The Third Natural Law Institute

Richard Cumberland developed his ideas in response to Hobbes’ Leviathan. He introduced concepts of aggregate goodness (later used in utilitarianism), of benevolence (used in moral-sense theory), of moral self-obligation, of empirical proofs of providence and of the moral importance of tradition à la Burke. The philosophical basis for Cumberland’s views was a theory of natural law which was strongly anti-voluntarist and committed to objective moral values, but recognizing institutions such as governments of state and church as conventional or traditional. Cumberland was often seen as the third co-founder, with Pufendorf and Grotius, of modern natural law.

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What is the ‘Problem of Induction’?

Philosophy ◽

10.1017/s0031819100038821 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 62 (241) ◽

pp. 325-340

Author(s):

E. J. Lowe

Keyword(s):

Philosophy Of Science ◽

Natural Law ◽

Problem Of Induction ◽

New Approach ◽

The Third ◽

Key Concepts

This paper falls into three parts. In the first I retrace the steps which, have led many to consider that there is a ‘problem of induction’ which may have only a sceptical solution. In the second I explain why I think we cannot rest content with such a solution. In the third I try to show how a new approach to certain key concepts in the philosophy of science—in particular the concept of natural law—may help towards a non-sceptical resolution of the problem.

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Von der coactio hypothetica zum kategorischen Imperativ: Was Kants Autonomie-Lehre Achenwalls Naturrecht von 1755 verdankt

Rechtsphilosophie ◽

10.5771/2364-1355-2020-4-352 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (4) ◽

pp. 352-367

Author(s):

Bernd Ludwig

Keyword(s):

Natural Law ◽

Free Action ◽

The Third ◽

Divine Will

In the first edition of his textbook on Natural Law (1750), Achenwall advocates a theory of obligation which reveals that he was a Wolffian before he came from Halle via Marburg to Göttingen in 1748: Obligation is essentially the connection of a free action with a motive. With the third edition of the textbook (1755), Achenwall changes in terms of obligation theory to the camp of the Pufendorfians, who understood obligation essentially as a relationship between two wills, that of the obliged and that of a superior obligor (whereby in natural law God is this obligor). Achenwall herewith explicitly joins the Wolff-criticism of his Göttingen predecessor Gottlieb Samuel Treuer, who in turn followed Jean Barbeyrac. It is this ‘Pufendorfian’ Achenwall - but not the ‘Wolffian’ of 1750 - according to whose textbook Kant gives his lectures since the 1770s. However, in 1785, in the Groundwork, Kant replaces the divine will by the pure legislative will of the obligated person himself: Autonomy replaces Theonomy - and Wolff’s idiosyncratic concept of ‘obligation as motivation’ finally drops out of the game again.

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The Genesis of the Idea and Value of Political Peace in Early Modern Political Philosophy

Politička misao ◽

10.20901/pm.57.4.02 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 57 (4) ◽

pp. 33-59

Author(s):

Raul Raunić

Keyword(s):

Political Philosophy ◽

Early Modern ◽

Natural Law ◽

Point Of View ◽

William Of Ockham ◽

Political Realism ◽

Early Modernity ◽

The Third ◽

Marsilius Of Padua ◽

The Many

The main intention of this paper is to reconstruct the conceptual and historical‎ genesis of the idea and value of political peace from the point of view of ‎political philosophy at the intersection between late scholasticism and early modernity. The paper consists of three related parts. The first part highlights‎ methodological and contextual reasons why the idea of political peace has ‎been overshadowed throughout history by dominant discourses on war. The ‎second part deals with conceptual clarifications. The nature of war is distinguished ‎from other types of conflict and three interpretative approaches to‎ war are analyzed: political realism, fundamentalist-moralistic view of the holy‎ war, and the many theories of natural law that give rise to conceptions of just‎ war, but also the first abolitionist perspective or idea of ending all wars. Early‎ theoretical articulations of the notion of peace indicated modern-day emancipation‎ of politics from the tutelage of metaphysics and classical ethics, thus‎ separating the value of political peace from its original oneness with cosmic ‎and psychological peace. The third part of the paper highlights key moments ‎in the historical genesis of the value of political peace in the works of Aurelius ‎Augustine, Marsilius of Padua, and William of Ockham.‎

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The Repudiation of Rational Natural Law by National-Socialism

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198716204.003.0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Ernst Fraenkel

Keyword(s):

Political Science ◽

Legal System ◽

Natural Law ◽

National Socialism ◽

Third Reich ◽

The Third ◽

The Law ◽

The Third Reich

The chapter describes how the prerogative state was able to completely abolish the inviolability of the law. Since the doctrine of the inviolability of law is part of the heritage of rational Natural Law, it is argued, its explicit rejection in the legal system of the Third Reich raises the question of the whole attitude of National-Socialism toward Natural Law. The chapter describes how the repudiation of Natural Law was achieved and also the form this repudiation took. Despite the fact that Natural Law has been refuted time and again by political science, until the period when this text was written it had not yet lost its vitality entirely.

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Amartia Sen, leitor de Rawls: uma crítica à teoria da justiça enquanto prioridade da liberdade formal (por um novo fundamento da dignidade humana, da autonomia e da justiça)

Problemata ◽

10.7443/problemata.v11i5.52674 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. 60-78

Author(s):

Damião Benilson Gomes de Melo ◽

José Roberto de Araújo Freire

Keyword(s):

Natural Law ◽

Empirical Data ◽

Private Property ◽

Financial System ◽

Private Ownership ◽

Natural Right ◽

The Third ◽

The Right ◽

Sufficient Strength ◽

Principle Of Maximum

The object of this essay is to examine Amartia Sen’s approach to the justification of substantive rights pointed out in the third chapter of ‘Development as Freedom’ and his critique of the priority of formal freedoms in rawlsian theory. He points out a conflict between liberties (formal freedoms) and freedoms (material freedoms). This opposition will be confronted with Herbert Hart’s polemic in the third part of ‘Essays in Jurisprudence and philosophy’, where he points out a problem of Rawls’ formulation in not reconciling the admission of private property as a basic freedom with the principle of maximum equal freedom. The problem is whether the Sen model better addresses this issue. Our positive hypothesis. By establishing a small number of basic freedoms, Rawls treated the right as a mere formal guarantee. Consequently, the right to private ownership of large portions of land and the extensive control by private individuals over the financial system and over major industrial, commercial, and service goods, in the absence of any greater or consistent justification, end up envisioned by something equivalent to a self-justified natural right. As Marx said, it is not scientifically possible to conceal the original fact of the conquest of private property by covering it up under the diaphanous cloak of natural law, inasmuch as, to oppose the ‘natural right of a few’ it would be enough for the previously dispossessed majority to gather sufficient strength to impose a ‘natural right’ of the reconquest of usurpation. As for the method, it is an exclusively bibliographical research, which can be based, in a merely incidental way, on empirical data.

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Worse than Death

Hobbes Studies ◽

10.1163/18750257-02702008 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 27 (2) ◽

pp. 148-170 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Johan Olsthoorn

Keyword(s):

Moral Philosophy ◽

Natural Law ◽

Laws Of Nature ◽

Eternal Life ◽

Rational Agents ◽

Orthodox Interpretation ◽

The Third ◽

General Desire ◽

In Virtue Of

This article challenges the orthodoxy that Hobbes’s laws of nature, considered as dictates of reason, ceaselessly oblige agents in virtue of the general desire for self-preservation. Hobbes is an internalist about reasons, who refuses reason independent motivational efficacy. The universal prescriptive force of natural law is instead grounded in some desire (or set of desires) which all rational agents share. On the Orthodox Interpretation, this is the desire for self-preservation, as death is considered the worst possible evil that can befall Hobbesian agents. I argue that this interpretation is untenable. A plethora of passages attests that at least one thing is worse than death: loss of eternal life. It is therefore rational, according to Hobbes, to choose to die if doing so is necessary to procure salvation. This article sketches a non-preservationist reading of the psychological underpinnings of Hobbes’s moral philosophy which can account for (but does not presuppose) the superior disvalue of damnation. Three psychological laws, I submit, structure Hobbesian deliberation and desire-formation. The third and perhaps most controversial law states that humans cannot help caring about their own welfare. My contention is that the inescapable desire for bonum sibi better explains the universal normativity of natural law than self-preservation does.

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3. Theoretical Accounts of European Intellectual Property

European Intellectual Property Law ◽

10.1093/he/9780198831280.003.0003 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 67-96 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Justine Pila ◽

Paul L.C. Torremans

Keyword(s):

Intellectual Property ◽

Subject Matter ◽

Natural Law ◽

Personal Development ◽

Regulatory Mechanism ◽

The State ◽

Natural Rights ◽

Rights Protection ◽

The Third ◽

Critical Account

This chapter offers a full and critical account of the arguments for and against the existence of IP systems in general, and of European IP systems in particular. It begins by considering two general theories in support of the recognition of IP rights as natural rights: the first casting IP as supporting the personal development and autonomy of individual creators (the argument from personhood), and the second casting IP as securing for creators such rights as they deserve by virtue of their acts of intellectual creation (the argument from desert). From natural law accounts of the existence of IP the chapter goes on to examine three other theories grounded in considerations of justice, utility, and pluralism respectively. According to the first, IP is defensible as a means of preventing people either from being enriched unjustly or from harming others by unfairly ‘reaping where they have not sown’. According to the second, IP rights are privileges conferred by the state on specific individuals in the pursuit of certain instrumentalist ends, such as encouraging socially desirable behaviour on the part of their beneficiaries or discouraging socially undesirable behaviour on the part of those whose freedoms they restrict. And according to the third, IP is a regulatory mechanism by which different understandings and traditions of protecting creative and informational subject matter are reconciled in support of legal and social pluralism. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of the theoretical accounts for the duration of copyright and related rights protection and the patentability of biotechnology.

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17. Burke

10.1093/hepl/9780198708926.003.0017 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

David Boucher

Keyword(s):

Natural Law ◽

Political Thought ◽

Political Obligation ◽

Institutional Practices ◽

The Third ◽

Universal Principles ◽

Short Biography

This chapter examines Edmund Burke's political thought. It first provides a short biography of Burke before discussing the three main interpretations of him: first, as a utilitarian; second, in relation to natural law; and the third, which attempts to bring together the two antithetical interpretations. It argues that even though Burke has elements of utilitarianism in his thought, and although he subscribes to natural law and universal principles, both somehow have to coincide in the traditions and institutional practices of a community. On the question of political obligation, although he uses the language of contract, it is clear that Burke does not subscribe to its central tenets. The chapter proceeds by exploring Burke's views on sovereignty, constitutionalism, colonialism, and slavery.

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Trzy „odczarowania” nowożytnej koncepcji prawa naturalnego

Przegląd Sejmowy ◽

10.31268/ps.2020.85 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6(161) ◽

pp. 169-187

Author(s):

Michał Wendland

Keyword(s):

Modern Philosophy ◽

Natural Law ◽

Natural Rights ◽

Modern Concept ◽

The Third ◽

Law Of Nature ◽

Theological Foundations ◽

History Of

he article addresses, in the perspective of the history of modern philosophy, the issue of the transformation to which the concept of natural law was subject in the 17th and 18th centuries. The author shares the views of, among others, Habermas and Bobbio, according to which the modern concept of natural law has been made “more positive” or “disenchanted” (after Weber), and thus the traditionally understood law of nature was transformed into the concept of natural rights. The article distinguishes three forms of this process: the first one, i.e., the so-called bourgeois school of natural law (Grotius, Thomasius, Pufendorf); the second one, developed by representatives of the early (moderate) Enlightenment (Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu); the third one, the most radical one, represented by the thinkers the late Enlightenment, mainly French encyclopaedists and materialists (La Mettrie, Holbach, Condorcet, Paine). Their common feature was the gradual abandonment of the metaphysical or theological foundations of natural law in favour of a naturalised ethic.

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