Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe: Jurisprudence, Theology, Moral and Natural Philosophy

by Stolleis,Michael; Daston,Lorrai

• ISBN13: 9780754657613
• ISBN10: 0754657612
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-04-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This impressive volume is the first attempt to look at the intertwined histories of natural law and the laws of nature in early modern Europe. It will stimulate new debate in the areas of intellectual history and the history of philosophy, as well as the natural and human sciences in general.This impressive volume is the first attempt to look at the intertwined histories of natural law and the laws of nature in early modern Europe. These notions became central to jurisprudence and natural philosophy in the seventeenth century; the debates that informed developments in those fields drew heavily on theology and moral philosophy, and vice versa. Historians of science, law, philosophy, and theology from Europe and North America here come together to address these central themes and to consider the question; was the emergence of natural law both in European jurisprudence and natural philosophy merely a coincidence, or did these disciplinary traditions develop within a common conceptual matrix, in which theological, philosophical, and political arguments converged to make the analogy between legal and natural orders compelling. This book will stimulate new debate in the areas of intellectual history and the history of philosophy, as well as the natural and human sciences in general.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Nature, law, and natural law in early modern Europe

From limits to laws: the transformation of ancient atomism in early modern philosophy

Expressing nature's regularities and their determinations in the late Renaissance

The legitimation of law through God, tradition, will, nature and constitution

The concept of (natural) law in the doctrine of law and natural law of the early modern era

'Lex certa' and `ius certum': the search for legal certainty and security

Crimen contra naturam

Nature's regularity in some Protestant natural philosophy textbooks 1530-1630

Natural order and divine salvation: Protestant conceptions in early modern Germany (1550-1750)

Natural law and celestial regularities from Copernicus to Kepler

The approach to a physical concept of law in the early modern period: a comparison between Matthias Bernegger and Richard Cumberland

Leibniz's concept of jus naturale and lex naturalis - defined `with geometric certainty'

Controversies on nature as universal legality (1680-1710)

From principles to regularities: tracing `laws of nature' in early modern France and England

Unruly weather: natural law confronts natural variability

In search of the Newton of the moral world

Deus legislator

Bibliography

Index

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