Abstract
Why discuss natural law, it may be asked, when the belief in the validity of this approach to ethical and political problems has suffered a marked decline, at least since the end of the eighteenth century? Why should the student of political thought be particularly interested in a discredited theory of political or moral obligation at a time when representatives of the last bastion of natural-law thinking, the Roman Catholic Church, have begun to question their church’s excessive reliance on the natural-law approach.1
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References
See, for example, Gregory Baum, “Remarks on Natural Law,” The Critic, April-May 1965, vol. XXIII, no. 5, pp. 49–50;
Charles E. Curran, “Absolute norms in moral Theology” in Gene Outka and Paul Ramsey (ed.), Norm and Context in Christian Ethics, New York, 1968, ch. 5.
Carl J. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Law in Historical Perspective, Chicago, 1958, p. 178. See the literature cited there and in Guenter Lewy “Resistance to Tyranny: Treason, Right, or Duty” Western Political Quarterly, XII, 3 (Sept. 1960), pp. 581.
See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, University of Chicago, Chicago, 1953, and Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, History of Political Philosophy, Chicago, 1963.
For an example of an attempt to relate the “laws” of biology to human conduct, see Konrad Lorenz in Life, vol. 68, no. 1 (Feb. 20, 1970), “The tragedy and magnificence of homo sapiens rise from the same smoky truth that we alone among animal species refuse to acknowledge natural law.”
On natural law as an “ideology of agreement” see Judith N. Shklar, Legalism, Cambridge, Mass., 1964, Part I. Rudolf Stammler, Theory of Justice, New York, 1925, contains his theory of “natural law with a changing content.” Jacques Maritain’s theory is best expressed in Man and the State, Chicago, 1951, while Reinhold Niebuhr’s revised version of natural law (based on the “law of love”) appears in “Christian Faith and Natural law” in George W. Forell (ed.) Christian Social Teaching, Garden City, N.Y., 1966, pp. 393–402.
Alf Ross, On Law and Justice, Berkeley, Calif., 1959, p. 261.
For examples of the three tendencies see John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths, New York, 1960, Part III;
Scott Buchanan, Rediscovering Natural Law, Santa Barbara, Calif., 1962;
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, Chicago, 1953.
Cf. John Chapman “Natural Rights and Justice in Liberalism” in D. D. Raphael (ed.); Political Theory and the Rights of Man, Bloomington, Ind., 1967, pp. 27–42.
Cf. H. L. A. Hart’s “minimum content of natural law” in The Concept of Law, Oxford, 1961, ch. 9.
John Rawls, “Distributive Justice”, in Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (eds.), Philosophy, Politics and Society, 3rd. series, London, 1967, pp. 58–82, has added the requirement that where inequalities exist they must be justified by their contribution to the good of all the individuals in the society.
“Essence and Concept in Natural Law Theory,” in Sidney Hook (ed.), Law and Philosophy, New York, 1964, p. 239. Green’s statement appears in his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, London, 1882, reprinted 1959, pp. 32–33.
Carl Joachim Friedrich, Man and His Government, New York, 1963, pp. 38–40 and ff.
Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law, New Haven, 1964, p. 186. Davitt’s Statement is the basic argument of his monograph, The Basic Values in Law, vol. 58, part 5 (1968) of The Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1968, p. 24.
Sidney Hook, From Hegel to Marx, paperback edition, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1962, pp. 6–7. McPherson’s statements appear in “The Maximization of Democracy” in Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (eds.), Philosophy, Politics, and Society (3rd series) Oxford, 1967, pp. 85, 89.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Some Reflections on the Rights of Man,” in UNESCO (ed.), Human Rights, New York, 1949, p. 106.
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© 1971 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Sigmund, P. (1971). Natural Law Today. In: von Beyme, K. (eds) Theory and Politics / Theorie und Politik. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-1063-9_9
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