The Essential Role of Iustitia for the Existence of the Legal System: Bio-Legal Issues

Abstract

The eclipse of reason no longer enlightened by faith in the age of secularisation tends to reduce the field of investigation of legal studies to a mere exercise in understanding, applying and systematizing the regulae iuris humani. The removal from the horizon of philosophical-legal thought of any reference to metaphysics and ius naturale has also impoverished the argumentation of legal experts, who are induced by a categorical imperative, dictated by the dominant philosophical currents in the contemporary world of nihilism and scientistic reductionism, to have as their exclusive point of reference the ius positivum. The thought of Thomas Aquinas appears to be an irreplaceable point of reference for the issues, particularly the bio-legal ones, that jurists must face in today’s world in order to defend the good of each man and of all men.