N
atural Law" as a term has either dropped out of the public consciousness, or is pretty grossly misunderstood nowadays, but it used to be a very important voice in discussions about law, reason, and authority (as a tentative Thomist, I still take it very seriously). Natural Law is not "the laws of nature", nor is it "the law of the jungle" in the Darwinian power-struggle sense. Rather, Natural Law is the theory that certain binding "laws" are natural to human beings as a particular rational animal. That is, because existence is good, humans have a right to self-defense; and any law that undermines that right is an "unnatural" law, since it denies basic facets about existence and humans' place within it. Likewise, the existence of the sexes and child-rearing in human biology naturally produce marriage laws (of some kind -- obviously, there has been historical variation in how these play out, but marriage as a bond is extremely universal). Natural Law theorists also tend to be supportive of at least certain kinds of hierarchy in society, seeing these as natural ways of delegating authority. The strong claim of the Natural Law theorist is that there must be some natural, foundational basis for how we understand law, or else we exist in a Nietzchean power struggle -- law is either formed from principles independent of an particular act of the human will, or it completely arbitrary. There is no middle ground.
It occurred to me recently that this theory actually seems to rhyme a bit with the Jungian theory of archetypes. Basically, Jung seems to be saying (I will have to research this more) that there are certain myths and characters that are natural to human beings -- they are not created from whole cloth, but rather expressed through our thoughts and storytelling, being implicit in our consciousnesses as particular kinds of rational beings; e.g. the existence of communities which need protection demands the concept of the Hero who will protect it. This is natural and ineluctable, and this archetype must be present in any community-based rational creature's psyche (though it will of course vary in the particular attributes of the creature in question).
I wonder if there is a fruitful way to pursue the connection here.