Formation of the Idea of Natural Law in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-28
Author(s):  
Anatolii P. Zaiets ◽  
Zoya O. Pohoryelova
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Legal Method ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Historical Comparative

The article analyzes the formation of the idea of natural law, which has an important theoretical and applied significance, as it makes it possible to better understand the essence of law, its connection with egalitarian and humanistic teachings. The research is based on modern philosophical worldview approaches, such general scientific research methods as axiological, anthropological, phenomenological, comparative-historical, comparative-legal, system-structural, hermeneutical, functional, institutional, as well as formal-legal method are used. The article examines the works of representatives of the Milesian school founded by Thales in the first half of the 6th century BC, whose analysis of human consciousness, human ability to create, transform the world, formulate ideas and implement them led to the idea of a universal Logos, a universal divine Mind, and the Law of Nature. The article reveals the contribution of sophists to the development of the idea of the natural law who justified the differences between natural and human law, defended the idea of equality of all people, called for not discriminating against citizens, depending on their origin, and denied slavery. The role of representatives of the stoicism school in substantiating the idea of natural law based on awareness of the fundamental difference between human nature and nature, justifying the existence of the unchangeable law of nature (lex naturale) in the form of common sense, equality of all people, recognition of slavery contrary to human nature, the need for recognition of human rights by law to preserve human dignity is highlighted. The article examines the influence of the ideas of the philosophers of Ancient Greece on the development of Roman law, the role of the Scipio group in this influence, and the essence of the then rational understanding of natural law as a true law, namely, common sense, which, in accordance with nature, concerns all people, is unchangeable and eternal

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.

Pirates, Kings and Reasons to Ad: Moral Motivation and the Role of Sanctions in Locke's Moral Theory

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Sheridan
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Moral Duties ◽  
Moral Rules

Locke's moral theory consists of two explicit and distinct elements — a broadly rationalist theory of natural law and a hedonistic conception of moral good. The rationalist account, which we find most prominently in his early Essays on the Law of Nature, is generally taken to consist in three things. First, Locke holds that our moral rules are founded on universal, divine natural laws. Second, such moral laws are taken to be discoverable by reason. Third, by dint of their divine authorship, moral laws are obligatory and rationally discernible as such. Locke's hedonism, which is developed most fully in his later Essay Concerning Human Understanding, consists in the view that all good amounts to pleasure, with specifically moral good taken to consist in the pleasurable consequences of discharging one's moral duties.

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.

Poetry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Shusterman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Real World ◽  
General Model ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Beneficial Effects ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Essential Unity ◽  
Formal Properties ◽  
Poetic Creation

Though poetry today seems a relatively marginal topic in philosophy, it was crucial for philosophy’s own initial self-definition. In ancient Greece, poetry was revered as the authoritative expression of sacred myth and traditional wisdom. With Socrates and Plato, philosophy began by distinguishing itself from poetry as a new, superior form of knowledge which could provide better guidance for life and even superior pleasure. Just as the sophists were attacked for relativism and deception, so were poets stridently criticized for irrationality and falsehood. For Plato, not only did poetry stem from and appeal to the emotional, unreasoning aspects of human nature; it was also far removed from truth, being only an imitation of our world of appearances which itself was but an imitation of the real world of ideas or forms. He therefore insisted that poets be banished from his ideal state because they threatened its proper governance by reason and philosophy. Subsequent philosophy of poetry has been devoted to overcoming Plato’s condemnatory theory, while tending to confirm philosophy’s superiority. This task, begun by Aristotle, was for a long time pursued primarily under Plato’s general model of poetry (and indeed all art) as imitation or mimesis. The main strategy here was to argue that what poetry imitates or represents is more than mere superficial appearance, but rather general essences or the ideas themselves. For such theories, poetry’s relation to truth is crucial. Other theories were later developed that preferred to define and justify poetry in terms of formal properties or expression, or its distinctively beneficial effects on its audience. These strategies became increasingly influential from the time of Romanticism, but can be traced back to more ancient sources. The vast majority of theories follow Plato in treating poetry as a distinct domain, separate from and subordinate to philosophy. But since Romanticism, some have argued for the essential unity of these two enterprises. Great philosophy is here seen as the poetic creation of new ways of thinking and new forms of language, while the role of poetry as uniting and gathering things together so that the truth and presence of being shines forth.

Between Life and Violent Death

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-80
Author(s):  
Fred Dallmayr
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Violent Death ◽  
Civil State ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
The Core

The chapter considers the origin and meaning of “natural law” and “natural rightness,” the core of right conduct, whose origin is sometimes placed in the cogito. This chapter emphasizes, instead, the role of contextual “relationality” in rules, whether “positive” social norms or “divine” rules, such as the Mosaic “laws” which were not imposed unilaterally by a divine potentate but reflected the people’s experience and “common sense” of right conduct. The chapter extends this argument to the work of Thomas Hobbes for whom transit from the “state of nature” to the “civil state” depended on reciprocal and relational “natural laws,” which he called “immutable and eternal” because they originate at the experiential boundary between life and death. Relationality prevails even when human norms are set aside in favor of “higher” rules—as revealed by Antigone of Thebes who appealed beyond state rules to the relationality between brother and sister.

Self-Interest and Virtue

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neera K. Badhwar
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Empirical Psychology ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Self Interest

The Aristotelian view that the moral virtues–the virtues of character informed by practical wisdom–are essential to an individual's happiness, and are thus in an individual's self-interest, has been little discussed outside of purely scholarly contexts. With a few exceptions, contemporary philosophers have tended to be suspicious of Aristotle's claims about human nature and the nature of rationality and happiness (eudaimonia). But recent scholarship has offered an interpretation of the basic elements of Aristotle's views of human nature and happiness, and of reason and virtue, that brings them more into line with common-sense thinking and with contemporary philosophical and empirical psychology. This makes it fruitful to reexamine the question of the role of virtue in self-interest.

The Law of Nature in Philo and Cicero

1978 ◽  
Vol 71 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 35-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Horsley
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
The Law ◽  
Medieval Political Theory

“Christian Natural Law is the acceptance and reinterpretation according to Christian and ecclesiastical principles of Stoic Natural Law. …” Thus runs Troeltsch's classic and influential formulation of the view that Stoicism forms the “preparation of the gospel” with regard to the law of nature in Christian theology and ethics. Historians of political theory similarly assume that it was the Stoic doctrine of natural law that decisively influenced both the rationalization and universalization of Roman law and medieval political theory.

scholarly journals Historical and Legal Context and Significance… of Selected Roman Public Law Institutions of the Early Principate Described in Canonical Gospels of the New Testament

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-687
Author(s):  
Maciej Tomasz Kubala
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Tax Law ◽  
Legal Method ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Judicial Procedure

The article analyses the issues in question by means of a method used in the legal sciences which in the Polish methodology is called “the historical and legal method.” It involves presentation and analysis of selected legal institutions and of their evolution in time. The following issues—identified across the pages of the Gospel—are analysed in this article: political and systemic context of evangelical events (section 1), the role of censuses in the implementation of Roman administrative and systemic principles (section 2), Roman tax law in the context of tax burdens resting on residents of Judea (section 3) and the Roman judicial procedure in the context of the trial of Jesus (section 4). In the summary the author answers the research question asked in the introduction: to what degree does the historical and legal significance of selected institutions of Roman law, inspired by the description of these institutions in canonical gospels of the New Testament, determine the contemporary understanding of the gospels themselves?

scholarly journals Z rodowodu klasycznego prawa naturalnego

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-27
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Szadok-Bratuń ◽  
Marek Bratuń
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Ideal

The issue of natural law has been mentioned by almost all philosophers of law, from the classical ones of ancient Greece to contemporary postmodernists, and is presented in various ways. In compliance with Cicero’s observation that “history is the herald of the future” we have attempted to go back to the sources and to start our considerations ab ovo. The historical review does not address systematically the issue discussed here, and only serves to properly explain what natural law in a classical reflection of ius naturale is. Therefore, our approach to the classical natural law has been narrowed down to three selected sophists, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and their views of ius naturale in opposition to ius positivum have been briefly outlined. The article consists of two parts: the first one entitled From Heraclitus to Socrates and the second entitled From Plato to Aristotle. The first part presents sophists’ views on the law of nature. It is worth noting that sophists did not analyse the essence of the law of nature; they were primarily interested in the relationship of the law of nature to positive law. Thus Socrates, by deriving the existence of universal and unchanging laws from human nature, gave birth to the doctrine of natural law with unchanging content. The second part contains the views of Plato and Aristotle on the question of the law of nature. Plato is considered to have discovered the ideal trend of natural law, although in his dialogues the term “law of nature” is not found. It was the theory of Plato’s ideas that became the model for the concept of lex aeterna as an arrangement of divine ideas. Whereas, Aristotle distinguished two types of good that law puts before man, and accepts them as the basis for the dichotomous division of laws. He described good that is indifferent to man, which due to specific circumstances becomes the object of his desire, as positive law. Good that is closely related to the nature of man, which is always and everywhere the object of his desire, is good indicating the natural law.

scholarly journals Roman law in the period of profound changes in Polish science

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-218
Author(s):  
Wojciech Dajczak
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Significant Implication ◽  
Legal Method ◽  
World Class ◽  
Polish Law ◽  
Polish Higher Education ◽  
The Impact

Separating Roman law from the theory of applicable private law inspires - from the beginning of 20th century – the questions pertaining to the meaning, aims, and methods of researching Roman law. This article analyses these issues in the context of the changes of the evaluation of research resulted from the Polish higher education and science act enacted in 2018. The core of this analysis is the comparison of the traditional understanding of the internationalization of the study of Roman law by Polish researchers and the understanding of world-class research according to the new Polish law. The tension between traditional approach of Romanists and bibliometric criteria of evaluation has significant implication for whether and how the Roman law should be studied and taught on the Polish faculties of law. The paper stresses the role of the impact of Polish researches of Roman law on the European debate about basic problems of private law and legal method today. The future of Roman law in Polish legal education interacts with today’s fundamental dispute about what is Western civilization and how it is to be understood.

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