Human Beings have certain rights, moral values, and responsibilities that are inherent in human nature. Natural law teaching is based on the idea that natural laws are universal concepts and are not based on any culture or customs. Still, it is a way society acts naturally and inherently as human beings.
“Few ideas have been as influential in the development of moral, political, legal, and economic thought in the broad Western tradition as the idea of natural law. It is also true that the understanding of natural law and its influence on specific norms and institutions—rights, justice, private property, rule of law, limited government, etc.—is not anywhere near as widespread in the twenty-first century as it was just 100 years ago. This book aims to help rectify this deficit by explaining the basic principles of natural law and highlighting significant contributions that key natural law scholars have made to ideas and concepts that have encouraged the growth of free societies.
The idea of natural law holds that all people, whatever their ethnicity, culture, or religion, can know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. The idea, for example, of the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—is understood as a principle of moral conduct that everyone can know. While such beliefs are applied to different and changing conditions and problems, the core principles always apply.
However, natural law is not a static tradition of thought. It has developed over time, partly through natural law theorists clarifying particular concepts, and partly through its proponents responding to ongoing intellectual challenges to its positions and changes in the realm of politics, society, and the economy. Whether it was the encounter between Europeans and the peoples of the New World in the late fifteenth century, or questions about what justice meant in the context of emerging market economies in the late eighteenth century, natural law scholars have applied natural law principles to discern how people should choose and act in these changing contexts.
While this book seeks to introduce readers to how natural law thinkers have contributed to the enhancement of freedom in the political, legal, and economic realms, we will focus on some scholars more than others. These include individuals like Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Francisco Suárez, and Hugo Grotius, to name just a few. Some focused their attention on very practical challenges arising from liberty of commerce within and across sovereign boundaries, while others explored the rights and obligations of individuals to each other as well as the state. All these endeavors helped to furnish an apparatus for thinking about the political, legal and economic institutions necessary for promoting freedom and justice.”
Dr. Samuel Gregg is an affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute, and serves as the Distinguished Fellow in Political Economy and Senior Research Faculty at the American Institute for Economic Research.
He has a D.Phil. in moral philosophy and political economy from Oxford University, and an M.A. in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne.
He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, monetary theory and policy, and natural law theory. He is the author of sixteen books, including On Ordered Liberty(2003), The Commercial Society (2007), Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy (2010); Becoming Europe (2013); Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization (2019); The Essential Natural Law (2021); and The Next American Economy: Nation, State and Markets in an Uncertain World (2022). Two of his books have been short-listed for Conservative Book of the Year. Many of his books and over 400 articles and opinion pieces have been translated into a variety of languages. He is also a Contributor to Law and Liberty, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, an Affiliate Scholar at the Acton Institute, a Fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. He also serves as a Visiting Scholar at the Heritage Foundation.
He has published in journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; Journal of Markets & Morality; Economic Affairs; Law and Investment Management; Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines; Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy; Oxford Analytica; Communio; Journal of Scottish Philosophy; University Bookman; Foreign Affairs; and Policy. He is a regular writer of opinion-pieces which appear in publications such as the Wall Street Journal Europe; First Things; Investors Business Daily; Law and Liberty; Washington Times; Revue Conflits; American Banker; National Review; Public Discourse; American Spectator; El Mercurio; Australian Financial Review; Jerusalem Post; La Nacion: and Business Review Weekly. He has served as an editorial consultant for the Italian journal, La Societa, and American correspondent for the German newspaper Die Tagespost. He has also been cited in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Time Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and the Holy See’s L’Osservatore Romano.
In 2001, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Member of the Mont Pèlerin Society in 2004. In 2008, he was elected a member of the Philadelphia Society, and a member of the Royal Economic Society. In 2017, he was made a Fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. He served as President of the Philadelphia Society from 2019-2021.
He is the General Editor of Lexington Books’ Studies in Ethics and Economics Series. He also sits on the Academic Advisory Boards of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London; Campion College, Sydney; the La Fundación Burke, Madrid; the Instituto Fe y Libertad, Guatemala; and as well as the editorial boards of the Journal of Markets and Morality and Revista Valores en la sociedad industrial.
Listen to The Essential Natural Law by Samuel Gregg on Audible.
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