Title: The Permanent Things and the Rational Order
Subject Classification:  Politics and Government, Law and Legal Ethics, Philosophy  
BIC Classification: LA, HP, JP
BISAC Classification:
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Planned publication date: Jun 2026
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83711-859-5
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83711-860-1

e-books available for libraries from   Proquest  and   EBSCO   with non-institutional availability from  GooglePlay

For larger orders, or orders where you require an invoice, contact us  admin@ethicspress.com

Description

The Permanent Things and the Rational Order argues that constitutional government and individual liberty rest on natural-law foundations that modern legal positivism cannot replace. It traces the tradition from antiquity to the present, demonstrating that law requires moral axioms beyond positive enactment and defending their continued relevance.

This book stands within the long tradition of natural-law scholarship shaped by thinkers such as Aquinas, Suárez, Grotius, Locke, and Finnis. It also engages directly with modern legal positivists including Bentham, Austin, Hart, and Raz. Unlike purely historical treatments, it integrates intellectual history with a systematic philosophical argument and a constitutional application.

Where contemporary natural-law works often remain either narrowly theological or abstractly analytic, this book synthesises rationalist and prudential-traditionalist strands, drawing on the Anglo-American constitutional inheritance as well as Continental developments. It offers a structural argument—analogous to formal incompleteness in logic—that no constitutional order can validate its own foundational commitments without recourse to moral premises external to positive law.

The principal audience includes legal scholars, constitutional theorists, political philosophers, advanced students of jurisprudence, and readers concerned with the preservation of limited government and the rule of law in contemporary Western democracies. The work contributes both a historical reconstruction and a constructive thesis: that the recovery and synthesis of the natural-law tradition is not antiquarian but essential to the defence of individual liberty in the twenty-first century.

Biography

Author(s):  Dr Craig Wright is a polymath whose work unites philosophy, economics, and systems design. He holds multiple doctorates, his seventh completed in 2025. He researches at the University of Exeter, UK.

Reviews

This title is currently being reviewed. Please check back for further updates in due course.