All Natural Right Is Changeable

Aristotelian Natural Right, Prudence, and the Specter of Exceptionalism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6403589
AutoresWilliam Clare Roberts (0000-0003-1892-1273, autor de correspondencia)
Año2012
Volumen74
Número2
Páginas261-283
Fecha de publicación2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670512000289
OpenAlexW2166596699
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas15

In his recent book on Strauss, Steven B. Smith has called attention to “a curiously neglected passage from the very center ofNatural Right and History,” a passage in which Strauss “acknowledges the way political decisions grow out of concrete situations and cannot be deduced from a priori rules.” The passage reads:Let us call an extreme situation a situation in which the very existence or independence of a society is at stake. In extreme situations there may be conflicts between what the self-preservation of society requires and the requirements of commutative and distributive justice. In such situations,and only in such situations, it can justly be said that the public safety is the highest law. A decent society will not go to war except for a just cause. But what it will do during a war will depend to a certain extent on what the enemy—possibly an absolutely unscrupulous and savage enemy—forces it to do. There are no limits which can be defined in advance, there are no assignable limits to what might become just reprisals

Adversary · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Exceptionalism · Independence (probability theory · Law and economics · Natural (archaeology · Political science · Politics · Prudence · Sociology · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · War, Ethics, and Justification