Albert the Great | Stanley B. Cunningham (essay date 1967)
Stanley B. Cunningham (essay date 1967)
SOURCE: "Albertus Magnus on Natural Law," in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4, October-December, 1967, pp. 479-502.
[In the following essay, Cunningham maintains that Albert's writings in his De bono constitute a significant development in the Medieval conception of natural law.]
In the history of the concept of natural law and its development in the Middle Ages, a privileged authority is commanded by the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. By comparison, only scant attention has been paid to speculations in the area of law and morals carried out by Thomas' teacher, Albert the Great (1206-1280), and still less to the extent of Thomas' dependency upon the latter. The full import of Albert's contributions, however, is appreciable when measured against the background of moral theorizing in the XI-IIth century. For one thing, his own independent writings as well as two...
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