On the 6th of March, Professor Nie Minli from Renmin University presented a lecture on “The Concept of Practice in the Modern Natural Law Tradition”. Professor Nie argued that, when studying early modern philosophy, we should approach with the understanding of modernity, rather than simply distinguish between the rationalists and the empiricists. With the idea of natural law, he analysed some philosophers’ construction of the concept of practice. While Aristotle’s concept of practice was often understood as grasping men’s action from the moral perspective, his discussion about justice already included the idea of grasping human practice and city-state construction from the perspective of productive actions. In the eyes of the classical virtue theorists, the moral actions should only be done for its own sake. However, this viewpoint ignored the productive implication of practice. If the actions themselves were the end of practice, the virtue of justice would be understood inappropriately. The theme of natural justice was property and its origin, and in the vision of natural law, labour was also often seen as the basis of practice. Based on these assertions, Professor Nie provided clue to understand the concept of practice in modern philosophy. After the lecture, Professor Nie communicated with the participant on relevant issues.
