On the nature of right and the right for nature. Aristotelian Politics of Natural justice

Abstract

There is no doubt that natural law has been a true paradigm – and an enigma, in the history of political and legal philosophy of all time. H. Rommen testified this fact in his thesis of the “eternal return”, as is has been the base for the recognition of natural right as the basic instance and necessary for the ethical-legal fundamentals of social life, that is not centered in procedural aspects, but on the great topics that feed the moral and political philosophy of the western world: fundamentals of human rights, recognition of a suprapositive justice; recognition of men as being social, political and moral. This paper intends to review the problem of natural law from the point of view of classical political philosophy, which counts as origin and basic source of any ethical and political consideration of human «nature» as law. Thus, we intend to revise the iusnaturalist contributions of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, as well as their fundamental commentators, basically from this threefold: «law», «nature», and «reason».