Questions Concerning the Law of Nature

John Locke's untitled manuscript "Questions concerning the Law of Nature" (1664) was his only work focused on the subject of natural law, a circumstance that is especially surprising since his published writings touch on the subject frequently, if inconclusively. Containing a substantial critical apparatus, this new edition of Locke's manuscript is faithful to Locke's original intentions and to the format he chose for his discourse on the law of nature—a late-Scholastic quaestio disputata, the form through which in 1664 the young Locke debated questions with his students as moral censor of Christ Church. For this volume, Robert Horwitz provides an introduction summarizing the history of the manuscript and analyzing Locke's role in the development of thinking on natural law. Jenny Strauss Clay offers a superb critical edition of the Latin text, for which she has supplemented the Latin text of Manuscript B, written by an amanuensis, with Manuscript A, a first draft in Locke's own hand. Diskin Clay's precise English translation—with the Latin presented on facing pages—is accompanied by annotations identifying Locke's references and allusions and explaining difficulties of translation. In the view of Horwitz, Clay, and Clay, Questions concerning the Law of Nature shows a tension between several opposing conceptions of natural law. In developing this view, the editors break with W. von Leyden, who prepared the first edition of the text and who interpreted Locke's understanding of natural law squarely within a Christian framework. The editors here present a fresh interpretation of Locke as a thinker who posed a series of subtle challenges to traditional natural law doctrine. That Locke was aware of the political danger of this challenge is evident from his refusal to publish the work during his lifetime and from the care he took to conceal these manuscripts among his possessions. Historians of philosophy, political scientists, political theorists, and others interested in the history of Western thought will welcome this definitive new edition of a key work for any interpretation of Locke.

About the Author :
The late Robert Horwitz was Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College. Among his books is Moral Foundations of the American Republic. Jenny Strauss Clay is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. Her books include Hesiod's Cosmos and The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey. Diskin Clay is RJR Nabisco Professor of Classical Studies at Duke University. His books include Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek States.

Review :
"The volume presents an excellent new critical edition of the Latin text ... which draws upon all three extant manuscripts, preserving the original foliation and reporting, in an elaborate apparatus criticus, all textual problems, variants, and authorial emendations... In short, this important philosophical text is rendered here with the sort of exquisite care and rigor that one rarely founds outside the field of classical philology... It is fair to say that the reader ... will have as unimpeded an access to Locke's original thought and expression as is possible... It belongs in the library of all who have a serious interest in Lockean thought or in the emergence of the modern moral perspective."-Review of Metaphysics "This edition has been edited and translated with meticulous and sympathetic care. The work represents an unusual and admirable collaboration of two eminent classicists with a distinguished historian of political thought. The three have brought their diverse talents to bear on a text that is of the greatest importance for our understanding of Locke, of the foundations of modern liberal thought, and of the meaning as well as the historical evolution of the idea of natural law."-Thomas L. Pangle, The University of Texas at Austin