Book contents
- Frontmatter
- VII Political philosophy
- 39 Religious authority and the state
- 40 Individual autonomy
- 41 Law and nature
- 42 Poverty
- 43 Just war
- VIII Metaphysics
- IX Theology
- Appendix A Doctrinal creeds
- Appendix B Medieval translations
- Appendix C Biographies of medieval authors
- Bibliography of primary sources
- Bibliography of secondary sources
- Index nominum
- Index rerum
- References
41 - Law and nature
from VII - Political philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- VII Political philosophy
- 39 Religious authority and the state
- 40 Individual autonomy
- 41 Law and nature
- 42 Poverty
- 43 Just war
- VIII Metaphysics
- IX Theology
- Appendix A Doctrinal creeds
- Appendix B Medieval translations
- Appendix C Biographies of medieval authors
- Bibliography of primary sources
- Bibliography of secondary sources
- Index nominum
- Index rerum
- References
Summary
The sources for what we know of medieval thinking on law and nature include the Church Fathers and scholastic theologians, as well as Roman legal writings, and the somewhat confused cluster of texts that were drawn together in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to constitute a body of recognized “canon law” for academic study. Of the first importance here is Gratian’s Decretum from the 1140s, the ground-breaking manual of canon law on which many subsequent treatises and commentaries would rely. These sources show how the classical understanding of a right (ius) as the subjective right of an individual contrasts with the characteristically medieval understanding of ius as “a system of objectively right relationships.” Medieval discussions of these issues pass through a complex set of questions about law and human nature, until the point where thinkers begin to stand away from tradition and ask radical questions. This leads through early modern political thought to a conventionalism that says morality is a mere convention that depends on the interaction between individuals.
DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS: ‘LAW’ AND ‘NATURE’
For the clusters of concepts for which we use the modern English words ‘law’ and ‘nature,’ a series of Latin terms were used from the ancient world to the Middle Ages, often equivocally, and with a shifting range of meanings.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy , pp. 565 - 576Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
References
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