Paper's abstract

Catherine Larrère, Natural Law and Physiocraty
There is no externality but continuity, between natural law and physiocraty. Quesnay is a theorist of natural law that gave the name of Economy to his way of treating it. His thesis is that of the extension of natural law into a society. This is realised in the property and this is how Quesnay links, in his theory of natural law, the individualistic affirmation of enjoyment to the evidence of the global rationality of social order. What gives his theory its originality is also what weakens it, for the order relation, which links the individual to the whole, is an unequal relation which, distributing hierarchically differentiated functions, cannot be universalised.

Key Words : economy, Quesnay, jusnaturalism, physiocrat
t. 37, 1992 : p. 69-88