ABSTRACT

Legal positivism is the one great movement in thought on the foundations of the law. Where natural law proponents are strongly focused on the legitimacy of the law, legal positivists are more interested in its legality. Like natural law proponents, there are many different types of legal positivists. The distinction between causal laws of nature as laws of what is and legal rules as laws of what should be is entirely lost in a religious-metaphysical worldview. Legal principles are not absolute, universal principles of natural law, as natural law proponents believe, but nor are they completely random and constantly changing manmade legal constructions. Modern natural law thinkers point to freedom as the foundation of the legal system. Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy, and his natural law philosophy, was inspired by Aristotle, who in turn was a pupil of Plato. Mankind has an exceptional position in the world. Plato gave shape to this exceptional position with his Two Worlds Theory.