The Cambridge Platonists’ philosophy of religion might be summed up as a tension between their commitment to the fixed nature of reason and goodness on the one hand and a commitment to freedom and distaste for all forms of tyranny and imposition on the other. This last chapter contends that the Cambridge Platonists not only acknowledge this tension, but embrace it, revelling in the paradoxical way that absolute fixedness and absolute freedom come together at the highest levels of being. This is made possible by what Stephen Darwall (writing specifically of Cudworth) has identified as an early theory of ‘practical reason’. This Platonic theory of practical reason draws together all the elements of the Cambridge Platonists’ outlook considered in earlier chapters – moral realism, divine communicative intent, and participatory epistemology, illustrating the extent to which this Platonic outlook binds together not only the thought of Whichcote, More, Cudworth and Smith but also runs through each of their views on different philosophical topics such as obligation, freedom and pedagogy.

Building on Derrida’s celebrated analysis of the term ‘supplement’, this chapter investigates the fundamental ambivalence of supplementary means of treaty interpretation. While the general philosophy of the Vienna Convention interpretive regime rests on the assumption of a hierarchy between the primary means set forth in Article 31 of the Vienna Convention and the supplementary means of Article 32, qualifying certain means as supplementary presumes that the primary interpretive means are somewhat lacking and in need of a complement. The chapter also focuses on the ‘danger’ of such supplement that has been highlighted in practice, namely, that supplementary means themselves need to be interpreted before they can be used in an interpretive inquiry, reinforcing the larger point made in the book that it is impossible to get an unmediated access to any signified. The chapter argues that since supplementary means are not comprehensively listed in the treaty interpretation regime, a virtually endless number of materials can be made relevant in treaty interpretation discourse through the channel of supplementary means.

How does one ascertain the object and purpose of a treaty? Can a treaty have more than one object and purpose? What does giving effect to the object and purpose of a treaty mean in practice? Despite such fundamental uncertainties surrounding them, the ‘object and purpose’ are widely resorted to in the practice of treaty interpretation. This chapter argues that the object and purpose doctrine is coextensive with a large amount of interpretive discretion. The identification of the object and purpose of a treaty a largely indeterminate process, and the assumption that the treaty makers necessarily want the object and purpose of their treaty to be implemented under all circumstances leaves the treaty interpreter with considerable normative power that can hardly be resisted given the very terms of the assumption. The chapter argues that consideration of the finality of a treaty cannot be an exercise in abstract logic, but meet the requirements of practical reason.

No philosopher is more strongly associated with deontological ethics or is a more canonical modern moral philosopher than Immanuel Kant. In this chapter, we focus on Kant, though we begin, after a brief introduction of Kant and his historico-philosophical significance, with Rousseau. Rousseau is best known as a political philosopher, but there are elements of his thought that have great importance for moral philosophy and its history and, especially, for Kant. Kant credits Rousseau as the source of his signature claim of the equal dignity of rational persons. And Rousseau’s conception of political society as an “association” that “defend[s] and protect[s] the person and goods of each associate with the full common force,” but where each “nevertheless obey[s] only himself,” has obvious resonances with Kant’s “kingdom of ends” in which all are governed by self-legislated law. At the same time, Rousseau offers important points of contrast to Kant. Whereas Rousseau’s emphasis is essentially social and political, Kant will attempt to argue for morality as a common law binding all agents that is grounded in practical reason alone. Rousseau, by contrast, points toward an alternative grounding in sociability that is reminiscent more of Grotius, Pufendorf, Smith, and Reid.

Jacobi argues that although Spinoza produced the most consistent rational system, its complete rational explanation leads to fatalism, mechanism, and atheism. The concern in this chapter is with how Jacobi stimulates Kant on issues of faith in relation to autonomy and practical reason (ethics), and how Kant’s “moral faith” seeks to avoid the pitfalls of mechanism while integrally linking faith with reason.

Prudence is the ability to determine the right course of action for a given situation. The virtue is fundamentally concerned with what we should do to achieve a desired objective, rather than what we should believe. Prudence is also a translation of Aristotle’s concept of phronesis (practical reason), which the Nicomachean Ethics defines as an “excellence of deliberation” (VI.9.9). In his formulation, Aristotle emphasizes the rightness of the ends being pursued, unlike several premodern and modern theories focusing only on the ability to attain desired ends, and which develop a somewhat uneasy relationship between prudence and virtue. Shakespeare makes the ethical challenges of prudence integral to The Merchant of Venice, a play featuring many deliberations over the means to such ends as happiness, wealth, friendship, and love. Throughout the play, Shakespeare takes a largely Aristotelian approach to prudence: characters who “hazard all” to gain noble ends are depicted as the most prudent, while the “shrewd,” who deliberate well but for immoral objectives, inevitably fail. Still, Shakespeare adds a final constraint to the virtue, suggesting that prudence is not a static trait but a dynamic effort to uncover one’s blind spots – and thus a virtue that few can hope to master.

This essay demonstrates the relationship between rights, natural law, and civic friendship by showing how the latter, the aim of law according to classic natural law theory, cultivates a culture of care for the other for one’s own sake, which is the basis of rights protections. It considers these connections in the teachings of key contributors to the classic natural law tradition, Aristotle and Aquinas, and engages their ideas with how rights are understood in modern liberal theory. The focus on the good regime of civic friendship responds to some contemporary concerns over the abstractness of human rights. While rights protections exist because the virtue of human beings cannot be depended upon, they still depend upon a standard of civic friendship that habituates citizens into regarding others as having absolute worth which finds its experiential origins in friendship.

The category of ‘human rights law’ is sometimes limited to bills and charters of rights on the model of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the case law of courts interpreting and applying these legal measures. This chapter argues that the measures that realise human rights in the law are the everyday, unremarkable measures that make up the full corpus of legal materials directing what may, must, and must not be done. The argument explores how all sound positive law finds its source in the human goods through one of two modes of derivation: deduction or specification. These are the same two modes of positive law’s derivation from natural law, for the reach of human rights law is more or less coextensive with the reach of positive law and the human goods from which are derived human rights law are the same human goods from which are derived natural law’s practical principles and precepts.

This chapter outlines three positions on the desirability of a marriage of the natural law and natural rights traditions: (i) that natural law and natural rights may be united without any recourse to revelation; (ii) that natural law and natural rights may be united but only by recourse to revelation; and (iii) that any form of union between natural law and natural rights should be avoided as contrary to the common good and the well-being of the City of God. It is argued that the third position is the preferred on the grounds that the natural rights tradition is difficult to translate into a non-individualistic, communitarian framework. Social bonds and civic ties revolve primarily around mediating institutions such as the family and cultural, educational, and sports associations, not around the machinery of the state and abstract concepts. Unlike Bills of Rights that enumerate rights attached to individuals, the alternative Common Law tradition presupposes that human persons live in communities, that human life is relational, and that conflicts arise for adjudication when a clash of claims occur that need to be resolved with reference to some higher common good.

We set forth and defend a natural law account of the fundamental dignity of persons. The basis of fundamental dignity--and of the possession of fundamental rights--is being a person: a being with a rational nature. What distinguishes human beings from other animals, what makes human beings persons rather than things, is their rational nature, that is, their having a nature oriented towards enabling them to shape their lives by their deliberate (rational) and free choices. One’s dignity and status as a person derives from the kind of substantial entity one is, namely, a human being, and, as such a creature whose nature is a rational nature. Because personhood is based on the kind of being one is – a substantial entity whose nature is a rational nature – one cannot lose one’s fundamental personal dignity as long as one exists. Although not all persons need be human beings (if, say, there are angels or intelligent Martians, they too are persons), all persons have a rational nature. And so every human being, from his or her coming to be until he or she ceases to be, is a person, and as such a bearer of inherent dignity and fundamental rights.

This chapter is the first of four investigating Aquinas’s view that choice is a hylomorphically structured act that inherits its preferential character from a previous judgment of reason. This chapter deals with the judgment preceding choice. The hallmark of this judgment is that it is free. It does not yet investigate this judgment’s free character in this chapter. Rather, here the groundwork is established for its discussion in Chapter 3 by clarifying what a practical judgment generally speaking is, for Aquinas. It argues that, on his view, a practical judgment involves two components, namely, a propositional content and an attitude of assent. It shows that the propositional content in question is an ought-statement or what Aquinas calls a “precept,” where the force of the ‘ought’ is not deontological, but rather means-end-relating. Thus, on Aquinas’s view, the chapter argues, to say that X ought to be done is to say that X ought to be pursued as a means for the sake of some end Y. It also shows that Aquinas draws a distinction between two types of means, expedient and necessary ones, and two types of ends, ultimate and non-ultimate ones, which yields four different types of precepts.

Chapter 2 develops the theoretical framework of the book and the conceptual categories that will be used. Onora O’Neill’s classic account of ‘agents of justice’ is incomplete, failing to acknowledge the obstacles that agents of justice meet when trying to apply abstract theories and principles of justice to the real world. The agents involved in this essential moral task can be conceptualized as formative agents of global justice. Formative agency is best channelled through democratic deliberation. Debates in the philosophy of practical reason already emphasize the need for moral deliberation to render moral principles action-guiding. There, moral deliberation is conceived as an internal, solitary activity taking place in each person’s head. We argue that external, collective deliberative processes are better able to support this moral activity. The chapter also introduces a distinction between different agents of justice (formative agents of justice, global justice entrepreneurs, and effectors of global justice) and discusses the roles that they play in global governance.