a disinterested moral sense are developed in opposition to different versions of ethical rationalism and ethical egoism, and they further oppose Calvinist ideas about the incapacity of corrupt postlapsarian human beings to know moral good and evil. Hutcheson’s arguments in moral psychology for the reality of disinterested benevolence are developed in opposition to different egoistic psychologies which resolve all desires into self-love. For Hutcheson, such debates are intrinsically connected to those on the moral status of human nature: both his defence of the reality of benevolence and his defence of the disinterestedness of the moral sense are directed against conceptions of human nature as morally corrupt. Hutcheson’s ideas about aesthetics and politics, his approach to natural law theories, and the religious dimensions of his philosophy have also attracted scholarly attention. Hutcheson had an affectionate interest in classical thinkers like Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, and in early modern figures like the Cambridge Platonists and, especially, Shaftesbury. He was inspired by John Locke’s theory of ideas and Samuel Pufendorf’s natural law theory, albeit dealing with those at some critical distance. Like so many of his contemporaries, he attacked Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville. The development of his writings makes manifest his critical engagement with contemporary ethical rationalists like Samuel Clarke, Gilbert Burnet, and John Balguy, and with psychological egoists like John Clarke of Hull and Archibald Campbell. Joseph Butler was a source of inspiration for Hutcheson. Hutcheson himself exerted a considerable influence on the Scottish Enlightenment and beyond: he had a complex relationship with David Hume, he was the teacher of Adam Smith; and various famous thinkers like Richard Price, Thomas Reid, Immanuel Kant, and Jeremy Bentham reacted to Hutcheson’s moral philosophy.

Aquinas

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
The Will

Aquinas develops Aristotelian themes as a foundation for his account of the Christian virtues. The will is both rational, being directed towards the ultimate good, and free, being determined by practical reason about what contributes to the ultimate good. Virtue is the good use of free will; it requires both the appropriate training of the passions (the non-rational part of the soul) and the correct practical reason. Practical reason finds the first principles of the natural law (the rational principles that are suitable for human nature), and the action-guiding rules that specify the implications of the natural law for human beings with a social nature, and for human society. The virtues, embodying the natural law, guide us towards the good that is proper to human beings. They do not guide us all the way, because we are subject to the influence of the sins that turn us away from God. Divine grace moves our free will to overcome the effects of these sins, and to form the Christian virtues that lead us towards the complete good.

Persons Together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
The Image Of God

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.

Wer täuscht wen?

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Daniel Strassberg
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Narrative Context ◽  
Everyday Knowledge

The insight that human beings are prone to deceive themselves is part of our everyday knowledge of human nature. Even so, if deceiving someone means to deliberately misrepresent something to him, it is difficult to understand how it is possible to deceive yourself. This paper tries to address this difficulty by means of a narrative approach. Self-deception is conceived as a change of the narrative context by means of which the same fact appears in a different light. On these grounds, depending on whether the self-deceiver adopts an ironic attitude to his self-deception or not, it is also possible to distinguish between a morally inexcusable self-deception and a morally indifferent one.

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