Natural laws precede written law.
The concept of natural law has two major uses. It can refer to the ruling that emanates from reason and the rights that are based on human nature itself or to the physical norm that establishes the behavior of bodies under certain conditions.
Natural law is known as those principles based on the nature of the human being and that are usually shared by almost all members of society. Natural laws, in this sense, are linked to the doctrine known as natural law .
The human being and natural law
For natural law , there is a natural right that all people have by virtue of belonging to the human species. This means that this right is associated with human nature, is universal and corresponds to natural laws.
Natural laws, in this framework, are precedent, superior and independent of written law, positive law and customary law. According to this theory, no one can violate these laws without committing a crime.
Plato, Aristotle and classical natural law
Just like many other concepts that are currently part of our universal cultural background, natural law has its origin in the work of the Greek philosopher Plato , which is why we must move to the 4th century BC. C., in particular to his work entitled Republic and Laws .
In "Republic and Laws", Plato reflects on natural law.
Aristotle , another of the most remembered Greek philosophers in history, spoke of natural law in his work Nicomachean Ethics , published the same century as Republic and Laws . Throughout this treatise on the ethics and morals of Western philosophy, Aristotle makes a distinction between conventional (that is, legal) and natural justice.
According to Aristotle's ideas, the force of natural justice is always the same, regardless of what human beings think. In the same way, it ensures that natural law is not immutable, since in human nature itself there are changes that respond to principles whose development is internal.
Aristotle also believed in the idea that the human being is characterized by being the only rational organism on the planet, something that many maintain even today to the detriment of the rest of the animal species.
In his work entitled Politics , he determines that reasoning is one of the natural laws, and that it serves to establish precepts such as freedom itself (it should be noted that he believed in the division between superior and inferior men, and therefore, also that slavery was justified by the nature of each one).
Natural law according to Stoicism
The philosophical school called Stoicism , founded by Zeno of Citium at the end of the 4th century BC. C., took up this aspect of rationality although with a different point of view.
For the Stoics, human nature is located in the natural order and its reason is a spark that comes from the creative fire thanks to which the cosmos can be ordered and unified. Natural law is reason itself, which the gods themselves implanted in us. It is worth clarifying that by natural law they understood only sound reason and not that which is perverted to serve other interests.
The concept in physics
A natural law, on the other hand, is a physical principle that is established from concrete facts and empirical evidence . When this principle can be applied to a defined set of phenomena and the realization of its statement under specific conditions is certified, we can speak of natural law.
These natural laws, in short, are conclusions that arise from scientific tests and observations repeated over time and already accepted by the community of scientists. Thus, through the postulation of natural laws, reality and everything that surrounds us is described.