Invincible Ignorance and the Americas: Why and How the Salamancan Theologians Made Use of a Medieval Notion

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.

This chapter lays out ten different discourses and practices of law in ancient Greek and Roman sources (referred to as G-R 1, 2, etc. throughout the book). A critical feature of all of these discourses and practices is their presumption of a dichotomy between the unwritten natural or divine law on the one hand and positive human law on the other. Thus, all Greco-Roman constructions of divine law begin with a common premise: divine law and human law possess different and usually diametrically opposed traits. The divine or natural law—in addition to being unwritten—is generally portrayed as rational and universal, corresponding to truth, conducive to virtue, and static or unchanging. By contrast, human positive law takes the form of concrete rules and prohibitions that can be set in writing. It does not of necessity possess any of the characteristics that are inherent in the very concept of divine law: it will contain arbitrary elements that do not correspond with truth, and it must be enforced coercively; it is particular and subject to variation, and its ability to produce virtue is a matter of considerable debate.

The Thomist 66 (2002): 275-309 JEAN PORTER ON NATURAL LAW: THOMISTIC NOTES1 LAWRENCE DEWAN, 0.P. Cotlege Dominicain Ottawa, Ontario, Canada lEAN PORTER'S RECENT BOOK Natural and Divine Law aims at making theologians aware of medieval scholastic theological discussions of natural law. The sources she consults include h theologians and canonists, extending over a period including the twelfth and much of the thirteenth century. She sees such discussions as a possible fruitful source for contemporary Christian ethics. As a former student of Etienne Gilson's, I rejoice to see this interest in medieval thought, and in its theological dimension. AB a disciple of St. Thomas, I am sure that acquaintance with the background against which he formulated his views of natural law can help one appreciate the magnitude of his accomplishment. A reader, one would hope, might benefit from such a book by coming to see how what were often confused and confusing presentations in earlier writers eventually become coherent in the works of Thomas. Many years ago, Fr. Thomas Deman used the history of moral discussions by theologians to present Thomas as the founder of moral theology, establishing its order and its place within the unity of sacra doctrina.2 However, Porter's own intentions do not run in that direction. She is interested, rather, in what a knowledge of the nitty-gritty 1 Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Ethics, foreword by Nicholas Wolterstorff (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdsmann, 1999). I will cite it simply by page number in my own text. 2 Thomas Deman, O.P., Aux origines de la theologie morale (Montreal: Inst. d'etudes medievales, 1951). 275 276 LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P. of medieval theological discussion can do to dispel the sort of "neat package" image of natural law that can result from the way it is presented by some modern philosophers, and even in some Church documents. Jacques Maritain used to insist on how much "rationalist recasting" and "the advent of a geometrising reason" had by the eighteenth century ruined the conception of natural law.3 An attempt to reestablish an awareness of the difficulty and variety of natural law discussion is well worth while. My own conviction, arising from my exploration of medieval natural law theory, including the texts of Thomas with their very thoughtful distinctions between levels of natural law precepts (and the possibilities or impossibilities of dispensation, whether by God alone or by human judges), is simply that natural law is not enough. One recalls the first article of the first question of the Summa Theologiae. We need a divine revelation, not only as regards knowledge of those truths that transcend human reason, but even as regards knowledge of those truths necessary for salvation which are within the range of our reason. The truths about God at which reason can arrive are known only by a few, after a long time, and with a mixture of error.4 And this need, Thomas eventually makes dear, also concerns truths about how humans should live their lives. Natural law needs the support of divine authority, at least in the present weakened condition of the human being in this world.5 3 Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 8084 . 4 STh I, q. 1, a. 1. 5 Cf. STh X-ll, q. 91, a. 4 (1212a45-b2), the second reason Thomas gives for the need of a divine law: "because owing to the uncertainty of human judgment, especially concerning contingent and particular things, it happens that there are diverse judgments of diverse people concerning human acts, from which (judgments) diverse and contrary laws result. Therefore, in order that man be able without any doubt to know what is to be done and what is to be avoided, it was necessary that in his own acts he be directed by divinely given law, concerning which it is dear that it cannot err.~ On the effects of sin, original and actual, as including the dulling of reason especially regarding matters of action, cf. I-II, q. 85, aa. 1 and 3; also I-II, q. 99, a. 2, ad 2. (In references to the...

Introduction 1. Life and Times: Childhood - Civil War - Education - Historical context - Influences - Patrons and friends - Works 2. Method: Definition - Experience - Experimentation - Game Theoretic Interpretations - Geometry - Logic - Observation - Reasoning - Resolutive-compositive method 3. Language: Absurdity - Definitions - Indexicals - Meaning - Names and Universals - Ratiocination - Rhetoric - Uses and abuses 4. Political Philosophy: Absolutism - Authorization and Alienation - Commonwealth - Duties of soverseigns and subjects - Equality - Laws of nature - Interest - Liberty - Monarchy and other forms of government - Obligation - Parental authority lies naturally in the mother - Private judgment - Power - Resistance and non-resistance - Rights - Social Contract - Sovereign - State of nature - Subjects - War and Peace 5. Moral Philosophy: Appetite and Aversion - Deliberation - Desire - Duty - Egoism - Equality - Fear - Folly - Good and evil - Human nature - Law of nature - Manners - Prudence - Obligation - Right of nature - Right and wrong - Self-preservation - Small morals, distinguished - Virtue - Wisdom 6. Religion: Anglicanism - Ecclesiology - Episcopacy - Erastianism - God - Hell - Heresy - Independency - Kingdom of Darkness - Miracles - Mohametans - Natural Religion - Presbyterianism - Puritanism - Revelation - Roman Catholicism - Salvation - Scripture - Superstition - Things Indifferent - Toleration - Trinity - Worship / 7. Law: Adjudication - Casuistry - Civil law - Divine law - Educative function of law - Equity - Good laws, defined - International law/ international relations - Judgment - Legislation - Natural law - Positive law - Revenge - Sin and Law - Crime and Punishment 8. Science and Philosophy: Body - Cause - Liberty - Materialism - Motion - Necessity and Contingency - Optics - Passions - Plenism - Reasoning, instrumental - Space and Time - Squaring the circle 9. Epistemology: Belief - History and historical knowledge - Knowledge - Opinion - Sensation and perception / 10. Lessons and Unsolved Mysteries: Hobbes's legacy - Hobbes and liberalism - Right to revolution - Does Hobbes's philosophy presuppose atheism? - What political forms can count as sovereign? - Is Hobbesian sovereignty obsolete in a world of global independence? Bibliography Index

In my study, The Natural Law Tradition and the Theory of International Relations, reviewed in Hedley Bull's interesting article, there are no chapters devoted to natural law thinkers before the thirteenth century. Any lengthening of an already long manuscript might have diminished its prospects of publication. In the absence of a full survey of the strengths and weaknesses of earlier theories, there are various explicit or implied judgements on positions of Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero and Augustine in chapters dealing primarily with other matters. Whilst referring to sources of Aquinas's doctrine, I did not give a detailed account of the historical formation of his teaching. I concentrated upon St. Thomas's discussion of the various kinds of law and especially upon the doctrine of eternal law which he brought to a certain perfection. In doing this, I was consoled by the view which I shared with Vincent McNabb that “it was always the thought of Aquinas never the history of that thought which seemed of greatest worth…” Indeed, given the incompleteness of so much of the discussion on the intellectual reconciliation of natural and divine law before Aquinas, it is arguable that McNabb was hardly exaggerating very greatly when he wrote that Aquinas's treatise on law in the Summa theologiae “would seem be the first great treatise ever written on law”.

Natural Law and Friendship with God Scott Roniger NEAR THE BEGINNING of book VII of the Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle says that the function (ergon) of the political art (politikēs) is the making of friendship (poiēsai philian).1 Near the start of book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics, he says, "It seems too that friendship holds cities together and that lawgivers (nomothetai) are more serious about it than about justice. For oneness of mind (homonoia) seems to resemble friendship, and lawgivers aim at this especially."2 The legislator possessed of the political art and prudence to legislate well for the common good has the natural end, as legislator, of forming friendships amongst his citizens by ordering the polity in such a way as to make it fertile soil for the growth of oneness of mind and life characteristic of friends. Saint Thomas Aquinas, devoted student of Aristotle that he was, argues that "every law aims [tendit] at establishing the friendship either of men with one another or of man with God."3 [End Page 237] Aquinas articulates the end (finis) of law in various ways: the common good, communal happiness, virtue, and, as we have just seen, friendship.4 These various descriptions of the end of law add nuance to his treatment of law, and they are not unrelated to each other. I wish to suggest that friendship has a kind of governing role over the other descriptions of the end of law. The common good of a polity, its communal happiness in the life of virtue, is founded upon and culminates in the various forms of familial, utilitarian, civic, and virtuous friendships that excellent law makes possible and encourages. Near the beginning of book I of De libero arbitrio, St. Augustine (through Evodius) distinguishes between the temporal, man-made law of a given polity and the eternal law upon which it is based.5 Aquinas, devoted student of St. Augustine that he was, clearly distinguishes human and divine law, and he correlates friendship amongst men with human law and friendship between man and God with divine law. "For just as the main intention [intentio principalis] of human law is to establish friendship of men with one another, so too the intention of divine law is mainly to establish man's friendship with God."6 Human law aims at the constitution of human friendship, and divine law aims at the constitution of friendship between human beings and God. With this framework in place, we raise the question that we wish to discuss in this paper: In light of what has been said about human law and divine law, what can be said about the natural law? Does the natural law aim at friendship amongst men themselves or friendship between men and God?7 Developing an [End Page 238] adequate answer to this question will require us to raise and respond to related philosophical questions and, in the final section of this paper, to go beyond philosophical thinking by reflecting theologically on human friendship with God in light of God's revelation.8 I. Natural Law as Divine Law The first step in answering our question is to determine whether the natural law is a human law or a divine law. To this end, it is important to recall Aristotle's distinction between immanent and transitive actions and to see that legislating is a transitive action. Immanent actions, such as seeing and thinking, remain "within" the agent, while transitive actions, such as building and cutting, "stretch out" from the agent and terminate in something external to him. The activity of legislating originates with the active thinking and directing decisions of the legislator and terminates in the shaped thinking and directed actions of the citizens subject to him. As Aquinas says, law can exist in two ways: "In one way, as in the measurer and ruler. And since this is proper to reason, law in this sense is in reason alone. In another way, as in the ruled and measured. And this is how law exists in [End Page 239] all the things that are inclined in any way by any kind of law."9 Although it...

Reviewed by: To Build the City of God: Living as Catholics in a Secular Age by Brian M. McCall Joshua Schulz To Build the City of God: Living as Catholics in a Secular Age by Brian M. McCall (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2014), 290 pp. THE CATHOLIC ANSWER to Juvenal’s question “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”—”Who guards the guardians?”—has always been “the Church.” She safeguards a transcendent rule or measure of goodness, the eternal law, which perfects human law by ordering it to human beatitude. Since law requires a lawgiver, it follows that Christ’s reign extends to familial and civic society as well as over the Church. If our primary obligations as subjects of this King are to profess true religion and render due worship to Christ (see Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2105), good human laws will facilitate this, being “not a law unto themselves but rather the final stage of making concrete and particular the laws of Christ’s kingdom, the eternal, natural, and divine laws” (McCall, 22). This conclusion has many consequences for modern Catholics. First, it contradicts the liberal doctrine that civil government ought to be, in principle, “neutral” regarding competing visions of the good, whether this is understood as a Jeffersonian “wall of separation” or as Rawlsian procedural “neutrality.” The Church holds that civil and ecclesial jurisdictions are distinct but not independent, being dynamically ordered one to the other as nature is to grace. Second, the social Kingship of Christ requires us to reject the authority of civil laws that cannot be ordered to the eternal law as acts of political violence. Brian McCall’s new book suggests a further implication: since democratic procedures presuppose liberal political theory, which cannot be ordered either to the common good or to the eternal law, Catholics [End Page 961] should reject the authority of ecclesial and civic associations that use such procedures, including the U.S. Constitution and the Second Vatican Council. “The Constitution,” he writes, “is a product of the errors of Enlightenment liberalism just as Dignitatis Humanae can be viewed as product of neo-modernism” (225)—that is, premised on the diabolical notion of popular sovereignty. This third supposed consequence of the social Kingship of Christ is problematic for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that every Church council from Nicea to Vatican II has made use of majoritarian procedures. This would suggest that voting at a Church council is neither a product of neo-modernism nor diabolical. McCall’s book has many strengths, not least of which is its clear and powerful exegesis of central principles of Thomistic natural law and Catholic social teaching on matters of sexuality and family life, economics, and political authority. However, this exposition is marred in several places by the insertion of procedural objections against Vatican II into McCall’s application of these principles. Consider an example. After setting out the doctrine of the social Kingship of Christ in chapter 1, McCall turns to a discussion of marriage and family from the perspective of natural law in chapter 2. He defends marriage as an indissoluble, complementary union of the sexes for the purpose of begetting, rearing, and educating children and discusses modern challenges to each of these three ends in detail. So far, so good. Yet McCall then argues that “the Second Vatican Council is really the ultimate party to blame” for the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down key sections of the “Defense of Marriage Act” in 2013 “and for Catholic’s confusion over the essence of marriage” (49). His argument for this claim is that, by utilizing majoritarian rather than monarchical procedures, the Council “adopted the idea that reality can become whatever a majority, no matter how nefariously procured, declares it to be” (49). This is so because, “if the majority of votes at a Council of the Church can declare that which has always been wrong to be right”—namely, demoting the primary end of marriage, procreation, to an end equal to or even secondary to the other ends of the marital act (50)—”then the will of the People must...

For most of us today a law means a rule that is enacted by some legislature. If the law proves to be a flaw, then a new law would replace it. Earlier a law was a command which could not have been replaced by another law at will. In this we can detect the difference between the ancient and the modern understanding of law and law-making. The explanation must be sought by pointing out the relativity of law in our modern conception of law compared to ancient perception of how a law must be treated once framed – it has the force of a command. In what follows the three aspects of law – the divine, natural and positive laws – will be discussed with the assumption that the dominant idea of law today is based on the conception of the relativity of law which fits most the newly emerging third concept of nature that tends to suit modern man’s need to oust both religion and philosophy. This third meaning of nature is best expressed by the concept of virtual reality. It is a covering term for all the arts of modern man that he has been creating by modern sciences and technological developments. Thus the state of religion (divine law) and the state of nature (natural law) are to be understood by exploring the state of modern politics which provides the actual conditions of modern virtual reality, and presupposes the dominance of the relativity of laws.

Although there are many studies on John Calvin’s teaching on natural law, the relation between natural law and Roman law has received relatively less attention. This essay examines the relation between natural law and Roman law in Calvin’s exegetical writing on the Mosaic law. I argue that Calvin regarded Roman law as an exemplary, albeit imperfect, witness to the natural law, and he used Roman law to aid in his interpretation of the Mosaic law. Since he assumed that Roman law embodies principles of natural law, Calvin drew on Roman law as an aid in order to distinguish natural from positive law within the Mosaic law. He also broadened the scope of commandments in the second table of the Decalogue by comparison with natural and Roman law. Yet although Calvin drew many continuities between Mosaic and Roman laws, he remained critical of the Roman system due to various failings in comparison with Scripture and principles of natural law.

SUMMARY The 1918 Code of Canon Law refers in various places to divine law. This term normally comprises both natural law and positive divine law. Both concepts are, in the Code, conceived as a totality of absolutely immutable norms, distinct from the mutable norms of positive ecclesiastical law. Adequate analysis of the canones referring to natural and positive divine law shows that the norms or institutions determined in this manner are not immutable in an absolute sense. They all reflect a development which cannot be determined once and for all, and which differs according to time and place. Again, the norms conceived as belonging to positive ecclesiastical law are invariably intended to promote values both naturally human and evangelical. As a result of this analysis the thesis is presented for discussion that the distinction between certain concrete norms assumed to belong exclusively to divine law (whether natural law or positive divine law), on the one hand, and certain other norms, on the other hand, supposed to belong to a merely human positive law, is unfounded. Natural law and positive divine law are, concretely speaking, found solely in historically determined and humanly concretized norms and institutions, which, for that reason, are liable to change; while positive law, if it is to be law and not arbritariness, concretely meets requirements which are imperative in view of the conservation and development of humanity and in the perspective of the appearance and sal- vific action of Christ in this world.

Reviewed by: The Governance of Friendship. Law and Gender in the Decameron by Michael Sherberg Francesco Ciabattoni Michael Sherberg. The Governance of Friendship. Law and Gender in the Decameron. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2011. 250 pages. The Governance of Friendship investigates the relationship between friendship and governance in Boccaccio’s masterpiece against the backdrop of political and religious theories of friendship. These include Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, Cicero’s De inventione as well as Hans Kelsen’s Introduction to the Problems of Legal Theory and Richard Posner’s Law and Literature. Sherberg’s thorough research testifies to the rising critical interest in the theme of friendship in medieval Italian writers, adding to such publications by Anna Fontes-Baratto, Emilio Pasquini, Franco Masciandaro, and others. Sherberg begins by contrasting Boccaccio’s reference to the friend whose ministrations saved his life (“li piacevoli ragionamenti d’alcuno amico e le sue laudevoli consolazioni” Proem, 4) with Aristotle’s three types of friendship: utilitarian, pleasurable and virtuous, which, according to the Greek Philosopher, inform all human relationships. Sherberg then analyzes the dynamics of political governance in the brigata against the backdrop of the Aristotelian constitutions of monarchy, aristocracy and timocracy, whose perversions (oligarchy, democracy and tyranny) are always lurking behind bad leadership. Sherberg also extends his analysis to sensibly selected tales to show how law and legal theories regulating human relationships bind together the various narrative layers of the Decameron. Chapter One, “The Order of Outsiders,” reveals the rhetorical strategy at play among the women of the brigata: exclusion of male rule and revenge on men for having been marginalized in the textual space. Such instances occur particularly in the Proem, the Introductions to Days One and Four and tales 4.1, 4.5, 5.8 and 7.8. Chapter Two, “Lessons in Legal Theory,” demonstrates how Boccaccio questions the validity of the link between divine law and natural law by questioning the connection between things that are unseen and things that are empirically perceivable. Focusing on 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 6.7, 6.9 and 6.10, this section also shows how the world of the frame narrative is entirely free from teleological concerns, which shifts the balance in favor of natural rather than divine law. Thus the return of the repressed male hierarchy hinges on the autonomy of a natural law that provides men with “the rhetorical props to rationalize violence—real and metaphorical—that they perpetrate against women” (106) and so leaves women to navigate the fine line between rhetoric and coercion. [End Page 145] This narrow space is explored in Chapter Three, “Strategies of Coercion: Filostrato,” in which Sherberg shows how Pampinea challenges Filostrato by telling the tale of Frate Alberto (4.2), which flouts and parodies the king’s theme of tragic loves. Filostrato attempts to impose a narrative world in which women must obey men because the latter are “physically stronger and as such may coerce obedience” (115), but his attempt fails because female storytellers create a free literary space for themselves and their fictional characters in which women rhetorically subvert male dominance. Chapter Four, “Dioneo and the Politics of Marriage,” draws on Albert R. Ascoli in analyzing the apparent contradiction in electing a king who has joined the brigata only to be an outlaw. From outsider to insider, Dioneo proposes for Day Seven the theme of wives’ beffe upon their husbands, thus allowing for the creation of a narrative space in which the violence of authority is counterbalanced by fiction. Elissa and Pampinea leading the women to the valle delle donne is a fitting example of this sexual and political subversion, though, Sherberg affirms, the valle is a place not of unbridled, but of disciplined pleasure, since male members of the brigata will penetrate and survey that space. Chapter Five, “The Rule of Panfilo: Fables of Reconciliation,” explores the role of women in a world ruled by male bonds of friendship. In the author’s words, this day represents “the triumph of the homosocial” in marginalizing female agency. Courtesy and giving are the centerpieces of this day that embodies Aristotle’s noblest type of friendship, that based on goodness. Such...

The Law as a Policy Aim in Jagiellon Poland Over the course of history, on countless occasions the law had been treated as an instrument for conducting policy. Such is also the contemporary understanding of the function of law in democratic countries. Yet, during the Jagiellon period the law was a means, not an end. It was defined in absolute terms, as a desirable ideal state for which one should strive. Consequently, it was politics that served as a means for the realization of the goal, which was the law, and not conversely. Moreover, the view that civil law should be in accord with divine law and natural law, was widely accepted. Consequently, creating new laws required an axiological justification. Among the goals of the constitutions passed by Parliament, the legislators enumerated, among others, the wellbeing of citizens, peace, good government, order, justice. At the same time, in the opinion of the gentry, it was the privileges which in many cases constituted a departure from the common law and served as a means of realization of one’s immediate political goals, this playing a highly negative role. This type of policy was curbed by the limitations imposed by the concept of common law perceived as superordinate over particular and individual rights, and at the same time understood as wise law that was in accord with the divine and natural law. In its relation to politics, common law was therefore perceived as a goal to which all group and individual rights used in the form of political instruments should be subordinated. The Polish common law which had been shaped during the first Jagiellon rulers, became the fundamental goal of the policy of the Polish state during the reign of the last representatives of this dynasty.

The year 1694 saw the death of Samuel Pufendorf, who, with Hugo Grotius, was the foremost representative of the modern tradition of natural law theory, and the birth of Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, who helped transform the tradition and convey it to new generations. As professor of natural law in Geneva, Burlamaqui used Pufendorfs works on natural law but taught and wrote on the subject in the vernacular, not in the traditional university Latin. By making natural jurisprudence more accessible, Burlamaqui helped make it part of civic education. Burlamaqui intended his writings to defend a middle road between the two main rival traditions in early modern natural law theory, that deriving from Leibniz and Wolff and that from Pufendorf and Barbeyrac. In fact, he seems closer to the former. The basis of this version of 'The Principles of Natural and Politic Law' is Thomas Nugents 1763 English translation, which became a standard textbook at Cambridge and many premier American colleges, including Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania. The first scholarly work on Burlamaqui was written by an American, M Ray Forrest Harvey, who in 1937 argued that Burlamaqui was well known among Americas Founding Fathers and that his writings exerted considerable influence upon the American constitutional system. In his introduction, Nugent said of Burlamaqui: His singular beauty consists in the alliance he so carefully points out between ethics and jurisprudence, religion and politics, after the example of Plato and Tully, and the other illustrious masters of antiquity.

The first principles of law, state and government that, for Hobbes, had their embodiment in the condition of commonwealths were principles which he saw as given in what he stated to be the fundamental laws of nature. At the same time, the laws of nature were presented by Hobbes as laws that applied to commonwealths in the sphere of their mutual external relations, and hence as laws which, in their international application, were to be thought of as being identical with the substance of the law of nations. In this chapter, the concern lies with the principles of natural law that Hobbes specified in their status as principles of the law of nations, and so with the view that Hobbes took of international law and of its essential constituent elements. Thus there is consideration given to the idea of the international state of nature, as the form of society holding among commonwealths in which the principles of natural law were regarded by Hobbes as having application. Also, there is detailed treatment provided of the principles that Hobbes gave expression to with his statement of the laws of nature, as these served to define what stand as the leading substantive principles of public international law.

In this article, we discuss the introduction and reception of the theology of natural and divine laws in late Ming China. Natural law and the twofold divine laws appear collectively as an object of discussion and exposition in a number of writings by Jesuit missionaries and Chinese Catholic converts of this time. We focus primarily on Michele Ruggieri’s Tianzhu shilu 天主實錄 (The True Record of the Lord of Heaven) and then consider additional texts by Yang Tingyun and Giulio Aleni, referring to other works in passing. While laying out in more detail than previous scholarship the scholastic basis of these discussions, we nonetheless emphasize that these texts do not reflect a fixed version of scholastic teaching but accommodate their discussions to Chinese cultural sensibilities and/or philosophical concepts. Our historical analysis serves as the basis for a comparative philosophical consideration of the relationship between the doctrine of natural law and the Chinese concept of liangzhi 良知 “innate moral knowledge”.