The Necessity of Nature
God, Science and Money in 17th Century English Law of Nature

A study of the natural law ideas of the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution and their impact on the philosophy of law.

Mónica García-Salmones Rovira (Author)

9781009332163, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 February 2023

504 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.9 cm, 0.89 kg

To understand our current world crises, it is essential to study the origins of the systems and institutions we now take for granted. This book takes a novel approach to charting intellectual, scientific and philosophical histories alongside the development of the international legal order by studying the philosophy and theology of the Scientific Revolution and its impact on European natural law, political liberalism and political economy. Starting from analysis of the work of Thomas Hobbes, Robert Boyle and John Locke on natural law, the author incorporates a holistic approach that encompasses global legal matters beyond the foundational matters of treaties and diplomacy. The monograph promotes a sustainable transformation of international law in the context of related philosophy, history and theology. Tackling issues such as nature, money, necessities, human nature, secularism and epistemology, which underlie natural lawyers' thinking, Associate Professor García-Salmones explains their enduring relevance for international legal studies today.

Introduction
I Altering the Perception of Nature
II Nature and The Light of Nature
III Needs, Politics and Money
IV Necessity and Liberalism
IV Outline of Chapters
1. A Christian Science: Searching for the Common Good and the Public Good
1.1 Deism, Neoplatonism and the Light of Reason
1.2 Scepticism and Moral Righteousness
1.3 Hobbes and Locke versus Filmer on Political Economy
1.4 The New Oeconomies: Household – State – Nature
2. Hobbes's Doctrine of Necessity
2.1 Hobbes's Doctrine of Necessity and Existence
2.2 Necessitarian Metaphysics and (Human) Body in Avicenna and Hobbes
3. Necessities, Natural Rights and Sovereignty in Leviathan
3.1 Hobbes's Necessity, Theology and Natural Laws
3.2 The Doctrine of Necessity in Leviathan
4. Reformers on the Necessary Knowledge
4.1 Useful Knowledge as the Only Necessary Knowledge: Benjamin Worsley in Context
4.2 All-Encompassing Human Necessities
5. Necessity, Free Will and Conscience: Robert Sanderson
5.1 Logician and Theologian
5.2 The Mechanical Conscience
6. The Grand Business of Nature
6.1 The Oeconomy of Nature
6.2 The Fact of Man
6.3 The Grand Business of Nature
7. Robert Boyle, the Empire over Nature
7.1 Nothing Is Necessary: Benjamin Worsley Revisited
7.2 The Transmutator of Nature
7.3 Undoing Nature
8. Locke's Early Writings
8.1 Independent Judgment of Conscience, Public Order and Public Interest
8.2 Undoing Conscience
9. Medicine, Oeconomy and Needs
9.1 The Oeconomy of Needs
9.2 Physicians and Oeconomia
10. Money and the Doctrine of Necessities
10.1 Locke's Doctrine of Necessities
10.2 Usury, Interest and Science
11. The Scientification of Money
11.1 The Science of Interest
11.2 The Morality of Capital
12. The Doctrine of Necessities and the (Public) Good
12.1 Necessity and Necessities in Knowledge and Morality: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
12.2 Necessities, Dominion and Money in the Two Treatises of Government
Conclusions
Index
Bibliography appears only online.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB]