Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: The Making and Unmaking of Boundaries
- THE JEWISH TRADITION
- THE CONFUCIAN TRADITION
- THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION
- THE NATURAL LAW TRADITION
- 8 The Making and Unmaking of Boundaries from the Natural Law Perspective
- 9 Natural Law and the Re-making of Boundaries
- THE ISLAMIC TRADITION
- THE LIBERAL TRADITION
- THE INTERNATIONAL LAW TRADITION
- CONCLUSION
- Index
8 - The Making and Unmaking of Boundaries from the Natural Law Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- About the Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: The Making and Unmaking of Boundaries
- THE JEWISH TRADITION
- THE CONFUCIAN TRADITION
- THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION
- THE NATURAL LAW TRADITION
- 8 The Making and Unmaking of Boundaries from the Natural Law Perspective
- 9 Natural Law and the Re-making of Boundaries
- THE ISLAMIC TRADITION
- THE LIBERAL TRADITION
- THE INTERNATIONAL LAW TRADITION
- CONCLUSION
- Index
Summary
The Ancient Background
Europeans have never lived in ignorance of other cultures. The clash of radically different moral attitudes was already a familiar theme by the time of Herodotus, whose History is in effect an encyclopedia of cultural difference. And although by the beginning of our era, the ancient cultural variety of the Mediterranean had been somewhat reduced to a kind of vaguely Hellenized uniformity, the Romans were constantly engaged in trade and warfare with exotic peoples beyond the empire's boundaries – extending even to the Chinese, with whom there were fitful contacts including (allegedly) an embassy from Marcus Aurelius to the Emperor. The spread of early Christianity from its origins in the Hellenised Roman Empire out across the Old World illustrates the range and complexity of these contacts: by the time Islam appeared on the scene, Christian sects were to be found spread out along the trade routes of Central Asia and even into China itself (where the presence of Nestorian monks later astonished – so it was claimed – Marco Polo); throughout the Parthian Empire (which was the base of the Nestorian Church, founded in deliberate rivalry to the Church of the Romans); in Northern India; in East Africa; and in the wilds of Northern and Central Europe.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- States, Nations and BordersThe Ethics of Making Boundaries, pp. 143 - 170Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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