Tiles ch. 7, pp. 153-182

The Measure of Law

True law (vera lex) is right reason (recta ratio) in agreement with nature.

Persons, rights and roles

1. God, slaves, and corporations:

1.1. Maxim:

e.g. Job’s maxim: People should not be made to suffer unless it is at the very least made clear to them what they have done to deserve suffering.

Is this maxim universal?

1.2. God and human beings:

1.2.1.God has rights and no duties.

1.2.2. Human beings have both rights and duties.

1.2.3.Slaves have duties and no rights.

1.3. Kant declared that there were no slave.

1.3.1.Counter-examples in real life: people treat some of their fellow humans as though they were beings without rights.

1.3.2. The distinction between a servant and a slave

1.3.2.1. "Servant" is an occupational category.

1.3.2.2."Slave" is (among other things) a legal condition, that of being without rights, only duties.

1.4. Kant’s definitions of "person" and "civil personality":

1.4.1."Person" is "a subject whose actions can be imputed to him."

1.4.2."Civil personality" is the "attribute of not needing to be represented by another where rights are concerned."

2. The Portuguese Jesuit Luis De Molina’ s claim:

"Man is dominus (the power of a head of a household) not only of his external goods, but also of his own honor and fame…" (p.160)

　

Natural slaves and natural law

1. Contours of nature and the flow of rhetoric:

1.1.Aristotle’s claim regarding the slavery:

Slavery is "contrary to nature," exists only custom (nomos) and is neither very good nor just (p. 160).

1.2. St. Thomas Aquinas’ justification for the existence of slavery:

It was "useful to his man (the slave) to be ruled by a wiser man, and the latter to be helped by the former as the Philosopher (Aristotle) states"(p. 161).

1.3.Cicero's  (1^st century BCE)  distinction of humans and beasts:

1.3.1."For those creatures who have received the gift of reason (ratio) from Nature have also received right reason (recto ratio) and therefore they have also received the gift of Law (lex), which is right reason applied to command and prohibition" (p. 162).

1.3.2. Some peoples’ natural capacity for ratio is so damaged that it is not improper to exercise dominium over those who are not capable of governing themselves.

        1.4. Locke’s understanding:

To be born with "A Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not… As Freedom of Nature is to be under no other restraint but the Law of Nature"(p. 167).

　

Kant’s canon

1. Questions remaining after Locke:

The morals are based on our own ideas did not mean that moral principles can be just anything we like.

2. Kant’s distinction:

2.1.Kant sharply distinguished the use of the mind in the creation or discovery of mathematics from the use needed to provide a rational foundation for morality.

2.1.1.Reason for Kant is strictly speaking our ability to deal with what must universally be the case.

2.1.2.The criteria of a priori knowledge are necessity and strict universality.