Nature, Law, and the Sacred

Nature, Law, and the Sacred
Author: Evanthia Speliotis
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2020-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780881467116

This collection of essays, presented in honor of Ronna Burger, addresses questions and themes that have animated her thinking, teaching, and writing over the years. With a view to the scope of her writings, these essays range broadly: from the Bible and Ancient Greek authors--including not only Plato and Aristotle, but also Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Xenophon--to medieval thinkers, Maimonides, Dante, and Boccaccio, as well as modern philosophers, from Descartes and Montesquieu to Kant, Lessing, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. Moving in order from antiquity to modernity, the essays highlight certain recurring philosophical issues, including the relations between nature and convention, law and justice, human and divine, in light of the indispensable need for questioning and self-knowledge. Taken collectively, the essays disclose intriguing connections among the various authors and texts and display how the themes of nature, law, and the sacred continue to resonate across time.

Sacred Polities, Natural Law and the Law of Nations in the 16th-17th Centuries

Sacred Polities, Natural Law and the Law of Nations in the 16th-17th Centuries
Author: Hans Willem Blom
Publisher: History of European Political
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2022
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9789004498532

"Often considered a secularizing force in the rise of the nation state, natural law was called upon in the defence of the early-modern confessional states. The fourteen chapters of this volume show how religious and legal thought around natural and biblical law interacted and combined in the new Christian states of Lutheranism, Calvinism and Catholicism. The volume addresses also questions of political legitimacy, civic and ecclesiastical authority, societal stability, conceptions of common good, liberalism's value pluralism (and its pretence), toleration and the lingering humanist project of determining "who are we", issues that were then important as they are now. Contributors are: Dominique Bauer, Thomas Behme, Hans Blom, Jiří Chotaš, Alberto Clerici, Stefanie Ertz, Arthur Eyffinger, Heikki Haara, Mads Langballe Jensen, Adriana Luna-Fabritius, Denis Ramelet, József Simon, and Markus M. Totzeck"--

Indigenous Sacred Natural Sites and Spiritual Governance

Indigenous Sacred Natural Sites and Spiritual Governance
Author: John Studley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2018-10-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429849796

Since time immemorial indigenous people have engaged in legal relationships with other-than-human-persons. These relationships are exemplified in enspirited sacred natural sites, which are owned and governed by numina spirits that can potentially place legal demands on humankind in return for protection and blessing. Although conservationists recognise the biodiverse significance of most sacred natural sites, the role of spiritual agency by other-than-human-persons is not well understood. Consequently, sacred natural sites typically lack legal status and IUCN-designated protection. More recent ecocentric and posthuman worldviews and polycentric legal frameworks have allowed courts and legislatures to grant 'rights' to nature and 'juristic personhood' and standing to biophysical entities. This book examines the indigenous literature and recent legal cases as a pretext for granting juristic personhood to enspirited sacred natural sites. The author draws on two decades of his research among Tibetans in Kham (southwest China), to provide a detailed case study. It is argued that juristic personhood is contingent upon the presence and agency of a resident numina and that recognition should be given to their role in spiritual governance over their jurisdiction. The book concludes by recommending that advocacy organisations help indigenous people with test cases to secure standing for threatened sacred natural sites (SNS) and calls upon IUCN, UNESCO (MAB and WHS), ASEAN Heritage and EuroNatura to retrospectively re-designate their properties, reserves, parks and initiatives so that SNS and spiritual governance are fully recognised and embraced. It will be of great interest to advanced students and researchers in environmental law, nature conservation, religion and anthropology.

Natural Law in the Spirritual World

Natural Law in the Spirritual World
Author: Henry Drummond
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2020-07-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 3752316942

Reproduction of the original: Natural Law in the Spirritual World by Henry Drummond

Experiencing and Protecting Sacred Natural Sites of Sámi and other Indigenous Peoples

Experiencing and Protecting Sacred Natural Sites of Sámi and other Indigenous Peoples
Author: Leena Heinämäki
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2017-02-24
Genre: Law
ISBN: 3319480693

This book focuses specifically on the experience and protection of indigenous, and particularly Sámi sacred sites in the Arctic. Sacred sites are being increasingly recognized as important reservoirs of Arctic cultural and biological diversity, as a means for the transmission of culture and identity, and a tool for the preservation of fragile northern social-ecological systems. Yet, legal protection of Arctic sacred sites and related policies are often still lacking or absent. It becomes increasingly difficult for site custodians in the Arctic to protect these ancient sites, due to disruptive changes, such as climate change, economic developments and infrastructural development. With contributions from Sámi and non-Sámi scholars from Arctic regions, this book provides new insights into our understanding of the significance and legal protection of sacred sites for Sámi of the Arctic. It examines the role of international human rights, environmental law, and longstanding customary law that uphold Arctic indigenous peoples’ rights in conservation, and their associated management systems. It also demonstrates the complex relationships between indigenous knowledge, cultural/spiritual values and belief systems and nature conservation. The book looks forward to providing guidelines for future research and practice for improved integration of the ethical, cultural and spiritual values of nature into law, policy, planning and management. As such, this book offers a contribution to upholding the sanctity of these sites, their cultural identity and the biodiversity associated with them.

Nature as Reason

Nature as Reason
Author: Jean Porter
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2005
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780802849069

This noteworthy book develops a new theory of the natural law that takes its orientation from the account of the natural law developed by Thomas Aquinas, as interpreted and supplemented in the context of scholastic theology in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Though this history might seem irrelevant to twenty-first-century life, Jean Porter shows that the scholastic approach to the natural law still has much to contribute to the contemporary discussion of Christian ethics. Aquinas and his interlocutors provide a way of thinking about the natural law that is distinctively theological while at the same time remaining open to other intellectual perspectives, including those of science. In the course of her work, Porter examines the scholastics' assumptions and beliefs about nature, Aquinas's account of happiness, and the overarching claim that reason can generate moral norms. Ultimately, Porter argues that a Thomistic theory of the natural law is well suited to provide a starting point for developing a more nuanced account of the relationship between specific beliefs and practices. While Aquinas's approach to the natural law may not provide a system of ethical norms that is both universally compelling and detailed enough to be practical, it does offer something that is arguably more valuable -- namely, a way of reflecting theologically on the phenomenon of human morality.

The Natural Law Tradition and Belief

The Natural Law Tradition and Belief
Author: David Ardagh
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2019
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781536149647

For over twenty centuries, from ancient Greece the ideal of natural law has been appealed to in Western moral and legal philosophy as a grounding for ethics and jurisprudence, centered on capacities of a common "human nature". From the early medieval advent of "Christendom", it was embedded within theistic and religious systems for over a millennium, during which time it was treated as incomplete and part of an enveloping divine law of ethics. Modern agnosticism in theology, religion, and metaphysics then saw natural law unhitched from these associations, but it is still suspect due to its lingering ties with these disciplines and practices. It endured through its meta-ethical capacity to integrate changes in science with ethics via its central notion of wellbeing as the perfection of human nature, via access to "the highest good", however variously understood. Today, nature and human nature's wellbeing, are both endangered. Ecological destruction arising from unbridled growth, industrial pollution, nuclear weapons and mass population displacement though poverty and wars threaten humanity. But in terms of the meta-ethics of wellbeing, both the humanist normative ethics of natural law, and some of its enveloping theistic and religious divine law addenda, can be invoked to address such evils. The book aims to reinvigorate natural law as a unifying ethical organon for this purpose, showing that it can dialogue with its enveloping divine law "overlays" constructively, uncovering its points of essential unity with them, and generating some unified solutions to the global threats mentioned, like poverty. These are largely due to global injustices like tax evasion, the arms trade, and political corruption, which are better prevented by cooperatively agreed and enforced global ideals, norms, and laws, based on natural and divine law, grounding international laws rather than appealing to national norms and laws alone.

Nature, Reality, and the Sacred

Nature, Reality, and the Sacred
Author: Langdon Gilkey
Publisher: Theology and the Sciences
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1993
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

Two partial apprehensions of nature vied for dominance in the past century: religious (void of any influence from science) and scientific (unable to admit any reality, beyond the empirical). Both views have led to the exploitation of nature -- and the scientific may prove even more devastating. The fault, Gilkey argues, lies not in the scientific knowledge of nature but in the assumed philosophy of science that accompanies most scientific and technological practice. Scientific knowing needs to be critiqued and brought into relationship with other complementary ways of knowing.