Natural Law Theory: Origins, Key Thinkers, and Objections
This paper examines the concept of natural law from its medieval roots through the seventeenth century, tracing the contributions of Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. It distinguishes natural law from the laws of nature, explores Aquinas's divine-rational framework, Hobbes's mechanistic view of human nature, and Locke's emphasis on self-preservation and natural rights. The paper then addresses key objections to natural law theory — including critiques based on historical relativism, ontological and epistemological concerns, political utilitarianism, and the absence of scientific verification — while noting the internal distinction between natural law as moral theory and as legal theory, and the concept of the Overlap Thesis.
- Introduction: Defining Natural Law: Distinguishing natural law from scientific laws of nature
- Aquinas and the Divine Foundation of Natural Law: Aquinas's divine-rational framework and moral theory
- Hobbes and the Mechanistic View of Human Nature: Hobbes's mechanistic account of man and self-preservation
- Locke and Natural Rights: Locke on self-preservation, ownership, and natural rights
- The Moral and Legal Theories of Natural Law: Internal divisions and the Overlap Thesis explained
- Objections to Natural Law: Strauss, Rollins, and other critics challenge natural law
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper provides a clear historical progression, moving from Aquinas's divine-rational foundation through Hobbes's mechanistic revision to Locke's rights-based framework, giving the reader a coherent intellectual narrative.
- It balances exposition of major theories with sustained critical engagement, dedicating substantial space to objections and counterarguments rather than simply surveying positions.
- The early distinction between "laws of nature" (scientific universals) and "natural law" (moral-legal theory) grounds the entire argument and prevents conceptual confusion throughout.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the technique of comparative intellectual history: it places three canonical thinkers in dialogue with one another, identifying both continuities (e.g., self-preservation as a shared concern for Hobbes and Locke) and divergences (e.g., Aquinas's theological grounding versus Hobbes's mechanistic materialism). This approach shows how a single concept evolves across different philosophical contexts.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a conceptual clarification, distinguishing natural law from the laws of nature. It then proceeds chronologically through Aquinas, Hobbes, and Locke before stepping back to analyze the internal structure of natural law theory (moral vs. legal theory; the Overlap Thesis). The final section surveys objections, including those from Leo Strauss, L.A. Rollins, and Marxist historical materialism, before briefly noting the advocates' response. The conclusion is embedded within the objections section rather than standing alone.
Introduction: Defining Natural Law
What constitutes religion, science, sociology, and so on is hard to define and ambiguous at times. Take, for instance, fundamentalism in religion, the fact that life is still difficult to define in scientific terms, or the complexity of natural law — in Latin, lex naturalis. What each of these three issues has in common is the difficulty they impose on someone trying to get to the bottom of them, because there are so many perspectives from which one could approach them and none is self-sufficient.
In the seventeenth century, two key concepts started to gain power over scholars. These concepts originated in the medieval period but had not stretched far enough to gain universal dominance until then. The first is the laws of nature, something natural philosophy was concerned with, and the second is natural law, a term frequently used in jurisprudence and political theory. To be more specific, consider science: what applies as a law of nature is, for example, Newton's law of gravitation, meaning that gravity is something true and valid anywhere in the world, everywhere in the universe. Thus, a law of nature requires foolproof certainty. If we hold an apple in our hand and then let it go, the apple will fall — it is something we know, and we acknowledge that it is within the apple's "nature" to fall to the ground. Hydrogen atoms combined with oxygen will result in water molecules, which is something "naturally" specific to hydrogen, oxygen, and water. There is nothing ambiguous about these observations, as Murray Rothbard has pointed out (9).
What, then, makes natural law such a controversy? The term is often used to refer to theories of ethics, politics, and civil law, as well as religious morality. But unlike in the case of the laws of nature, there is only a quantum of certainty — sometimes none at all — that can be ascribed to natural law.
Works Cited
Rothbard, Murray N. The Ethics of Liberty. New York and London: New York University Press, 1998. Print.
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