Grotius in the Prolegomena examines the reasons for the validity of natural law in a polemical discussion with the sceptical critic of Stoical philosophy, Carneades. The latter, in one of his speeches in Rome, asserted that all human conduct is motivated by one’s own utility and that justice does not exist. Grotius rejects these sceptical objections because people have an innate desire for community and, on the basis of their reason, are able to conduct themselves according to general rules. These rules are, as a series of norms of natural right, evident in themselves and unalterable. They would even be valid were there no God. Natural law is, according to Grotius, superordinate to the civil law and is the source of international law.
The Prolegomena opens with the remark that we lack a systematic work dealing with international law (ius gentium; § 1), although classical texts provide numerous examples of how ancient Romans and Greeks understood the question of a justlywaged war (§ 2–27). By providing a solution to this question Grotius wishes to help his times (§ 28–32): some of his contemporaries, after all, disparaged all use of weapons. After presenting the themes of each of the three books (§ 33–35) Grotius explained how he classifi ed his sources according to their usefulness in drawing up a groundplan of the natural elements of international law (§ 36–55) and he characterised the principles of the work (§ 56–61).
The contribution of intelligentsia to formation and development of ancient Roman justice is shined. The great attention is given to the extralegal criteria causing specificity of justice during the specified historical period. The empirical material of article is presented by citations from the historical, philosophical and legal monuments confirming theoretical arguments of the author.
This article examines the dimension of the tragic experience in Levinas’s ethics. This dimension seems at odds with this ethics’ claim to define justice in a new way – no longer as a relation of reciprocity between members of a community, but newly according to the individual and asymmetrical relation to the Other. On several occa-sions, Levinas expresses the intention to overcome the fatality of being and to break with the totalitarian effects of the State logic by revealing the ethical meaning beyond being. His philosophy has therefore been interpreted as an ethics of transcendence, based upon the reference to the idea of the Good, but which is unable to account for the tragic dimension of conflicting values and for the finitude of the subjectivity’s capabilities for doing good. In this article, however, I argue that Levinas does not ignore a dimension of the tragic in the ethical relation to the other. Reconsidering the notion of the “there is” (the il y a) within the relation to the other, I show in the first part of this paper how Levinas’s ethics of transcendence enables us to consider a new sense of the tragic experience, given with the responsibility for the other. In the second part, I examine how this sense of the tragic experience relates to Levinas’s understanding of justice. Confronting Levinas with Ricœur’s approach to tragic action in One-self as another, I point to a gap between Levinas’s ethical concept of justice and the political realisation of justice, the articulation of which also reveals several major problems in Levinas’s understanding of justice.