Brian Tierney. Liberty and Law: The Idea of Permissive Natural Law, 1100–1800.
2015; Oxford University Press; Volume: 120; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ahr/120.2.704
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
ResumoBrian Tierney's new book, like his 1997 work, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150–1625, usefully illuminates modern political thought by revealing its origins in medieval and early modern juristic debates. Permissive natural law defines the genus of which natural liberties, powers, rights, and immunities are species; in this sense, his new volume on permissive natural law is a companion to the earlier one on natural rights. Due to the influence of voluntarist and positivist legal theories, we tend to think of law in terms of command and prohibition, but even the modern positivist legal theorist H. L. A. Hart pointed out that law also creates permissions in the form of rights, powers, liberties, and immunities. Tierney's important new study draws our attention to this oft-neglected dimension of the rule of law. Although trained as a historian, Tierney takes to heart George Santayana's dictum that history should be written by philosophers. Tierney attempts to occupy a middle ground between the two disciplines; therefore, his book will strike many historians as too philosophical and many philosophers as too historical. His studies are not organized around a single or unified tradition of thought. Instead, the authors he discusses, including Gratian, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Johannes Valentinus Andreae, Richard Hooker, Francisco Suárez, Hugo Grotius, John Selden, Samuel von Pufendorf, Christian Wolff, and Immanuel Kant (just to name the major figures), have in common only an interest in the idea of permissive law. Because this book is organized around theorists, rather than around themes, there is some repetition of ideas as Tierney moves from writer to writer. He nicely situates each thinker in his proper political and philosophical context.
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