ABSTRACT
Hume’s key insight is that, even if the most fundamental principles of justice are our artifacts, they are not arbitrary: they are necessary for human life on Earth, individually and collectively (§2). This is central to “Natural Law Constructivism,” a methodology which identifies and justifies basic, strictly objective moral norms, regardless of issues about moral (ir)realism or motivation. This is underscored by two key points of Hobbes’s state of nature (§3). Two points about social ontology made by Aristotle show why we are a zoôn politikon (§4). Kant argues anew that we as individual moral agents are fundamentally zoae politike (§§5, 6). These results highlight how the first two parts of Hegel’s Philosophical Outlines of Justice (1821, Rph) map directly onto Kant’s Doctrines of Justice and of Virtue (§7). Hegel’s account of Sittlichkeit undergirds Kant’s agreement with Aristotle by showing how the customs, economy, civil institutions, and law of a republican nation are artifacts produced by our free agency and activity. Fundamental to our human nature is this second moral, social and historical nature. These findings illuminate basic features of sound republican constitutionalism and liberal education (§8).
