Synopsis
At the beginning of 1944, Valentin Tomberg (1900–1973), best-known at the time for his Christological works, moved to Cologne at the invitation of legal scholar Ernst von Hippel, and that same year was awarded the title of Doctor of Law for his dissertation, published by Angelico Press as The Art of the Good: On the Regeneration of Fallen Justice. Tomberg had come to regard the modern path away from a natural law founded upon religion and towards a legal positivism oriented towards power as a degeneration of the different levels of law, a “fall” he sought to reverse in the direction of regeneration. In his second jurisprudential work, here published as Jus Humanitatis: The Right of Humankind as Foundation for International Law, Tomberg presents the history of international law more broadly in such a way that it can serve the peaceful coexistence of all nations on earth. Invoking Thomistic terms, he presents the step-by-step dismantling of the edifice of law as the eclipse of the lex divina and lex naturalis in the so-called “law of nations” or international law—to the point that the higher vocation of international law came to be understood as nothing more than a legitimizing of absolute power, which then led to the modern totalitarian state. In this inspired text, Tomberg equips us to set about reversing this degradation and establishing the right or law of humankind as foundation for international law.
About the Author
VALENTIN TOMBERG was born into a Lutheran family in St. Petersburg, Russia. Tomberg's mother was killed by looters during the Russian Revolution, after which Valentin and his father fled to Tallinn, Estonia, where Tomberg studied languages and comparative religion at the University of Tartu. As a young man, he was strongly influenced by Vladimir Soloviev and had a personal experience of the Sophia at a cathedral in Holland. In 1925, he joined the Anthroposophical Society, under whose auspices he lectured in Holland and England and wrote on his understanding of the Bible, Anthroposophy, and Christianity. During World War II, he left the Anthroposophical Society and its internal struggles and converted to Catholicism. In 1948, he moved to England, where he became a translator for the BBC and monitored Soviet broadcasts during the Cold War, while continuing his devotion to meditation practice and writing. The best-known work of his later life is Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, written anonymously.
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