The Natural Law: An Appraisal of the Roman Catholic and Jewish Perspective

The article focuses on the reception of the idea of the natural law in Jewish thinking from Medieval to Postmodern times. It starts with outlining Maimuni's refusal to put practical and ethical aspects of human existence on the same footing as theoretical pursuits of human intellect. This assumption is set against Aquinas' analogical understanding of the functioning of practical and speculative reason, which is essential for the Thomistic grounding of the concept of the natural law. The article then proceeds to Yoseph Albo, the first Jewish scholar to introduce a Christian-like concept of natural law. One of his objectives for adopting the idea of natural law might have been to shift the debate on social and political standing of Jews in Christian society to a new and theoretically better grounded platform than that of contingent lex humana represented by the Church and secular legislation on behalf of Jews throughout the Middle Ages. Finally, the article turns its attention to David Novak, who claims that the concept of natural law retains some value even in the postmodern setting. Instead of an attempt to find some universal phenomenon to ground natural law, it seems more authentic and more useful to see it as the constitution of a universal horizon by a thinker in a particular culture for his or her own culture.

Keywords: Judaistics; Natural Law; Ethics