It is immaterial for understanding the concept of an artificial person that usually it takes a natural person (a human being) to play the role, occupy the position or perform the function of an artificial person. It is said that the Roman Emperor Caligula wanted to make his horse a Consul of the Empire. If he had done that, it would not have changed the positive rights and duties of a Roman Consul. What a King in chess is or can do is independent of whether the game is played by human chess players or by computer programmes. Usually, one chess player moves all the pieces of a given colour. However, in other rule-defined systems, two or more human individuals may occupy the same position or perform the same function (as when two part-timers occupy the position of Secretary). There is no direct connection between the order of human persons and an order of artificial persons.

It is a sad fact that modern law schools and most of the lawyers they produce seem to have adopted the idea that only 'positive law' should count as law. However, positive law is merely an arbitrary system of rules that defines a game or society, which is an order of personified positions, roles and functions. In most cases, it is supported by a social organisation of rewards and punishments-itself a positive law-that aims to induce or to compel natural persons to perform the roles scripted for them. On the other and, more often than not, natural law, which is the convivial order of natural human persons, is dismissed without serious argument. In the convivial order, people interact as human beings, irrespective of their status, role or function (if any) in any social order.

Thus, in the practice of the modern law schools, the science of law is neglected almost completely in favour of the dogmatic study of a multitude of arbitrary 'systems of legal rules'. Without much exaggeration, we can say that, in the law schools, the science of law, which seeks to identify the principles and patterns of order (as against disorder) in the human world, has lost out to a fragmented 'legal science'. The conceptual distinction between the legal and the illegal, which belongs to the study of artificial orders, has displaced the distinction between the lawful and the unlawful, which pertains to real or natural order.

That is true to a large extent even in the field of 'private law', although its basic patterns of property, contract and personal liability are not arbitrary 'social constructions' and would be incomprehensible without reference to the objective conditions of order among natural persons. The study of 'private law' all too often is restricted to the acquisition of knowledge of a particular system of legal rules and their judicial application. Whether the rules and their applications help to maintain, strengthen or restore respect for the objective conditions of order among natural persons, is hardly ever an issue. For example, in the perspective of legal positivism, 'buying' and 'selling' appear as social functions defined by whatever rules that happen to apply rather than as human activities that may or may not respect the natural order of the human world. Thus, the law student is more likely to learn to detect if an activity is according to the rules than to discover the conditions under which the activity does, or does not, sow confusion about or among persons, or about who said, did, or produced what, when and where.

However, in this paper, we shall not discuss the methodological and ontological issues attending the distinction between social orders of artificial persons or personified social positions and the convivial order of natural persons. Our focus is on the general concept of an order of persons (whether natural or not).

In the first section, we define a formal language using only the resources of first order predicate logic (extended with the logic of the identity of objects). Using that language, we then formulate a general theory of law as a formal theory of order among persons and the means that belong to them. It is a general theory in the sense that it is very nearly a pure logic of the binary predicator 'x belongs to y'. Indeed, the general theory has only two axioms that restrict the possible interpretations of that predicator. By introducing new predicators - all of them defined in terms of the basic 'x belongs to y' - we can extend the vocabulary of the formal theory and rephrase its theorems in a manner that reveals its relevance for the philosophy of law. For example, we define the notions of 'a person' and 'a means' syntactically in terms of the relation 'x belongs to y'. The only presuppositions of the theory are that there may be things that are means but not persons, and that if 'A belongs to B' is true, then B must be a person while A must be a person or a means.

Next, we consider an extension of the general theory to provide a formal framework for referring to actions. We introduce a couple of predicators that refer to relations between 'actions' and 'means' or 'persons'. Again, there are just a few axioms that restrict the possible interpretations of those predicators. We conclude the first section with the formulation of a general principle of justice.

In the second section, we introduce another basic binary predicator, 'x naturally belongs to y', that we define implicitly by means of a few axiomatic constraints. The main interest of that section is the formal definition of the predicator 'is a natural person'. This gives us a formal perspective on the notion of natural law as an order among natural persons.

We then try to flesh out that perspective by introducing a number of propositions that together make up a naturalistic filter and a principle of natural justice. We may think of the former as postulates of natural law. They formally link the general theory of order among persons to the theory of order among natural persons (the theory of natural law). Applying the filter to theories about the status in law of natural persons, we can identify and eliminate those that conflict with the postulates of natural law or the principle of natural justice. We shall see that political and legal theories of law (which accommodate the notion of unilateral rule or legislation) have to deny the principle of natural justice.

In the third section, we introduce a formal placeholder for human beings into the framework of the theory of natural law. We conclude the analysis with a brief look at the different ways in which the theory of human law can be integrated formally into the general theory.

One can interpret the formal theory by stipulating rules of correspondence that link its terms to various classes of things, events, actions or relations in what the interpreter assumes to be the real world. Obviously, there conceivably is an innumerable multitude of different, more or less plausible interpretations. We shall call such interpretations material theories of law, but we shall consider only certain classes of them towards the end of this paper. We assume that all or nearly all of the better known and historically influential material theories of law are or include interpretations of the formal theory that we shall set out below. To the extent that assumption is true, the formal theory is a tool for drawing out the implications of such theories and interpretations.

Our interest in law obviously derives from our concerns about human beings and their relations. The same concerns motivate our attempt to develop a formal theory of law. However, the formal system does not and cannot fix a priori the semantics of 'person' or any other term of the language. Of course, the common understanding of the word 'person' is that it refers to a human being, but in some disciplines (for example theology, political, legal and social theory) many other things are personified or taken to be persons. Similarly, the common understanding of 'natural person' is that it too refers to a human being. Again, some disciplines or philosophies may assume that the formal characteristics of what we here call 'a natural person' apply to other sorts of things as well as to human beings. Our aim here is not to judge the merits or demerits of particular material theories of law from a semantic or pragmatic point of view. We merely want to elucidate their common logical forms and the effects of particular postulates to which they might appeal in arriving at particular conclusions.

(SD1) Po' =: ( #o) Boo'

(SD2) Mo' =: (#o) Bo'o

By using distinct sets of variables to refer to the class of persons, respectively to the class of means, we can simplify considerably the presentation of the system by having recourse to the technique of many-sorted quantification. Thus (p)F and (#q)G are to be read respectively as 'for all persons, F [is the case]' and as 'for at least one person, G [is the case]'. On the other hand we read (x)F and (#y)G respectively as 'for all means, F [is the case]' and as 'for at least one means, G [is the case]'.

Given the syntactical definitions SD1 and SD2, we can immediately derive two theorems: (p)(#x) Bxp and (x)(#p) Bxp - for every person, there is at least one means that belongs to him; and for every means, there is at least one person to whom it belongs. The proofs of those theorems are too simple to spell out. In any case the formal presentation should make it easy to check their validity. The same remarks apply to all the other theorems. While we shall occasionally provide short sketches of proofs, we shall list most theorems without proving them.

In view of SD2 the first axiom implies that every person is a means. In other words, the set of persons is a subset of the set of means. Consequently, the name of any person is the name of a means and the variables x, y, ... can be instantiated with the names of persons. The first axiom ensures that if something is identified as a person, it is meaningful to ask to whom he belongs. The answer may be 'to himself alone', 'to himself and one or more other persons' or 'to one or more other persons'. The axiom only excludes the possibility that a person (in the sense of the formal theory) belongs to no one. In other words, every person is the property of some person; there is no person for whom no person is responsible or answerable.

Persons

We now define three general relational concepts in terms of a person's relation to others: sovereignty, autonomy and heteronomy.

(DP3) Sp =: (q)(Bpq > p=q)

It follows immediately that

Free persons are sovereign.

A person is free if and only if he is sovereign.

A sovereign person is a real person.

(DP4) Ap =: (q)(Bpq > Bqp)

An autonomous person is a real person.

Every sovereign person is an autonomous person.

(DP5) Hp =: -Ap

Every person is either an autonomous person or a heteronomous person.

(DP6) A!p =: Ap & -Sp

Obviously,

TP11) (p) (A!p > (#q)(Bpq & -p=q))

TP12) (p)(q)(A!p & Bpq > A!q & Bqp)

If P is a strictly autonomous person who belongs to Q, then Q is a strictly autonomous person who belongs to P.

Strictly autonomous persons are not free persons.

TP14) (p) (Sp v A!p v Hp)

TP15) -(#p) (Sp & A!p)

TP16) -(#p) (A!p & Hp)

No person is at once strictly autonomous and heteronomous.

TP17) -(#p) (Sp & Hp)

Every non-sovereign person belongs to at least one other person.

TP19) (p) (Ap & (q)(Aq > p=q) > Sp)

TP20) (p)( (q) p=q > Sp)

By inductive generalisation we can derive the following propositions. (The expressions 'finite word' and 'infinite world' stand for a world with a finite, respectively a world with an infinite number of persons in it.)

(DP7) SACpq =: A!p & Bpq

Obviously,

TP22) (p) ((#q) SACpq > A!p)

TP24) (p)(q) (SACpq > SACqp)

TP25) (p)(q)(r) (SACpq & SACqr > SACpr)

Obviously, no person can be a member of more than one autonomous collective. If C1 and C2 are different autonomous collectives (there being at least one person who is a member of one but not of the other), then none of the members of C1 is a member of C2, and vice versa. Of particular relevance is the following theorem:

Whatever belongs to one member of an autonomous collective also belongs to every other member.

The members of an autonomous collective may be masters and rulers of other persons, who would then be serfs and subjects of each and every one of the members of the collective. However, while the members of an autonomous collective necessarily are rulers and subjects of each other, they cannot be serfs of any master (for then they would not be autonomous persons). Nor can they be subjects of any person who is not a member of the collective, since that too would conflict with their status as autonomous persons.

Clearly, sovereign persons have no master. Although several sovereign persons may have many means (including serfs or subjects) 'in common', they are always independent of one another. They cannot be part of an autonomous collective; and if they are part of a hegemonic collective, their position in it must be that of a ruler. Unlike strictly autonomous persons, who are necessarily rulers and subjects, sovereign persons need not be either. Thus, sovereign persons need not be members of any collective and they do not constitute a collective of any sort.

Rousseau's conception of the State is based on the notion of an autonomous collective. The social contract requires every human person who becomes a party to the 'social contract' to give all of his possessions, all of his rights, indeed himself, in common to all the others. Thus, the social contract founds an autonomous collective. However, Rousseau set out to prove to his own satisfaction-and against Hobbes-that an autonomous collective could be a viable option, at least in theory, if certain conditions were met. The essential condition was that human nature should change, because an autonomous collective made up of natural human persons would inevitably be a Hobbesian 'war of all against all'. To meet that condition, it was necessary that a political genius-Rousseau's 'legislator'-should succeed in turning natural men and women into artificial citizens of the right kind. Rousseau's argument was that if it were possible to make citizens out of human beings then the autonomous collective would become a self-governing, free real unity of equal citizens. The social contract, therefore, must be interpreted as creating a new entity, 'the People' or 'the State', which is the personified autonomous collective itself. That artificial person, however, can come to life only if the living human material that constitutes it takes the form of the Citizen-if it can be made to identify fully with the State.

Like Hobbes' subjects, Rousseau's citizens interpret their subjection to the State as their authorisation of the State. However, in the autonomous collective of the State, Rousseau's citizens do not act according to their particular 'natural will' (their given human nature) but according to the statutory 'general will' of the collective itself (which is to become second nature to them). That general will is the same for all citizens qua citizens, because by definition a citizen qua citizen is animated by nothing else than the statutory purpose of the association. Rousseau's citizens, therefore, are committed to act according to the legal rules that express the determinations of the 'general will' in particular circumstances.

For every member of an autonomous collective there is another person who is his civic persona.

The civic personae of any two members of the same autonomous collective are identical.

In the final analysis, Rousseau's theory ends up in the same corner as Hobbes'. For both, the social contract establishes a sovereign who rules his subjects, who are also his serfs. In Rousseau's approach, the social contract does so in two steps. First, it ostensibly establishes only an autonomous collective in which every person belongs to every other, but then this collective is personified and turned into a sovereign ruler ('the People') in its own right. That second step is accomplished by legally interpreting the autonomous collective of human persons as an autonomous collective of their identical civic personae. The latter collective, therefore, legally has only one member, the People, who necessarily is autonomous and indeed sovereign. The human persons ultimately drop out of the picture. However, as in reality the transformation of men into citizens takes time, they must be given a place in the State until the transformation is complete. Their place is that of a heteronomous person, a serf. From the citizen's point of view, then, the State is not a hegemonic collective and every citizen is autonomous and sovereign. The political circle is squared: citizens are 'free and equal'. From the human point of view, however, the State is a hegemonic collective, with the citizens constituting the ruling class and the (not yet fully socialised) human persons constituting the class of serfs. From that point of view, the political circle is not squared at all. Nevertheless, Rousseau's legal pyrotechnics, masquerading as political philosophy, had a great future. It spawned a numerous offspring of ideologies of 'the republican state' and its fulfilment of the requirements of liberty and equality. In the legal-political theory of the State, fiction trumps reality.

Rights

(DR1) Dpxq =: (Bxp v Bqp) & -Bpq

Note that this definition merely states the truth-conditions of statements of the form specified in the definiendum. Thus, to refute the claim that P has right to deny Q the use of X, one may point out that neither X nor Q belongs to P, or that P is a serf or subject of Q. As immediate consequences we have

No person has right to deny himself the use of himself.

TR2) (p)(x) (Dpxp > Bxp)

A person P has right to deny himself the use of X only if X belongs to him.

(DR2) Fpxq =: -Dqxp

(DR3) Rpxq =: Bxp & -Dqxp

(DR4) R*px =: (q)Rpxq

Obviously,

If P has right to the use of X without the consent of Q, then Q has no right to deny P the use of X.

TR7) (p) (Sp > R*pp)

TR9) (p)(q)(x) (Sp & Bxp & -p=q > -Rqxp)

If P belongs to Q then Q has right to the use of P without the latter's consent.

TR11) (x)(p)(q) (r) (Rpxq & Brq > Rpxr)

If P has right to the use of X without consent of Q then P has right to the use of X without the consent of any person that belongs to Q.

A member of an autonomous collective has right to the use of any other member's means without the latter's consent.

TR13) (p)(q) (SACpq > Rpqq)

Members of the same autonomous collective have right to the use of each other without consent.

TR14) (p)(x) (Hp & Bxp > (#q) Rqxp)

For every heteronomous person P there is another person Q who has right to the use of P's means without the latter's consent.

TR15) (p)(x) (Hp & Bxp > (#q) -Rpxq)

For every means X that belongs to a heteronomous person P there is a person Q without whose consent P has no right to the use of X.

TR16) (p) (Hp > (#q) Rqpp)

For every heteronomous person P there is a person Q who has right to the use of P without the latter's consent.

Property

Our basic relation 'x belongs to p' can be interpreted as a property-relation. However, we easily can define some forms of property, such as common property, communal property and ownership, in its terms.

(DY1) Oxp =: Bxp & (q)(Bxq > Bqp)

It follows that an imaginary person cannot own what belongs to it. To put this differently, an owner must be a real person:

Only real persons own anything.

TY2) (x)(p) (Oxp > Ap)

Only autonomous persons own anything.

TY3) (x)(p) (Hp > -Oxp)

No heteronomous person owns anything.

TY4) (p) (Sp > Opp)

Only self-owners are sovereign.

TY5) (p) (Ap > Opp)

Every autonomous person is a self-owner.

TY6) (p) (Opp > Ap)

Every self-owner is an autonomous person.

If a member of an autonomous collective owns X then every member of that collective owns X.

Only common property is communal property.

If P and Q have communal property then they belong to one another.

There is no communal property between master and serf.

If X is communal property of P and Q then neither P nor Q is a sovereign person.

Whatever belongs to any member of an autonomous collective is communal property of all its members.

Actions

The use of the added primitive predicators is constrained by four axioms:

The first axiom requires us to interpret Uix and Vix in such a way that whenever U holds for some pair (i,x) V holds for the same pair. However, it allows us to consider that with respect to some such pair V holds but U does not: an action may 'affect' a means without 'using' it. The second and the third axioms ensure that there is always some connection between an element in the domain of means and some element in the domain of actions, and vice versa. The fourth axiom stipulates that an action that affects a means (in a way that is relevant from the point of view of law) also affects the person(s) to whom that means belongs.

From the perspective of a theory of law, the primary purpose of introducing the concept of action is to answer questions about what sort of things a person has, or does not have, the right to do. To achieve that purpose, we first define with respect to actions some concepts that are analogous to those that we introduced earlier:

The following definitions extend concepts of property and ownership to actions:

Among the theorems that we can prove, we note the following:

If P owns I then P has the right to do I without the consent of any Q.

No heteronomous person owns any action.

If one member of an autonomous collective has the right to do an action without the consent of a person R, then so does every other member.

If any member of an autonomous collective owns an action, then so does every other member.

No member of an autonomous collective has right to deny any action to any other member.

P has the right to do I without consent of Q if and only if action I belongs to P and if either I or P belongs to Q then Q belongs to P.

Because the DA6-concept is 'stronger' than the concept defined in DA5, its negation is 'weaker' than the negation of the DA5-concept.

In their use of the expression 'has right to do some kind of action' some material theories may exhibit a preference for one of those notions over the other. Perhaps the same theory uses that expression now in one sense, then in another. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but the indiscriminate use of the same expression to convey different logical structures may be utterly confusing.

A peculiar consequence of the definitions is that no person has a weak right, but every person has a strong right to do any action of an impossible kind or a kind that has no instantiation. For example, any action of the kind 'Zi & -Zi' would be impossible; an action of the kind 'transporting the planet Jupiter', which presumably is logically possible, does not at present exist. For action-types that do have instances, having a strong right obviously implies having a weak right. The reverse is not always true.

We note that

If P has the weak right to Z without anybody's consent, then P is an autonomous person.

Consider now the theorem

Similar complications attend the interpretation of 'freedom to do some generic action'. We could trace it back to definition DR2 (one's freedom to use some means without the consent of another person). Then, we should note at least the following possibilities for defining 'freedom to do:

No person has right to put what belongs to an independent person in V-state Φ without that person's consent.

No one has right to put an independent person in V-state Φ without his consent.

There is no person R without whose consent P has right to deprive a person Q of his innocence.

There is no person Q without whose consent P has right to deprive himself of his innocence.

General Principle of Justice

In the formal theory, it follows from GJ that

TG2) (p)-Ip > (q)-Sq

If no person is innocent, then no person is sovereign.

SECTION II

Natural Persons and Natural Law

P is a natural person =: P belongs to himself by nature.

Only to a natural person does any means belong naturally.

No person belongs naturally to any other person.

No means belongs naturally to more than one person.

For every natural person, some means naturally belongs to him.

For every pair of natural persons, there is a means that naturally belongs to one of the pair but not to the other.

Legal positivists might object to the use of the term 'natural' concerning persons. However, the term is not important. Another term, say 'necessary', might do as well. What is important is that we have at our disposal a concept of a person that is independent of the concept of a person as defined in the general theory of law, yet sufficiently similar to be subsumed under the latter theory. Although we may believe that human persons are natural persons, and perhaps the only natural persons, we cannot charge a purely formal theory with these assumptions.

Natural law theorists focus on natural persons (in an ordinary sense of the word 'natural') as the persons whose existence is necessary to make sense of law as an order of persons. From their point of view, all other orders of persons-orders of artificial persons such as corporations or states-are 'law' only by analogy to the natural order of human persons.

The Postulates of Natural Law

No matter what a material theory of law may say about other sorts of persons, it cannot be a theory of natural law unless it denies that there is at any time an actual infinity of natural persons.

Every person belongs to at least one natural person.

Only natural persons are free.

Only natural persons are sovereign.

There is at least one autonomous natural person.

Only real persons are natural persons.

What belongs naturally to a person, belongs to whomever he belongs to.

From the postulates of individualism and consistency it follows that

What belongs naturally to a person P belongs to another person Q if and only if P belongs to Q.

Q has right to deny P the use of what naturally belongs to P only if P belongs to Q.

Q has right to deny a natural person P the use of himself only if P belongs to Q

The Principle of Natural Justice

A natural person is free if and only if he is innocent.

An innocent natural person is autonomous.

No innocent natural person is heteronomous.

A natural person is sovereign if and only if he is innocent.

For every pair of innocent natural persons, some means belong(s) to only one of them.

For every innocent natural person, there is a means that belongs exclusively to him.

What belongs naturally to an innocent person belongs to him exclusively.

An innocent person owns what naturally belongs to him.

Natural Rights

We have seen that the class of persons can be partitioned in three jointly exhaustive but mutually exclusive subclasses of sovereign, heteronomous and strictly autonomous persons. In short, the status of a person in law is 'sovereignty', 'strict autonomy' or 'heteronomy'. In view of that fact, we can make an exhaustive list of all logically possible types of theories of order among natural persons (theories of natural law), subject only to a few straightforward conditions. First, we consider only theories concerning the original status in law of natural persons-in other words, their original or natural rights. Obviously, a person's status may change, for example as a result of some action by that person or another. Thus, a man may commit a crime and thereby lose the status he had as long as he was innocent of any crime. Also, a master or ruler may change the status of his serfs or subjects by an act of emancipation. However, such changes obviously presuppose that the person in question had a status in law to begin with. We can distinguish therefore between theories of natural rights by noting the original status they assign to a natural person - in short, the status they assign to an innocent natural person.

Leaving aside then those aspect-persons, we see that there are only so many logically different types of theories of natural rights. We have listed them in the following table. The column 'S' has an entry '*' for types of theory that assign at least one natural person the original status of a sovereign person. Similarly, column 'A!', respectively 'H,' has an '*' for types of theory that assign at least one natural person the original status of a member of an autonomous collective, respectively the original status of a heteronomous person. Column 'M' identifies types of theory that deny personal standing to at least one natural person (giving him the status of a mere means). Theories of type 0 assign no natural person any status in law, neither as a person nor as a means. Such theories consider natural persons as mere objects. (I shall not consider types of theories - they are not even listed in the table - that assign only some natural persons the status of a mere object).

Obviously, the information that a theory assigns an equal status to all natural persons does not tell what that status is. However, the 'equal status' types of theory are philosophically speaking considerably less demanding than the 'unequal status' types. In particular, they need no justifying argument for discriminating among innocent natural persons. An argument for assigning to such persons one status rather than another is all they need to provide. Note, however, that a theory of a type that assigns the original status of a member of an autonomous collective to some or all innocent natural persons need not assign all of them to the same collective. Similarly, theories that originally assign an heteronomous status to some or all innocent natural persons need not assign them all to the same masters. Finally, theories that assign the status of a mere means to some or all innocent natural persons need not assign them to be property of the same person. Theories of types 2, 3 and 4, then, require not only an argument for justifying their pick of the original status in law of any natural person, but also an argument justifying a particular distribution of natural persons among an untold number of autonomous collectives, hegemonic collectives or non-natural persons. Only theories of type 1, which assert that every natural person originally (in his state of innocence) is a sovereign person, avoid those complications of discrimination and distribution. In fact, formally speaking, there is only one such theory, although there may still be any number of schemes for interpreting it in terms of real things and relations.

None of those observations constitute a convincing argument for the type 1 theory of natural rights or against any theory of another type. However, we should be able to check which types of theory are compatible with the postulates of natural law and the principle of natural justice.

The postulates of natural law (Finitism and Naturalism - PNL in the table below) imply that all means and all persons (including all natural persons) belong to a finite number of natural persons. Therefore at least some natural persons must be persons in the sense of the general theory of law. This consequence rules out TT0 and TT4. Moreover, the same postulates imply that there should be at least one autonomous natural person. Therefore, the postulates of natural law rule out TT3 and TT10.

According to the postulate of consistency, every natural person is a real person and therefore a person in the sense of the general theory of law. This rules out any type of theory that holds that some natural persons are not persons but mere objects or mere means. Thus, the postulate of consistency - PC in the table - eliminates TT0, TT4, TT7, TT9-10, and TT12-15.

The principle of natural personal justice states that all innocent natural persons are free and therefore sovereign. It rules out all types of theories except TT1.

Thus, we see that only TT1 is compatible with the postulates of natural law and the principle of natural justice.

Natural law without natural justice

Each one of those theories implies that at least some innocent natural persons belong to another person. Moreover, they imply (by PN) that some innocent natural persons belong to at least one other natural person. Consequently, they all imply that some natural person has right to the use of another innocent natural person without the latter's consent. Thus, they imply that some natural persons have the right to rule other innocent natural persons without their consent - that is, to legislate for or to impose their 'will' on others. TT2- and TT5-theories restrict this right to situations where the right to rule is mutual: it exists only within autonomous collectives. TT6-theories imply that at least some natural persons are sovereign and that at least some of those have the right to rule other innocent natural persons without their consent. TT8-theories imply that some natural persons are members (and therefore rulers and subjects) of autonomous collectives and rulers of other innocent natural persons who are merely subjects. Finally, TT11-theories stipulate that some innocent natural persons are subjects of others (sovereigns or members of autonomous collectives).

The common element of those theories is the idea of one or more natural persons ruling innocent others - and that idea, disguised as the power of legislation, is very much the centrepiece of most political or legal theories of law. Clearly, all attempts to justify legislation (as distinct from contractual obligation) must reject the principle of natural justice, which is that innocent natural persons are free.

SECTION III

Note that we do not add any axioms for µ. We do not specify in an apriori way any constraints on what a human being is supposed to be in the context of a discussion of law. Thus, we allow the acceptance of the postulate of anti-humanism:

Weaker versions of anti-humanism imply that only some humans are not natural persons while others are. An anti-humanism of this sort could ride in on the back of the postulate of humanist naturalism.

Human Law

Under the postulate of naturalist humanism, all human beings are natural persons, but there may be other non-human natural persons. Assuming there are such persons, theories that assign an 'unequal original status' to natural persons nevertheless can assign an equal status to all innocent human beings (i.e. an equal original status or equal natural rights to all human beings). This opens the door for theories asserting the existence of non-human legislators that lawfully rule human beings. For example, TT6-, TT8- and TT11-theories may envisage that at least some non-human natural persons (gods, nations, states) are naturally autonomous while human persons are naturally heteronomous. Equality among humans is then coupled with a denial of natural justice (freedom) for all humans. Similarly, TT2- and TT5-theories allow us to envisage a situation in which all human beings are members of some autonomous collective or other. This is consistent with an equal status for all human persons and with a denial of freedom for all human persons.

Under the postulate of humanist naturalism, all natural persons are humans but here may be human beings that are not natural but artificial persons or even mere means or objects. That gives us a possibility for asserting the right of legislation, this time for human beings that are natural persons over those that are not. Here the denial of natural justice (freedom) for some humans is a consequence of the denial of equality among humans.

From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, the natural equality of human beings was sanctified. At the same time, divine law virtually was nullified. Thus, natural equality was taken for granted as the pre-eminent social and political norm-the just society had to be a society of equals. In contrast, freedom, as a natural or divinely ordained human right, rapidly lost ground. The arguments of progressive philosophy against natural law and justice began to focus on human freedom as their primary target. Rousseau, for example, turned Plato's argument concerning the dangers of equality against freedom. He argued that while human beings are in fact 'born free', they would have to trade in their human freedom for 'civic liberty' if politics is ever to rise above the institutionalisation of war-and if man is to become truly social (i.e. an inseparable part of a particular society). Civic liberty, of course, was not a natural right of human persons, but a political right of the citizen. While it implied that every citizen was at once the ruler and the subject of every other citizen, it also implied that natural human persons as such have no right in the state. Since citizens qua citizens were by definition essentially identical and therefore equal, only civic liberty was compatible with equality and therefore 'just'.

Rousseau's theory, with its hypostatisation of the abstract 'man-as-citizen', inaugurated the fashion of appealing to mystical aspect-persons that plagues positivist legal theory to this day. While it dispenses with pre-modern forms of the belief in non-human, non-empirical natural persons, it opens the door for a myriad of other abstractions to replace the gods of yore. Those are the superstitions we now invoke to justify political rule and legislation and to avoid the requirement of natural justice for human beings.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------