The philosophical and ideological root to classical natural law can be found in the following: Greek philosophy86 (especially stoicism with its ideas regarding recta ratio as the objectively existing universal reason of reality);87 post-reformation Christian theology;88 and finally the attempts of the modern natural lawyers to secularize and rationalize the foundations of natural law.89 Finally, it is the incorporation of elements from stoicism such as recta ratio into the theory of rights and duties that allows natural law to construe the Roman concept of obligatio as corresponding to that of universal rights and duties: p a r t v i , c h a p t e r 2 404 “Somit ist der Beweis für die einleitenden Sätze von der Naturrechtslehre als einerVerbindung des stoischen Gedankens vom ius naturale mit dem römischen Begriff vom privaten subjektiven Recht zu Ende geführt. Zum römischen Begriff gehört, sofern es sich um dasVerhältnis zu anderen Menschen handelt: die übernatürliche Macht zur Zwangsexekution, die beim Sachenrecht eine Folge der ursprünglichen direk86 Kaufmann, Rechtsphilosophie, pp. 30-66. Cf.Wieacker, History, pp. 111 and205-206. 87 Hägerström,“Nehrman-Ehrenstråles uppfattning,” pp. 597-601; Recht, Pflicht etc, pp. 44-50;Welzel, Naturrecht und materiale Gerechtigkeit: Prolegomena zu einer Rechtsphilosophie, pp. 106-111. See also Sauter, Die philosophischen Grundlagen des Naturrechts, pp. 44-57. Sauter is of the opinion that Pufendorf falsely argued that: 1) natural law started with the stoics; 2) that natural law was reborn with Grotius, hence there existed no natural law proper during the Middle Ages; and 3) that legal science has uncritically adopted these ideas of Pufendorf ’s. But what is the issue here is, on the one hand, the actual philosophical influences on Roman jurists, for instance, Gaius, Ulpian, and Cicero, and the rationalistic natural lawyers of modern times, and on the other, what practical effects such influences had for their jurisprudence. To the Roman jurists the practical impact of philosophy seems to have been marginal, while the rationalistic natural lawyers founded their entire systems on a philosophical interpretation and transformation of the sources of law, whichever they may have been (see PartVII, Chapter 1). See also Hägerström, Obligationsbegriff 1, pp. 290-291, 563-567, and 598; Magistratische Ius, pp. 67-77, n; Obligationsbegriff 2, pp. 75-76 and 236. 88 See, e.g., Hartung, Die Naturrechtsdebatte: Geschichte der Obligatio vom17. bis 20. Jahrhundert. In this thorough investigation into the contractual theories of the 17th to 20th Century Hartung pays special attention to the doctrines of, for example, those authors that Hägerström traces the contractual theory of David Nehrman-Ehrenstråle (1695-1769) back to, namely Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Samuel Pufendorf (16321694), ChristianThomasius (1655-1728), and Niccolaus Hieronymus Gundling (16711729).This is important, since the continuation of Hägerström’s argument is that the ideas of these authorities form the basis of both modern contractual theory and accompanying theories of rights and duties. 89 Welzel, Naturrecht, pp. 106-111. See also Part VII, Chapter 1 below.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=