THE LAW OF NATURE ニ ツイテ チュウエイゴキ ノ イミ ナイヨウ カラ ノ イチコウサツ

The ‘law of nature’ or ‘natural law’ has been an important concept in the West since the classical period, when the phrases were endowed with some political and philosophical meaning by Aristotle, Cicero or Seneca. The idea was continued by the writers of the Middle Ages, and the fourteenth-century authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland were amongst them. The Oxford English Dictionary, defines the law ‘as was implanted by nature in the human mind, or as capable of being demonstrated by reason’, while the Middle English Dictionary defines its Middle English counterpart, ‘law of kynde’, as ‘the laws of principles governing the natural world’, and ‘the natural moral law’. The phrase ‘the law of nature’ , however, seems to have had more multi-stranded significance in the past. The following paper closely examines the works of two of the fourteenth-century writers mentioned above, thereby clarifying the meanings of this complex phrase. In Piers the Plowman, the law is identified with ‘reason,’ and constitutes an essential element of the maintenance of the order in the hierarchical feudal society. It also means ‘natural instinct’ or ‘natural desire’ necessitated by the desire for subsistence. In Chaucer’s works, natural law does not appear to be based upon reason, as is seen in the instances in the most influential source-work for Chaucer, le Roman de la Rose, where the law means such basic desires as sexual urge or appetite