Workshop: Natural Law in Ancient Philosophy

The Stoic view that divinely ordained laws of nature provide the norms for human conduct is widely regarded as the starting-point of the natural law tradition, and was to shape both Roman political and legal theory (e.g. Cicero, De Republica, De Legibus; Justinian and Ulpian on ius naturale) and Christian theology (St. Augustine) later in Antiquity. But the Stoic theory was itself part of a broader discussion of naturalism in ethics reaching back to Sophistic debates about the respective claims of nature (phusis) and convention (nomos) to provide ethical and political standards (see Plato’s Gorgias 483 ff., Protagoras 320 ff., Republic I; Xenophon’s Memorabilia IV.14 ff.; Aristotle’s distinction between natural and conventional justice: Nicomachean Ethics V 13, Rhetoric I 13). In this workshop, we aim to investigate the formation (and transformation) of the idea of natural law. Among the questions we will ask are: What is a natural law, and how are theories of natural law to be distinguished from other anti-conventionalist approaches to ethics in Antiquity? How do we come to know the content of natural laws? How does the Stoic reference to a cosmic nomos work? To what extent are elements of the Stoic theory prefigured in earlier thinkers, and how was the Stoic theory transformed and adapted by later theorists? What is the scope of natural laws, and how do they relate to the man-made laws? To what extent were natural law theories implemented in real political contexts?

Munich School of Ancient Philosophy (MUSAΦ), Leopoldstr. 11b, 4^th Floor, Room 433