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

1st Edition

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

By Michael Stolleis, Lorraine Daston Copyright 2008
    350 Pages
    by Routledge

    350 Pages
    by Routledge
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    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.

    Introduction; 1: From Limits to Laws: The Construction of the Nomological Image of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy; 2: Expressing Nature's Regularities and their Determinations in the Late Renaissance; 3: The Legitimation of Law through God, Tradition, Will, Nature and Constitution; 4: The Concept of (Natural) Law in the Doctrine of Law and Natural Law of the Early Modern Era; 5: ‘Lex certa' and ‘ius certum': The Search for Legal Certainty and Security; 6: Crimen contra naturam; 7: Nature's Regularity in Some Protestant Natural Philosophy Textbooks 1530–1630; 8: Natural Order and Divine Salvation: Protestant Conceptions in Early Modern Germany (1550–1750); 9: Natural Law and Celestial Regularities from Copernicus to Kepler; 10: The Approach to a Physical Concept of Law in the Early Modern Period: A Comparison between Matthias Bernegger and Richard Cumberland; 11: Leibniz's Concept of jus naturale and lex naturalis — defined ‘with geometric certainty'; 12: Controversies on Nature as Universal Legality (1680–1710); 13: From Principles to Regularities: Tracing ‘Laws of Nature' in Early Modern France and England; 14: Unruly Weather: Natural Law Confronts Natural Variability; 15: In Search of the Newton of the Moral World: The Intelligibility of Society and the Naturalist Model of Law from the End of the Seventeenth Century to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century; 16: Deus legislator

    Biography

    Lorraine Daston and Michael Stolleis are both Professors at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Germany.

    ’The book is worth reading in its entirety; it has far more internal coherence than most edited collections. The authors have all read each others’ contributions and each essay is peppered with references to the others, allowing the reader to follow common themes throughout. This collection of essays will provide useful insights as well as a stimulus to further research for a broad range of scholars interested in the intellectual and cultural history of early modern and Enlightenment Europe.’ Renaissance Quarterly ’Lorraine Daston and Michael Stolleis have brought together sixteen scholars (including themselves) from the history of science and the history of jurisprudence, and they have compiled a collection of essays of the highest standards. Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe should certainly provide the starting point for all future work in the area.’ British Journal for the History of Science
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