Institutions, Principles and Judgement: The Relevance of the Natural Law Tradition for Articulating Business in a Global Context

Universal Principles, Global Cooperation, and Moral Disagreement:A Natural Law Account Joseph Boyle (bio) I. Introduction Since ancient times a number of Western moral views have been described or self-described as "natural law" ethics. These views claim that there are universal moral principles and norms. Moral principles, according to natural law views, are somehow "natural," and, thus, are the common property of those who share human nature. That implies that the principles of the natural law are in principle accessible to all humans. Those who accept this ethical approach are not in full agreement about the precise sense and reference of the expression "natural law" or about the specific moral norms justified by the principles of the natural law. I do not here propose to address these differences among natural law theorists. Instead, I will sketch the approach to universal moral principles that I, as a philosopher working within the natural law tradition, think correct. My approach is within the broad tradition of natural law theorizing inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas; it is the version of Thomistic natural law called the "new natural law theory."1 Natural law theories include a conception of the nature and purpose of morality. Two closely related theses comprise the key elements of this conception. The first is that moral principles, and their implications in moral norms and judgments, are propositional realities having logical relationships and normative content that can be formulated, debated and judged either correct or incorrect. Thus, natural law theory is a form of ethical rationalism; moral judgments are a form of knowledge. The second thesis holds that moral principles are universal in two senses: they are applicable to all human actions, and they are accessible to all human beings capable of the reasoning needed for choice and action. Some immediate implications of these theses are obviously important for thinking about moral diversity, difference and consensus. First, the universal applicability of moral principles implies that there are no human actions, however complex their circumstances and obscure their significance, that are in principle immune from moral assessment. Second, the universal accessibility of the principles of the natural law implies that moral norms, customs, and practices are not finally a matter of local custom or particular circumstance. Criticism in the light of accessible moral principle is always possible. Third, the conjunction of the universal accessibility of natural law and its ethical rationalism makes the possibility of recognizing mistaken moral judgment and practice more than an abstract possibility, but, instead, an ordinary, intelligible aspect of moral life and thought. Any person capable of practical reasoning and choice can access enough of moral principle to criticize his or her own moral beliefs and those of his or her society. That capability is obviously ethically significant. Its availability in reflection to people generally implies that they are not simply stuck with the moral limitations and corruption of their culture, upbringing, and life experience; they have the resources for critical judgment and autonomous action based on that reflection. These claims about the nature of morality may now seem quaint given some defining features of post-modernity. The conjunction of two features of our post-modern world poses a special problem for natural law theory: (1) the rapidly emerging globalization of economic, social and political life; and (2) the pervasiveness of post-modern relativism, and "local-only" conceptions of morality. These conceptions reject the universalist theses I listed above. But they do so in a globalized context calling for moral guidance for the world-wide interactions that transcend the moralities of local communities and their members. Together these features challenge the core convictions of natural law theory. In this contribution, I will briefly articulate and defend these strong natural law claims about the nature of morality, and will bring natural law theory to bear on the challenge posed to them by the realities of our post-modern and globalized situation. I will develop this account as follows: In part II, I will summarize the account of the human good that underlies morality according to natural law theories that follow Aquinas's classic treatment. In Part III, I will sketch an account of how universal moral principles are justified...

Natural law theory can render the so-called “non-aggression principle” (NAP), which prohibits the initiation of force against person or property, intelligible and can ground a robust, even if not exceptionless, version of the principle. Natural law and natural rights theories share common roots, but are often seen as divergent, if not antagonistic. But I believe it can plausibly be maintained that claims about natural rights find their home within the context of more comprehensive natural law theories. I seek to illustrate this claim by showing how a central claim about natural rights can be defended using the resources provided by the best contemporary version of natural law theory. I consider the significance of the NAP and its place in natural rights theory. I outline the contours of one contemporary natural law position, the new classical natural law (NCNL) theory. I go on to indicate what form I suspect a version of the NAP framed using the categories provided by the NCNL theory might take.

Justice is the name for a human characteristic that everyone feels spontaneously: what is fair or unfair in a social relationship. Animals do not have justice. The human reason (logos – λόγος) acts in order to reveal what is included in justice. Thus, as a participation in justice, the human conscience (logos) finds the law. Away from modern (and current) theories of natural law that sets rules either to be applied directly to social reality or to be individual powers to be opposed to positive law, the classical theory of law is a social quest directed toward doing the right thing. In the wake of Aristotle, classical natural law is a methodology (based on dialectics) to find justice in society. The etymology of dialectics, dia-lektos, teaches us that it signifies the exchange of words between different interlocutors. In this sense, dialectics is practiced every day by those gathering together, who receive advice relating to a given situation. Dialectic does not solely aim to persuade; but also tries to look for the natural law. Legal conclusions, notwithstanding the authority submitting them, are ultimately questionable. Having been born in dialectic, these conclusions remain as such. Nonetheless, their very existence gives the natural law, a fragmented expression of justice. Unlike morality, or the precepts of divine law, natural law is not given at all: it must be established through dialectic. Morality retains a reduced role, broadly limited to the discovery of natural law’s essence, for example by prohibiting murder from being accepted in principle. Still, such a moral prescription does not solve the problem to know who is guilty of murder. As a methodology, classical natural law acknowledges the contingency of social norms with regard to the distribution of common goods. As a process that attends to the common good available and the merits of people understood in a broad fashion as encompassing the resources they possess, classical natural law cannot a priori determine what specific rights or goods particular specific people should have. Adapting to reality is necessary: a dialogue is always established to amend the contours of justice. For this purpose, classical natural law is the methodology for justice to achieve its new forms, to distinguish new data from the social distribution of goods and responsibilities. The protection of the worker, of the minor or of the foreigner is of indisputable moral value, though its implementation follows the oscillations of time. However, as a moral horizon, seeking justice involves a perennial effort to recognise other humans as human.

This article introduces the definition and connotation of the term Natural Law and Natural Moral Law. It also explains briefly the important viewpoints of the Chinese and Western philosophy and theology. The article especially cites Thomas Aquinas' view on the gradations of law among the 'Eternal Law', 'Natural Law'. 'Divine Law' and 'Human Law' and his theories on common moral and the transcendent moral. This article also explains the stand points of Ockham, Martin Luther and John Calvin, in either objecting or amending the theological aspect of the theory of Natural Moral Law. It also touches on the ethical studies of the segregation between moral and religions during ancient Greece and the Enlightenment Project. Secondly, there is a discussion on Buddhism's perspective of the Natural Law -the Law of Dependent Origination that explains that all phenomena arises and ceases according to causes and conditions and that our life is filled with ignorance and self-love (ego desire). The 'self-love' that everyone is equipped can in fact be cultivated into an opposite direction so that one develops a sense of sharing the feelings of others by putting oneself in others' shoes. The practice of putting oneself in others' shoes, the interrelationship among the dependent originated phenomena and the equanimity of the dharma nature of dependent origination, are the three major principles of Moral Law encompassed in the Natural Law. From the perspective of Buddhism, moral norms and moral principles all originate from Natural Moral Law. Even the norms formulated by the Buddha are still founded on Natural Moral Law to help practitioners develop wholesome moral habits during the process of practice. Moral and meritorious joy are not the apocalyptic or kindness bestowed by a god. According to Buddhism's theory of consistency in virtues and merits, the gods reap the merits of being reborn in heaven according to the virtuous deeds that they have done in the past. The practice of wholesome deeds with the hope of gaining good rewards; has its relative values in preventing one from doing bad and try to be good. However this can only lead to a limited degree of meritorious reward. We should not practice virtues just for the sake of gaining meritorious rewards. We should practice upholding precepts with the mind of putting ourselves in others positions, practice giving with the realisation of emptiness in three aspects (namely, realise that the donor, recipient and the item that is being donated are empty in nature) or non-attachment to the four forms. In this way we can pave our way to the noble stage.

Buckle provides a historical perspective on the political philosophies of Locke and Hume, arguing that there are continuities in the development of 17th- and 18th-century political theory which have often gone unrecognized.

The topic of this symposium pertains to how a Catholic should approach the purported distinction between ancient and modern political thought. What is implicit in this distinction is a concern with the modern (or postmodern) world in which we live—somewhere along the line, we have strayed from the better political thought and practice of an earlier age. A foundational premise for my paper is an observation that moral relativism, rooted in a rejection of immutable universal moral principles, is what is most problematic in our modern times. Whether or not a rejection of the immutability of universal moral principles is advocated by the modern thinkers, our contemporary politics, law, and morality (and much of contemporary political thought) reject some of these principles. Thus, any discussion regarding ancient and modern political thought should include a sound understanding of the natural moral law. The most notable advocate of a divide between the ancient and modern political thinkers is Leo Strauss, who, in Natural Right and History,1 proposes a return to the natural right/law of the ancients to counter both the natural rights of the moderns and historical relativism.2 Accompanying this advocacy for a return is Strauss’s critique of Thomistic natural law as it pertains to universal moral principles.3 From a traditional natural law perspective there are universal moral principles which suffer no exception—that is, applicable to all, at all times, and in all circumstances. These principles primarily (but not exclusively) concern specific actions which are known as intrinsically evil actions— actions which are always evil regardless of the intention of the one choosing or the circumstances surrounding the choice (VS, #52, 80-82). For Catholics, the foundations of any political community must (at least) rest upon the universal moral truths of the natural law (Evangelium Vitae, #70-71, VS, #95-96, 112-113).4 Without them, society descends into tyranny and/or totalitarianism (EV, #70; VS, #101). It is worthwhile to explore Strauss’s understanding of natural right to see whether or not his treatment of natural right/law in relation to the ancient/modern distinction is of help to Catholics. I will argue that Strauss’s desire to combat historical relativism by returning to ancient natural right includes a rejection of universal moral principles, and therefore the Catholic, who must assent to the natural moral law teaching, can not fully embrace this particular return.

This article discusses the meta-ethical presuppositions necessary for understanding the ethical naturalism common to several contemporary natural law arguments. This analysis, while conscious of the historical antecedents in medieval Aristotelianism with special reference to Thomas Aquinas, concentrates on the contemporary thrust of natural law discussions. Natural law theory at its best has a realist foundation based on human persons; this moral theory has rationality articulated as a necessary condition and is thoroughly cognizant of the common good or the public interest. The article attempts to spell out the set of conditions necessary for natural law, and moral and legal theory, through an analysis of the writings of several contemporary analytical philosophers and the role these central metaphysical concepts play in the respective theories.

Securing the Foundations:Karol Wojtyła's Thomistic Personalism in Dialogue with Natural Law Theory Petar Popoviß Introduction Any attempt to exhaustively present the contributions of Karol Wojtyła's Thomistic personalism as elaborated in his pre-pontifical philosophical writings to the theory of natural law is surely not a task that can be easily reduced to a summary overview of Wojtyła's ready-made arguments. In his writings, John Paul II did not, in fact, reflect extensively on the topic of "natural law" as an immediate object of his philosophical enquiries. We can find only a few explicit references to it in his 1969 magnum opus The Acting Person, while a substantial philosophical argumentation on this subject in the immediate textual context of these references is virtually nonexistent. In his only philosophical text explicitly dedicated to the topic of natural law, entitled "The Human Person and Natural Law,"1 also from 1969, a more extensive elaboration on brief references to St. Thomas Aquinas's definitions of natural law is completely absent. Even in his later pontifical documents, John Paul II hardly ever extensively referred to natural law in its classic Thomistic formulation until his 1993 encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor.2 However, such a notable absence of explicit references [End Page 231] to natural law did not discourage Kenneth L. Schmitz, the author of one of the most significant studies of Wojtyła's philosophical project, from repeatedly highlighting the importance of Wojtyła's "personalist approach to natural law" and of his underscoring the "personal dimension within the metaphysics of natural law."3 How can an author who is so reluctant to avail himself of classical natural law discourse be, at the same time, celebrated as an important contributor to its more adequate comprehension? In this paper, we will aim to postulate that Wojtyła enters into an enriching dialogue with the Thomistic theory of natural law, in both its classical and its contemporary formulations, on a specific systematic level that does not directly engage the classic elements of natural law theory (such as natural inclinations, first precepts of natural law, etc.). We will show that Wojtyła, rather, grounds his most important contributions to this theory within the framework of his specific methodology of Thomistic personalism,4 which he held to be essential [End Page 232] to secure more completely the foundations5 that natural law and its adequate understanding offer to the moral and legal normative "grammar" of the humanum. The Personalistic Value of the Human Act as the Immediate Conceptual Context of Wojtyła's Contributions to Natural Law Theory In order to present Karol Wojtyła's contributions to natural law theory, we will first have to delimit the immediate conceptual context of his arguments on the topic. In his writings, he touches upon the topic of natural law in three distinctive ways. First, he sometimes only incidentally refers to some general topics of natural law theory while pursuing his personalistic line of argumentation, only to arrive at the already firmly established conclusions within the theory itself.6 Second, he sometimes, though seldom, explicitly refers to the concept of "natural law" (Polish: prawo naturalne) in order to invoke elements of the classical theory of natural law and to touch upon elements of his philosophical contribution to the theory from the perspective of Thomistic personalism.7 Finally, Wojtyła, at times, and without explicitly invoking the [End Page 233] term, provides arguments that represent his genuine, more developed contributions to the theory of natural law from his own specific philosophical perspective of Thomistic personalism. The first approach to the concept of natural law is not taken into consideration in this paper, while the second has already been thoroughly researched at length by other authors.8 Instead, this paper seeks to present the key elements of Wojtyła's third approach to the understanding of natural law—namely, his arguments on the enriching potential of viewing natural law from the perspective of the analysis of the personalistic value of the human act as the immediate object of philosophical analysis. We have elaborated at greater length on Wojtyła's concept of "the personalistic value of...

Recent work in natural law theory, both in moral theory and jurisprudence, is by any account burgeoning. The last third of the twentieth century witnessed a burst of energy by philosophers sorting out its many-faceted claims. Natural law, with extensive resources rooted in Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethics andwith Stoic modifications, was developed and systematized in the thirteenth century by Thomas Aquinas; his Summa Theologiae (Ia-IIae, QQ. 90-7, see Thomas Aquinas 1996) became the classical canon for much natural law thinking. The insights of Aquinas focused on the role of the human person possessing a unique essence or nature as a necessary condition for a cogent theory of ethical naturalism and a foundational theory for human law. But since natural law is based on human nature, both the Kantian objections to the possibility of a naturalist moral theory together with Moore’s naturalistic fallacy cast a death-knell on natural law philosophy. As a result, throughmost of the twentieth century ethical naturalism as found inAristotle and developed in natural law theory was not a vibrant component of significant moral discussions in Anglo-American philosophy. But the tide has changed. While the concept of natural law plays an essential role in the historicaldevelopment of Western moral and political theory, nonetheless there is no one theory of natural law. What is common to natural law accounts, for the most part, is that its fundamental principles are in some sense objective, knowable by human reason, grounded in human nature, and not related necessarily although sometimes connected historically with divine command theory. Nonetheless, there are different ways that these principles have been adopted and adapted over the course of the development of Western philosophy.

The purpose of this study is to review the natural law theory in international law in order to examine some of the limitations of today’s international legal system, that is, the legal system based on voluntaristic legal positivism, and to consider the modern implications of natural law theory. Today, it is difficult to find international law scholars who take natural law as their legal theory. Even if there are natural law theorists, they may simply be referring to or emphasizing morality/justice rather than taking an approach based on “true law” or metaphysics like the classical natural law theorists. Therefore, there may be more cases of doubts on the necessity of studying natural law. Nevertheless, there is significance in studying natural law. This is because it is difficult to say that there are no remnants of natural law in the international legal system today. Historical study of natural law has been taken in order to comprehend how it has changed its nature throughout the history of international law. Furthermore, the inter-related thesis of (classical) natural law has been identified. Even though it is difficult to find the adherents of natural law today, the traces of natural law could be identified. Traces such as pacta sunt servanda, opinio juris, general principles of law, obligation of reparation, jus cogens, right of self-defence, equity, and human rights are discussed. Apparently, depending on your point of view, these issues may not be traces of natural law theory. However, in this study, it will be stated that there is a part to increase the understanding of the international legal system through the study of natural law theory. The fact that natural law was influential until the 19th century means that this jurisprudence could not have evaporated in an instant. It does not simply mean that there was a transitional period. There may be remnants of natural law in today’s international legal system, and they may still be affecting it. Therefore, an understanding of natural law may be necessary to deeply examine the limitations of today’s international legal system.

This paper will attempt to explore the relationship between culture, history and the natural law. The natural moral law, based on a universally shared nature, provides a common starting point for moral dialogue between different religious, cultural and philosophical systems. Further, for Maritain history and human experience can provide a test by which competing ethical theories can be tested.

Reviewed by: Natural Law, Laws of Nature, and Natural Rights. Continuity and Discontinuiy in the History of Ideas Brian Tierney Natural Law, Laws of Nature, and Natural Rights. Continuity and Discontinuiy in the History of Ideas. By Francis Oakley. (New York: Continuum Press. 2005. Pp. 143. $29.95.) This excellent book provides a sophisticated but accessible introduction to some fundamental problems in the history of natural law thinking, and the writing throughout is elegant, lucid, and persuasive. Oakley's central argument is that a major shift occurred in the fourteenth century and that it influenced both the scientific and the moral philosophies of the succeeding age. A byproduct of the argument is a reminder that the traditional periodization of Western history into ancient, medieval, and modern is "more of a hindrance than a help" in the study of intellectual history (p. 81), an observation that will be applauded by many medievalists. [End Page 111] Historians typically treat the physical laws of nature as conceptually distinct from the natural law that directs our moral behavior. But Oakley challenges this sharp distinction. He is not concerned to refute Hume's is-ought argument, that we cannot derive moral propositions from factual ones. His argument is rather that the same underlying set of ideas informs both kinds of thinking and that the physical laws of nature can provide a sort of "intellectual template" to which the natural moral law conforms (p. 70). Underlying Oakley's whole argument is his concern with a persistent tension between the Greek and Hebrew sources of Christian thought. On the one hand we have the Greek idea of a divine reason immanent in an eternal cosmos, a reason reflected also in the workings of human reason. On the other hand stands the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, an all-powerful, willful God of untrammeled freedom who made the universe from nothing and out of his own good pleasure. Oakley shows how the church fathers, especially Augustine, and then the scholastic theologians, especially Aquinas, sought to reconcile the two ideas. Aquinas envisaged an eternal law, a manifestation of divine reason directing all created beings to their due ends, a ground of both the physical laws of the universe and the natural moral law known to man. As Oakley notes, in Aquinas the fit between the templates of moral and physical natural law is very close. But a later generation of theologians, prominent among them William of Ockham, saw in this way of thinking an unacceptable restraint on God's absolute freedom and omnipotent will. Ockham argued that the characteristics of the existing universe did not flow by any kind of necessity from the reason of God; God could have made a different universe with different laws of motion and different rules of morality. And this teaching, Oakley argues, helped to shape the new scientific thought of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In a contingent universe one could not explain the way things behaved by pure reason, by hypothesizing about natural ends and occult essences. The only way to understand the material world was by observation and experiment and mathematical formulations of the resulting data. The problem is more complicated when we consider the moral natural law. Ockham's teaching that moral norms depended entirely on the will of God was reflected in some natural law theories of the early modern period. But alongside this doctrine Ockham also presented a "non-positive moral science" based on reason and experience, and this too had echoes in later thought. In Ockham's own later political writings, where he discussed explicitly the varieties of natural law, he appealed persistently to right reason as a guide to human behavior. Oakley explains the dichotomy by pointing to the common medieval distinction between the absolute and ordained powers of God. However, Oakley's argument here leaves open a much-disputed question that he raises but does not finally answer, the question whether Ockham's voluntarist theology did in fact exercise any significant influence on the content of his later political thought and his teachings there on natural law. [End Page 112] In a last chapter the author considers the emergence of a doctrine of...

The Thomist 67 (2003): 1-44 THE COGNITIVE STRUCTURE OF THE NATURAL LAW AND THE TRUTH OF SUBJECTIVITY1 MAR.TIN RHONHEIMER Pontifical University ofthe Holy Cross Rome, Italy LA "DUALISTIC FALLACY" AND THE ESSENTIALLY COGNITIVE CHARACTER OF THE NATURAL LAW A) A Historical Reminiscence: The "Nature-Reason" Dichotomy In a book bearing the title Lex naturae, which was published almost half a century ago and became before Vatican Council II an obligatory work of reference, moral theologian Josef Fuchs presented a systematic exposition of the formulations of the Magisteriurn of the Church on the natural moral law.2 He thought that he had found "two series" of formulations. The first series referred to the "ontological foundation" of the natural law, the "nature of things": these formulations identified the natural law with the "corporeal-spiritual nature of man" and thus understood it as nature, which was normative for human action. On the basis of this first approach, the natural law was regarded as a normative order placed within the order of things. On the other hand, the 1 This paper was presented during the VIIIth General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life (Vatican City, February 25/27, 2002) and will be published with the title "La legge morale naturale: conoscenza morale e coscienza" in the Proceedings, edited by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 2 J. Fuchs, Natural Law: A Theological Investigation, trans. H. Reckter and J. Dowling (New York, 1965; original German edition published 1955). For more details see M. Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy (Fordham University Press, New York, 2000), 8ff. 2 MARTIN RHONHEIMER second series of formulations was said to refer to what Fuchs called "the noetic aspect of the natural law, its being written into the heart, its natural ability to be recognised by man."3 With this schematization, Fuchs echoed an approach that was widespread in the neo-Scholastic theology and philosophy of the period, which without doubt also influenced the language of not a few documents of the Magisterium. According to this approach, the "natural law" is an order of nature that is knowable by man, and, once known, imposes itself immediately as a norm of moral action.4 This schema, in essential terms, is dualistic because it is based upon a dichotomy between "nature" and "natural order" (the objective aspect) on the one hand, and "reason" and "moral knowledge" (the subjective aspect) on the other: the natural law is situated in the sphere of nature; it is the function of reason to read the moral order placed in nature and to follow this order in free action. Only in this sense can one affirm that the natural law "is written in the heart of man": it is an objective, normative natural order that is subjectively known and applied to action. But an observation must be made here: according to this notion what is "written in the heart of man" is not so much the natural law in its objective being as it is the subjective knowledge of this law. The natural law itself is said to be a kind of code of moral norms, found in nature as an "object" of knowledge-though, as "law," independent of this last. This notion is based upon what I would like to call a "dualistic fallacy." In my judgment, it is difficult to match this way of speaking about the natural law with the long tradition of the doctrine on lex naturalis, of which St. Thomas was not only a privileged witness but also perhaps the most lucid and original continuator. For this tradition, the natural law was never simply 3 Fuchs, Natural Law, 6-9. 4 Cf. ibid.: "In these [texts concerned with the ontological aspect] the being, the very essence or nature of man as composed ofbody and spirit appears as a norm of moral behavior and of law ... reason reads the natural law in the nature of all things and particularly in the nature of man." Fuchs's assertion that this schema expresses in a completely general way the opinion of traditional moral theology is certainly not correct. Cf. M. Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason, 9ff. THE...

Consent and Natural Law Theories, Classical and Contemporary There is a popular but false story concerning the connection between the rise of consent theories of political authority and the fall of natural law theories of political authority. The story is, to put it crudely, that the rise of consent theory in the modern period coincided with, and came as a result of, the fall of the natural law theory that dominated during the medieval period. Neat though it is, the story errs doubly, for it supposes both that consent did not play a key role in natural law theories of political authority offered in the medieval period (a supposition falsified by close inspection of the view of Aquinas, the paradigmatic natural law theorist; see Murphy 1997a) and that natural law theory did not play a key role in the consent theories of political authority offered in the modern period (a supposition falsified by close inspection of the views of Hobbes and Locke, perhaps paradigmatic consent theorists; for Hobbes as a natural law theorist, see, for example, Murphy 1995, and for Locke, see, for example, Tuckness 1999). It is bad history to set up natural law and consent theories of political authority as unqualifiedly antagonistic to each other. But it is not an unfair description of the accounts of political authority offered by contemporary natural law theorists to say that these accounts were developed in self-conscious opposition to voluntaristic accounts of political obligation, and that their formulations rule out as normatively unnecessary a citizen's consent to adhere to the dictates of the civil law.

This major contribution to the history of philosophy provides the most comprehensive guide to modern natural law theory available, sets out the full background to liberal ideas of rights and contractarianism, and offers an extensive study of the Scottish Enlightenment. The time span covered is considerable: from the natural law theories of Grotius and Suarez in the early seventeenth century to the American Revolution and the beginnings of utilitarianism. After a detailed survey of modern natural law theory, the book focuses on the Scottish Enlightenment and its European and American connections. Knud Haakonssen explains the relationship between natural law and civic humanist republicanism, and he shows the relevance of these ideas for the understanding of David Hume and Adam Smith. The result is a completely revised background to modern ideas of liberalism and communitarianism.