Economising Natural Law: Pufendorf on Moral Quantities and Sumptuary Legislation

2019 ◽  
pp. 241-277
Author(s):  
Michael Seidler
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Sumptuary Legislation

Pufendorf’s theory of moral entities imposes a normative grid upon an indifferent world and articulates the positive, non-metaphysical nature of morality. This chapter focuses especially on the function of moral quantities, which set the prices of things and the esteem of persons. It clarifies the moral economy constituted by these values through an examination of Pufendorf’s view of sumptuary laws and their role in the state. The need to calculate particular values within a broader normative context shows also how Pufendorf’s method is both demonstrative and casuistic.

The Land Question in India

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Land Acquisition ◽  
Infrastructure Development ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Tribal Communities ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Acquisition Processes ◽  
Land Question

This book takes a fresh look at the land question in India. It goes beyond re-engagement in the rich transition debate by critically examining both theoretically and empirically the role of land in contemporary India. Springing from the political economy discourse surrounding the classic capitalist transition issue in agriculture in India, the book gravitates toward the development discourse that inevitably veers toward land and the role of the state in pushing a process of dispossession of peasants through direct expropriation for developmental purposes. Contemporary dispossession may look similar to the historical process of primitive accumulation that makes room for capitalist agriculture and expanded accumulation. But this volume shows that land in India is sought increasingly for non-agricultural purposes as well. These include risk mitigation by farmers, real estate development, infrastructure development by states often on behalf of business, and special economic zones. Tribal communities (advasis), who depend on land for their livelihoods and a moral economy that is independent of any price-driven markets, hold on to land for collective security. Thus land acquisition continues to be a turbulent arena in which classes, castes, and communities are in conflict with the state and capital, each jockeying to determine the terms and conditions of land transactions or their prevention, through both market and non-market mechanisms. The volume collectively addresses the role of the state involved in the process of dispossession of peasants and tribal communities. It provides new analytical insights into the land acquisition processes, their legal-institutional and ethical implications, and captures empirically the multifaceted regional diversity of the contestations surrounding the acquisition experiences in India.

The Emergence of Mafia-like Business Systems in China

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Meg Rithmire ◽  
Hao Chen
Keyword(s):  
Large Body ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Business Systems ◽  
Business Elites ◽  
Growth And Survival ◽  
Political Role ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Large N ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract A large body of literature on state–business relations in China has examined the political role of capitalists and collusion between the state and the private sector. This paper contributes to that literature and understanding of the internal differentiation among China's business elites by documenting the emergence of a particular kind of large, non-state business group that we argue is more akin to a mafia system than any standard definition of a firm. Drawing on large-N descriptive data as well as deep ethnographic and documentary research, we argue that mafia-like business systems share organizational principles (plunder and obfuscation) and means of growth and survival (relations of mutual endangerment and manipulation of the financial system). Understanding the particular moral economy that underlies mafia-like business systems and their interactions with the state challenges methodological foundations of research on China's political economy and helps to explain recent conflict between high-profile business people and the state.

Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend, Achenwall and the Role of the State

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71
Author(s):  
Mike L. Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Law System ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Will ◽  
Subjective Rights

Abstract Kant’s Naturrecht Feyerabend has recently gained more sustained attention for its role in clarifying Kant’s published positions in political philosophy. However, too little attention has been given to the lecture’s relation to Gottfried Achenwall, whose book was the textbook for the course. In this paper, I will examine how Kant rejected and transforms Achenwall’s natural law system in the Feyerabend Lectures. Specifically, I will argue that Kant problematizes Achenwall’s foundational notion of a divine juridical state which opens up a normative gap between objective law (prohibitions, prescriptions and permissions) and subjective rights (moral capacities). In the absence of a divine sovereign, formal natural law is unable to justify subjective natural rights in the state of nature. In the Feyerabend Lectures, Kant, in order to close this gap, replaces the divine will with the “will of society”, making the state necessary for the possibility of rights.

scholarly journals “Every Scientifically Educated Lawyer Should be a Cultural Fighter for the Ideals of Law in Life!“ — Nikolay I. Palienko’s Legal and Political Views

Lex Russica ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 123-135
Author(s):  
A. S. Tumanova ◽  
A. A. Safonov
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Integrative Concept ◽  
Legal Understanding

. The paper analyzes the legal views of Nikolay I. Palienko, a prominent philosopher of law and a state historian of the beginning of the last century. The authors pay significant attention to the integrative concept of legal understanding that is followed by Prof. Nikolay Palienko. They also substantiate originality and significance of the concept in the light of modernization of the political and legal order in late imperial Russia. It seems that under certain conditions it could serve as a bridge between positivist jurisprudence and the doctrine of “reborn natural law” developed in pre-revolutionary Russia. It was intended to smooth out the contradictions in both doctrines and contribute to the development of a new methodology for law understanding in the context of transformation of the Russian legal system towards establishing institutions of constitutional order.On the basis of published sources, the authors show the evolution of the scholar’s views from the positivist theory of law to idealism that is not properly estimated in the legal literature and is quite typical for the legal scholars of the interrevolutionary period.The authors conclude that Prof. Nikolay I. Palienko scholarship and knowledge allowed him to substantiate his own concept of legal understanding that can be considered integrative on the basis of achievements of the positivist theory of law, philosophy of natural law, psychological and sociological concepts of legal understanding. Prof. Palienko proclaimed the normative nature of law and at the same time expressed ideas of the supremacy of law over the state and the coherence of the state provided by law. An essential element of his legal concept was the legal consciousness of the society, acknowledgement of its role in the course of law education, as well as its establishment as a source of law. Palienko’s idea of legal coherence of the state represents a synthesis of positivism with idealism and leads to a new stage of development of legal methodology and ideology, namely: integrative jurisprudence. Scholar’s political and legal ideas contributed to the development of ideas about the rule of law, which were very popular in Russia during the period of development of representative institutions and constitutionalism.

Freedom in Religion, Freedom in the State

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Mirjam Künkler
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The State ◽  
Intellectual Biography ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Role Of Religion

This article provides an overview of Böckenförde’s writings on issues of religion, ethos, and the Catholic Church in relation to law, democracy, and the state. It presents Böckenförde as an inner-Catholic critic, who attempted to persuade Catholicism that one’s own freedom can be defended only as part of the general freedom. This was finally achieved, at least dogmatically according to Böckenförde, with the Declaration of Religious Freedom at the end of the Second Vatican Council. The article lays out how Böckenförde sees the role of religion and natural law in secular democracy, namely as one informing the citizens’ ethos. Democracy cannot survive in the long term unless it is carried out by people who consider themselves part of the same demos and work towards a shared democratic culture. The article includes information on his intellectual biography, a periodization of his academic writings in seven phases from 1957 to 2012, a discussion of some of his core arguments as an inner-Catholic critic, a reflection on the cover images he chose for the two volumes, and closes with concluding remarks on Böckenförde’s view of religion in democracy compared to other theorists of democracy and secularism.

Review of Hans J. Morgenthau, Dilemmas of Politics, and Correspondence (University of Chicago Press; and London, Cambridge University Press, 1958)

2021 ◽  
pp. 321-323
Author(s):  
Martin Wight
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Action ◽  
National Interest ◽  
The State ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Factual Error ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

In Wight’s view, ‘Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book is that it does not mention Morgenthau’s colleague at Chicago, Leo Strauss [ … ] Agreed in their concern about the retreat of political science into “the trivial, the formal, the methodological, the purely theoretical, the remotely historical”, they are divided by the gulf of natural law.’ Morgenthau asserted, however, that Wight in his review had made ‘a factual error’. Morgenthau quoted another one of his books, In Defense of the National Interest: ‘There is a profound and neglected truth hidden in Hobbes’s extreme dictum that the state creates morality as well as law and that there is neither morality nor law outside the state. Universal moral principles, such as justice or equality, are capable of guiding political action only to the extent that they have been given concrete content and have been related to political situations by society.’ Morgenthau wrote in criticism of Wight’s review: ‘To say that a truth is “hidden” in an “extreme” dictum can hardly be called an endorsement of the dictum. To call a position “extreme” is not to identify oneself with the position but to disassociate oneself from it. In the quoted passage I was trying to establish the point, in contrast to Hobbes’s, that moral principles are universal and, hence, are not created by the state.’ Wight replied: ‘I am sorry to have misinterpreted Professor Morgenthau, but I rejoice that my error has evoked an authoritative exegesis of a disputed passage.’

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Ruth Boeker
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Aims And Scope

This introductory chapter outlines Locke’s innovative contributions to debates about persons and personal identity. His view builds, first, on moral and legal conceptions of a person, which can be found in natural law theory, second, on metaphysical debates about individuation and identity, and, third, on metaphysical and religious debates about the afterlife and the state of the soul between death and resurrection. The chapter shows that he not only builds on these debates, but also how he systematically brings the different debates together in new ways and how his distinction between the ideas of person, man, and substance makes it possible to advance the debates of his day. Moreover, this chapter presents the aims and scope of the book and offers a summary of the subsequent chapters.

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