There is a difference in natural law doctrines that have affected me growing up in the USA I definitely imbibed the natural law theory embodied in the Declaration of Independence of Thomas Jefferson along with the emphasis in Southern California to be an individual, and not follow the crowd.
This Thomas Jefferson doctrine is different than other theories of natural law.
The basic idea I should state here is that people have natural rights that they are endowed with by their Creator. These rights are natural rights, and do not owe their existence to any government. And here is the key point--governments are formed not just to preserve these rights, but also people give up a certain amount of their rights in order to form a government.
This is due to John Locke. Further the identification of Divine rights with natural rights comes from Thomas Aquinas.
There is a theory of natural law from Saadia Gaon who associates all laws of the Torah --Divine Law with laws of reason-not nature. This is a different natural law theory than Aquinas.
[That is also not necessarily the reason for the law, In the gemara itself there is the idea of reason for the laws. And teh question about what to do when the reason does not apply to a certain situation. This come up in Bava Metzia page 119. R Shimon ben Yochai said a rich widow, one can take a pledge for a loan from since the reason for the law not to take the pledge of a widow does not apply. The sages disagree. But in any case all agree the commandments are not the goal in themselves. Rather they are to lead to certain goals.
This Thomas Jefferson doctrine is different than other theories of natural law.
The basic idea I should state here is that people have natural rights that they are endowed with by their Creator. These rights are natural rights, and do not owe their existence to any government. And here is the key point--governments are formed not just to preserve these rights, but also people give up a certain amount of their rights in order to form a government.
This is due to John Locke. Further the identification of Divine rights with natural rights comes from Thomas Aquinas.
There is a theory of natural law from Saadia Gaon who associates all laws of the Torah --Divine Law with laws of reason-not nature. This is a different natural law theory than Aquinas.
[That is also not necessarily the reason for the law, In the gemara itself there is the idea of reason for the laws. And teh question about what to do when the reason does not apply to a certain situation. This come up in Bava Metzia page 119. R Shimon ben Yochai said a rich widow, one can take a pledge for a loan from since the reason for the law not to take the pledge of a widow does not apply. The sages disagree. But in any case all agree the commandments are not the goal in themselves. Rather they are to lead to certain goals.
