ABSTRACT

The concern of modern Protestant natural law was to find a basis for moral life that, without conflicting with the tenets of Christianity, was neutral with respect to confessional religion. Natural law was thus central to one of the defining debates of the Enlightenment, namely whether and to what extent the cognitive, including moral, powers of humanity were adequate to the conduct of life in this world. This chapter explains the so-called voluntarist version of natural law, compares it with its so-called realist opposition, suggesting how each has had a shaping influence on modern moral thought. A main point in the significance of protestant natural law in early modern period is that it harboured a realist and anti-individualist strand that provided some basic continuity between scholastic and nineteenth-century moral and social thought. Natural law theory sustained the continuous development of a metaphysically based realism and objectivism as the dominant force in moral theory from late scholasticism to the nineteenth century.