Abstract

Francesco Viola’s new book is an excellent contribution not only to the history of natural law in the twentieth century, but to the theoretical reflection on the functions of natural law today. On the one hand, from the point of view of historical reconstruction, the tripartite division by Viola between the three twentieth-century rebirths of natural law is very efficacious, leaving room for a concluding chapter on contemporary natural law theories. On the other hand, from the point of view of theoretical reflection, on which the author himself insists, the distinction between a broad sense of the expression “natural lawµ and a narrow sense, closer to the theories of John Finnis and Viola himself, is interesting and intriguing. The present contribution, in turn, tries to show how Viola’s theoretical positions may be compared to the theses of legal evolutionism on three subjects: law-moral relationships, metaethics, and theory of interpretation