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145-539: The origins of modern Comparative Law can be traced back to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1667 in his Latin-language book Nova Methodus Discendae Docendaeque Iurisprudentiae (New Methods of Studying and Teaching Jurisprudence). Chapter 7 (Presentation of Law as the Project for all Nations, Lands and Times) introduces the idea of classifying Legal Systems into several families. A few years later, Leibniz introduced an idea of Language families. Although every Legal System

290-529: A dissertation Specimen Quaestionum Philosophicarum ex Jure collectarum ( An Essay of Collected Philosophical Problems of Right ), arguing for both a theoretical and a pedagogical relationship between philosophy and law. After one year of legal studies, he was awarded his bachelor's degree in Law on 28 September 1665. His dissertation was titled De conditionibus ( On Conditions ). In early 1666, at age 19, Leibniz wrote his first book, De Arte Combinatoria ( On

435-726: A fair part of his assigned task: when the material Leibniz had written and collected for his history of the House of Brunswick was finally published in the 19th century, it filled three volumes. Leibniz was appointed Librarian of the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel , Lower Saxony , in 1691. In 1708, John Keill , writing in the journal of the Royal Society and with Newton's presumed blessing, accused Leibniz of having plagiarised Newton's calculus. Thus began

580-433: A foreign rule disrupts established norms and societal arrangements. This disruption sparks an evolution where the external rule's meaning is redefined and where significant transformations within the internal context are triggered. Lasse Schuldt added that irritation is not spontaneous, but requires institutional drivers. Also, the usefulness of comparative law for sociology of law and law and economics (and vice versa)

725-511: A geometry book as an example to explain his reasoning. If this book was copied from an infinite chain of copies, there must be some reason for the content of the book. Leibniz concluded that there must be the " monas monadum " or God. The ontological essence of a monad is its irreducible simplicity. Unlike atoms, monads possess no material or spatial character. They also differ from atoms by their complete mutual independence, so that interactions among monads are only apparent. Instead, by virtue of

870-604: A journal article titled "New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances". Between 1695 and 1705, he composed his New Essays on Human Understanding , a lengthy commentary on John Locke 's 1690 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , but upon learning of Locke's 1704 death, lost the desire to publish it, so that the New Essays were not published until 1765. The Monadologie , composed in 1714 and published posthumously, consists of 90 aphorisms. Leibniz also wrote

1015-612: A key role in advancing his mathematical and scientific reputation, which in turn enhanced his eminence in diplomacy, history, theology, and philosophy. The Elector Ernest Augustus commissioned Leibniz to write a history of the House of Brunswick, going back to the time of Charlemagne or earlier, hoping that the resulting book would advance his dynastic ambitions. From 1687 to 1690, Leibniz traveled extensively in Germany, Austria, and Italy, seeking and finding archival materials bearing on this project. Decades went by but no history appeared;

1160-410: A law, especially when the "particular" law of one's own city was adverse to the case being made, not that there actually was such a law. Aristotle, moreover, considered certain candidates for a universally valid, natural law to be wrong. Aristotle's theoretical paternity of the natural law tradition is consequently disputed. Thomas Aquinas is the foremost classical proponent of natural theology , and

1305-546: A meticulous study (informed by the 1999 additions to the critical edition) of all of Leibniz's philosophical writings up to 1688, Mercer (2001) disagreed with Couturat's reading. Leibniz met Baruch Spinoza in 1676, read some of his unpublished writings, and had since been influenced by some of Spinoza's ideas. While Leibniz befriended him and admired Spinoza's powerful intellect, he was also dismayed by Spinoza's conclusions, especially when these were inconsistent with Christian orthodoxy. Unlike Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz had

1450-540: A moral virtue derived as the mean between opposing vices, just like every other virtue he describes. His longest discussion of his theory of justice occurs in Nicomachean Ethics and begins by asking what sort of mean a just act is. He argues that the term "justice" actually refers to two different but related ideas: general justice and particular justice. When a person's actions toward others are completely virtuous in all matters, Aristotle calls them "just" in

1595-469: A new theory of jurisprudence that has developed since the 1970s. The theory can generally be traced to American legal realism and is considered "the first movement in legal theory and legal scholarship in the United States to have espoused a committed Left political stance and perspective". It holds that the law is largely contradictory, and can be best analyzed as an expression of the policy goals of

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1740-481: A norm. Joseph Raz's theory of legal positivism argues against the incorporation of moral values to explain law's validity. In Raz's 1979 book The Authority of Law , he criticised what he called the "weak social thesis" to explain law. He formulates the weak social thesis as "(a) Sometimes the identification of some laws turn on moral arguments, but also with, (b) In all legal systems the identification of some law turns on moral argument." Raz argues that law's authority

1885-409: A philosopher, he was a leading representative of 17th-century rationalism and idealism . As a mathematician, his major achievement was the development of the main ideas of differential and integral calculus , independently of Isaac Newton 's contemporaneous developments. Mathematicians have consistently favored Leibniz's notation as the conventional and more exact expression of calculus. In

2030-428: A pivotal book on Hart (second edition published in 2008), which further refined and offered some important criticisms that led MacCormick to develop his own theory (the best example of which is his Institutions of Law , 2007). Other important critiques include those of Ronald Dworkin , John Finnis, and Joseph Raz . In recent years, debates on the nature of law have become increasingly fine-grained. One important debate

2175-410: A post he held for the rest of his life. Leibniz served three consecutive rulers of the House of Brunswick as historian, political adviser, and most consequentially, as librarian of the ducal library. He thenceforth employed his pen on all the various political, historical, and theological matters involving the House of Brunswick; the resulting documents form a valuable part of the historical record for

2320-652: A related mission to the English government in London, early in 1673. There Leibniz came into acquaintance of Henry Oldenburg and John Collins . He met with the Royal Society where he demonstrated a calculating machine that he had designed and had been building since 1670. The machine was able to execute all four basic operations (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing), and the society quickly made him an external member. The mission ended abruptly when news of

2465-676: A role in the initiatives and negotiations leading up to that Act, but not always an effective one. For example, something he published anonymously in England, thinking to promote the Brunswick cause, was formally censured by the British Parliament . The Brunswicks tolerated the enormous effort Leibniz devoted to intellectual pursuits unrelated to his duties as a courtier, pursuits such as perfecting calculus, writing about other mathematics, logic, physics, and philosophy, and keeping up

2610-546: A short paper, "Primae veritates" ("First Truths"), first published by Louis Couturat in 1903 (pp. 518–523) summarizing his views on metaphysics . The paper is undated; that he wrote it while in Vienna in 1689 was determined only in 1999, when the ongoing critical edition finally published Leibniz's philosophical writings for the period 1677–1690. Couturat's reading of this paper influenced much 20th-century thinking about Leibniz, especially among analytic philosophers . After

2755-581: A sovereign, to whom people have a habit of obedience". H. L. A. Hart criticized Austin and Bentham's early legal positivism because the command theory failed to account for individual's compliance with the law. Hans Kelsen is considered one of the preeminent jurists of the 20th century and has been highly influential in Europe and Latin America, although less so in common law countries. His Pure Theory of Law describes law as "binding norms", while at

2900-422: A system of law, or to give it our respect. Thus, the law must have a morality that goes beyond the societal rules under which laws are made. Sophisticated positivist and natural law theories sometimes resemble each other and may have certain points in common. Identifying a particular theorist as a positivist or a natural law theorist sometimes involves matters of emphasis and degree, and the particular influences on

3045-623: A system. Several disciplines have developed as separate branches of comparative law, including comparative constitutional law , comparative administrative law , comparative civil law (in the sense of the law of torts , contracts , property and obligations ), comparative commercial law (in the sense of business organisations and trade), and comparative criminal law . Studies of these specific areas may be viewed as micro- or macro-comparative legal analysis, i.e. detailed comparisons of two countries, or broad-ranging studies of several countries. Comparative civil law studies, for instance, show how

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3190-532: A theory of ius gentium (law of nations), and thus is an important figure in the transition to modernity. He extrapolated his ideas of legitimate sovereign power to international affairs, concluding that such affairs ought to be determined by forms respecting of the rights of all and that the common good of the world should take precedence before the good of any single state. This meant that relations between states ought to pass from being justified by force to being justified by law and justice. Some scholars have upset

3335-677: A two-year residence in Vienna , where he was appointed Imperial Court Councillor to the Habsburgs . On the death of Queen Anne in 1714, Elector George Louis became King George I of Great Britain , under the terms of the 1701 Act of Settlement. Even though Leibniz had done much to bring about this happy event, it was not to be his hour of glory. Despite the intercession of the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Ansbach, George I forbade Leibniz to join him in London until he completed at least one volume of

3480-467: A university education in philosophy. He was influenced by his Leipzig professor Jakob Thomasius , who also supervised his BA thesis in philosophy. Leibniz also read Francisco Suárez , a Spanish Jesuit respected even in Lutheran universities. Leibniz was deeply interested in the new methods and conclusions of Descartes, Huygens, Newton, and Boyle , but the established philosophical ideas in which he

3625-462: A vast correspondence. He began working on calculus in 1674; the earliest evidence of its use in his surviving notebooks is 1675. By 1677 he had a coherent system in hand, but did not publish it until 1684. Leibniz's most important mathematical papers were published between 1682 and 1692, usually in a journal which he and Otto Mencke founded in 1682, the Acta Eruditorum . That journal played

3770-594: A wide variety of advanced philosophical and theological works—ones that he would not have otherwise been able to read until his college years. Access to his father's library, largely written in Latin , also led to his proficiency in the Latin language, which he achieved by the age of 12. At the age of 13 he composed 300 hexameters of Latin verse in a single morning for a special event at school. In April 1661 he enrolled in his father's former university at age 14. There he

3915-417: Is the case. So analysing and clarifying the way the world is must be treated as a strictly separate question from normative and evaluative questions of what ought to be done. The most important questions of analytic jurisprudence are: "What are laws?"; "What is the law?"; "What is the relationship between law and power/sociology?"; and "What is the relationship between law and morality?" Legal positivism

4060-411: Is a necessary truth that there are vices that a legal system cannot possibly have (for example, it cannot commit rape or murder). Legal realism is the view that a theory of law should be descriptive and account for the reasons why judges decide cases as they do. Legal realism had some affinities with the sociology of law and sociological jurisprudence. The essential tenet of legal realism is that all law

4205-416: Is based on "first principles": ... this is the first precept of the law, that good is to be done and promoted, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based on this ... The desires to live and to procreate are counted by Aquinas among those basic (natural) human values on which all other human values are based. Francisco de Vitoria was perhaps the first to develop

4350-496: Is commonly said that Hobbes's views on human nature were influenced by his times. The English Civil War and the Cromwellian dictatorship had taken place; and, in reacting to that, Hobbes felt that absolute authority vested in a monarch, whose subjects obeyed the law, was the basis of a civilized society. John Austin and Jeremy Bentham were early legal positivists who sought to provide a descriptive account of law that describes

4495-425: Is conceptually distinct from morality. While law might contain morality, the separability thesis states that "it is in no sense a necessary truth that laws reproduce or satisfy certain demands of morality, though in fact they have often done so." Legal positivists disagree about the extent of the separability thesis. Exclusive legal positivists, notably Joseph Raz , go further than the standard thesis and deny that it

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4640-475: Is exercised within natural laws, where choices are merely contingently necessary and to be decided in the event by a "wonderful spontaneity" that provides individuals with an escape from rigorous predestination. For Leibniz, "God is an absolutely perfect being". He describes this perfection later in section VI as the simplest form of something with the most substantial outcome (VI). Along these lines, he declares that every type of perfection "pertains to him (God) in

4785-410: Is force, while space , matter , and motion are merely phenomenal. He argued, against Newton, that space , time , and motion are completely relative: "As for my own opinion, I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something merely relative, as time is, that I hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions." Einstein, who called himself a "Leibnizian", wrote in

4930-485: Is from this cultural movement that Justinian 's Corpus Juris Civilis was born. Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and was based on the first principles of natural law , civil law , and the law of nations . Natural law holds that there are rational objective limits to the power of rulers, the foundations of law are accessible through reason, and it is from these laws of nature that human laws gain force. The moral theory of natural law asserts that law

5075-528: Is identifiable purely through social sources, without reference to moral reasoning. This view he calls "the sources thesis". Raz suggests that any categorisation of rules beyond their role as authority is better left to sociology than to jurisprudence. Some philosophers used to contend that positivism was the theory that held that there was "no necessary connection" between law and morality; but influential contemporary positivists—including Joseph Raz, John Gardner , and Leslie Green —reject that view. Raz claims it

5220-446: Is inherent in nature and constitutive of morality, at least in part, and that an objective moral order, external to human legal systems, underlies natural law. On this view, while legislators can enact and even successfully enforce immoral laws, such laws are legally invalid. The view is captured by the maxim: " an unjust law is no law at all ", where 'unjust' means 'contrary to the natural law.' Natural law theory has medieval origins in

5365-424: Is made by humans and thus should account for reasons besides legal rules that led to a legal decision. There are two separate schools of legal realism: American legal realism and Scandinavian legal realism. American legal realism grew out of the writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes . At the start of Holmes's The Common Law , he claims that "[t]he life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience". This view

5510-535: Is made of an infinite number of simple substances known as monads. Monads can also be compared to the corpuscles of the mechanical philosophy of René Descartes and others. These simple substances or monads are the "ultimate units of existence in nature". Monads have no parts but still exist by the qualities that they have. These qualities are continuously changing over time, and each monad is unique. They are also not affected by time and are subject to only creation and annihilation. Monads are centers of force ; substance

5655-517: Is obvious in the following excerpt from Chapter III of Book I of his masterpiece, De l'esprit des lois (1748; first translated by Thomas Nugent, 1750): [T]he political and civil laws of each nation ... should be adapted in such a manner to the people for whom they are framed that it should be a great chance if those of one nation suit another. They should be in relation to the nature and principle of each government: whether they form it, as may be said of politic laws; or whether they support it, as in

5800-554: Is possible for morality to be a part of law at all. The discretion thesis states that judges create new law when they are given discretion to adjudicate cases where existing law underdetermines the result. Hobbes was a social contractarian and believed that the law had peoples' tacit consent. He believed that society was formed from a state of nature to protect people from the state of war that would exist otherwise. In Leviathan , Hobbes argues that without an ordered society life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." It

5945-472: Is the dominant theory, although there is a growing number of critics who offer their own interpretations. Historical jurisprudence came to prominence during the debate on the proposed codification of German law . In his book On the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence , Friedrich Carl von Savigny argued that Germany did not have a legal language that would support codification because

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6090-451: Is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values; as well as the relationship between law and other fields of study, including economics , ethics , history , sociology , and political philosophy . Modern jurisprudence began in the 18th century and was based on the first principles of natural law , civil law , and

6235-573: Is unique, Comparative Law through studies of their similarities and differences allows for classification of Legal Systems, wherein Law Families is the basic level of the classification. The main differences between Law Families are found in the source(s) of Law, the role of court precedents, the origin and development of the Legal System. Montesquieu is generally regarded as an early founding figure of comparative law. His comparative approach

6380-430: Is very large. The comparative study of the various legal systems may show how different legal regulations for the same problem function in practice. Conversely, sociology of law and law & economics may help comparative law answer questions, such as: René David proposed the classification of legal systems, according to the different ideology inspiring each one, into five groups or families: Especially with respect to

6525-420: Is within legal positivism. One school is sometimes called "exclusive legal positivism" and is associated with the view that the legal validity of a norm can never depend on its moral correctness. A second school is labeled "inclusive legal positivism", a major proponent of which is Wil Waluchow, and is associated with the view that moral considerations may , but do not necessarily, determine the legal validity of

6670-530: The Nicomachean Ethics (Book IV of the Eudemian Ethics ). Aquinas's influence was such as to affect a number of early translations of these passages, though more recent translations render them more literally. Aristotle's theory of justice is bound up in his idea of the golden mean . Indeed, his treatment of what he calls "political justice" derives from his discussion of "the just" as

6815-552: The Daoists , Confucians , and Legalists all had competing theories of jurisprudence. Jurisprudence in ancient Rome had its origins with the periti —experts in the jus mos maiorum (traditional law), a body of oral laws and customs. Praetors established a working body of laws by judging whether or not singular cases were capable of being prosecuted either by the edicta , the annual pronunciation of prosecutable offences, or in extraordinary situations, additions made to

6960-518: The Leibniz wheel , later used in the arithmometer , the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. In philosophy and theology , Leibniz is most noted for his optimism , i.e. his conclusion that our world is, in a qualified sense, the best possible world that God could have created , a view sometimes lampooned by other thinkers, such as Voltaire in his satirical novella Candide . Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza ,

7105-594: The Thirty Years' War had left German-speaking Europe exhausted, fragmented, and economically backward. Leibniz proposed to protect German-speaking Europe by distracting Louis as follows: France would be invited to take Egypt as a stepping stone towards an eventual conquest of the Dutch East Indies . In return, France would agree to leave Germany and the Netherlands undisturbed. This plan obtained

7250-557: The Théodicée of 1710 was published in his lifetime. Leibniz dated his beginning as a philosopher to his Discourse on Metaphysics , which he composed in 1686 as a commentary on a running dispute between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld . This led to an extensive correspondence with Arnauld; it and the Discourse were not published until the 19th century. In 1695, Leibniz made his public entrée into European philosophy with

7395-471: The United Nations System , in analyzing the laws of different countries regarding their treaty obligations. Comparative law would be applicable to private international law when developing an approach to interpretation in a conflicts analysis. Comparative law may contribute to legal theory by creating categories and concepts of general application. Comparative law may also provide insights into

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7540-454: The calculus priority dispute which darkened the remainder of Leibniz's life. A formal investigation by the Royal Society (in which Newton was an unacknowledged participant), undertaken in response to Leibniz's demand for a retraction, upheld Keill's charge. Historians of mathematics writing since 1900 or so have tended to acquit Leibniz, pointing to important differences between Leibniz's and Newton's versions of calculus. In 1712, Leibniz began

7685-424: The edicta . A iudex (originally a magistrate , later a private individual appointed to judge a specific case ) would then prescribe a remedy according to the facts of the case. The sentences of the iudex were supposed to be simple interpretations of the traditional customs, but—apart from considering what traditional customs applied in each case—soon developed a more equitable interpretation, coherently adapting

7830-663: The law of nations . Contemporary philosophy of law addresses problems internal to law and legal systems and problems of law as a social institution that relates to the larger political and social context in which it exists. Jurisprudence can be divided into categories both by the type of question scholars seek to answer and by the theories of jurisprudence, or schools of thought, regarding how those questions are best answered: The terms "philosophy of law" and "jurisprudence" are often used interchangeably, though jurisprudence sometimes encompasses forms of reasoning that fit into economics or sociology . Whereas lawyers are interested in what

7975-410: The principle of sufficient reason . Using the principle of reasoning, Leibniz concluded that the first reason of all things is God. All that we see and experience is subject to change, and the fact that this world is contingent can be explained by the possibility of the world being arranged differently in space and time. The contingent world must have some necessary reason for its existence. Leibniz uses

8120-786: The "last universal genius" due to his knowledge and skills in different fields and because such people became much less common after his lifetime with the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the spread of specialized labor. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics . He wrote works on philosophy , theology , ethics , politics , law , history , philology , games , music , and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology , and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory , biology , medicine , geology , psychology , linguistics and computer science . Leibniz contributed to

8265-410: The 20th century, Leibniz's notions of the law of continuity and transcendental law of homogeneity found a consistent mathematical formulation by means of non-standard analysis . He was also a pioneer in the field of mechanical calculators . While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascal's calculator , he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented

8410-529: The American legal realists of the early twentieth century, legal realism sought to describe the way judges decide cases. For legal realists such as Jerome Frank , judges start with the facts before them and then move to legal principles. Before legal realism, theories of jurisprudence turned this method around where judges were thought to begin with legal principles and then look to facts. It has become common today to identify Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., as

8555-526: The British. Thus Leibniz went to Paris in 1672. Soon after arriving, he met Dutch physicist and mathematician Christiaan Huygens and realised that his own knowledge of mathematics and physics was patchy. With Huygens as his mentor, he began a program of self-study that soon pushed him to making major contributions to both subjects, including discovering his version of the differential and integral calculus . He met Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld ,

8700-509: The Civil law legal systems included those countries where legal science was formulated according to Roman law, whereas Common law countries are those dominated by judge-made law. The characteristics that he believed uniquely differentiate the Western legal family from the other four are: Arminjon, Nolde, and Wolff believed that, for purposes of classifying the (then) contemporary legal systems of

8845-614: The Combinatorial Art ), the first part of which was also his habilitation thesis in Philosophy, which he defended in March 1666. De Arte Combinatoria was inspired by Ramon Llull 's Ars Magna and contained a proof of the existence of God , cast in geometrical form, and based on the argument from motion . His next goal was to earn his license and Doctorate in Law, which normally required three years of study. In 1666,

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8990-459: The Dean of Harvard Law School , used this term to characterise his legal philosophy . In the United States, many later writers followed Pound's lead or developed distinctive approaches to sociological jurisprudence. In Australia, Julius Stone strongly defended and developed Pound's ideas. In the 1930s, a significant split between the sociological jurists and the American legal realists emerged. In

9135-584: The Elector in the hope of obtaining employment. The stratagem worked; the Elector asked Leibniz to assist with the redrafting of the legal code for the Electorate. In 1669, Leibniz was appointed assessor in the Court of Appeal. Although von Boyneburg died late in 1672, Leibniz remained under the employment of his widow until she dismissed him in 1674. Von Boyneburg did much to promote Leibniz's reputation, and

9280-636: The Elector's cautious support. In 1672, the French government invited Leibniz to Paris for discussion, but the plan was soon overtaken by the outbreak of the Franco-Dutch War and became irrelevant. Napoleon's failed invasion of Egypt in 1798 can be seen as an unwitting, late implementation of Leibniz's plan, after the Eastern hemisphere colonial supremacy in Europe had already passed from the Dutch to

9425-437: The Elector's death (12 February 1673) reached them. Leibniz promptly returned to Paris and not, as had been planned, to Mainz. The sudden deaths of his two patrons in the same winter meant that Leibniz had to find a new basis for his career. In this regard, a 1669 invitation from Duke John Frederick of Brunswick to visit Hanover proved to have been fateful. Leibniz had declined the invitation, but had begun corresponding with

9570-422: The French and English systems for punishment of false witnesses, he advises that "to determine which of those systems is most agreeable to reason, we must take them each as a whole and compare them in their entirety." Yet another place where Montesquieu's comparative approach is evident is the following, from Chapter XIII of Book XXIX: As the civil laws depend on the political institutions, because they are made for

9715-693: The Russian Tsar Peter the Great stopped in Bad Pyrmont and met Leibniz, who took interest in Russian matters since 1708 and was appointed advisor in 1711. Leibniz died in Hanover in 1716. At the time, he was so out of favor that neither George I (who happened to be near Hanover at that time) nor any fellow courtier other than his personal secretary attended the funeral. Even though Leibniz

9860-455: The US was brought by a legal scholar fleeing persecution in Germany, Rudolf Schlesinger . Schlesinger eventually became professor of comparative law at Cornell Law School helping to spread the discipline throughout the US. Comparative law is an academic discipline that involves the study of legal systems, including their constitutive elements and how they differ, and how their elements combine into

10005-853: The University of Leipzig turned down Leibniz's doctoral application and refused to grant him a Doctorate in Law, most likely due to his relative youth. Leibniz subsequently left Leipzig. Leibniz then enrolled in the University of Altdorf and quickly submitted a thesis, which he had probably been working on earlier in Leipzig. The title of his thesis was Disputatio Inauguralis de Casibus Perplexis in Jure ( Inaugural Disputation on Ambiguous Legal Cases ). Leibniz earned his license to practice law and his Doctorate in Law in November 1666. He next declined

10150-511: The aggregating by David of the Civil and Common laws into a single family, David argued that the antithesis between the Common law and Civil law systems, is of a technical rather than of an ideological nature. Of a different kind is, for instance, the antithesis between, say, Italian and American laws, and of a different kind than between the Soviet, Muslim, Hindu, or Chinese laws. According to David,

10295-411: The basis of being analogous to the laws of physical science. Natural law is often contrasted to positive law which asserts law as the product of human activity and human volition. Another approach to natural-law jurisprudence generally asserts that human law must be in response to compelling reasons for action. There are two readings of the natural-law jurisprudential stance. Aristotle is often said to be

10440-416: The best of all masters" and he will know when his good succeeds, so we, therefore, must act in conformity to his good will—or as much of it as we understand (IV). In our view of God, Leibniz declares that we cannot admire the work solely because of the maker, lest we mar the glory and love God in doing so. Instead, we must admire the maker for the work he has done (II). Effectively, Leibniz states that if we say

10585-594: The case of civil institutions. They should be in relation to the climate of each country, to the quality of its soil, to its situation and extent, to the principal occupation of the natives, whether husbandmen, huntsmen, or shepherds: they should have relation to the degree of liberty which the constitution will bear; to the religion of the inhabitants, to their inclinations, riches, numbers, commerce, manners, and customs. Also, in Chapter XI (entitled 'How to compare two different Systems of Laws') of Book XXIX, discussing

10730-548: The classification of legal systems places national laws in the broader context of major legal tradition: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz or Leibnitz (1 July 1646 [ O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician , philosopher , scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton , with the invention of calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics , such as binary arithmetic, and statistics . Leibniz has been called

10875-401: The consort of her grandson, the future George II . To each of these women he was correspondent, adviser, and friend. In turn, they all approved of Leibniz more than did their spouses and the future king George I of Great Britain . The population of Hanover was only about 10,000, and its provinciality eventually grated on Leibniz. Nevertheless, to be a major courtier to the House of Brunswick

11020-468: The content of legal concepts using the methods of social science , analytical jurisprudence seeks to provide a general account of the nature of law through the tools of conceptual analysis . The account is general in the sense of targeting universal features of law that hold at all times and places. Analytic, or clarificatory , jurisprudence takes a neutral point of view and uses descriptive language when referring to various aspects of legal systems. This

11165-410: The development of legal institutions in primitive societies and engaged in a comparative discussion of Eastern and Western legal traditions. This work placed comparative law in its historical context and was widely read and influential. The first university course on the subject was established at the University of Oxford in 1869, with Maine taking up the position of professor. Comparative law in

11310-502: The difference between civil and criminal law. In addition to analytic jurisprudence, legal philosophy is also concerned with normative theories of law. "Normative jurisprudence involves normative, evaluative, and otherwise prescriptive questions about the law." The English word is derived from the Latin, iurisprudentia . Iuris is the genitive form of ius meaning law, and prudentia meaning prudence (also: discretion, foresight, forethought, circumspection). It refers to

11455-538: The diverse kinds of developing transnational law) and the increasingly important interrelations of law and culture, especially in multicultural Western societies. Legal positivism is the view that the content of law is dependent on social facts and that a legal system's existence is not constrained by morality. Within legal positivism, theorists agree that law's content is a product of social facts, but theorists disagree whether law's validity can be explained by incorporating moral values. Legal positivists who argue against

11600-573: The duke in 1671. In 1673, the duke offered Leibniz the post of counsellor. Leibniz very reluctantly accepted the position two years later, only after it became clear that no employment was forthcoming in Paris, whose intellectual stimulation he relished, or with the Habsburg imperial court. In 1675 he tried to get admitted to the French Academy of Sciences as a foreign honorary member, but it

11745-575: The early Roman Empire to the 3rd century, a relevant body of literature was produced by groups of scholars, including the Proculians and Sabinians . The scientific nature of the studies was unprecedented in ancient times. After the 3rd century, juris prudentia became a more bureaucratic activity, with few notable authors. It was during the Eastern Roman Empire (5th century) that legal studies were once again undertaken in depth, and it

11890-453: The earth is good because of the will of God, and not good according to some standards of goodness, then how can we praise God for what he has done if contrary actions are also praiseworthy by this definition (II). Leibniz then asserts that different principles and geometry cannot simply be from the will of God, but must follow from his understanding. Jurisprudence Jurisprudence , also known as theory of law or philosophy of law ,

12035-501: The empirical methods used by social scientists. Prominent Scandinavian legal realists are Alf Ross , Axel Hägerström , and Karl Olivecrona . Scandinavian legal realists also took a naturalist approach to law. Despite its decline in popularity, legal realism continues to influence a wide spectrum of jurisprudential schools today, including critical legal studies , feminist legal theory , critical race theory , sociology of law , and law and economics . Critical legal studies are

12180-669: The exercise of good judgment, common sense, and caution, especially in the conduct of practical matters. The word first appeared in written English in 1628, at a time when the word prudence meant knowledge of, or skill in, a matter. It may have entered English via the French jurisprudence , which appeared earlier. The terms "philosophy of law" and "jurisprudence" are often used interchangeably, though jurisprudence sometimes encompasses forms of reasoning that fit into economics or sociology . Ancient jurisprudence begins with various Dharmaśāstra texts of India. Dharmasutras of Āpastaṃba and Baudhāyana are examples. In Ancient China,

12325-582: The exercise of their free will . God does not arbitrarily inflict pain and suffering on humans; rather he permits both moral evil (sin) and physical evil (pain and suffering) as the necessary consequences of metaphysical evil (imperfection), as a means by which humans can identify and correct their erroneous decisions, and as a contrast to true good. Further, although human actions flow from prior causes that ultimately arise in God and therefore are known to God as metaphysical certainties, an individual's free will

12470-476: The extent to which they are binding. Kelsen contends that the extent to which legal norms are binding, their specifically "legal" character, can be understood without tracing it ultimately to some suprahuman source such as God, personified Nature or—of great importance in his time—a personified State or Nation. In the English-speaking world, the most influential legal positivist of the twentieth century

12615-577: The fair sum he left to his sole heir, his sister's stepson, proved that the Brunswicks had paid him fairly well. In his diplomatic endeavors, he at times verged on the unscrupulous, as was often the case with professional diplomats of his day. On several occasions, Leibniz backdated and altered personal manuscripts, actions which put him in a bad light during the calculus controversy . He was charming, well-mannered, and not without humor and imagination. He had many friends and admirers all over Europe. He

12760-488: The father of natural law. Like his philosophical forefathers Socrates and Plato, Aristotle posited the existence of natural justice or natural right ( dikaion physikon , δικαίον φυσικόν , Latin ius naturale ). His association with natural law is largely due to how he was interpreted by Thomas Aquinas . This was based on Aquinas' conflation of natural law and natural right, the latter of which Aristotle posits in Book V of

12905-734: The father of the Thomistic school of philosophy, for a long time the primary philosophical approach of the Roman Catholic Church . The work for which he is best known is the Summa Theologiae . One of the thirty-five Doctors of the Church , he is considered by many Catholics to be the Church's greatest theologian. Consequently, many institutions of learning have been named after him. Aquinas distinguished four kinds of law: eternal, natural, divine, and human: Natural law

13050-429: The field has traditionally focused on giving an account of law's nature, some scholars have begun to examine the nature of domains within law, e.g. tort law, contract law, or criminal law. These scholars focus on what makes certain domains of law distinctive and how one domain differs from another. A particularly fecund area of research has been the distinction between tort law and criminal law, which more generally bears on

13195-436: The field of library science by developing a cataloguing system while working at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel , Germany, that served as a model for many of Europe's largest libraries. His contributions to a wide range of subjects were scattered in various learned journals , in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts. He wrote in several languages, primarily in Latin, French and German. As

13340-553: The governed to obey. Secondary rules are rules that confer authority to create new primary rules or modify existing ones. Secondary rules are divided into rules of adjudication (how to resolve legal disputes), rules of change (how laws are amended), and the rule of recognition (how laws are identified as valid). The validity of a legal system comes from the "rule of recognition", which is a customary practice of officials (especially barristers and judges) who identify certain acts and decisions as sources of law. In 1981, Neil MacCormick wrote

13485-422: The highest degree" (I). Even though his types of perfections are not specifically drawn out, Leibniz highlights the one thing that, to him, does certify imperfections and proves that God is perfect: "that one acts imperfectly if he acts with less perfection than he is capable of", and since God is a perfect being, he cannot act imperfectly (III). Because God cannot act imperfectly, the decisions he makes pertaining to

13630-444: The historical background, the characteristic way of thought, the different institutions, the recognized sources of law, and the dominant ideology. Using the aforementioned criteria, they classify the legal systems of the world into six families: Up to the second German edition of their introduction to comparative law, Zweigert and Kötz also used to mention Soviet or socialist law as another family of laws. H. Patrick Glenn proposed

13775-531: The history of the Brunswick family his father had commissioned nearly 30 years earlier. Moreover, for George I to include Leibniz in his London court would have been deemed insulting to Newton, who was seen as having won the calculus priority dispute and whose standing in British official circles could not have been higher. Finally, his dear friend and defender, the Dowager Electress Sophia, died in 1714. In 1716, while traveling in northern Europe,

13920-532: The incorporation of moral values to explain law's validity are labeled exclusive (or hard) legal positivists. Joseph Raz's legal positivism is an example of exclusive legal positivism. Legal positivists who argue that law's validity can be explained by incorporating moral values are labeled inclusive (or soft) legal positivists. The legal positivist theories of H. L. A. Hart and Jules Coleman are examples of inclusive legal positivism. Legal positivism has traditionally been associated with three doctrines:

14065-487: The introduction to Max Jammer 's book Concepts of Space that Leibnizianism was superior to Newtonianism, and his ideas would have dominated over Newton's had it not been for the poor technological tools of the time; Joseph Agassi argues that Leibniz paved the way for Einstein's theory of relativity . Leibniz's proof of God can be summarized in the Théodicée . Reason is governed by the principle of contradiction and

14210-508: The journey from London to Hanover, Leibniz stopped in The Hague where he met van Leeuwenhoek , the discoverer of microorganisms. He also spent several days in intense discussion with Spinoza , who had just completed, but had not published, his masterwork, the Ethics . Spinoza died very shortly after Leibniz's visit. In 1677, he was promoted, at his request, to Privy Counselor of Justice,

14355-624: The latter's memoranda and letters began to attract favorable notice. After Leibniz's service to the Elector there soon followed a diplomatic role. He published an essay, under the pseudonym of a fictitious Polish nobleman, arguing (unsuccessfully) for the German candidate for the Polish crown. The main force in European geopolitics during Leibniz's adult life was the ambition of Louis XIV of France , backed by French military and economic might. Meanwhile,

14500-524: The law as it is. Austin explained the descriptive focus for legal positivism by saying, "The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry." For Austin and Bentham, a society is governed by a sovereign who has de facto authority. Through the sovereign's authority come laws, which for Austin and Bentham are commands backed by sanctions for non-compliance. Along with Hume, Bentham

14645-446: The law is on a specific issue in a specific jurisdiction, analytical philosophers of law are interested in identifying the features of law shared across cultures, times, and places. Taken together, these foundational features of law offer the kind of universal definition philosophers are after. The general approach allows philosophers to ask questions about, for example, what separates law from morality, politics, or practical reason. While

14790-417: The law of private relations is organised, interpreted and used in different systems or countries. The purposes of comparative law are: Comparative law is different from general jurisprudence (i.e. legal theory) and from public and private international law. However, it helps inform all of these areas of normativity. For example, comparative law can help international legal institutions, such as those of

14935-473: The law to newer social exigencies. The law was then adjusted with evolving institutiones (legal concepts), while remaining in the traditional mode. Praetors were replaced in the 3rd century BC by a laical body of prudentes . Admission to this body was conditional upon proof of competence or experience. Under the Roman Empire , schools of law were created, and practice of the law became more academic. From

15080-400: The leading French philosophers of the day, and studied the writings of Descartes and Pascal , unpublished as well as published. He befriended a German mathematician, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus ; they corresponded for the rest of their lives. When it became clear that France would not implement its part of Leibniz's Egyptian plan, the Elector sent his nephew, escorted by Leibniz, on

15225-519: The main precursor of American Legal Realism (other influences include Roscoe Pound , Karl Llewellyn , and Justice Benjamin Cardozo ). Karl Llewellyn, another founder of the U.S. legal realism movement, similarly believed that the law is little more than putty in the hands of judges who are able to shape the outcome of cases based on their personal values or policy choices. The Scandinavian school of legal realism argued that law can be explained through

15370-500: The morality enacted as law, not the laws themselves. The best evidence of Aristotle's having thought there was a natural law comes from the Rhetoric , where Aristotle notes that, aside from the "particular" laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a "common" law that is according to nature. The context of this remark, however, suggests only that Aristotle thought that it could be rhetorically advantageous to appeal to such

15515-496: The next Elector became quite annoyed at Leibniz's apparent dilatoriness. Leibniz never finished the project, in part because of his huge output on many other fronts, but also because he insisted on writing a meticulously researched and erudite book based on archival sources, when his patrons would have been quite happy with a short popular book, one perhaps little more than a genealogy with commentary, to be completed in three years or less. They never knew that he had in fact carried out

15660-483: The offer of an academic appointment at Altdorf, saying that "my thoughts were turned in an entirely different direction". As an adult, Leibniz often introduced himself as "Gottfried von Leibniz". Many posthumously published editions of his writings presented his name on the title page as " Freiherr G. W. von Leibniz." However, no document has ever been found from any contemporary government that stated his appointment to any form of nobility . Leibniz's first position

15805-510: The only way we can truly love God is by being content "with all that comes to us according to his will" (IV). Because God is "an absolutely perfect being" (I), Leibniz argues that God would be acting imperfectly if he acted with any less perfection than what he is able of (III). His syllogism then ends with the statement that God has made the world perfectly in all ways. This also affects how we should view God and his will. Leibniz states that, in lieu of God's will, we have to understand that God "is

15950-465: The pedigree thesis, the separability thesis, and the discretion thesis. The pedigree thesis says that the right way to determine whether a directive is law is to look at the directive's source. The thesis claims that it is the fact that the directive was issued by the proper official within a legitimate government, for example, that determines the directive's legal validity—not the directive's moral or practical merits. The separability thesis states that law

16095-644: The period. Leibniz began promoting a project to use windmills to improve the mining operations in the Harz Mountains. This project did little to improve mining operations and was shut down by Duke Ernst August in 1685. Among the few people in north Germany to accept Leibniz were the Electress Sophia of Hanover (1630–1714), her daughter Sophia Charlotte of Hanover (1668–1705), the Queen of Prussia and his avowed disciple, and Caroline of Ansbach ,

16240-427: The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas , especially in his Treatise on law . In late 20th century, John Finnis revived interest in the theory and provided a modern reworking of it. For one, Finnis has argued that the maxim "an unjust law is no law at all" is a poor guide to the classical Thomist position. In its general sense, natural law theory may be compared to both state-of-nature law and general law understood on

16385-427: The post-1870 period. Francisco Suárez , regarded as among the greatest scholastics after Aquinas, subdivided the concept of ius gentium . Working with already well-formed categories, he carefully distinguished ius inter gentes from ius intra gentes . Ius inter gentes (which corresponds to modern international law) was something common to the majority of countries, although, being positive law, not natural law, it

16530-426: The principle of pre-established harmony , each monad follows a pre-programmed set of "instructions" peculiar to itself, so that a monad "knows" what to do at each moment. By virtue of these intrinsic instructions, each monad is like a little mirror of the universe. Monads need not be "small"; e.g., each human being constitutes a monad, in which case free will is problematic. Monads are purported to have gotten rid of

16675-531: The problematic: The Theodicy tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds . It must be the best possible and most balanced world, because it was created by an all powerful and all knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him or possible to exist. In effect, apparent flaws that can be identified in this world must exist in every possible world, because otherwise God would have chosen to create

16820-412: The question of legal transplants , i.e. the transplanting of law and legal institutions from one system to another. The notion of legal transplants was coined by Alan Watson , one of the world's renowned legal scholars specializing in comparative law. Gunther Teubner expanded the notion of legal transplantation to include legal irritation : Rather than smoothly integrating into domestic legal systems,

16965-548: The same society, whenever there is a design of adopting the civil law of another nation, it would be proper to examine beforehand whether they have both the same institutions and the same political law. The modern founding figure of comparative and anthropological jurisprudence was Sir Henry Maine , a British jurist and legal historian. In his 1861 work Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas , he set out his views on

17110-461: The same time refusing to evaluate those norms. That is, "legal science" is to be separated from "legal politics". Central to the Pure Theory of Law is the notion of a ' basic norm ' ( Grundnorm )—a hypothetical norm, presupposed by the jurist, from which all "lower" norms in the hierarchy of a legal system , beginning with constitutional law , are understood to derive their authority or

17255-507: The second half of the twentieth century, sociological jurisprudence as a distinct movement declined as jurisprudence came more strongly under the influence of analytical legal philosophy; but with increasing criticism of dominant orientations of legal philosophy in English-speaking countries in the present century, it has attracted renewed interest. Increasingly, its contemporary focus is on providing theoretical resources for jurists to aid their understanding of new types of regulation (for example,

17400-401: The sense of "general justice"; as such, this idea of justice is more or less coextensive with virtue. "Particular" or "partial justice", by contrast, is the part of "general justice" or the individual virtue that is concerned with treating others equitably. Aristotle moves from this unqualified discussion of justice to a qualified view of political justice, by which he means something close to

17545-444: The standard account of the origins of International law, which emphasises the seminal text De iure belli ac pacis by Hugo Grotius , and argued for Vitoria and, later, Suárez's importance as forerunners and, potentially, founders of the field. Others, such as Koskenniemi, have argued that none of these humanist and scholastic thinkers can be understood to have founded international law in the modern sense, instead placing its origins in

17690-411: The subject of modern jurisprudence. Of political justice, Aristotle argues that it is partly derived from nature and partly a matter of convention. This can be taken as a statement that is similar to the views of modern natural law theorists. But it must also be remembered that Aristotle is describing a view of morality, not a system of law, and therefore his remarks as to nature are about the grounding of

17835-527: The term " possible world " to define modal notions. Gottfried Leibniz was born on July 1 [ OS : June 21], 1646, in Leipzig , Saxony, to Friedrich Leibniz (1597–1652) and Catharina Schmuck (1621–1664). He was baptized two days later at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig ; his godfather was the Lutheran theologian Martin Geier  [ de ] . His father died when he was six years old, and Leibniz

17980-471: The theorist's work. The natural law theorists of the distant past, such as Aquinas and John Locke made no distinction between analytic and normative jurisprudence, while modern natural law theorists, such as John Finnis, who claim to be positivists, still argue that law is moral by nature. In his book Natural Law and Natural Rights (1980, 2011), John Finnis provides a restatement of natural law doctrine. Unlike experimental jurisprudence , which investigates

18125-513: The traditions, customs, and beliefs of the German people did not include a belief in a code. Historicists believe that law originates with society. An effort to systematically inform jurisprudence from sociological insights developed from the beginning of the twentieth century, as sociology began to establish itself as a distinct social science , especially in the United States and in continental Europe . In Germany, Austria and France ,

18270-602: The view of Leibniz, because reason and faith must be entirely reconciled, any tenet of faith which could not be defended by reason must be rejected. Leibniz then approached one of the central criticisms of Christian theism: if God is all good , all wise , and all powerful , then how did evil come into the world ? The answer (according to Leibniz) is that, while God is indeed unlimited in wisdom and power, his human creations, as creations, are limited both in their wisdom and in their will (power to act). This predisposes humans to false beliefs, wrong decisions, and ineffective actions in

18415-410: The work of the "free law" theorists (e.g. Ernst Fuchs, Hermann Kantorowicz , Eugen Ehrlich and François Gény ) encouraged the use of sociological insights in the development of legal and juristic theory. The most internationally influential advocacy for a "sociological jurisprudence" occurred in the United States, where, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Roscoe Pound , for many years

18560-423: The world must be perfect. Leibniz also comforts readers, stating that because he has done everything to the most perfect degree; those who love him cannot be injured. However, to love God is a subject of difficulty as Leibniz believes that we are "not disposed to wish for that which God desires" because we have the ability to alter our disposition (IV). In accordance with this, many act as rebels, but Leibniz says that

18705-406: The world that excluded those flaws. Leibniz asserted that the truths of theology (religion) and philosophy cannot contradict each other, since reason and faith are both "gifts of God" so that their conflict would imply God contending against himself. The Theodicy is Leibniz's attempt to reconcile his personal philosophical system with his interpretation of the tenets of Christianity. This project

18850-541: The world, it was required that those systems per se get studied, irrespective of external factors, such as geographical ones. They proposed the classification of legal system into seven groups, or so-called 'families', in particular the: Konrad Zweigert and Hein Kötz propose a different, multidimensional methodology for categorizing laws, i.e. for ordering families of laws. They maintain that, to determine such families, five criteria should be taken into account, in particular:

18995-515: Was H. L. A. Hart , professor of jurisprudence at Oxford University . Hart argued that the law should be understood as a system of social rules. In The Concept of Law , Hart rejected Kelsen's views that sanctions were essential to law and that a normative social phenomenon, like law, cannot be grounded in non-normative social facts. Hart claimed that law is the union of primary rules and secondary rules. Primary rules require individuals to act or not act in certain ways and create duties for

19140-770: Was a life member of the Royal Society and the Berlin Academy of Sciences , neither organization saw fit to honor his death. His grave went unmarked for more than 50 years. He was, however, eulogized by Fontenelle , before the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had admitted him as a foreign member in 1700. The eulogy was composed at the behest of the Duchess of Orleans , a niece of the Electress Sophia. Leibniz never married. He proposed to an unknown woman at age 50, but changed his mind when she took too long to decide. He complained on occasion about money, but

19285-416: Was a philosophical development that rejected natural law's fusing of what law is and what it ought to be. David Hume argued, in A Treatise of Human Nature , that people invariably slip from describing what the world is to asserting that we therefore ought to follow a particular course of action. But as a matter of pure logic, one cannot conclude that we ought to do something merely because something

19430-490: Was a reaction to legal formalism that was popular the time due to the Christopher Columbus Langdell . Holmes's writings on jurisprudence also laid the foundations for the predictive theory of law. In his article "The Path of the Law", Holmes argues that "the object of [legal] study...is prediction, the prediction of the incidence of the public force through the instrumentality of the courts." For

19575-423: Was an early and staunch supporter of the utilitarian concept, and was an avid prison reformer, advocate for democracy , and firm atheist . Bentham's views about law and jurisprudence were popularized by his student John Austin . Austin was the first chair of law at the new University of London , from 1829. Austin's utilitarian answer to "what is law?" was that law is "commands, backed by threat of sanctions, from

19720-593: Was as a salaried secretary to an alchemical society in Nuremberg . He knew fairly little about the subject at that time but presented himself as deeply learned. He soon met Johann Christian von Boyneburg (1622–1672), the dismissed chief minister of the Elector of Mainz , Johann Philipp von Schönborn . Von Boyneburg hired Leibniz as an assistant, and shortly thereafter reconciled with the Elector and introduced Leibniz to him. Leibniz then dedicated an essay on law to

19865-558: Was considered that there were already enough foreigners there and so no invitation came. He left Paris in October 1676. Leibniz managed to delay his arrival in Hanover until the end of 1676 after making one more short journey to London, where Newton accused him of having seen his unpublished work on calculus in advance. This was alleged to be evidence supporting the accusation, made decades later, that he had stolen calculus from Newton. On

20010-466: Was educated influenced his view of their work. Leibniz variously invoked one or another of seven fundamental philosophical Principles: Leibniz would on occasion give a rational defense of a specific principle, but more often took them for granted. Leibniz's best known contribution to metaphysics is his theory of monads , as exposited in Monadologie . He proposes his theory that the universe

20155-661: Was guided, among others, by Jakob Thomasius , previously a student of Friedrich. Leibniz completed his bachelor's degree in Philosophy in December 1662. He defended his Disputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui ( Metaphysical Disputation on the Principle of Individuation ), which addressed the principle of individuation , on 9 June 1663 [ O.S. 30 May], presenting an early version of monadic substance theory. Leibniz earned his master's degree in Philosophy on 7 February 1664. In December 1664 he published and defended

20300-438: Was identified as a Protestant and a philosophical theist . Leibniz remained committed to Trinitarian Christianity throughout his life. Leibniz's philosophical thinking appears fragmented because his philosophical writings consist mainly of a multitude of short pieces: journal articles, manuscripts published long after his death, and letters to correspondents. He wrote two book-length philosophical treatises, of which only

20445-668: Was motivated in part by Leibniz's belief, shared by many philosophers and theologians during the Enlightenment , in the rational and enlightened nature of the Christian religion. It was also shaped by Leibniz's belief in the perfectibility of human nature (if humanity relied on correct philosophy and religion as a guide), and by his belief that metaphysical necessity must have a rational or logical foundation, even if this metaphysical causality seemed inexplicable in terms of physical necessity (the natural laws identified by science). In

20590-487: Was not necessarily universal. On the other hand, ius intra gentes , or civil law, is specific to each nation. Writing after World War II , Lon L. Fuller defended a secular and procedural form of natural law. He emphasised that the (natural) law must meet certain formal requirements (such as being impartial and publicly knowable). To the extent that an institutional system of social control falls short of these requirements, Fuller argued, we are less inclined to recognise it as

20735-403: Was one of the three influential early modern rationalists . His philosophy also assimilates elements of the scholastic tradition, notably the assumption that some substantive knowledge of reality can be achieved by reasoning from first principles or prior definitions. The work of Leibniz anticipated modern logic and still influences contemporary analytic philosophy , such as its adopted use of

20880-556: Was quite an honor, especially in light of the meteoric rise in the prestige of that House during Leibniz's association with it. In 1692, the Duke of Brunswick became a hereditary Elector of the Holy Roman Empire . The British Act of Settlement 1701 designated the Electress Sophia and her descent as the royal family of England, once both King William III and his sister-in-law and successor, Queen Anne , were dead. Leibniz played

21025-437: Was raised by his mother. Leibniz's father had been a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig , where he also served as dean of philosophy. The boy inherited his father's personal library. He was given free access to it from the age of seven, shortly after his father's death. While Leibniz's schoolwork was largely confined to the study of a small canon of authorities, his father's library enabled him to study

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