natural law

"Natural law, as a school of jurisprudence or a means to decide or consider legal cases, is considered by some as nothing more than an emotive reminiscence and by others as a foundational system upon which legal reasoning must depend"--Provided by publisher.

Examines the status of the problem of natural right in contemporary thought, discussing how the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics have a firm foundation in reality.

"We are, all of us, everywhere, always, enmeshed in a web of rules and constraints. Rules fix the beginning and end of the working day and the school year, direct the ebb and flow of traffic on the roads, dictate who can be married to whom and how, place the fork to the right or the left of the plate, lay down the meter and rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet, and order the rites of birth and death. Cultures notoriously differ as to the content of their rules, but there is no culture without rules. In this book, historian of science Lorraine Daston adopts a long term perspective for studying rules from diverse sources, including monastic orders, cookbooks, and mathematical algorithms. She argues that in the Western tradition most rules can be characterized as one of the following: tools of measurement and calculation, models or paradigms, or laws. Moreover, they exist on spectra from specific to general, flexible to rigid and the specific-to-general, and universal-to-particular. In investigating how rules work, how they don't work, how they've changed across time, and why exceptions are necessary, Daston paints a vivid picture of Western civilization from the antiquity to the present"--.

Provides an exploration of human nature and a discussion of the factors that lead to warfare and strife. Includes textual notes and a bibliography.

Presents an English translation of the Latin text in which seventeenth-century English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes explores the philosophical elements of the true citizen, and includes a glossary of Latin terms, a chronology, a bibliography, and an expository introduction.

Combines moral and political philosophy to form a sociologic view dominated by the idea of a state. Hegel defines universal right as the synthesis between the thesis of an individual acting in accordance with the law and the occasional conflict to follow private convictions. He suggests an idealized form of a constitutional monarchy, in which ultimate power rests with the sovereign.