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

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-105 ◽  
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>

Natural Rights as Powers to Act

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
Susan James
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Right

Spinoza grounds his political philosophy on a highly counter-intuitive conception of natural right as the right to do anything in your power. Just as big fish eat little fish by the right of nature, so humans act by natural right, regardless of what they do. In this essay I explain what leads Spinoza to hold this view and show how, in doing so, he contentiously rejects some of the most central assumptions of the natural law tradition. Finally, I consider whether Spinoza’s view can contribute anything of value to current discussions of natural right. I argue that he draws our attention to prerequisites of a cooperative way of life that contemporary theorists frequently neglect.

Natural Right in Hobbes and Kant

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Williams
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Rational Individual ◽  
Divine Support ◽  
Orthodox View

Both Hobbes and Kant tackle the issue of natural right in a radical and controversial way. They both present systematic, secular theories of natural law in a highly religious age. Whereas Hobbes transforms natural right by placing the rational individual bent on self-preservation at the centre of political philosophy, Kant transforms natural right by putting the metaphysical presuppositions of his critical philosophy at the heart of his reasoning on politics. Neither attempts to provide an orthodox view of natural right as directly or indirectly derived from God’s commands, although subsequent to their philosophical deduction as natural rights or laws both do not entirely repudiate the idea that these rights or laws can be portrayed as having divine support.

CLASSICAL NATURAL LAW THEORY, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND TAXATION

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Feser
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Natural Law Theory

AbstractClassical natural law theory derives moral conclusions from the essentialist and teleological understanding of nature enshrined in classical metaphysics. The paper argues that this understanding of nature is as defensible today as it was in the days of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. It then shows how a natural law theory of the grounds and content of our moral obligations follows from this understanding of nature, and how a doctrine of natural rights follows in turn from the theory of natural law. With this background in place, the implications of the theory for questions about property rights and taxation are explored. It is argued that classical natural law theory entails the existence of a natural right of private property, and that this right is neither so strong as to supportlaissez fairelibertarianism, nor so weak as to allow for socialism. Though the theory leaves much of the middle ground between these extremes open to empirical rather than moral evaluation, it is argued that there is a strong natural law presumption against social democratic policies and in favor of free enterprise.

JUSTICE, EQUALITY, AND NATURAL RIGHTS CLAIMS: A RECONSIDERATION OF AQUINAS'S CONCEPTION OF RIGHT

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Porter
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Objective State ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right

AbstractAccording to a widely held view, Aquinas does not have a notion of subjective natural rights, understood as moral powers inhering in individuals. This article argues that this way of reading Aquinas is wrong, or at best, seriously misleading. Aquinas does identify the right, the object of justice, with the relation established between parties to an equitable exchange or interaction, and in this sense he identifies right with an objective state of affairs. But this line of analysis does not commit him to any particular construal of what constitutes a just relation. In particular, it leaves open the possibility that in some situations, the right, understood as an objectively equitable relation, presupposes that someone's claim of a right, is duly acknowledged. Moreover, in many contexts Aquinas says that individuals can claim certain liberties and immunities on the basis of some natural right, in terms that make it clear that these claims lie within the discretion of the individual. His overall conception of natural law and natural right implies that individuals can legitimately make certain claims by right, claims that emerge within some contexts and not others. He does not have a theory of rights, but neither do the scholastic jurists of the time, and his appeals to what someone can claim by right are reminiscent of their views. If they can be said to have a notion of subjective natural rights, the same can be said of Aquinas himself.

Natural Rights and Natural Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-36
Author(s):  
Dennis Klimchuk
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

This chapter argues for the continued relevance of the natural law tradition to inquiry into the philosophical foundations of private law. It focuses on the arc in the history of political philosophy that starts in Hugo Grotius and ends in Immanuel Kant. The original community of property on Grotius’s account and throughout the early modern tradition is a conceptual starting point, a representation of how people stand with respect to one another in the world abstracted from the institutions through which people administer the regime of private property. Grotius and others in the natural law tradition cast the moral aspect of that standing in terms of the natural laws that protected the natural rights of equals. The chapter then looks at two debates. Grotius’s and John Locke’s disagreements about the foundations of property rights and Grotius’s and Samuel von Pufendorf’s about the foundations of the right of necessity are, at their core, disagreements about how to render private ownership consistent with equality. The common ground against which these disagreements is framed is the view that, through its doctrines, the institution of private property inevitably expresses some view on this question, and in this way reveals its connection to the rest of people’s moral lives.

Natural Law and Natural Rights: Old Problems and Recent Approaches

2002 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Tierney
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Relationship

Widely divergent views exist among modern scholars concerning the relationship between natural law and natural rights. Some hold that the two concepts are logically incompatible with one another. Others maintain that natural rights were derived from natural law in the work of Aquinas or, alternatively, that natural law was derived from natural right in the work of Hobbes. All these views seem open to criticism. An alternative approach is suggested by a consideration of the idea of permissive natural law.

Natural Law, Due Process, and Economic Pressure

1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-354
Author(s):  
Margaret Spahr
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Economic Pressure ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Freedom Of Contract ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Constitutional System

“Liberty of contract” is an honorable phrase. It is not too much to say that contractual freedom is generally regarded as the crowning glory of Anglo-American law in general and of the American constitutional system in particular. Belief in a pre-civil state of nature may have been cast into the discard, but not so the belief in natural law in the sense of ideal law, in natural rights as rights superior—if not anterior—to civil rights, and in freedom of contract as one of the greatest of the natural rights secured by natural law. There is well-nigh universal approbation of the philosophy implicit in Sir Henry Maine's famous conclusion that “the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract,” and there is general satisfaction that certain American constitutional provisions preclude any retrograde movement in the future. In particular, there is rejoicing that the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments insure to the American workman his natural freedom of contract against any insidious attempt to relegate him to a servile status. In spite of an occasional voice crying in the wilderness, it is still heretical to suggest that constitutional contractual liberty amounts to a guarantee that economic pressure may be exerted by the rich upon the poor, by the employer upon the employee. The hypothesis deserves further examination. It will be profitable to ascertain how far the use of economic pressure has been deemed natural in English law and philosophy, and then to observe the extent to which it is recognized in American constitutional law as a natural right superior to any legislative enactment.

Riccardo Saccenti, Debating Medieval Natural Law: A Survey. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016, XIII, pp. 155.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 318-320
Author(s):  
Scott L. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Great Chain Of Being ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
Hans Kelsen ◽  
University Of Notre Dame ◽  
Conceptual Shift

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.”

Natural Rights in Albert the Great

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mónica García-Salmones Rovira
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Early Appearance ◽  
Albert The Great

Paying careful attention to his use of language, this chapter introduces Albert the Great’s contribution to natural rights into the scholarly debate between subjective and objective rights. Teacher of Thomas Aquinas, Albert’s work on ius naturale has been overshadowed in many aspects by the significance and impact of his student’s. However, Albert’s early appearance on the stage of empirical sciences as a student of nature has been widely recognized. Eclectic in his use of sources, Albert would generously use Stoic writings, and would become as well a first-rate commentator of Aristotle’s works. As a theologian, Albert’s Augustinian influences cannot be neglected. The text examined here, De bono (1242), constitutes an early and thorough elaboration of an original doctrine of natural right and, importantly, of natural rights.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christian Humanism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Theological Politics

Based on a comprehensive reading of his entire work, in this book Jens Zimmermann presents Bonhoeffer’s theological ethos as a Christian humanism, that is, as an understanding of the gospel rooted in apostolic and patristic writers who believed God to have renewed humanity in the incarnation. The heartbeat of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions, including his opposition to the Nazi regime, is the conviction that Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike. In eight chapters, the author details Bonhoeffer’s humanistic theology following from this incarnational starting point: a Christ-centered anthropology that shows a deep kinship with patristic Christology, a hermeneutically structured theology, an ethic focused on Christ-formation, a biblical hermeneutic centered on God’s transforming presence, and a theological politics aimed at human flourishing. In offering a comprehensive reading of his theology as Christian humanism, Zimmermann not only places Bonhoeffer in the context of the patristic and greater Christian tradition but also makes apparent the relevance of Bonhoeffer’s thought for a number of contemporary concerns: hermeneutic theory, the theological interpretation of the Bible, the relation of reason to faith, the importance of natural law, and the significance of religion for secular societies. Bonhoeffer turns out to be a Christian humanist and a modern theologian who models the deeply orthodox and yet ecumenical, expansive Christianity demanded by our time.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document