The article discusses the notion of ‘legal humanism’, i.e. the encounter between jurisprudence and fundamental ideas of Renaissance humanists. Legal historians are fundamentally divided over the ...impact of humanistic thought on legal development. While some influential authors regard the insights and ideas of Renaissance humanists as largely irrelevant to legal thinking, others identify a group of ‘legal humanists’ and describe them as modernisers whose innovative forms of ‘humanistic’ legal thinking initiated developments that ultimately led to modern law. In view of this debate, the article analyses writings of Valla, Budé, Zasius, Alciato and other humanists in their historical contexts. It will be shown that these authors cannot be properly described as ‘modernisers’ as they did not advance new ideas that transformed legal thinking. Nevertheless, the conceptions of time and the philological insights of Renaissance humanism irritated established forms of scholastic legal thinking and made jurists reflect on their scholarship. The new forms of legal thinking that emerged from those 16
-century discussions did not make use of specifically humanistic, philological techniques, but should rather be seen as specifically legal responses to the humanistic irritation.
At the conclusion of his
, a treatise on the law of nature, how it is grasped by the human mind, and how it coheres with the Decalogue, Niels Hemmingsen claims to have eschewed the use of theological ...sources in his argument, claiming instead to have demonstrated ‘how far reason is able to progress without the prophetic and apostolic word’. Yet the reader of the treatise will notice several citations of theologians alongside those of pagan poets and philosophers. This essay demonstrates that there is less here than meets the eye, that is, that Hemmingsen quotes theologians only to buttress what one can know from natural reason or the classical tradition, even when he is discussing God, and thus he does not violate his own stated principle.
This article responds to four criticisms of the Catholic view of natural law: (1) it commits the naturalistic fallacy, (2) it makes divine revelation unnecessary, (3) it implausibly claims to ...establish a shared universal set of moral beliefs, and (4) it disregards the noetic effects of sin. Relying largely on the Church’s most important theologian on the natural law, St. Thomas Aquinas, the author argues that each criticism rests on a misunderstanding of the Catholic view. To accomplish this end, the author first introduces the reader to the natural law by way of an illustration he calls the “the ten (bogus) rules.” He then presents Aquinas’ primary precepts of the natural law and shows how our rejection of the ten bogus rules ultimately relies on these precepts (and inferences from them). In the second half of the article, he responds directly to each of the four criticisms.
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.
El artículo ofrece una introducción al conjunto de los comentarios a la Ética a Nicómaco escritos por autores protestantes durante el siglo XVI. Se corrige así la unilateral impresión que el ...antiaristotelismo de Lutero ha dejado sobre la historia intelectual del periodo. Exponemos el modo en que estos comentadores tratan la idea de lo justo por naturaleza en EN V, 7, y en particular la singular tesis aristotélica sobre la mutabilidad de lo justo natural.
El artículo pretende esclarecer la incidencia que pueda tener la ausencia de fe y el contexto social respecto a la validez del matrimonio. La Comisión Teológica Internacional (CTI) propone una ...indirecta identificación entre intención matrimonial y fe personal, ve descartable la identidad entre vínculo conyugal y sacramento del matrimonio y opta por la eliminación del favor matrimonii cuando hay falta de fe. La perspectiva de la CTI resulta limitada por prescindir en su enfoque de las relaciones entre naturaleza y gracia, y de la consecuente circularidad entre el derecho divino natural y positivo. Las menciones a la recta intentio por el magisterio y la doctrina remiten a dos instancias humanas no suficientemente distinguidas: la que interviene en el consensus, y la ratio naturalis de la esencia humana, que es anterior y superior a la primera. El autor propone la noción de ratio naturalis como fundamento de la validez del matrimonio en ausencia de fe.
This volume addresses issues of moral pluralism and polarization by drawing attention to the transcendent character of the good. It probes the history of Christian theology and moral philosophy to ...investigate the value of this idea and then relates it to contemporary moral issues. The good is transcendent in that it goes beyond concrete goods, things, acts, or individual preferences. It functions as the pole of a compass that helps orient our moral life. This volume explores the critical tension between the transcendent good and its concrete embodiments in the world through concepts like conscience, natural and divine law, virtue, and grace. The chapters are divided into three parts. Part I discusses metaphysical issues like the realist nature and the unity of the good in relation to philosophical, naturalist, and theological approaches from Augustine to Iris Murdoch. The chapters in Part II explore issues about knowing the transcendent good and doing good, exemplified in the delicate balance between divine command and human virtuousness. Early Protestant theological views prove to be excellent interlocutors for this reflection. Finally, Part III focuses on how transcendence is at stake in two heavily debated moral issues of today: euthanasia and the family. The Transcendent Character of the Good will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in theological ethics, moral philosophy, and the history of ethics. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Natural law is a perennial though poorly represented and understood issue in political philosophy and the philosophy of law. In this 2006 book, Mark C. Murphy argues that the central thesis of ...natural law jurisprudence - that law is backed by decisive reasons for compliance - sets the agenda for natural law political philosophy, demonstrating how law gains its binding force by way of the common good of the political community. Murphy's work ranges over the central questions of natural law jurisprudence and political philosophy, including the formulation and defense of the natural law jurisprudential thesis, the nature of the common good, the connection between the promotion of the common good and requirement of obedience to law, and the justification of punishment.
The Necessity of Naturalness Brown, Joshua D. K.; Wildman, Nathan
Erkenntnis,
03/2024, Letnik:
89, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Are properties perfectly natural (or not) relative to worlds, or are they perfectly natural (or not) tout court? That is, could there be a property P that is instantiated at worlds w1 and w2, and is ...perfectly natural at w1 but not at w2? Here, we offer an original argument for the non-world-relativity of perfect naturalness. Along the way, we reply to a prima facie compelling argument for the contingency of perfect naturalness, based upon the connection between natural properties and laws of nature.
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