Changes Of Natural Law Thinking In Middle Ages

Middle ages, the darkest time in the Europe, is the most important and special period in the history of Natural Law. In the slow development, Nature Law was introduced by Greek philosopher at first, and then used to prove and justify the God by theologist in religion books, but there are many unclearness and misunderstanding. On the base of previous study, the aim of this thesis is to find out the evolution skeleton of Nature Law in Middle ages, by the way of investigating different thoughts of Augustine, Gratian and Thomas Aquinas.This thesis described the concept and development of Nature Law briefly, and then was composed by four parts. The first part introduced the situation of Nature Law before Middle ages. During this long period, Nature Law was the basement of the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Stoic ideology. This part is the groundwork of this thesis. The second part focuses on the Augustine's ideology of Nature Law, the center of which is the original sin. By resolving the'Epicurus paradox', Augustine considered that human beings have original sin themselves because of their ancestor, Adam. Therefore, in order to punish evil, it is necessary to establish laws which were classified by Eternal Law, Nature Law and Human Law. The third part deals with the Gratian's ideology of Nature Law, which was familiar with people. In the Decretum Gratiani, he discussed the relationships of Nature Law, Common Law and Unwritten Law in detail, especially the Ecclesia Law. The fourth part is Thomas Aquinas's ideology, in which the Nature Law becomes rational instead of mystic. According to Thomas, the source of Nature Law is logos, which is the essential difference between human and animals. After that, the idea of Nature Law becomes more and more common, and results in the Revival of Learning. The studying methods in this thesis include history review, value analysis and comparison analysis. Nature Law can't be investigated isolated because of its particular background. In Middle ages, theology dominated all the other science subjects, the descriptions of which were all included in the religion books. So only in this way can we study the evolution process and rules. Nature Laws played great impacts in human nature and society. The statements of Augustine, Gratiani and Thomas Aquinas have many similarities, as they all classified the laws, but the criterions are different from each other. From this and the relations between Natural Law and divinity, we can conclude the meanings of Natural Law and its evolution skeleton.Everything is progressing deviously. Even in the darkest Middle ages, full of divinity books and despotism, Natural Law had its own brightness. The goal and innovation point of this thesis is the evolution skeleton of Natural Law from obscure and expatiatory divinity literatures. In the period of Middle ages, Natural Law became more and more concern about the human beings, instead of close with God. As we all know, this revolution made human beings in Europe stepping out of religion obscuration, and into the scientific world.