Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T05:23:00.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 6 - Human Nature and Natural Law in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose

from Part II - Natural Law, Politics, and Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2020

By
Philip Knox
Edited by
Jonathan Morton  and
Marco Nievergelt
With
John Marenbon
Jonathan Morton
Affiliation:
Tulane University, Louisiana
Marco Nievergelt
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Get access

Summary

This paper seeks to deepen our understanding of Jean’s idea of ‘the natural’ by exploring how Jean relates to the complex (often self-contradictory) discourse that formed around medieval discussions of natural law. These discussions occur in legal and theological arenas in Bologna and Paris, a deeply suggestive context for Jean’s presentation of the natural. Such investigations are timely after renewed focus on documentary records relating to the life of Jean de Meun has revealed more details relating to his legal training in Bologna, but this chapter also shows thirteenth-century legal thought spilled out beyond the boundaries of juridical writings: Jean need not have been a lawyer to come into contact with these ideas. Instead of seeking to identify an individual ‘source’ that will decode Jean’s attitude to nature, I point towards a complex of developing ideas, a discourse to which he responds and in which he intervenes. Focusing on the legal tradition that led Aquinas to claim that human nature is double in a discussion of natural law, and relating this to the double nature of the human experience of desire in the Rose, this chapter seeks to cast new light on a relatively unexamined aspect of Jean’s intellectual development.

Keywords

Natural lawlegal theorycanon lawGratianJustiniannaturedesiretheology
Type
Chapter
Information
The ‘Roman de la Rose' and Thirteenth-Century Thought , pp. 131 - 148
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×