Self-preservation between the laws of nature and natural law

SILVIA MANZO

Gante

Workshop; Self-Care and Self-Preservation, c. 1400-1650; 2017

Universidad de Gante

Even if there are exchanges of meanings, parallels and continuities occurring between the concepts of preservation and the concepts of law in natural philosophy, psychology, ethics, political philosophy, and jurisprudence, it is my hypothesis that there are relevant differences worth to be explored which perhaps would find out that self-preservation was a more complex concept than the scholarship usually had claimed. The natural philosophical meanings of law have been in many cases imported and adapted from the conceptual developments of law in the realm of jurisprudence, ethics, and theology. However, the concepts of laws of nature circulating in the early modern period by no means could be identified with the concept(s) of natural law maintained in jurisprudence. In the same way, even if the strive for preservation was considered as a fundament of natural, moral and political order, the ways in which preservation was pursued and the potential conflicts that it produced were different in material bodies, individuals and society.