Argument of Against the Death Penalty

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-102
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Pelli
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Rational Argumentation ◽  
Early Indication ◽  
Father And Son ◽  
Innate Tendency

This chapter outlines the different views and arguments of Giuseppe Pelli's unfinished dissertation of Against the Death Penalty. It provides an analysis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourses 'on the Sciences and Arts' and 'on Inequality', and Pelli's early indication of lack of sympathy with Transalpine Enlightenment philosophers, with the exception of Montesquieu. The natural law philosophers and jurists from Hugo Grotius provided the main foundation and stimulation for his own ideas. Pelli reveals himself as a close reader of, among others, Grotius, Heineccius, the Cocceji father and son and Vattel. The chapter also highlights Pelli's deep pessimism about human nature, and inclination to moralizing. Here he labels the punishment by execution of the 'vicious' as itself a vice, having its origins in the 'general corruption' of our hearts, our innate tendency to give way to capricious anger, cruelty and malice. Ultimately, in the course of his treatise, it explains his humanitarian instincts and motives and how his commitment to his cause come to the fore. But he is also insistent that his case rests on rational argumentation.

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.

Texts

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-53
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Pelli
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Cesare Beccaria ◽  
Father And Son

This chapter analyzes the texts and fragments of Giuseppe Pelli's dissertation on the death penalty. It discusses various meanings given to the word punishment which have created a great deal of misunderstanding. The chapter defines the term with precision and at the same time takes issue with the definitions proposed by Hugo Grotius and others. Punishment taken in a general sense may be divided into conventional and civil. Conventional punishment arises from the pact and is that which everyone signs up to spontaneously, while civil punishment is understood as that imposed by positive law, 'conventional' as that to which one submits of one's own volition. It also demonstrates three ends of punishment: reform, satisfaction and example, with regard to the death penalty. Ultimately, the chapter presents the lengthy discussions of the two Cocceji, father and son, on the punishment of Talion and the distinct writing of Giuseppe Pelli and Cesare Beccaria about the death penalty.

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.

Naturalizing Sharīʿa: Foundationalist Ambiguities in Modern Islamic Apologetics

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 45-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew F. March
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Ethical Systems

This essay discusses an important feature of much modern Islamic writing on law, politics and morality. The feature in question is the claim that Islamic law and human nature (fiṭra) are in perfect harmony, that Islam is the “natural religion” (dīn al-fiṭra), and thus that the demands of Islamic law are easy and painless for ordinary human moral capacities. My discussion proceeds through a close reading of the Moroccan independence leader and religious scholar ʿAllāl al-Fāsī (d. 1974). I discuss the ambiguities within Fāsī’s theory and suggest that the natural religion doctrine might be better understood less as a reduction of Islamic law to “natural law” and more as an apologetic effort to defend the realism and feasibility of Islamic law. In the hands of reformers like Fāsī, this project is beset with unresolved ambiguities around the constraining quality of revealed law in practice and the moral validity of non-Islamic political and ethical systems.


scholarly journals Human Rights and Human Nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-534
Author(s):  
Jean Rhéaume
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Positive Law

At least two important consequences follow from the fact that human rights are based on human nature. First, they exist according to natural law even in cases where positive law does not recognize them. Secondly, they cannot evolve because the nature and purpose of the human being does not change: only their formulation and level of protection in positive law can vary according to the socio-historical context.

Calvin's legacy for contemporary Reformed natural law

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 414-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Herdt
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Fair Dealing ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
Moral Quality ◽  
Careful Distinction

AbstractRecent scholarship has done much to uncover a continuous tradition of distinctively Reformed natural law reflection, according to which knowledge of the natural moral law, though not saving knowledge, is universally available to humanity in its fallen state and makes a stable secular order possible. A close look at Calvin's understanding of natural law, and in particular of conscience and natural human instincts, shows that Calvin himself did not expect the natural law to serve as a source of substantive action-guiding moral norms. First, Calvin held that conscience delivers information concerning the moral quality even of individual actions. But he also thought that we often blind ourselves to the deliverances of conscience. Second, he argued that our natural instincts predispose us to civic order and fair dealing insofar as these are necessary for the natural well-being or advantage of creatures such as ourselves. But he also carefully distinguished the good of advantage from the good of justice or virtue. The modern natural lawyers eroded Calvin's careful distinction between conscience as revealing our duty as duty, and instinct as guiding us towards natural advantage. They also turned away from Calvin's insistence on the moral incapacity of unredeemed humanity. The modern natural lawyers saw their task as one of developing an empirical science of human nature to guide legislation and shape international law, bracketing questions of whether this nature was fallen and in need of redemption. When Scottish Presbyterian Reformed thinkers, such as Gershom Carmichael and John Witherspoon, tried in diverse ways to restore eroded Reformed commitments to the science of human nature, about which they were otherwise so enthusiastic, they were not particularly successful. A science which could derive moral norms from an examination of human instincts, and a conscience which could deliver universal moral knowledge, proved too attractive to decline simply because of the transcendence of God or the fallenness of humankind. Those who wished to preserve an account of natural law which remained faithful to a fully robust set of Reformed theological commitments could do so only by refusing to regard the natural law as a positive source of moral knowledge.

Natural Law Republicanism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Hawley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The People ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

By any metric, Cicero’s works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. This book suggests that perhaps Cicero’s most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism’s unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero’s thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero’s vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people’s collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero’s original articulation through the American founding. It concludes by exploring how modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome’s great philosopher-statesman.

scholarly journals La estructura intencional de la Ley natural, según Vázquez (s. xvi) / The Intentional Structure of the Natural Law According to Vázquez (16th century)

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 121
Author(s):  
Juan CRUZ CRUZ
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Moral Rule ◽  
Practical Judgment ◽  
Structural Requirements ◽  
Rational Nature ◽  
Intentional Structure ◽  
Self Consistency

Gabriel Vázquez (1549-1604) explained that natural law is properly «the whole of radical or structural requirements of human nature as such, which is biological and rational at the same time». Natural law has also «self-consistency» by its own nature, and not by the consent or will of anyone, not even God. There is a double natural law: the primary one is the rational nature, and the secondary one is the judgment of our reason. This secondary natural law, based on the rational nature —which is our first moral rule—, gives a guideline, a practical judgment about the morality and immorality of human acts. The first is properly rule (mensura), the second is properly law (lex). The present study examines this dual intentional structure of natural law.

Natural Law in Early Modern Legal Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ibbetson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Hugo Grotius

Natural law thinking in the early modern world had two principal roots: Greco-Roman moral philosophy and Roman law. These two strands came together in sixteenth-century Spain, from where they influenced the Dutchman Hugo Grotius. Grotius can be seen as the channel through which this thinking reached a pan-European audience. His works, and the works of his followers, came to have an enormous influence on the development of legal thought and practice after the seventeenth century. Ideas of natural law were no longer regarded as dependent on God’s will. A rational structure could be derived from self-evident premises in the law of nature and identification of concrete rules of natural law was regarded as the work of human reason. These features, coupled with its seeming moral objectivity, allowed natural law to provide a template for positive legal systems, and fuelled the move towards codification of law in eighteenth-century Europe.

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