Tema: Stoic Ideal Agency.

Iniciado por Esteban

The concept of natural law was very important to Roman jurists, is one of the great contributions of Stoicism to Roman law.
Also influenced a legal theory called iusnaturalism.

Sadly at present exerts much influence a legal theory called Legal positivism, which seeks to establish a separation between morality and law.

Regards

This is a misrepresentation of Stoic natural law, which like its Christian counterpart, is only understandable when it's placed in relationship to the divine. An ideal example would be a line from Cleanthes' hymnal to the Stoic God:

Zeus, the First Cause of Nature, who rules all things with Law.

In both cases natural law exists and is effective because of of its ultimate source: God. Modern attempts to separate morality from God only result in moral subjectivity and depravity. Stoic natural law is a counterpart to Christian natural law and is properly understood in the light of Christian Tradition.

I wrote about the influence of the concept of natural law and also refer to the bad influence now exercised by legal positivism, the opposite of natural law.

I agree with you, Stoic natural law as Christian natural law is understandable only in his relationship with God.

Sadly in the present prevailing legal theories (positivism, legal realism,etc) are contrary to Christian natural law.

Regards

Iniciado por Esteban

I wrote about the influence of the concept of natural law and also refer to the bad influence now exercised by legal positivism, the opposite of natural law.

I agree with you, Stoic natural law as Christian natural law is understandable only in his relationship with God.

Sadly in the present prevailing legal theories (positivism, legal realism,etc) are contrary to Christian natural law.

Regards

Stoicism comes to its full understanding via Christian interpretation and I might conjecture that, even moreso than the intellectual influence of Plato and Aristotle, Stoicism is far more important than it seems. Stoicism became a purely moral and ethical philosophy like its earlier counterpart Cynicism; it was meant to be practiced rather than purely for speculation (i.e. Platonism). The classical Roman legalists, i.e. Cicero, were affiliated in some degree to Stoicism- just as later Roman jurists were trained in Christianity, which itself inherited the legacy of the philosophical schools.

The dividing line between an eternal natural law and a subjective natural law began beginning in the Renaissance period and its humanism; previously the was a pyramidal structure to the universe and its laws: God at the top with everything else in an inferior relationship due to a dependency on God and his laws (be they laws of nature or laws of revelation and teaching, which themselves are merely a re-iteration of eternally-existing principles). Humanism in the Christian sense is to recognize man as being the image and likeness of God (Christ being the perfect example of this idea of image and likeness); humanism in the sense of the Renaissance merely rejects God's importance and raises man to the level of a deluded, self-professed god (i.e. the error that Lucifer made).

In the traditional Christian sense science was the study of nature and its laws- merely corollaries of Christian belief and religion. Stoicism predicted this sort of holistic relationship between God and Man, i.e. man's ethics are guided by eternal principles which're easily proven via an application of sound reason and common sense.