The Christian Origin of Modern Law: Hugo Grotius’ Right-Based and Will-Based Natural Law Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 121-157
Author(s):  
Dohyun Kim
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Natural Law Theory

scholarly journals GROTIUS, DESCARTES E O PROBLEMA DO CETICISMO NO SÉCULO XVII: AS ORIGENS FILOSÓFICAS DO DEBATE JUSNATURALISMO VS. POSITIVISMO LEGAL

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (120) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Marcelo Araújo
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Natural Law Theory

O objetivo deste texto é contribuir para uma compreensão da história do debate entre jusnaturalismo e positivismo legal. Esse debate teve sua origem no século XVII, mais especificamente no contexto do ceticismo moderno acerca dos fundamentos da legitimidade do exercício da autoridade política. As respostas de Hugo Grotius e René Descartes ao problema do ceticismo, como se pretende mostrar, contribuíram para a emergência do debate entre jusnaturalismo e positivismo legal.Abstract: This paper aims to develop a historical understanding of the debate between natural law theory and legal positivism. This debate has its roots in the 17th century, particularly in the context of the modern skepticism about the justification for the exercise of political authority. I intend to show that the answer given by both Hugo Grotius and René Descartes against the skeptical attack contributed to the emergence of the debate between natural law theory and legal positivism.

Grotius, Stoicism, and Oikeiosis

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
General Structure ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Practical Deliberation ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Close Fit

This chapter turns to Hugo Grotius and to the origins of the modern natural rights tradition in a reworking of Ciceronian Stoicism. It first argues that there is a close fit between the general structure of a Ciceronian Stoic natural law theory and the argument that Grotius builds in his Prolegomena to De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1631). Next, the chapter notes that the Stoic concern with autonomy combined with regulating practical deliberation is what gives us this distinctive argument, in which strong claims about the natural sociability of human beings end up issuing in a theory characterised above all by rights that separate people and their property off from one another. Finally, although Grotius calls oikeiosis (a desire for society) the appetitus societatis, he in fact works far more closely with Stoic sources on the side of personal oikeiosis rather than on the side of social oikeiosis.

scholarly journals Natural Law and Civilizational Progress: Assumptions of a Political Theory in Simonas Daukantas’s Historiography

Politologija ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (3) ◽  
pp. 56-82
Author(s):  
Saulius Pivoras
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Private Property Rights ◽  
The People ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Conjectural History

This article aims to identify and reconstruct a few main elements of political theory upon which the works of Simonas Daukantas, the founding father of the national Lithuanian written history, are based. Daukantas’s major works on Lithuanian history were researched while identifying and closely analyzing the passages where Daukantas specifically speaks about natural law and civilizational progress. Daukantas’s history works were considerably influenced by authors of Neostoic natural law theory, such as Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, and Antoine-Yves Goguet. This influence shows in the adopted conceptions of natural needs, natural sociability, and a characterization of the emergence of private property rights in Lithuania with the help of conjectural history methods. Daukantas traces natural law elements in the oldest customs of the people and therefore gives most attention to reconstructing and describing the mores of the ancient Lithuanians. In describing historical evolution, he applied in his works the concepts of bright and dark periods as well as the distinctions of other separate stages of civilizational progress as discussed in Enlightenment historiography and conjectural history in particular.

On the Artifactual—and Natural— Character of Legal Institutions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corrado Roversi
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Legal Realism ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Law ◽  
Theory Of Law

Are legal institutions artifacts? If artifacts are conceived as entities whose existence depends on human beings, then yes, legal institutions are, of course, artifacts. But an artifact theory of law makes a stronger claim, namely, that there is actually an explanatory gain to be had by investigating legal institutions as artifacts, or through the features of ordinary artifacts. This is the proposition explored in this chapter: that while this understanding of legal institutions makes it possible to find common ground between legal positivism and legal realism, it does not capture all of the insights offered by these two traditions. An artifact theory of law can therefore be necessary in explaining the law, but it will not suffice to that end. This chapter also posits that legal artifacts bear a relevant connection to certain conceptions of nature, thus vindicating one of the original insights behind natural law theory.

scholarly journals God, New Natural Law Theory, and Human Rights

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 613
Author(s):  
Christopher Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Full Theory ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Epistemological Dimension

Critics of the “New” Natural Law (NNL) theory have raised questions about the role of the divine in that theory. This paper considers that role in regard to its account of human rights: can the NNL account of human rights be sustained without a more or less explicit advertence to “the question of God’s existence or nature or will”? It might seem that Finnis’s “elaborate sketch” includes a full theory of human rights even prior to the introduction of his reflections on the divine in the concluding chapter of Natural Law and Natural Rights. But in this essay, I argue that an adequate account of human rights cannot, in fact, be sustained without some role for God’s creative activity in two dimensions, the ontological and the motivational. These dimensions must be distinguished from the epistemological dimension of human rights, that is, the question of whether epistemological access to truths about human rights is possible without reference to God’s existence, nature, or will. The NNL view is that such access is possible. However, I will argue, the epistemological cannot be entirely cabined off from the relevant ontological and motivational issues and the NNL framework can accommodate this fact without difficulty.

On American Values, Unalienable Rights, and Human Rights: Some Reflections on the Pompeo Commission

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Risse
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
American Values ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The U.S

AbstractIn July 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched a Commission on Unalienable Rights, charged with a reexamination of the scope and nature of human rights–based claims. From his statements, it seems that Pompeo hopes the commission will substantiate—by appeal to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and to natural law theory—three key conservative ideas: (1) that there is too much human rights proliferation, and once we get things right, social and economic rights as well as gender emancipation and reproductive rights will no longer register as human rights; (2) that religious liberties should be strengthened under the human rights umbrella; and (3) that the unalienable rights that should guide American foreign policy neither need nor benefit from any international oversight. I aim to show that despite Pompeo's framing, the Declaration of Independence, per se, is of no help with any of this, whereas evoking natural law is only helpful in ways that reveal its own limitations as a foundation for both human rights and foreign policy in our interconnected age.

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.

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