Continuing recording here notes made in grad school on A History of Political Theory by George Holland Sabine.
The Theory of the Universal Community
VIII. The Law of Nature
A. The passing of Aristotle, and the city-states, is the only sharp break in the
history of Western Political Thought
1. Continuity since then
2. Theory of natural law goes from Stoics down to the revolutionary
doctrine of the Rights of Man
B. Man cut off from the life of the polis and left to live in a new, enlarged
and impersonal social union
C. After Aristotle, philosophies tended to become vehicles for ethical
instruction and consolation
1. Took on characteristics of religion
2. Religious feeling grew
3. Result of new impersonal world
D. Distinctions between citizen and other lost usage
"Political thought had, therefore, two ideas to make clear and to interweave into a common scheme of values: the idea of the individual, a distinct item of
humanity with his purely personal and private life, and the idea of universality, a world-wide humanity in which all are endowed with a common human nature. (143)
E. Greek notions (Aristotle) of two essentials of citizenship, relations
between equals and voluntary loyalty to lawful government, were
reworked to become part of Western consciousness
F. Chrysippus the Stoa gave Stoicism form last quarter of Third Century BC
1. Idea of concord between Greeks and from the east
2. Theory of Kingship
3. Result of Alexander's Empire and its breakup
4. Divinity of king seen as the best way of achieving unity and
homogeneity of the state and legitimize his rule
5. Gave positive moral meaning to idea of a world state and universal law
6. Made achieving self-sufficiency and individual well-being an ethical
imperative
7. Taught self-sufficiency by rigorous training of the will
8. Virtues were resolution, fortitude, devotion to duty and
indifference to solicitations of pleasure
9. Sense of duty re-enforced by religious training -- the duty of every
man to play well the part assigned by Divine Providence
i. Man and nature seen as one
ii. Man shared in the rationality of God, who animates nature
iii. Right reason is the law of nature
iv. All men are equal under God (reason), but most are fools not wise
10. Saw law of the city as customary law and inferior to the law of the world-
city which is the law of reason
i. Customary law of several cities combined under a king became the
common law
ii. Law of reason is higher that customary law and a separate standard
of justice
iii. Law of reason provided an appeal to equity in the
elaboration of common law
11. Resulting in part from criticism by the Skeptic Carneades, Stoicism
underwent reform at the end of the 2nd Century BC
i. Went back to Plato and Aristotle
ii. Became less logical but more urbane in appeal and more attractive to
Roman aristocrats
iii. Became a philosophy of self-control and public devotion which
appealed to the Romans
iv. Ideal of a world-city was of use to idealize Roman conquest
v. Reason became law for all men, not only the wise
Circle
1. Brought Stoic thought to bear on earliest studies in Roman jurisprudence.
2. Roman Law enlightened by inclusion of ius gentium (common law) that
grew alongside civil (or ceremonial) law based on good business practice
3. ius gentium coalesced with ius naturale of the Greek Stoics as translated
into Latin
Next week: Cicero and the Roman Lawyers
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