The Natural Law Theory

The historical development of the natural law theory involves a lot of concepts from different people whom are termed as naturalists. People such as Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Rousseau, John Finnis, Cicero etc. They all have different concepts even though some of the naturalists acknowledged and some disagreed with the Ancient philosophers, somehow it is contradicting. With these concepts from the naturalists, there are critically analyzed by the people termed as the ‘ Positivists’ and others like jurists are included too. Their existence brought about critics on the different concepts of the natural

He analyzed natural by distinguishing it into primary principle and secondary principle. He continued by saying that the primary may be supplemented by new principle, but not subtracted from it while the secondary principle may, in exceptional, be susceptible to change. Aquinas’ critics starts from here, because he hasn’t established on what basis this distinction is drawn; which principles are primary? Nor does he explain how secondary are derived from the primary ones. This appeared to be that Aquinas was just quoting St. Augustine. St. Thomas Aquinas identified that natural law is common to all humans either they are Christian or not, and the revelation of the law gave Christians additional guidelines for their actions. His thought was to reconcile the secular power with the Godly

Thomas Hobbes ‘ famous work, Leviathan talked about the natural state and condition of man before the existence of social contract and the self-interest of humans. Hobbes said that the natural condition of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Critics on Hobbes: Rousseau argued with Hobbes that this, brings about confusion in the society. Rousseau believed that man should give up themselves to the good of the community in a social contract and the true freedom lies in the will of people, by doing this, he replaced justice with instinct. Rousseau regarded Hobbes as an evil man because Hobbes’ ideology to natural was the one that portrayed man as evil. John Austin acknowledged that the law means different thing to different people but argued that it would be good if humans learned to distinguish between the different kinds of law. John Locke approached through the term ‘private property’ i.e. the effort in which individual put to own a property. Locke believed that the duty of the state was to secured freedom. Critics on Locke: he was criticized by John Sergent