Logic: The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge ed. by J. R. de J. Jackson

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.

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

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...

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.

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...

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.

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.

Invincible ignorance is defined as the state in which one cannot overcome his ignorance, despite one’s utmost diligence, and hence cannot be blamed for the acts resulting from that circumstance. It is particularly relevant with regard to law and principles that one is bound to know. The main problem with the admission that such a state may occur results from the difficulty of assessing the subjective element present in such a state: How can we know that one applied his diligence to the utmost extent? This notion emerged in the 12th century. But while medieval theologians elaborated such a notion, they nonetheless stressed that in reality no one could be guiltlessly ignorant of natural and divine law. The arrival of the Spaniards to the Americas triggered the awareness that entire nations could, in fact, be invincibly ignorant of Christianity. The Spanish theologians then started to use this notion, admitting the existence of invincible ignorance of some principles of divine and natural law. Their argumentative strategy rested on emphasising the subjective element of invincible ignorance. In this article, I examine Vitoria’s Relectio de Indis against the medieval doctrinal background. I also analyse Vitoria’s, Domingo de Soto’s and Juan Gil de Nava’s unedited lectures on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae as well as the works by Matias de Paz, Juan Lopez de Palacios Rubios, Juan de Celaya and Bartolome de Las Casas.

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”.

Reviewed by: Kant on Laws by Eric Watkins Paul Guyer Eric Watkins. Kant on Laws. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xv + 297. Cloth, $99.99. Kant on Laws is a collection of papers that Eric Watkins published from 1997 to 2018, "lightly rewritten," as he says, and accompanied with a new Introduction that states the general thesis that Kant has a univocal conception of law that applies to both laws of nature and the moral law. "Kant's most generic conception of law… includes two essential elements: (1) necessity and (2) the act of a spontaneous faculty whose legislative authority prescribes that necessity to a specific domain through an appropriate act" (2). These conditions are satisfied by both laws of nature and the moral law. They differ, however, in that laws of nature apply ultimately to objects that are given to us through intuition—appearances—while the moral law applies to actions that we are to perform as rational agents: theoretical laws are to tell us how nature is, the moral law tells us how nature ought to be. Thus, Watkins writes that Kant "recognizes that 'necessity' comes in different forms, depending on the kind of law at issue. Though 'necessity' might well mean 'determination' (in the sense of 'natural necessity') in the case of laws of nature, in the case of the moral law, it amounts to 'necessitation' or 'obligation' in the case of human beings" (2–3). That is, although no empirical objects have any choice about complying with the laws of nature, human beings do have the freedom to choose whether or not to conform to the moral law (in their choice of particular maxims), so the moral law obligates us without it being necessarily true that we will always, or ever, satisfy those obligations. The papers are grouped in five parts. The first part, "Kant's Concept of a Law," contains two papers, "What is, for Kant, a Law of Nature?" (2014) and "Kant on Transcendental Laws" (2007). The second part, "The Laws of Mechanics," begins with a paper on Kant's general principles of experience such as the universal law of causality (2010), and then contains three papers on Kant's more specific laws of physics: "The Argumentative Structure of Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science" (1998), "The Laws of Motion from Newton to Kant" (1997), and "Kant's Justification of the Laws of Mechanics" (1998). The second of these is of particular interest because it shows that Newton's three laws of motion were significantly revised by eighteenth-century German writers such as Wolff, Maupertuis, and Euler, and thus that Kant was by no means trying just to provide an a priori foundation for Newton's laws, but was also himself revising them. The third part of the book, "Teleological Laws," includes a 2008 paper on the "Antinomy of Teleological Judgment" in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (previously published only in German) and a 2014 paper on "Nature in General as a System of Ends," which discusses the third Critique's culminating attempt to unify the laws of nature and the laws of freedom or moral law. Part four, on "Laws as Regulative Principles," includes two papers, "Kant on Rational Cosmology" (2000) and "Kant on Infima Species" (2013), which provide a more detailed account of Kant's derivation of the regulative principles of homogeneity, specificity, and continuity, and of the "maxims" that nature allows no chance, "blind necessity," leaps, or gaps, than one usually finds. The final part, "The Moral Law," includes two recent papers, "Autonomy and the Legislation of Laws in the Prolegomena" (2018) and "Kant on the Natural, Moral, Human, and Divine Laws" (2013). The first of these suggests that Kant's conception of our autonomy in imposing theoretical law upon nature in the 1783 Prolegomena prepares the way for Kant's discovery of moral autonomy in the 1785 Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. The second argues that the Critique of Pure Reason argues for our theoretical "assent" to even if not "cognition" of the existence of God, while Kant's "moral theology" adds only moral predicates to our conception of God rather than Kant's sole...

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.

Reviewed by: Reforming the Law of Nature: The Secularization of Political Thought, 1532–1689 by Simon P. Kennedy Francis J. Beckwith KENNEDY, Simon P. Reforming the Law of Nature: The Secularization of Political Thought, 1532–1689. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. ix + 125 pp. Cloth, $110.00 In this monograph Simon P. Kennedy offers an account of the desacralization of politics in the West by critically examining the works of five central figures in the Protestant Reformed tradition: John Calvin (1509–64), Richard Hooker (1554–1600), Johannes Althusius (1557–1638), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and John Locke (1632–1705). He dedicates a chapter to each thinker. The core of Kennedy's thesis is that desacralization is the result of a shift in the way modern thinkers like Hobbes and Locke reimagined the nature of natural law. The medieval tradition, having found its fullest expression in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, saw natural law as one of four different types of law: eternal law (the eternal plan of creation in the mind of God), natural law (the rational creature's participation in the eternal law), human law (civil laws that are derived from the natural law), and divine law (the Old and New Testaments). According to Kennedy, the eventual desacralization of politics was set in motion with the development of arguments for natural rights that relied on a natural law that was in [End Page 553] practice severed from eternal law. But in that case, our political institutions—which are founded on the natural law—are purely human constructions and thus entirely secular. The usual story is that the Protestant Reformation constituted the decisive break with the medieval tradition and that it was the political theology of the reformers and their immediate successors that made the secularization of politics nearly inevitable. Kennedy wants to push back against that story. He argues, quite convincingly, that Calvin, Hooker, and Althusius, all Reformed Protestants, were in continuity with their medieval predecessors. Although Calvin is often depicted by his contemporary followers—especially among American Evangelicals—as hostile to the natural law tradition, Kennedy marshals an impressive case that shows that classical natural law seemed almost second nature to Calvin. My own sense is that the confusion over Calvin is the result of his contemporary readers expecting him to use the vocabulary of an Aquinas or a Duns Scotus. But not finding that vocabulary, they conclude that he rejected the natural law. Kennedy dispels that confusion by showing that Calvin in fact was fully committed to the four types of law absent the technical jargon of medieval scholasticism. Hooker and Althusius, writes Kennedy, continue in that tradition, though with a bit of a twist that some argue portends to Hobbes and Locke. Hooker and Althusius use the language of contract to account for the origin of certain aspects of political life. But Kennedy insists that it is a mistake to interpret them as proto-contractarians (as one finds in Hobbes and Locke), for they still held that the natural law participates in the eternal law, and that any agreements employed in the service of political life are under the authority of, and guided by, the natural law. One could argue, then, that these "contracts," like constitutions and treaties, are nonstatutory manifestations of the human law, which is perfectly consistent with classical natural law. So like Calvin before them, Hooker and Althusius were, as Kennedy puts it, theistic political naturalists. Hobbes and Locke are a different story. According to Kennedy, they both defended desacralized views of politics, with Hobbes being the more extreme of the two. Although I think he is correct in that assessment, I am not sure he locates the cause of the desacralization in the right place. For example, he says that because for Locke politics is artificial and not natural—that is, it is the result of a social contract to insulate members of society from the instability of a state of nature—politics is desacralized, even though God is the ultimate source of the natural law. But it is not clear how that in and of itself desacralizes politics. After all, Aquinas, the paradigm case of a classical natural lawyer, held...

In contemporary parlance, “natural law”most commonly refers to a core doctrine of the Catholic Church and its educational institutions, according to which God has imbued nature, including human nature, with certain fundamental values or purposes which humanity can understand and which are consonant with the values taught by the Christian revelation. (See Contemporary natural law theory [Chapter 42].) The most important Catholic articulation of this idea is ascribed to the great thirteenth-century philosopher Thomas Aquinas, and accordingly it is known as “Thomistic” natural law. In modern philosophical ethics and philosophy of law, “natural law” refers to the more general idea that there is a “higher” norm, or law, that is not the work of human action, such as legislation, and bymeans of which the latter can be assessed, indeed, has to be assessed in order to be considered “valid” law. In other words, naturally given law is distinguished from “positive” law that is made (posited) by human authorities. Whatever their contemporary philosophical significance, these neat doctrineshave at best very limited relevance for understanding natural law ideas in the early modern period, from the Reformation to the end of the Enlightenment period in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. In fact, the tendency to bring our own concepts to bear upon the past has in this case, as in many others, played havoc with the appreciation of an important phase in the history of ethics. In post-Reformation Protestant countries, especially those in whose universities natural law had been transferred from the theology to the law and philosophy faculties, a form of natural law emerged whose main concern was with peace and sociability under civil government rather than with divine law. This aroused significant hostility in Catholic countries and universities and led to a certain wariness of a subject that might be seen as distinctive for Protestant culture. It was only with the so-called Catholic revival in the late nineteenth century that Thomistic natural law doctrine was invigorated to become the prominentflagship for Catholic moral engagement that it has been during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Furthermore, the general philosophical idea of a natural law as the master norm and test of legal validity cannot be clearly and uniformly applied to characterize early modern thinking on the subject, especially in Protestant states where the “new” natural law tended to converge with positive civil law. In fact, this idea of a “higher” natural law has been one of the major stumbling blocks for our understanding of significant thinkers of the period in question. The problem here, as so often in the history of ideas, is the tendency toassume that there is a core meaning of central concepts, such as natural law, and that we can trace the occurrences of these ideas in the course of history. Whether or not this ever makes sense is outside the present brief. This chapter is concerned to show, however, that natural law ideas in the early modern period can best be understood as a string of intellectual episodes that may be said to have varying degrees of family resemblance when they are considered as an intellectual and literary genre and an institutionalized resource for education, public debate and policy-making in quite different contexts. This amorphous character of natural law ideas does not detract from their significance, though that significance may be different from what is commonly expected.

It is characteristic of non-instrumental views that the content of law is, in some sense, given; that law is immanent; that the process of law-making is not a matter of creation but one of discovery; that law is not the product of human will; that law has a kind of autonomy and internal integrity; that law is, in some sense, objectively determined. In the Medieval period in Europe, two distinct but commingled types of law possessed these characteristics. The first type was natural law and divine law in the Catholic tradition – the Ten Commandments, for example. Divine and natural law were thought to be binding upon and to be infused in the positive law that governed society. They were pre-given by God and were the product of God's will, unalterable by man. They were objective in that they constituted absolute moral and legal truths that were binding on all, providing the content of and setting limits upon positive law. These laws and principles were disclosed through revelation (mainly scripture) and discerned through the application of reason implanted in man by God. As medieval scholar Walter Ullmann put it, “the law itself as the external regulator of society was based upon faith. Faith and law stood to each other in the relation of cause and effect effect.” The second type was customary law. Everyday life during the Medieval period was governed by customary law, or, more accurately, by overlapping and sometimes conflicting regimes of customary law: feudal law, the law of the manor, Germanic customary law, residues of Roman law, trade customs, and local customs.

Francisco Suarez's thought on the Natural Law is barely known, and any bibliographical search will yield only very meagre results. This is a real misfortune he shares with his contemporary theologians of sixteenth-century Spain, whose prolific response to the challenges that the New World was offering is hardly ever mentioned in contemporary discussions on Natural Law. Suarez meticulously discusses the usual issues raised by authors at the time, including the nature of the law, its content, and the question of whether it can change or not. He insists that it is a divine law, and as such is absolutely immutable, so that not even God can dispense from any of its demands. Suarez constructs his position in a critical dialogue with Vazquez, who, radicalizing Aquinas, insisted that the natural law in humans is identical with our rational nature. Keywords: divine law; Francisco Suarez; Natural Law; Spain