The essays of this volume examine natural moral law, different natural law theories, and the role that natural law can and should play in our contemporary society

Natural Law and Modern Society presents a new theory of natural law, grounded in the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, aimed at answering questions relevant to the ethics and morality of the theory of law, obligation and political authority; from the domestic realm to international community.

The idea of natural law, says the author, "is based on a belief that there exists a moral order which every normal person can discover by using his reason, and of which he must take account if he is to attune himself to his necessary ends as a human being." This notion has supported the philosophy and behaviour of men in all cultures since the beginning of society. It is implicit in the Mosaic code; is fundamental in the thought of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Rousseau, Newton and Mill; served as the "higher law" basis for English common law and the American Constitution; and is still relevant today. It is to natural law and to its relation to the condition of our society that the seven distinguished contributors to this volume address themselves. In keeping with their widely divergent backgrounds and different faiths, the writers reveal a refreshing range of opinion within a fundamental unity.

Resorting to natural law is one way of conveying the philosophical conviction that moral norms are not merely conventional rules. Accordingly, the notion of natural law has a clear metaphysical dimension, since it involves the recognition that human beings do not conceive themselves as sheer products of society and history. And yet, if natural law is to be considered the fundamental law of practical reason, it must show also some intrinsic relationship to history and positive law. The essays in this book examine this tension between the metaphysical and the practical and how the philosophical elaboration of natural law presents this notion as a "limiting-concept", between metaphysics and ethics, between the mutable and the immutable; between is and ought, and, in connection with the latter, even the tension between politics and eschatology as a double horizon of ethics. This book, contributed to by scholars from Europe and America, is a major contribution to the renewed interest in natural law. It provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of natural law, both from a historical and a systematic point of view. It ranges from the mediaeval synthesis of Aquinas through the early modern elaborations of natural law, up to current discussions on the very possibility and practical relevance of natural law theory for the contemporary mind.

"Law in Modern Society" is a comparative study of the place of law in societies as well as a criticism of social theory. Under what conditions do different kinds of law emerge? What are the bases of the rule of law ideal that marks advanced liberal, capitalist societies? What can the study of law teach us about social hierarchy and moral vision in these societies, and, indeed, about the specificity of Western civilization? Why do we find it necessary to struggle for the rule of law and impossible to achieve it? What political possibilities are closed or opened by present-day changes in the established styles of legality and legal thought? Unger deals with these questions in a broad range of historical settings. But he also relates them to the central issues of social theory: the method of explanation, the conditions of social order, and the nature of 'modern' society. the book argues that to resolve its own internal dilemmas the science of society must once again become both metaphysical and political.

"Human beings are a part of nature and apart from it." The argument of Natural Law and Justice is that the philosophy of natural law and contemporary theories about the nature of justice are both efforts to make sense of the fundamental paradox of human experience: individual freedom and responsibility in a causally determined universe. Professor Weinreb restores the original understanding of natural law as a philosophy about the place of humankind in nature. He traces the natural law tradition from its origins in Greek speculation through its classic Christian statement by Thomas Aquinas. He goes on to show how the social contract theorists adapted the idea of natural law to provide for political obligation in civil society and how the idea was transformed in Kant's account of human freedom. He brings the historical narrative down to the present with a discussion of the contemporary debate between natural law and legal positivism, including particularly the natural law theories of Finnis, Richards, and Dworkin. Professor Weinreb then adopts the approach of modern political philosophy to develop the idea of justice as a union of the distinct ideas of desert and entitlement. He shows liberty and equality to be the political analogues of desert and entitlement and both pairs to be the normative equivalents of freedom and cause. In this part of the book, Weinreb considers the theories of justice of Rawls and Nozick as well as the communitarian theory of Maclntyre and Sandel. The conclusion brings the debates about natural law and justice together, as parallel efforts to understand the human condition. This original contribution to legal philosophy will be especially appreciated by scholars, teachers, and students in the fields of political philosophy, legal philosophy, and the law generally.