A much-maligned feature of ancient and medieval political thought is its tendency to appeal to
nature to establish norms for human communities. From Aristotle's claim that humans are
political animals to Aquinas' invocation of natural law it may seem that pre-modern
philosophers were all too ready to assume that whatever is natural is good and that just
political arrangements must somehow be natural. The papers in this collection show that this
assumption is at best too crude. From very early for instance in the ancient sophists'
contrast between nomos and physis there was recognition that political arrangements may be
precisely artificial not natural and it may be questioned whether even such supposed
naturalists as Aristotle in fact adopt the quick inference from natural to good. The papers in
this volume trace the complex interrelations between nature and such concepts as law
legitimacy and justice covering a wide historical range stretching from Plato and the
Sophists to Aristotle Hellenistic philosophy Cicero the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry
ancient Christian thinkers and philosophers of both the Islamic and Christian Middle Ages.
