پژوهش های حقوق تطبیقی (Dec 2022)
Natural Law in View of Montesquieu; Thinking about the Relationship between Metaphysics and Reality in Natural Law
Abstract
Although natural law has a deontic essence and function in the paradigm of modernity, and thus prompted the passage of the traditional structure, the conceptions and analyses reconcilable with tradition are also evoked throughout the history of thought and it seems that Aristotelian natural law thought, the most famous one, is a gaze that reflects natural law based on the nature of things being the symbol of realism. Perhaps Montesquieu belongs to legal historicism and thus one cannot find a relationship between his thought and natural law, but the fact is that Montesquieu is not outside the paradigm of modernity. His concern is natural public law and why is the nature of things in his idea not another expression of spontaneous and social rationality and the freedom based on this rationality? By analyzing and critiquing Montesquieu's various conceptions of natural law, this research tries to present a conception that is reconcilable with Montesquieu's natural public law anxiety and thus makes it possible to understand his thought in the paradigm of modernity.
