Greene and Stanlis on Dr. Johnson and the Natural Law
A Medieval Postscript
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10065629 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Francis Oakley (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1964 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-5 |
| Publication date | 1964-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of British Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9371 • E-ISSN: 1545-6986 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1086/385488 |
| OpenAlex | W2012101071 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
“ And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight Where ignorant armies clash by night .” Matthew Arnold Perhaps it is somewhat less than fair that to one whose interests lie in earlier centuries than theirs, the recent exchanges between Donald J. Greene and Peter J. Stanlis should have called irresistibly to mind the closing lines of Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach . Unfair, indeed, admittedly unfair, but not wholly without its moral. The strife has been ferocious and the crash of opposed artillery truly deafening. But the smoke remains dense, the objectives obscured, and so many of the projectiles hurled have spent their force on phantom targets. And why is this so? In part, no doubt, because of disagreements about the very nature of Dr. Johnson's views — but a medievalist would be presumptuous indeed to contemplate even the most tentative of interventions on this score. More germane to his interests, however, and surely no less fundamental to the impasse, is the dangerously impoverished historical landscape against which these views have been measured. This comes out very clearly in Stanlis's abuse of the label “Calvinist” — for which Greene correctly upbraids him. It comes out, too, in Greene's reliance on that shopworn tag “Augustinian,” with which Stanlis is rightfully uneasy — though, conceivably, for the wrong reasons. But it comes out most clearly of all in the assumption, common, it seems, to both parties, that it is safe and meaningful to speak of the Scholastic conception of natural law
Artillery · Natural (archaeology · Natural law · Political science · Classics · History · Law · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |