CHAPTER IV

SEMINAL CONCEPTS
 DIFFERENT CONCEPTS OF JUSTICE
Plato
• For Plato, he wants to consider
Justice in the State, he says
Justice in the State is ‘read more
clearly’, being written in ‘large
characters’, whereas in each
individual man it is written in small
characters.
• JUSTICE, is the virtue par
excellence, insofar as it consists
in a harmonic relation between
the various parts of a whole.
Justice requires that each one do
his part, in relation to the
common purpose.
Aristotle
• For Aristotle, law is the highest
reason implanted in nature. It is
the mind and reason and mind of
an intelligent man, the standard
by which Justice and Injustice are
measured.
• Those creatures who have
received the gift of reason from
Nature have also received right
reasons, and therefore they have
also received the gift of Law,
which is right reason applied to
command and prohibition. And if
they have received Law, they
have received Justice also.
 PLATONIC CONCEPT OF NATURAL
LAW
• According to Plato, when judgment of society takes
the form of a public decision of the state, it has the
name law.

• Plato tentatively defined reality as power, by which

he meant that anything has real existence if it has
inherent in it the power of being affected or of
affecting others, no matter how small.

• Plato asserted that law was the discovery of true

reality, appearing to mean that the moral value of
law increases as it approximates the ideal law
which exists in the world is reality.
• Plato puts forward the theory that law is an
instrument of social control and thus suggests the
problem of the end of law.

• He stated that, the end of law was to produce men

who were “completely good”. He therefore
rejected laws that did not incline to the end,
asserting that a bad law is a no law.
• For Plato, there was not a man
among us whose natural
equipment enabled him both to
see what was good for men as
members of the community, and on
seeing it, always to be both able
and willing to act for the best. As
Acton puts it, “all power corrupts
and absolute power corrupts
absolutely”.
 Contribution Of Roman Jurist Cicero To
Legal Philosophy
• Cicero’s principal thesis is that

“Law is not a product of choice, but is given by nature.”

According to him, Law is noted based on arbitrary

opinion, but there is a natural, immutable and
necessary “just” as is proved by testimony taken
from the very conscience of man.”

There is therefore a law of nature, immutable, not artificially

made but already existing, inborn. It is a uniform law, not subject
to change by the action of men.
THE ROMAN JURISTS
CICERO – DE LEGIBUS

• For Cicero, Law is the highest reason implanted in nature. It is

the mind and reason and mind of an intelligent man, the
standard by which Justice and Injustice are measured.

• For him, reason when perfected is rightly called wisdom.

• Those creatures who have received the gift of reason from

Nature have also received right reasons, and therefore they
have also received the gift of Law, which is right reason
applied to command and prohibition. And if they have
received Law, they have received Justice also.
Concept of Law of St. Thomas Aquinas

• Aquinas follows Aristotle in thinking that an act is good or

bad depending on whether it contributes to or deters us
from our proper human end—the telos or final goal at
which all human actions aim.

• That telos is ’eudaimonia’, or happiness, where

“happiness” is understood in terms of completion,
perfection, or well-being.

• Achieving happiness, however, requires a range of

intellectual and moral virtues that enable us to
understand the nature of happiness and motivate us to
seek it in a reliable and consistent way.
• On the other hand, Aquinas believes that we can never
achieve complete or final happiness in this life.

• For him, final happiness consists in beatitude, or supernatural

union with God. Such an end lies far beyond what we through
our natural human capacities can attain.
 NATURAL LAW AS CONCEIVED BY
Plato & Aristotle

• FOR PLATO, he wants to consider Justice in the State

• For Plato, Justice is the virtue par excellence, insofar as it consists in a

harmonic relation between the various parts of a whole.
• Justice requires that each one do his part, in relation to the common
purpose.

• FOR ARISTOTLE in his principle on Classical Natural Law, his definitions

of law are partial and are thus an anticipation of the practices of
modern science.

• They are always relative to the problem before him, and the aspect
of law which they emphasize constantly shifts in order to permit
different consequences to be drawn.
 NATURAL LAW AS CONCEIVED BY
St. Thomas Aquinas

ACCORDING TO AQUINAS, every law is ultimately derived from what he

calls the ’eternal law’.

• The “eternal law” refers to God’s providential ordering of all created

things to their proper end. We participate in that divine order in virtue
of the fact that God creates in us both a desire for and an ability to
discern what is good (he calls this ability the “light of natural reason”).

• According to Aquinas, “it is this participation in the eternal law by the

rational creature that is called the natural law”. On this view, natural
law is but an extension of the eternal law.

• For by it God ordains us to final happiness by implanting in us both a

general knowledge of and inclination for goodness.
 “TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY”
Immanuel Kant

• To define law, we should not study actual legal

systems, but rather, retire to the world of pure
thought and discover those elements without which
it is logically impossible to conceive of law at all.

• To Kant, the world of sensible experience is full of diversity and

can of itself produce no principles which are universally valid.
 CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
Immanuel Kant

• The Categorical Imperative only expresses generally what

constitutes Obligation. It may be rendered by the following
Formula.

“Act according to a Maxim which can be adopted at the same time as a

Universal Law.”

• Actions must therefore be considered, in the first place,

according to their subjective Principle.

• But whether this principle is also valid objectively, can only be

known by the criterion of the Categorical Imperative
 THEORY OF LAW AND THE STATE OF
HEGEL
Immanuel Kant

• The Categorical Imperative only expresses generally what

constitutes Obligation. It may be rendered by the following
Formula.

“Act according to a Maxim which can be adopted at the same time as a

Universal Law.”

• Actions must therefore be considered, in the first place,

according to their subjective Principle.

• But whether this principle is also valid objectively, can only be

known by the criterion of the Categorical Imperative
 THEORY OF LAW AND STATE
Hegel

• Hegel believed that philosophy possessed a logic or method

of its own, one that was peculiar to itself, and which
constituted philosophy’s own kind of scientific proof. This was
the dialect method, which proceeds through the
development of concept.

• He took the view that jurisprudence is at bottom was a

philosophical science and in such a subject, he held, form and
content inseparable.

• Hegel’s philosophy of law takes as its subject-matter the Idea

of right, that is, the concept of right and the actualization of
that concept.
 DIALECT THEORY OF HEGEL
Hegel

• For hegel the absolute, the idea, becomes through

contradictions, contrast, the fluctuations of battle.

• The absolute is knowable only by means of systems of

concepts, not by means of one concept which is necessarily
unilateral partial.

• Reality is development, movement, so also the system of

concepts must be mobile, composed of thoughts in
movements.
 DIALECT THEORY OF HEGEL
Hegel

• Therefore, every concept is unilateral, because it lays down its

contrary, it raises a contradiction.
 IMPLIED JUSTIFICATION OF WAR
Hegel

• Hegel, justified war according to this manner:

He stated that,
“The State is the highest degree of objective spirit; It is the supreme
manifestation of liberty. Above the State, there is but the absolute.”

• From this comes the important consequence that all States are
in a condition of equality, nor can there be a human
jurisdiction superior of to them.
 IMPLIED JUSTIFICATION OF WAR
Hegel

• Thus, one arrives at a systematic justification of war, since

conflicts between States, being incapable of being smoothed
out or decided by a superior jurisdiction, will have to be
regulated in final analysis by war which is a sore of “divine
judgment”.

• Thus, for Hegel, peoples receive in history their just sentence.

• Hegel therefore, does not admit the possibility of an unjust

invasion or of an illicit conquest. In war he wins who must win,
and every people has the lot, just as it has the government
which it deserves.
 IMPLIED JUSTIFICATION OF WAR
Hegel

“ The spirit of the world is superior to the spirit of the individual

States, and pronounces irrevocably upon them its sentences.”
THE END.
THANK YOU!
- LYLE 