Natural Law (natural + law)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

Terms modified by Natural Law

  • natural law theory

  • Selected Abstracts


    JUDAISM AND NATURAL LAW

    THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 6 2009
    JONATHAN JACOBS
    The question of the relation between Judaism and natural law is important both for scholars and for reflective persons with an interest in the grounds of Jewish moral thought. There is a rich history of natural law theorizing that has had considerable influence, and there has been a revival of natural law theorizing in the contemporary period. The topic of the present discussion is of more than historical interest; it is a live question of real, current relevance. [source]


    Is Natural Law a Border Concept Between Judaism and Christianity?

    JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 2 2004
    David Novak
    ABSTRACT With the passing of disputations between Jewish and Christian thinkers as to whose tradition has a more universal ethics, the task of Jewish and Christian ethicists is to constitute a universal horizon for their respective bodies of ethics, both of which are essentially particularistic being rooted in special revelation. This parallel project must avoid relativism that is essentially anti-ethical, and triumphalism that proposes an imperialist ethos. A retrieval of the idea of natural law in each respective tradition enables the constitution of some intelligent common ground for ethical cooperation in both theory and practice between the traditions. This essay also suggests how the constitution of this common ground could include Muslims as well. The constitution of this common ground enables religious ethicists to present more cogent ethical arguments in secular space, but only of course, when those who now control secular space are open to arguments from members of any religious tradition. [source]


    From is to ought: Natural Law in Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and Phra Prayudh Payutto

    JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 2 2002
    Sallie B. King
    The contemporary Thai Theravada Buddhist monks Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and Phra Prayyudh Payutto espouse a version of natural law thinking in which the norms of good behavior derive from the nature of the world, specifically its features of conditionality, causality, karma and interdependence. An ethic which stresses non-egoic harmony is the result. This paper (1) develops the notion of natural law in their thinking and (2) critically evaluates these ideas as a foundation for ethical thought, specifically asking whether such ideas recognize something of value in the individual per se and in individual freedom and, in an interdependent world, how one can challenge injustice or a brutal government. [source]


    What's at Stake in Natural Law?

    NEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1023 2008
    Barrister, David McIlroy M.A. (Cantab.), Mtr Dt (Toulouse)
    Abstract Something like natural law is required if Christians are to say that Jesus Christ is as relevant to human beings of every age and in every place that we have ever existed as a race. There must be something stable about the human condition which means that we are all alike in need of a Saviour. That something is the fact that we are created to love God and to love our neighbour. This much is revealed to all humankind. For the Apostle Paul and Thomas Aquinas the natural law was not given as an alternative method of salvation but rather to explain the justice of God's judgment and the utter gratuity of divine grace. Similarly, natural theology is not an assertion that faith in Christ is optional but rather that all human beings are culpable if they do not recognise that there is a god who created them and rewards those who seek God. Natural theology is the minimum content of faith where Christ has not been proclaimed; it is no substitute for explicit faith in Christ when He has been revealed. [source]


    Participation Metaphysics, The Imago Dei, and the Natural Law in Aquinas' Ethics

    NEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1015 2007
    Professor Craig A. Boyd
    First page of article [source]


    24 Ryan and His Domestication of Natural Law,

    AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2004
    Robert V. AndelsonArticle first published online: 24 MAR 200
    First page of article [source]


    Natural Law, Motives, and Freedom of the Will

    PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, Issue 3 2001
    William H. Brenner
    In this paper I piece together a Wittegnsteinian view of the topics indicated in my title, contrasting it with the views of Bertrand Russell and Donald Davidson - two philosophers who, in words from the Blue Book, seem "constantly to see the method of science before their eyes." I conclude that Wittegnstein helps us understand something those philosphers tend to overlook: that "freedom of the will" gets its meaning not in a belief to be assessed by evidence but, on the contrary, in the expression of a way of living and assessing life that limits the role of "assessing beliefs by evidence." [source]


    Republicanism, Freedom from Domination, and the Cambridge Contextual Historians

    POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 5 2001
    Patricia Springborg
    Philip Pettit, in Republicanism: a Theory of Freedom and Government (1997), draws on the historiography of classical republicanism developed by the Cambridge Contextual Historians, John Pocock and Quentin Skinner, to set up a programme for the recovery of the Roman Republican notion of freedom, as freedom from domination. But it is my purpose to show that classical republicanism, as a theory of institutional complexity and balanced government, could not, and did not, lay exclusive claim to freedom from domination as a defining value. Positive freedom was a concept ubiquitous in Roman Law and promulgated in Natural Law as a universal human right. And it was just the ubiquitousness of this right to freedom, honoured more often in the breach than the observance, which prompted the scorn of early modern proto-feminists like Mary Astell and her contemporary, Judith Drake. The division of society into public and private spheres, which liberalism entrenched, precisely allowed democrats in the public sphere full rein as tyrants in the domestic sphere of the family, as these women were perspicacious enough to observe. When republicanism is defined in exclusively normative terms the rich institutional contextualism drops away, leaving no room for the issues it was designed to address: the problematic relation between values and institutions that lies at the heart of individual freedoms. [source]


    Ethical Individualism and the Natural Law

    RATIO, Issue 1 2000
    Phillip Goggans
    "Generic qualities" are qualities typical of a kind because of the nature of that kind. It is commonly thought that generic qualities are morally irrelevant. For instance, the fact that human beings have a natural tendency to be thus-and-such is not relevant to moral acts involving a particular human being; what matters, rather, are the qualities of that individual. I argue that generic qualities are relevant in certain instances. First, we need to believe that this is so in order to be morally competent. Second, there is no other way to account for the rationality of the universal response to Oedipus the King. [source]


    From CR-psychopaths to responsible corporations: waking up the inner Sleeping Beauty of companies

    CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2006
    Tarja Ketola
    Many large companies seem to fulfil the psychiatric criteria for psychopaths in their corporate responsibility (CR) practices. Are they really incurable psychopaths, or is it possible that they could be counselled into accepting their responsibilities? CR studies have so far paid little attention to the variations in the CR emphases between different companies. This article, based on a conference paper (Ketola, 2005b), presents a CR emphasis model, pinpointing eight different approaches to corporate responsibility. Some companies do not voluntarily take any responsibilities. Companies acting like psychopaths need a Prince of Virtues to kiss awake their inner Sleeping Beauty from its 100-year irresponsibility sleep. All companies could take advantage of virtue ethics, which present the values shared by all humans, and hence exemplify the natural law (lex naturae). Counselling top managers and key individuals on their personal and professional values enables all personnel to integrate virtues into the company's CR practices. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]


    A Tale of Two Vectors

    DIALECTICA, Issue 4 2009
    Marc Lange
    Why (according to classical physics) do forces compose according to the parallelogram of forces? This question has been controversial; it is one episode in a longstanding, fundamental dispute regarding which facts are not to be explained dynamically. If the parallelogram law is explained statically, then the laws of statics are separate from and (in an important sense) "transcend" the laws of dynamics. Alternatively, if the parallelogram law is explained dynamically, then statical laws become mere corollaries to the dynamical laws. I shall attempt to trace the history of this controversy in order to identify what it would be for one or the other of these rival views to be correct. I shall argue that various familiar accounts of natural law (Lewis's Best System Account, laws as contingent relations among universals, and scientific essentialism) not only make it difficult to see what the point of this dispute could have been, but also improperly foreclose some serious scientific options. I will sketch an alternative account of laws (including what their necessity amounts to and what it would be for certain laws to "transcend" others) that helps us to understand what this dispute was all about. [source]


    Sovereignty, Supremacy and the Origins of the English Civil War

    HISTORY, Issue 288 2002
    D. Alan Orr
    This article integrates the concept of sovereignty with religious perceptions of misrule in the years leading up to the English Civil War. Existing revisionist narratives have emphasized the consensual nature of early Stuart political culture, especially the central role of the ,common law mind' in determining the proper place of potentially rival political vocabularies of natural law, civil law and absolutism. This article argues alternatively that the concept of sovereignty and in particular the contested relationship of sovereignty to ecclesiastical governance stood at the centre of the emerging conflict. The primary mode of ,opposition' to the policies of Charles I's personal rule (1629,40) was erastian: it presumed that control over the doctrine and discipline of the established church was for all intents and purposes a mark or right of sovereignty in the same manner as power of war and peace, power of appointing magistrates, or coinage. Seen in this light the ecclesiastical innovations of the personal rule constituted a treasonable attempt on the part of the Laudian episcopate to erect an ecclesiastical state within a state. The English Civil War was a war of religion in the sense that a significant number of those who waged it operated under the assumption that religion was the rightful provenance of the civil magistracy of king in parliament. [source]


    Is Natural Law a Border Concept Between Judaism and Christianity?

    JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 2 2004
    David Novak
    ABSTRACT With the passing of disputations between Jewish and Christian thinkers as to whose tradition has a more universal ethics, the task of Jewish and Christian ethicists is to constitute a universal horizon for their respective bodies of ethics, both of which are essentially particularistic being rooted in special revelation. This parallel project must avoid relativism that is essentially anti-ethical, and triumphalism that proposes an imperialist ethos. A retrieval of the idea of natural law in each respective tradition enables the constitution of some intelligent common ground for ethical cooperation in both theory and practice between the traditions. This essay also suggests how the constitution of this common ground could include Muslims as well. The constitution of this common ground enables religious ethicists to present more cogent ethical arguments in secular space, but only of course, when those who now control secular space are open to arguments from members of any religious tradition. [source]


    From is to ought: Natural Law in Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and Phra Prayudh Payutto

    JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 2 2002
    Sallie B. King
    The contemporary Thai Theravada Buddhist monks Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and Phra Prayyudh Payutto espouse a version of natural law thinking in which the norms of good behavior derive from the nature of the world, specifically its features of conditionality, causality, karma and interdependence. An ethic which stresses non-egoic harmony is the result. This paper (1) develops the notion of natural law in their thinking and (2) critically evaluates these ideas as a foundation for ethical thought, specifically asking whether such ideas recognize something of value in the individual per se and in individual freedom and, in an interdependent world, how one can challenge injustice or a brutal government. [source]


    "Fill the Earth and Subdue it": Biblical Warrants for Colonization in Seventeenth Century England

    JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 1 2005
    PETER HARRISON
    The importance of conceptions of natural law in early-modern debates about the legitimacy of colonization is well known. The role played by specific arguments drawn from Scripture is less recognized. In seventeenth century England the biblical injunction to "fill the earth and subdue it," along with the account of the Exodus and the occupation of "the promised land," informed debates about the origins of private property, and was directly relevant to developing conceptions of indigenous property rights and the legitimacy of dispossession. Although there were powerful economic and evangelical incentives for the establishment of foreign plantations in the early-modern period, these were strongly reinforced, in the English context at least, by particular readings of Old Testament narratives. [source]


    A Delicate Knowledge: Epistemology, Homosexuality, and St. John of the Cross

    MODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 4 2001
    Christopher Hinkle
    In light of the intractable disagreements, both theological and theoretical, which emerge at every turn in contemporary discussions of homosexuality and religion, this essay advances an epistemological approach to the discussion. The advantage of an epistemological approach is that it sidesteps many of the narrow denominational discussions, making almost no reference to Romans, to natural law, or to a sexual ethic based on love and mutuality. By drawing upon analytic philosophy of religion (Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne specifically), I hope to show how a failure explicitly to face epistemological challenges has undermined pro-gay claims and arguments and contributed to religious confusion. Constructively, the work of St. John the Cross helpfully offers a powerful epistemological vision that importantly supplements the analytic projects of Plantinga and Swinburne, thereby helping us comprehend more fully what is implied and required in justified pro-gay religious conviction. [source]


    Christian Ethics In Jewish Terms: A Response to David Novak

    MODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 3 2000
    Stanley Hauerwas
    While appreciating the illuminating qualities of Novak's account of natural law, Hauerwas also regards it as problematic precisely because of the unhealthy tension that remains between Novak's claim regarding the inseparability of theology and ethics, on the one hand, and his contention that the Noachian laws may ,be taken to be a universal requirement'of human reason, on the other. Hauerwas' central reservation is that Novak's account is the danger of abstracting from the law's sanctifying intent; i.e., its purpose to form a holy people. A consequence for Jewish-Christian dialogue, then, is a misplaced concentration on the role of the law in these respective traditions rather than different understandings of sanctification between (and within) these respective traditions. [source]


    What's at Stake in Natural Law?

    NEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1023 2008
    Barrister, David McIlroy M.A. (Cantab.), Mtr Dt (Toulouse)
    Abstract Something like natural law is required if Christians are to say that Jesus Christ is as relevant to human beings of every age and in every place that we have ever existed as a race. There must be something stable about the human condition which means that we are all alike in need of a Saviour. That something is the fact that we are created to love God and to love our neighbour. This much is revealed to all humankind. For the Apostle Paul and Thomas Aquinas the natural law was not given as an alternative method of salvation but rather to explain the justice of God's judgment and the utter gratuity of divine grace. Similarly, natural theology is not an assertion that faith in Christ is optional but rather that all human beings are culpable if they do not recognise that there is a god who created them and rewards those who seek God. Natural theology is the minimum content of faith where Christ has not been proclaimed; it is no substitute for explicit faith in Christ when He has been revealed. [source]


    JUDAISM AND NATURAL LAW

    THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 6 2009
    JONATHAN JACOBS
    The question of the relation between Judaism and natural law is important both for scholars and for reflective persons with an interest in the grounds of Jewish moral thought. There is a rich history of natural law theorizing that has had considerable influence, and there has been a revival of natural law theorizing in the contemporary period. The topic of the present discussion is of more than historical interest; it is a live question of real, current relevance. [source]


    The Basic Goods Theory and Revisionism: A Methodological Comparison on the Use of Reason and Experience as Sources of Moral Knowledge

    THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 4 2001
    Todd A. Salzman
    In Roman Catholic moral theology there is an ongoing debate between the proportionalist or revisionist school and the traditionalist school that has developed what is referred to as the ,New Natural Law Theory' or ,Basic Goods Theory' (BGT). The stakes in this debate have been raised with Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993) on fundamental moral theology that condemned ,proportionalism' or ,teleologism' as an ethical theory while utilizing many of the ideas, concepts, and terminology of the BGT, thereby implicitly endorsing that ethical theory. While absolute norms and intrinsically evil acts have frequently been the focus of debate between these two schools, what is it that divides them fundamentally, on the level of ethical method? It is the role and function of reason and experience as two sources of moral knowledge, in part, that distinguish these two versions of natural law on the most basic level. While the BGT has a strict hierarchy of the sources of moral knowledge that posits the hierarchical magisterium as the definitive interpreter of reason and experience, revisionists posit a more dialogical relationship between reason, experience, and the magisterium. On certain ethical issues (e.g., artificial birth control), the experience of the faithful as well as the rational arguments developed by revisionist Catholic moral theologians challenge some of the normative claims of the magisterium. This paper investigates the methodological use of reason and experience in each theory's interpretation of natural law and how and why these two sources of moral knowledge lead to fundamentally divergent normative claims on particular ethical issues. [source]


    Environmental Properties of Minerals and Contaminants Purified by the Mineralogical Method

    ACTA GEOLOGICA SINICA (ENGLISH EDITION), Issue 1 2004
    LU Anhuai
    Abstract The investigation of the environmental properties of minerals, i.e., environmental mineralogy, is a branch of science dealing with interactions between natural minerals and spheres of the Earth surface as well as a reflection of global change, prevention of ecological destruction, participation in biomineralogy, and remediation of environmental pollution. Pollutant treatment by natural minerals is based on the natural law and reflects natural self-purification functions in the inorganic world, similar to that of the organic world , a biological treatment. A series of case studies related to natural self-purification, which were mostly completed by our group, are discussed in this paper. In natural cryptomelane there is a larger pseudotetragonal tunnel than that formed by [MnO6] octahedral double chains, with an aperture of 0.462,0.466 nm2, filled with K cations. Cryptomelane might be a real naturally-occurring mineral of the active octahedral molecular sieve (OMS-2). CrVI -bearing wastewater can be treated by natural pyrrhotite, which is used as a reductant to reduce CrVI and as a precipitant to precipitate CrIII simultaneously. Batch experiments were conducted using the CTMAB-Montmorillonite as an adsorbent for aromatic contaminants (phenol, aniline, benzene, toluene and xylenes), which are detected frequently in the leaching water from municipal waste deposits around China. The CTMAB modification has proved very effective to enhance the adsorption capacity of the sorbent. Expansion of vermiculite develops loose interior structures, such as pores or cracks, inside briquettes, and thus brings enough oxygen for combustion and the sulfation reaction. Effective combustion of the original carbon reduces the amount of dust in the fly ash. [source]


    Unwritten law in Hobbesian political thought

    BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2000
    Alan Cromartie
    In Hobbesian terminology, ,unwritten laws' are natural laws enforced within a polity, by a non-sovereign judge, without some previous public promulgation. This article discusses the idea in the light of successive Hobbesian accounts of ,law' and ,obligation'. Between De Cive and Leviathan, Hobbes dropped the idea that natural law is strictly speaking law, but he continued to believe unwritten laws must form a part of any legal system. He was unable to explain how such a law could claim a legal status. His loyalty to the notion, in spite of all the trouble that it caused, is a sign of his belief that moral knowledge is readily accessible to all. [source]


    Epicureanism and the poetics of consumption

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 4 2010
    Dawn Wood
    Abstract Consumption, ,to use up, to destroy', is a dirty word. It conjures piles of rubbish; it suggests an extravagant attitude. We, each one of us hoping to be a unique, careful individual, can feel offended at being referred to as ,the consumer'. Yet, ,to consume' is not only a human activity, it is one of the fundamental processes of nature, a natural aspect of the creative process. In this paper, I will emphasize connections between the creative research process, poetics and consumerism. I suggest that research can be envisioned as a cycle of consumption and renewal. Our tools in such a natural philosophy are the contemplation of natural events, and the insights that a poetic understanding of language can give us. To this end, I draw on the ancient Epicurean philosophy, as demonstrated in De rerum natura, written by the Roman poet, Lucretius, in the first century BCE. Lucretius gave a scientific explanation of the universe, in poetry, to demonstrate that natural laws can be derived by reason, contemplation and by the use of the senses. Further, Lucretius' use of language, as a creative medium, modelled the actions of the universe. This insight provides a link between poetry, science and research, one which is still relevant to twenty-first-century scientific research generally. In this paper, I will suggest that it is also specifically relevant to the design and practice of consumer research. For instance, both research and creativity are aspects of that urge to move beyond subjectivity, towards knowledge that is whole and shared. In Epicureanism, subjective engagement provides access to that which is universal. We can conceive of consumerism, and of consumer research, in the same terms, as a striving for completion, and as a poetic, natural and reciprocal act, involving the transformation of the consumer, and that which is consumed. [source]


    Unwritten law in Hobbesian political thought

    BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2000
    Alan Cromartie
    In Hobbesian terminology, ,unwritten laws' are natural laws enforced within a polity, by a non-sovereign judge, without some previous public promulgation. This article discusses the idea in the light of successive Hobbesian accounts of ,law' and ,obligation'. Between De Cive and Leviathan, Hobbes dropped the idea that natural law is strictly speaking law, but he continued to believe unwritten laws must form a part of any legal system. He was unable to explain how such a law could claim a legal status. His loyalty to the notion, in spite of all the trouble that it caused, is a sign of his belief that moral knowledge is readily accessible to all. [source]