Maimonides, Nature and Natural Law

Joseph (Yossi) E. David, “Maimonides, Nature and Natural Law” (September 3, 2008). Journal of Law Philosophy and Culture. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1262796

Did Maimonides accept or reject the concept of Natural Law? While initial inquiries asked whether Maimonides accepted or rejected the doctrine as a whole, later studies focussed on whether Maimonidean legal theory could go along with the Natural Law doctrine or not. The aim of my paper is to go a step further and to argue that while Maimonides had a lively interest in the relationship between nature and law, he was not dragged into the Natural Law discourse. In other words, although he didn’t overlook the nature-law question in his jurisprudential scheme, he didn’t see it as integral to his legal theory