About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

13 Law & Phil. 1 (1994)

handle is hein.journals/lwphil13 and id is 1 raw text is: OTA WEINBERGER NATURAL CONSTITUENTS OF JUSTICE I. THE QUESTIONS UNDER CONSIDERATION In this paper I deal with the question of why it is that members of our society everywhere and repeatedly ask and discuss questions of justice. What are the anthropological characteristics or the institutional facts that enable man - or even impel him - to reflect about justice and to demand it? What structures or immanent preconditions of our minds induce us to strive for justice and to insist on it? To interpret my way of addressing the problem as a search for the foundations of a theory of natural law would be to misunderstand my approach. My intentions in writing this paper have nothing to do with natural law. A brief digression into an analysis of the tenets of natural law will allow me to prove this point. The definition of the tenets of natural law is disputed, so is the question what exactly could be said to be the central concern of the representatives of natural law. Hans Kelsen believes that all doctrines of natural law are, in fact, based on the premises of a religious faith.1 It is undoubtedly true that most religiously based legal scholars have a leaning toward natural law, believing, as they do, that the creator defines not only what is, the material world, but that God rather than human attitudes and deci- sions determines that which ought to be good and evil. Standards of justice and definitions of good and evil are posited for the religious thinker - not, though, creative acts and decisions undertaken by man. Conceptions of a more or less positivist nature are, nevertheless, to be found even among religious legal philosophers. ' H. Kelsen, Allgemeine Theorie der Normen, ed. by K. Ringhofer (Vienna: Manz, 1979), pp. 4-5. Law and Philosophy 13: 1-25, 1994. © 1994 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most