Ewiges Recht?

Today's moral and legal philosophers mostly deem natural law obsolete. However, an analysis of methods, systematics and logical validity of contemporary natural law concepts shows that they should not be discarded so easily. Natural law theory provides a hermeneutics of the basic normativity of practice in general and offers a common basis for morals and law by representing them as parts of a whole. Nowadays, natural rights are mostly discussed as human or basic rights. Jan Leichsenring confronts natural law theory with several objections and discusses its relations to metaphysics, tradition, theology and positive law. Although in some cases natural law theory is indeed a naïve, fallacious, conservative ideology, the author demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case and that natural law thinking can in general be defended.