The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Translator’s Preface
• Part One: History of the Idea of Natural Law
• Chapter I: The Legacy of Greece and Rome
• Chapter II: The Natural Law In the Age of Scholasticism
• Chapter III: The Turning Point: Hugo Grotius
• Chapter IV: The Natural Law In the Age of Individualism and Rationalism
• Chapter V: The Turning Away From Natural Law
• Chapter VI: The Victory of Positivism
• Chapter VII: The Reappearance of Natural Law
• Part Two: Philosophy and Content of the Natural Law
• Chapter VIII: Being and Oughtness
• Chapter IX: Intellect and Will
• Chapter X: The Structure of the Sciences
• Chapter XI: The Nature of Law
• Chapter XII: Morality and Law
• Chapter XIII: The Content of the Natural Law
• Chapter XIV: Natural Law and Positive Law
• Chapter XV: Conclusion
• Select Bibliography
• General Studies
• Ancient
• Medieval and Scholastic
• Enlightenment
• Anglo-american
• Contemporary Debates

enlightenment

Although there are family resemblances between premodern and modern theories of natural law, the Enlightenment era theorists reworked natural law in the light of new philosophical vocabularies and under the pressure of new political and institutional forces. Ruby and Rapaczynski investigate how the new sciences changed the logic of predicating “law(s)” of “nature.” Windolph and Bobbio examine the most important figure in that change, Thomas Hobbes. Leo Strauss’s book recommends itself. Strauss emphasized the discontinuity of ancient and modern theories of natural right. There is much disagreement, however, about how this discontinuity applies to John Locke. Different readings of Locke are to be found in the books by Grant, Andrew, and Haakonssen. Haakonssen examines the Enlightenment generally, and Scottish tradition in particular. Buckle, Schneewind, Waddicor, and Windolph take up the issue of natural law in various Enlightenment philosophers.

• Andrew, Edward. Shylock’s Rights: A Grammar of Lockian Claims. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.
• Bobbio, Norberto. Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
• Buckle, Stephen. Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1991.
• Chroust, Anton-Hermann. “Hugo Grotius and the Scholastic Natural Law Tradition.” New Scholasticism 17, no. 2 (1943): 101–33.
• Grant, Ruth. John Locke’s Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
• Haakonssen, Knud. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Rapaczynski, Andrzej. Nature and Politics: Liberalism in the Philosophies of Hobbe, Locke, and Rousseau. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
• Ruby, Jane E. “The Origins of Scientific ‘Law.’” Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (1986): 341–59.
• Schneewind, J. B. “Kant and Natural Law Ethics.” Ethics 104 (October 1993): 53–74.
• Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.
• Waddicor, Mark H. Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970.
• Windolph, F. Lyman. Leviathan and Natural Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951.