I. DEFINITIONS
The expression “natural law” includes the ideas of
nature and law, two nouns which do not lend them-
selves to univocal objective definition or even at least
to general or commonly accepted usage. One recent
author Erik Wolf (
Das Problem..., Ch. I, Part III)
enumerates twelve meanings of “nature” and ten
meanings of “law,” which yield 120 possible combina-
tions and almost as many definitions of the expression
“natural law.” We may add that if it is theoretically
possible to think of supporting a specific agreement
as to the present meaning of “nature”—again in this
case not overlooking all the other historically accepted
meanings—on the other hand, it is certain that there
is no hope of finding a similar agreement about the
idea of “law”: the definition of law entails reference
to philosophical presuppositions and consequently is
not susceptible to supporting an indispensable general
consensus. The definition of law is indeed the rock of
Sisyphus.
To define natural law in an objective manner by
disengaging it from its environment, from the schools
which employ the expression, or from the political and
legal organs which make use of it, is therefore an
undertaking doomed to failure from the start. Hence
it is necessary, if we wish to avoid confusion, always
to qualify the expression: for example, classical natural
law (to make the Aristotelian or Thomist conception
precise); Stoic natural law; Protestant natural law;
positive natural law characteristic of one of the forms
of contemporary natural law (the legal sense of natural
law); and so forth.
Furthermore, certain essential features of natural law
can be formulated by specifying it in contrast with
conventional law: nature opposed to convention, jus-
tice to legal right, even unwritten law opposed to
written law, the permanence of certain human values
confronting the transitory character of other values
derived especially from the state. Seen in this light
natural law appears as a group of principles that tran-
scend the law of different epochs and regrouping a set
of norms endowed with a certain continuity by opposi-
tion to the law of a given epoch, which is transitory
and changing; for the law of any epoch is the inter-
preter of the preceding one, whereas natural law is
the law which outlives the times.
Though the expression “natural law” is equivocal,
the idea of “natural rights” presents much less am-
biguity. By “natural rights” we understand the subjec-
tive rights that man possesses as a human being, which
are granted to his person for the protection of certain
essential interests. These rights are considered the
irreducible legal patrimony of every human being as
part of his very nature. They are based on the idea
that only a human being is a person, and that every
human being is a person. As a consequence, these rights
are inalienable and imprescriptible. Inalienable, be-
cause if these rights would be given up, man would
cease to be a person and become a case of alienation;
imprescriptible, because if these rights ceased to exist
(extinctive prescription), man would likewise cease to
be a person in his prescribed condition.
Natural rights thus appear as a manifestation of
individualism, man being considered in his own nature
independently of his political allegiance. They conse-
crate the idea of the dignity of the human person
considered as such.
