Eleftherios Karampilas

In a period of the European history when property, trade, economic development and capitalism (were in the forefront of the intellectual progress, Greeks, despite their past ideas on natural law, could not have desired anything but the same philosophical foundations that supported the political, economic and social demands of the uprising new classes. These philosophical foundations transformed the notion of natural law into the notion of natural rights, influencing the constitutional texts of the newly established Greek state. Thus, the ancient idea of natural law in close correlation with the pursuit of virtue, faded away allowing the, relatively, new concept of natural rights to find its way to the texts of the new constitutions, assuming the role of a protective wall against the demands of the state.