Reforming the Law of Nature

Simon P. Kennedy is Senior Lecturer in Humanities at Christian Heritage College and the Director of the Millis Institute, in Brisbane, Queensland. He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. He researches the intersections between political ideas, law, and religion.

Simon P. Kennedy offers an intellectual contribution of exceptionally high merit. By offering a nuanced and historically well-grounded analysis, demonstrates convincingly how natural law thinking in the early modern period first coincided with and then became unmoored from Protestant thought. Reforming the Law of Nature should effect a fundamental change in the way in which we recount the history of European natural law theory.

• IntroductionJohn Calvin’s Political NaturalismRichard Hooker’s Theistic NaturalismJohannes Althusius and Political Society as PactumThomas Hobbes: Reforming Nature, Profaning PoliticsJohn Locke on Conventional PoliticsConclusion