The origins of the notion of natural law - Rene Brouwer
Location:
In Person Event:
Usha Kasera Lecture Theatre
Edinburgh Law School
Old College
South Bridge
Edinburgh
EH8 9YL
Virtual - Zoom
Date/time
Fri 14 October 2022
17:30-19:00
The Edinburgh Roman Law Group presents
The origins of the notion of natural law
Prof René Brouwer, University of Utrecht
About the seminar
In my talk I will deal with the vexed question of the origins of the notion of natural law. Whereas in modern scholarship the notion is often attributed to Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, they did not actually use the expression. I will argue that the notion was first put to use in the 1st century BCE and that its occurrence can be explained as a result of the interaction between Roman jurists on the one hand and Stoic philosophers on the other: whereas for the jurists the Stoic doctrine of law offered a theoretical underpinning for their unique practice of dispute resolution, for the Roman Stoics this practice offered an unexpected opportunity to develop their conception of law in more detail.
About the speaker:
René Brouwer teaches law and philosophy at the University of Utrecht. He has published on a variety of subjects in the history and philosophy of law as well as in ancient philosophy, including The Stoic Sage (Cambridge, 2014) and Law and Philosophy in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2021). He is currently working on the origins of the natural law tradition.
This event is free and open to all, no registration necessary.
Image credit: Jurist - Tacitus, Cornelius, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons