Lucky Philip Dube: The Artiste in Search of a New Jurisprudence and Subaltern Redemption

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-100
Author(s):  
Eric Nsuh Zuhmboshi
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
South African ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Black South African ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Discourse

Abstract Most musicians, in their songs, portray their philosophical vision of life as could be seen in the case of Lucky Philip Dube, the black South African reggae musician. His songs show that he adheres to the principle of ethical humanism and portrays him as a crusader of social justice. Thus, this essay shows the link between musical art and law by examining the commitment of Dube’s lyrical composition in fighting for a just legal system in his society. This essay therefore, analyses some of his lyrical productions in order to expound on the philosophical ideas underneath the songs and how they tie with the search of an alternative jurisprudence and humanism in postcolonial discourse and the liberation of the subaltern. From the perspective of natural law theory, this essay postulates that Dube’s songs criticise the injustice of the legal philosophy in his society and quest for an impartial jurisprudence – that of equality and justice in his society.

The Origins of “Social Justice” in the Natural Law Philosophy of Antonio Rosmini

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Kraynak
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Common

Abstract“Social justice” is a powerful idea today, but its origins and meaning are unclear. One of the first to use the term was Antonio Rosmini, author of The Constitution under Social Justice (1848) and other works of moral philosophy. I argue that Rosmini arrived at his idea of social justice by developing Thomistic natural law theory into a novel view of the common good that balances two principles: (1) the equal rights and dignity of persons as ends-in-themselves, a version of “personalism” influenced by Kant and Christianity; and (2) unequal rewards for those who contribute most to society, a version of Aristotelian “proportionalism” based on the social nature of man. I conclude by comparing Rosmini's idea of social justice to John Rawls's “theory of justice” and Catholic social teaching.

WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT LEGAL CONVENTIONALISM?

Legal Theory ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Kyritsis
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Morality ◽  
Robust Version ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Suitable Form ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Over Time

According to legal conventionalism, a legal system cannot come into existence and be sustained over time unless legal officials see themselves as working together with their fellow participants in the practice of law for the purpose of achieving coordination or alternatively realizing a joint endeavor. This thesis has traditionally been thought to support a positivist understanding of law. The paper challenges this piece of common wisdom. It aims to establish that the idea of cooperation among legal officials that figures so prominently in conventionalist accounts of law may in a suitable form be appropriated by a robust version of natural-law theory. It claims that participants in the practice of law may be understood as having reasons of political morality to heed the acts and decisions of their fellow participants and calibrate their own behavior accordingly. It takes the value of democracy to illustrate the point. Democracy furnishes a reason for courts to give effect to democratically reached decisions rather than work out on their own how best to adjudicate disputes before them.

Natural Law and Public Reason in Kant's Political Philosophy

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Weinstock
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Natural Law Theory

My intention in this essay will be to explore the role that consent-based arguments perform in Kant's political and legal philosophy. I want to uncover the extent to which Kant considered that the legitimacy of the State and of its laws depends upon the outcome of intersubjective deliberation. Commentators have divided over the following question: Is Kant best viewed as a member of the social contract tradition, according to which the legitimacy of the state and of the laws it promulgates derives from the consent of those people over whom it claims authority, or should he be read as having put forward a secularized version of natural law theory, according to which the state and its laws are legitimate to the extent that they are attained by standards of sound reason and supported by an objective account of the human good?

Hegel’s Philosophy of Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thom Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Significant Influence ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Common ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
Legal Theorist

Hegel was neither a lawyer nor primarily a legal theorist, but his writings make a significant influence to the understanding of legal philosophy. Nevertheless, there is disagreement about where Hegel’s importance lies. This chapter argues that Hegel’s philosophy of law is best understood as a natural law theory. But what is interesting about Hegel’s view is that it represents a distinctive alternative to how most natural law theories are traditionally conceived. Hegel’s philosophy is remarkable for providing an entirely new way of thinking about the relation between law and morality than had been considered before. It is the distinctiveness of his legal philosophy that has rendered so difficult a categorization into standard jurisprudential schools of thought. There is little that is standard in Hegel’s innovative understanding of law. This has importance for other areas of his thinking, such as his novel theory of punishment and understanding of the common law.

scholarly journals Anti-metaphysical foundation of contemporary theory of natural law: Theory of law and practical rationality in works of John Mitchel Finnis

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-27
Author(s):  
Dejan Stankovic
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Socially Relevant ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
John Mitchel

The contemporary natural law theory was grounded in the philosophical and the jurisprudential work of Australian legal and moral philosopher John Mitchell Finnis. He reaffirmed the natural law and also corrected some of false notions about it which were dominant through the history of legal philosophy. Finnis moral and legal philosophy could be understood by the specific theoretical figure - moral argument for law. This theoretical concept implies unity of two mutually connected moments which are necessary for a philosophical treatment of any socially relevant phenomena: methodological and epistemological as well as practical. The meeting point of these two philosophically relevant dimensions is theory of practical rationality exposed in the philosophy of John Mitchell Finnis. By grounding his concept of natural law on the theory of practical rationality, John Finnis historically contextualize it. He made some sort of specific anti metaphysical concept of natural law theory that is alternative to the classical natural law as well as to the legal positivism, which mainly exposed in the legal theories of Hans Kelsen and H.L.A Hart.

scholarly journals Natural Justice, Law, and Virtue in Hobbes’s Leviathan

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-208
Author(s):  
J. Matthew Hoye
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Natural Justice ◽  
General Significance ◽  
Natural Person ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Theory Of Law

Scholars debate whether Hobbes held to a command theory of law or to a natural law theory, and to what extent they are compatible. Curiously, however, Hobbes summarizes his own teachings by claiming that it is “natural justice” that sovereigns should study, an idea that recalls ancient virtue ethics and which is seemingly incompatible with both command and natural law theory. The purpose of this article is to explicate the general significance of natural justice in Leviathan. It is argued that below the formal and ideological claims regarding the law’s legitimacy, the effective ground of the legitimacy of both the civil and natural laws is sovereign virtue. In turn, it is argued that the model for this idea was found in Aristotle. As such, this article constitutes a general recasting of Hobbes’s legal philosophy with a focus on the natural person of the sovereign.

Positively Fabulous: Why It Is Good To Be a Legal Positivist

1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-248
Author(s):  
James Allan
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Classic Work ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Legal Positivist ◽  
The Concept Of Law

‘Legal Positivism’ is a much abused term. It is often pejoratively invoked by those occupying both the natural law and critical legal studies ramparts. The former see it as a school of thought which ignores the role in law of those standards and values which have not been deliberately laid down or unintentionally evolved. Positivism, for them, fails because it is prepared to describe a legal world where moral values play no necessary part and where transcendent values may not exist at all. The latter group of critics, not too dissimilarly, see legal positivism’s doctrines as over-reliant on rules and too inclined to accept that a legal system somehow can generate a logically mandated code of answers.In order to defend positivism it is advisable to start with an enunciation of its core precepts. With all that has been written attacking and supporting positivism though, this can be a contentious matter. So instead I shall defend one particular version of positivism, that of H.L.A. Hart. As Hart’s The Concept of Law, first published in 1961, is at worst one of the handful of great legal philosophy texts written in English this century and at best “the classic work of philosophical jurisprudence”, this preference for concentrating on the tangible and identifiable precepts of Hart over the woolly, elusive and frequently caricatured precepts of something disparagingly termed positivism has much to recommend it.

The Acceptance of a Legal System

1990 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
Roger A. Shiner
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Separation Thesis ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Right ◽  
Independent Account

The interest of political theory in the acceptance of law is obvious. If one believes that a regime is legitimate only if it governs with the consent of the governed, then the notion of acceptance is deeply linked with the notion of legitimacy, a fundamental concern of political theory. The interest of legal theory in the notion of acceptance is less obvious. I construe it to arise in the following way. One central tradition in legal theory is that of positivistic or content-independent theories of law. Positivism, crudely speaking, is characterized by some form of the Separation Thesis—that the existence of law is one thing and its merit or demerit another. But if it is important for positivistic legal theory to mark the separation of law and the merits of law, then it must also be important to mark the separation between law and the acceptance of law. The existence of law must be one thing and its acceptance as meritorious another. In deference to the separation of existence and merit, positivism tries to find a content-independent account of the validity of law. Equally, in deference to the separation of law and acceptance, positivism tries to find a content-independent account of the acceptance of law. The topic of this paper is whether the separation of law and the acceptance of law is possible. I shall try to suggest, in service of a non-positivistic or content-dependent approach to law, that this separation is not possible. I will attempt to argue on the basis of points which legal positivism itself has acknowledged to form valid constraints on any theory of acceptance. My ambitious thesis is that positivism has presented us with the reasons for rejecting it. Even if that thesis is not made out, I have a less ambitious thesis which I am confident of securing, that the demand for an account of law which permits law to be accepted ‘for any reason whatever’ is not a theoryneutral demand which might decide between positivism and natural law theory. Rather, it is an expression of a prior commitment to positivism. It is the familiar demand of natural law theory that the convergence of attitudes towards law which makes for acceptance of law must be a convergence for the right kind of reasons; ones that have to do with the value of law.

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