All Natural Right Is Changeable

Aristotelian Natural Right, Prudence, and the Specter of Exceptionalism

Bibliographic Data

ID6403589
AuthorsWilliam Clare Roberts (0000-0003-1892-1273, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume74
Issue2
Pages261-283
Publication date2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670512000289
OpenAlexW2166596699
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited15

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