Questions Concerning the Law of Nature

John Locke's untitled manuscript "Questions concerning the Law of Nature" (1664) was his only work focused on the subject of natural law, a circumstance that is especially surprising since his published writings touch on the subject frequently, if inconclusively. Containing a substantial critical apparatus, this new edition of Locke's manuscript is faithful to Locke's original intentions and to the format he chose for his discourse on the law of nature—a late-Scholastic quaestio disputata, the form through which in 1664 the young Locke debated questions with his students as moral censor of Christ Church.

For this volume, Robert Horwitz provides an introduction summarizing the history of the manuscript and analyzing Locke's role in the development of thinking on natural law. Jenny Strauss Clay offers a superb critical edition of the Latin text, for which she has supplemented the Latin text of Manuscript B, written by an amanuensis, with Manuscript A, a first draft in Locke's own hand. Diskin Clay's precise English translation—with the Latin presented on facing pages—is accompanied by annotations identifying Locke's references and allusions and explaining difficulties of translation.

In the view of Horwitz, Clay, and Clay, Questions concerning the Law of Nature shows a tension between several opposing conceptions of natural law. In developing this view, the editors break with W. von Leyden, who prepared the first edition of the text and who interpreted Locke's understanding of natural law squarely within a Christian framework. The editors here present a fresh interpretation of Locke as a thinker who posed a series of subtle challenges to traditional natural law doctrine. That Locke was aware of the political danger of this challenge is evident from his refusal to publish the work during his lifetime and from the care he took to conceal these manuscripts among his possessions.

Historians of philosophy, political scientists, political theorists, and others interested in the history of Western thought will welcome this definitive new edition of a key work for any interpretation of Locke.