Questions Concerning the Law of Nature

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.