Of The Law Of Nature

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power comes the definitive new book on decoding the behavior of the people around you Robert Greene is a master guide for millions of readers, distilling ancient wisdom and philosophy into essential texts for seekers of power, understanding and mastery. Now he turns to the most important subject of all - understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves. We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess, without which our other talents can only take us so far. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control, how to develop the empathy that leads to insight, how to look behind people's masks, and how to resist conformity to develop your singular sense of purpose. Whether at work, in relationships, or in shaping the world around you, The Laws of Human Nature offers brilliant tactics for success, self-improvement, and self-defense.

This book is D. M. Armstrong's influential defense of his original theory of what a law of nature is.

'Human laws must be reformulated to keep human activities in harmony with the unchanging and universal laws of nature.' This 1987 statement by the World Commission on Environment and Development has never been more relevant and urgent than it is today. Despite the many legal responses to various environmental problems, more greenhouse gases than ever before are being released into the atmosphere, biological diversity is rapidly declining and fish stocks in the oceans are dwindling. This book challenges the doctrinal construction of environmental law and presents an innovative legal approach to ecological sustainability: a rule of law for nature which guides and transcends ordinary written laws and extends fundamental principles of respect, integrity and legal security to the non-human world.

Thisbook isnotatextbook tobecomeacquainted with thelaws ofnature. An elementaryknowledgeaboutlawsofnature,inparticularthelawsofphysics,is presupposed. Thebookisratherintendedtoprovideaclari?cationofconcepts and properties of the laws of nature. The authors would like to emphasise that this book has been developed – created – as a real teamwork. Although the chapters (and in some cases parts of the chapters) were originally written by one of the two authors, all of them were discussed thoroughly and in detail and have been revised and complemented afterwards. Even if both authors were in agreement on most of the foundational issues discussed in the book, they did not feel it necessary to balance every viewpoint. Thus some individual and personal di?erence or emphasis will still be recognisable from the chapters written by the di?erent authors. In this sense the authors feel speci?cally responsible for the chapters as follows: Mittelstaedt for Chaps. 4, 9. 3, 10, 11. 2, 12, 13 and Weingartner for Chaps. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8. 2, 9. 2, 9. 4. The remaining parts are joint sections. Most of the chapters are formulated as questions and they begin with arguments pro and contra. Then a detailed answer is proposed which contains a systematic discussion of the question. This is the respective main part of the chapter. It sometimes begins with a survey of the problem by giving some important answers to it from history (cf. Chaps. 6 and 9).

This is the first major work in English to explore at length the meaning, context, aims, and vital importance of Thomas Hobbes's concepts of the law of nature and the right of nature. Hobbes remains one of the most challenging and controversial of early modern philosophers, and debates persist about the interpretation of many of his ideas, particularly his views about natural law and natural right. In this book, Perez Zagorin argues that these two concepts are the twin foundations of the entire structure of Hobbes's moral and political thought. Zagorin clears up numerous misconceptions about Hobbes and his relation to earlier natural law thinkers, in particular Hugo Grotius, and he reasserts the often overlooked role of the Hobbesian law of nature as a moral standard from which even sovereign power is not immune. Because Hobbes is commonly thought to be primarily a theorist of sovereignty, political absolutism, and unitary state power, the significance of his moral philosophy is often underestimated and widely assumed to depend entirely on individual self-interest. Zagorin reveals Hobbes's originality as a moral philosopher and his importance as a thinker who subverted and transformed the idea of natural law. Hobbes and the Law of Nature is a major contribution to our understanding of Hobbes's moral, legal, and political philosophy, and a book rich in interpretive and critical insights into Hobbes's writing and thought.

Uncovers the relationship between early modern natural law ideas and secular conceptions of politics.

This impressive volume is the first attempt to look at the intertwined histories of natural law and the laws of nature in early modern Europe. These notions became central to jurisprudence and natural philosophy in the seventeenth century; the debates that informed developments in those fields drew heavily on theology and moral philosophy, and vice versa. Historians of science, law, philosophy, and theology from Europe and North America here come together to address these central themes and to consider the question; was the emergence of natural law both in European jurisprudence and natural philosophy merely a coincidence, or did these disciplinary traditions develop within a common conceptual matrix, in which theological, philosophical, and political arguments converged to make the analogy between legal and natural orders compelling. This book will stimulate new debate in the areas of intellectual history and the history of philosophy, as well as the natural and human sciences in general.