| FA-55356-10 | Research Programs: Fellowships for University Teachers | John Schaeffer | Vico on Natural Law: Sensus Communis, Rhetoric, and Religion | 8/1/2010 - 7/31/2011 | $50,400.00 | John | | Schaeffer | | | | Northern Illinois University | DeKalb | IL | 60115-2828 | USA | 2009 | Philosophy, General | Fellowships for University Teachers | Research Programs | 50400 | 0 | 50400 | 0 |
My project will show how Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) provides a new model of natural law. Vico's concept of natural law 1) historicizes human nature itself, showing that human rationality is a product of long historical development, while received ideas of natural law assume that human nature and human reason are universal and historical constants; 2) is based on a plausible social contract, itself based on force, that established inequality in human society which human beings try to remedy with political speech, while the received natural law tradition posits a fictional social contract based on the free assent of all parties; 3) provides a model of development from religion to secularity rather than assumes that religion and secularity are absolute and mutually exclusive; 4) historicizes natural law rather than seeing it as a trans-cultural, trans-historical moral absolute. |