Premium
Morality and Law
Author(s) -
LETWIN SHIRLEY ROBIN
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9337.1989.tb00026.x
Subject(s) - morality , positivism , obligation , law , virtue , passion , economic justice , resolution (logic) , philosophy , political science , sociology , psychology , computer science , social psychology , artificial intelligence
. The controversy over law and morality between positivists and normativists is largely a result of failure on both sides to understand the idea of authority. The author argues that Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Hobbes held a common notion of legal authority that was distinctively moral. They all saw the virtue of law (and the source of legal obligation) in the equal protection it provides for all against the disorder to which passion makes men vulnerable, and not in the justice of its provisions. Michael Oakeshott, among contemporary theorists, best illustrates this approach to a resolution of the differences between positivists and normativists.