Edmund Burke and the Natural LawTransaction Publishers, 10.03.2015 - 311 Seiten Today the idea of natural law as the basic ingredient in moral, legal, and political thought presents a challenge not faced for almost two hundred years. On the surface, there would appear to be little room in the contemporary world for a widespread belief in natural law. The basic philosophies of the opposition--the rationalism of the philosophes, the utilitarianism of Bentham, the materialism of Marx--appear to have made prior philosophies irrelevant. Yet these newer philosophies themselves have been overtaken by disillusionment born of conflicts between "might" and "right." Many thoughtful people who were loyal to secular belief have become dissatisfied with the lack of normative principles and have turned once more to natural law. This first book-length study of Edmund Burke and his philosophy, originally published in 1958, explores this intellectual giant's relationship to, and belief in, the natural law. It has long been thought that Edmund Burke was an enemy of the natural law, and was a proponent of conservative utilitarianism. Peter J. Stanlis shows that, on the contrary, Burke was one of the most eloquent and profound defenders of natural law morality and politics in Western civilization. A philosopher in the classical tradition of Aristotle and Cicero, and in the Scholastic tradition of Aquinas, Burke appealed to natural law in the political problems he encountered in American, Irish, Indian, and British affairs, and in reaction to the French Revolution. This book is as relevant today as it was when it was first published, and will be mandatory reading for students of philosophy, political science, law, and history. |
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... virtues; those of the body are things like health, strength, and beauty; the external goods refer to things like wealth and influence.19 By natural right Aristotle also seems to refer to a core of principles of justice common to any ...
... virtues, especially that of prudence. At the same time a great controversy has arisen over just how the precepts of the natural law are derived: are they derived from some account of human nature, as the more traditional approach has ...
... virtue of prudence is central to lawmaking and that is based not only on the natural law, but on the statesman's knowledge of the peculiarities of his society and its needs. While natural law can be subversive in some contexts, it is ...
... virtues; part of it involves the political constitution (politeia) of the city. So classical political philosophy culminates in the question of the best regime. While the best regime simply is the rule of the wise, the unlikelihood of ...
... virtues can be related to the common good "there is no virtue whose acts cannot be prescribed by the law." However, he goes on to state that human law does not prescribe concerning all the acts of every virtue, "but only in regard to ...