Natural Law Republicanism

Natural Law Republicanism
Author: Michael C. Hawley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2021-11-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197582354

By any metric, Cicero's works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. Natural Law Republicanism suggests that perhaps his most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism's unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, Michael C. Hawley demonstrates how Cicero's thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero's vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people's collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. Tracing the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero's original articulation through the American Founding, Natural Law Republicanism explores how our modern political ideas remain dependent on the legacy of one of Rome's great philosopher-statesmen.

The Terror of Natural Right

The Terror of Natural Right
Author: Dan Edelstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2009-10-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226184404

Natural right—the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are “natural” in origin—is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom. In The Terror of Natural Right, Dan Edelstein argues that the revolutionaries used the natural right concept of the “enemy of the human race”—an individual who has transgressed the laws of nature and must be executed without judicial formalities—to authorize three-quarters of the deaths during the Terror. Edelstein further contends that the Jacobins shared a political philosophy that he calls “natural republicanism,” which assumed that the natural state of society was a republic and that natural right provided its only acceptable laws. Ultimately, he proves that what we call the Terror was in fact only one facet of the republican theory that prevailed from Louis’s trial until the fall of Robespierre. A highly original work of historical analysis, political theory, literary criticism, and intellectual history, The Terror of Natural Right challenges prevailing assumptions of the Terror to offer a new perspective on the Revolutionary period.

American Interpretations of Natural Law

American Interpretations of Natural Law
Author: Benjamin Fletcher Wright
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351532650

This book illustrates the deep roots of natural law doctrines in America's political culture. Originally published in 1931, the volume shows that American interpretations of natural law go to the philosophical heart of the American regime. The Declaration of Independence is the preeminent example of natural law in American political thought?it is the self-evident truth of American society.Benjamin Wright proposes that the decline of natural law as a guiding factor in American political behaviour is inevitable as America's democracy matures and broadens. What Wright also chronicled, inadvertently, was how the progressive critique of natural law has opened a rift between and among some of the ruling elites and large numbers of Americans who continue to accept it. Progressive elites who reject natural law do not share the same political culture as many of their fellow citizens.Wright's work is important because, as Leo Strauss and others have observed, the decline of natural law is a development that has not had a happy ending in other societies in the twentieth century. There is no reason to believe it will be different in the United States.

Natural Rights and the New Republicanism

Natural Rights and the New Republicanism
Author: Michael Zuckert
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2011-06-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1400821525

In Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, Michael Zuckert proposes a new view of the political philosophy that lay behind the founding of the United States. In a book that will interest political scientists, historians, and philosophers, Zuckert looks at the Whig or opposition tradition as it developed in England. He argues that there were, in fact, three opposition traditions: Protestant, Grotian, and Lockean. Before the English Civil War the opposition was inspired by the effort to find the "one true Protestant politics--an effort that was seen to be a failure by the end of the Interregnum period. The Restoration saw the emergence of the Whigs, who sought a way to ground politics free from the sectarian theological-scriptural conflicts of the previous period. The Whigs were particularly influenced by the Dutch natural law philosopher Hugo Grotius. However, as Zuckert shows, by the mid-eighteenth century John Locke had replaced Grotius as the philosopher of the Whigs. Zuckert's analysis concludes with a penetrating examination of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, the English "Cato," who, he argues, brought together Lockean political philosophy and pre-existing Whig political science into a new and powerful synthesis. Although it has been misleadingly presented as a separate "classical republican" tradition in recent scholarly discussions, it is this "new republicanism" that served as the philosophical point of departure for the founders of the American republic.

The Terror of Natural Right

The Terror of Natural Right
Author: Dan Edelstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 562
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226184390

"Natural right - the idea that there is a collection of laws and rights based not on custom or belief but that are "natural" in origin - is typically associated with liberal politics and freedom. But during the French Revolution, this tradition was interpreted to justify the most repressive actions of the violent period known as the Terror." "In The Terror of Natural Right, Dan Edelstein argues that the revolutionaries used the natural right concept of the "enemy of the human race" - an individual who has transgressed the laws of nature and must be executed without judicial formalities - to authorize three-quarters of the deaths during the Terror. But the significance of the natural right did not end with its legal application. Edelstein argues that the Jacobins shared a political philosophy that he calls "natural republicanism," which assumed the natural state of society was a republic and that natural right provided its only acceptable laws. Ultimately, he argues that what we call the Terror was in fact only one facet of the republican theory that prevailed from Louis's trial until the fall of Robespierre." "A work of historical analysis, political theory, literary criticism, and intellectual history, The Terror of Natural Right challenges prevailing assumptions of the Terror to offer a new perspective on the Revolutionary period."--BOOK JACKET.

The Idea of Natural Rights

The Idea of Natural Rights
Author: Brian Tierney
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2001
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780802848543

This series, originally published by Scholars Press and now available from Eerdmans, is intended to foster exploration of the religious dimensions of law, the legal dimensions of religion, and the interaction of legal and religious ideas, institutions, and methods. Written by leading scholars of law, political science, and related fields, these volumes will help meet the growing demand for literature in the burgeoning interdisciplinary study of law and religion.

The Natural Rights Republic

The Natural Rights Republic
Author: Michael P. Zuckert
Publisher:
Total Pages: 320
Release: 1996
Genre: Law
ISBN:

In The Natural Rights Republic, political theorist Michael Zuckert counters contemporary confusion by offering an insightful study of the concept that dominated the mindset of the founding generation, the natural rights philosophy. Zuckert offers a new treatment of the theme of self-evident truths and further plumbs the depths of the natural rights philosophy by examining Jefferson's Notes on Virginia and related writings.

Traditional Natural Law as the Source of Western Constitutional Law, Particularly in the United States

Traditional Natural Law as the Source of Western Constitutional Law, Particularly in the United States
Author: Dante Figueroa
Publisher: Fundacion Editorial Juridica Venezolana
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2014-10-04
Genre: Constitutional history
ISBN: 9789803652708

In his book, "Traditional Natural Law as the Source of Western Constitutional Law, Particularly in the United States," Professor Figueroa seeks to explain to his students the connections between the concept of natural law as understood by Catholic thinkers throughout the ages, and the fundamental notions of constitutional law in the Western world. To this effect, Professor Figueroa identifies the main elements of natural law as originally conceived by its authors, contrasting them with the distortions occurred at the hands of the enlightened philosophes to date. He takes particular aim at the natural rights theories that were popular in the Anglo-American world at the time of the American Revolution, and explains the significant deviations present in their many versions. In Professor Figueroa's view, reason and spirit are two dimensions of the human person that shape all human institutions in a way that is lost when they are artificially separated. In sum, according to Professor Figueroa, debunking erroneous ideologies, in particular errors in natural rights theories, is a necessary first step for the authentic rediscovery and revitalization of the Traditional Natural Law doctrine. In this way, Professor Figueroa concludes, Western constitutional law will re-encounter an appealing, living, and solid intellectual background in its very roots, providing a solid and lasting foundation for Western democracies. This book is a 'tour de force' that should be required reading in every law school and political science department in the country (and beyond): " Robert Barker, Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Algernon Sidney between Modern Natural Rights and Machiavellian Republicanism

Algernon Sidney between Modern Natural Rights and Machiavellian Republicanism
Author: Luís Falcão
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2020-08-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1527558762

The book investigates the political thought of Algernon Sidney (1623-1683), a historical character of the English civil wars, republic, protectorate, and Rump Parliament, who faced his trial and execution during the Exclusion Crisis. In his writings, Sidney mixed hugely different traditions of political philosophy: the modern natural rights, which were predominant in England in his generation, and the republicanism of Machiavelli. This volume will interest researchers in political philosophy, history of political thought and, particularly, republican theory. Its contribution to these topics explores the specificities of a thought that uses the language of natural rights and social contract and, on the other hand, the tumults, expansion and virtues of the republics.