On the Natural State of Men 0889462992, 9780889462991

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
I. PUFENDORFS LIFE AND WORKS
II. THE MODERN NATURAL LAW TRADITION
Overview: Pufendorf s Predecessors and Successors
Grotius, Hobbes, and Weigel
III. THE ‘NATURAL STATE’ IN PUFENDORF
Separate Treatments of the 'Natural State' in Pufendorfs Works
Competing Accounts of the ‘Natural State' in the 17th Century
Different Meanings of 'Natural State* in Pufendorf
PUFENDORF’S USES OF ‘NATURAL STATE’
Synopsis of "On the Natural State of Men"
IV. THE FUNCTION OF THE 'NATURAL STATE' IN EARLY MODERN NATURAL LAW THEORY
Notes
Select Bibliography
A. Texts and Translations
B. Studies
COMMENTS ON TEXT AND TRANSLATION
TEXTUAL VARIANTS
De Statu Hominum Naturali (1678)
On the Natural State of Men
notes

Citation preview

SAMUEL PU FEN DORFS O N THE NATURAL STATE OF M EN

T he 1678 Latin Edition and English Translation

Translated, Annotated, and Introduced by

M ichael Seidler

Studies in the History of Philosophy Volume 13 The Edwin Mellen Press Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter

Library of Congress Caialoging-in-Piiblication Data

This book has been registered with the Library of Congress.

This is volume 13 in the continuing series Studies in the History of Philosophy Volume 13 ISBN 0-88946-299-2 SHP Series ISBN 0-88946-300-X

A C1P catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 1990 Michael Seidler All rights reserved. For information contact The Edwin Mellen Press Box 450 Lewiston, New York USA 14092

The Edwin M ellen Press Box 67 Q ueenston, O ntario CANADA LOS 1L0

The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd. l^ m p e te r, Dyfed, Wales UN ITED KINGDOM SA48 7DY Printed in the U nited States of America

for Sarah and Alex for all the waiting...

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments IN TR O D U C TO R Y ESSAY i. P ufendorfs Life and Works II. The M odern N atural Law Tradition

ix 1 3 13

III. The ‘N atural State’ in Pufendorf

25

IV. T he Function of the ‘Natural State’ in Early M odern N atural Law Theory

43

Notes to Introductory Essay

54

S E L E C T B IBLIO G RA PH Y

71

CO M M EN TS O N TE X T AND TRANSLATION

77

"D E STA TU H O M IN U M NATURALI" (Latin Text of 1678)

83

"ON T H E N A TU R A L STA TE O F MEN" (Translation)

109

N O TES T O TRANSLATION

137

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The current, relatively undeveloped state of Pufendorf scholarship makes research in this area somewhat more difficult than in fields where texts and studies are m ore easily available. This means, among other things, that one’s eventual debts are also enlarged.

Since my initial task was to

acquire the appropriate manuscripts, I owe thanks to the rare book librarians of UCLA, N orthw estern University, and the New York Public Library for respectively supplying m e with the 1675, 1677, and 1678 editions of Pufendorfs Dissertaiiones academicae selectiores, the essay collection in which "De statu hom inum naturali" is found. I am likewise indebted and grateful to the underfunded and no doubt understaffed Library of Congress, particularly the head o f its Loan Division, Christopher Wright, for making available to me a microfilm copy of the 1744 Mascovius edition of Pufendorfs De jure naturae et gentium, which is bound with a late, complete version of the latter’s Eris scandica. Closer to home, it is a pleasure to acknowledge the expert and cheerful assistance of Ms. Susan Tucker and the Interlibrary Loan D epartm ent at Helm-Cravens Library of W estern Kentucky University whom I pestered with many an obscure and difficult request. Ms. Tucker and her staff helped remedy the real geographical handicaps that confronted me in this particular kind o f scholarly work.

W estern Kentucky University also

furthered my project by generously granting me a Summer Faculty Research Fellowship in 1987, and by approving reduced teaching loads for two semesters. For this latter assistance, and also for his general support and encouragem ent, I am particularly grateful to Alan B. Anderson, H ead of the D epartm ent o f Philosophy and Religion. Finally, I thank the D epartm ent of Political Science at Portland State University (O R ) for providing me with working space and other facilities during the sum m er of 1987. Though mostly completed by then, this project has also b e n efited from my participation in the N EH Summer Institute on Early M odern Philosophy at Brown University (1988). The stimulating presentations of the Institute staff, particularly Edwin Curley, David F ate N orton, Richard

Popkin, and Jerom e Schneewind, as welt as conversations with them and other participants, including Mary Gregor and M ark Waymack, improved my understanding of early modern moral philosophy and m ade me aware of some needed corrections and qualifications in my introductory essay-for whose remaining defects I alone am responsible. I thank all of them , as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities and Daniel G arber, the Institute’s director, for making this valuable opportunity available to me. My colleague and sometime collaborator, Craig L. C arr (D epartm ent of Political Science, Portland State University, O R), deserves special m ention not only for his many helpful comments on both the translation and the introductory essay (where 1 have sometimes taken his advice), but also for test-teaching the translation for clarity and readability in one of his political theory classes. I continue to appreciate his collegial assistance. Finally, I owe thanks to Ms. Joan ten Hoor, reference librarian at the University of Louisville, for responding to an im portant initial inquiry from an unknown scholar on locating 17th-century manuscripts; and to Joseph and Monessa Cummins for clarifying one of Pufendorfs unattributcd classical references at a point when I had almost given up. My greatest debts are to Sarah and Alex Seidler.

The former dem anded that I transform my

Germanic prose into more or less readable English, and the latter, quite simply, to be paid some attention. Though they may think this book has been written in spite of them, both it and many other things besides would never have been accomplished without their indulgence, help, and support.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY1 T here are few discussions of Pufendorf in English, particularly ones that are both general and short.2 M oreover, for reasons that will become clear, the scholarly literature as a whole is relatively meager. Hence, the task of introducing one of Pufendorfs smaller and lesser-known works is form idable. In w hat follows, I offer both a broad overview of Pufendorfs w ork and its 17th-century context, as well as a m ore detailed analysis of the subject o f this newly edited and translated text on the state o f nature. My treatm ent is divided into four major sections. Following a survey of P ufendorfs life and works in the first section, Section II situates Pufendorf within the natural law tradition before and after him, particularly in relation to his m ain intellectual predecessors: Grotius, Hobbes, and Weigel. Section III contains a description of Pufendorfs various treatm ents of and carefully distinguished meanings for the ‘state of n atu re/ as well as a structured content analysis o f the essay translated here for the first time. Finally, in Section IV, I discuss P ufendorfs philosophical use of the state-of-nature concept in relation to the larger 17th-century natural law problematic, particularly as this has been recently interpreted by Richard Tuck and others. G iven my essay’s double function of introducing both Pufendorf and one of his works, portions thereof are necesarily m ore general and less nuanced than they otherwise might be. Also, except for the closer analysis in Section III, I have relied primarily and heavily on the existing secondary literature, hoping thereby also to fulfill my introductory task of orienting the reader and opening up avenues for the further study of Pufendorfs thought.

I. P U F E N D O R F S L I F E A N D W O R K S Samuel Pufendorf was bom into a Lutheran pastor’s family in D orfchemnitz-bei-Thalheim, in Saxony, on January 8, 1632, a year that also saw the birth of Spinoza, Locke, and Cumberland. T heir century was marked by trem endous social, political and intellectual u p h eav al-a fact reflected differently in each of their philosophies. In general, it was still an age of exploration when the significance of many new geographical and social discoveries was beginning to be absorbed-often disruptively-into European thought. Increasingly, too, it was an age of science, which began seriously to challenge the established secular and religious orthodoxies with both its theoretical claims and associated practical results. And on the Continent, the Protestant R eform ation’s legacy of religious fragmentation contributed to ongoing political reorganization of m ajor proportions-the disintegration of the G erm an (Holy R om an) Em pire coinciding with the ascendancy of Sweden, France, and Prussia as modem , secular nation-states, and with the transform ation

of the

N etherlands from a

Spanish colony into

an

independent republic. Many of these changes were marked by a pervasive violence that added fear to the insecurity and disorientation that must already have been felt. N othing represents this b etter than the brutal Thirty-Years’ W ar (161848) th at was but half over at the time of Pufendorfs birth.

Though his

im m ediate environm ent was not ravaged, the young Pufendorf was no doubt

6 refusal of the doctorate, Weigel prudently persuaded him to earn the master’s degree essential for a university career. Now Pufendorf, like other independent students throughout history, faced the prospect of getting a job. H e declined an unacceptable offer at the University of Halle and was unable to find an academic post in his native Saxony, at Leipzig, where his future prospects would have been difficult at best.7

Once again, however, he benefitted from the lifelong fraternal

attention of Esaias, who had already left Jena for the diplom atic service of Christina of Sweden. There Esaias now obtained for his younger brother the position of tutor to the family of Peter Julius Coyet, the Swedish minister in Copenhagen. Soon after Samuel’s arrival there, Sweden suddenly expressed its dissatisfaction with the ongoing peace talks by reconvening its w ar with Denmark. W hether or not Coyet himself anticipated the Swedish betrayal, he managed to flee while leaving his family and their tutor behind.

But

Pufendorf turned the ensuing eight-month imprisonment into an opportunity (much in the fashion of Grotius at Loevenstein castle) and composed without benefit o f books an already planned work that inaugurated the rest o f his career. In the Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis, a work much indebted to Grotius and Hobbes, Pufendorf deduced in quasi-m athem atical fashion a system of law based on the light of reason alone that foreshadowed much of his later thinking. After his release and recuperation from prison, he brought the manuscript to Holland, where he rejoined the Coyet family.

Though

apparently not intending to publish his notes, he nonetheless circulated the

Elementa among his brother and friends, who persuaded him to publish it in 1660. While in Holland, Pufendorf also pursued studies in classical philology at the University of Leiden, becoming more familiar with the Stoicism that would play such an important role in his m ature system.

H e edited and

annotated two works on classical antiquity,8 an d -p erh ap s most im portantly for his future career-h e made the acquaintance of the great classical scholar, Gronovius, and also of Peter de G root, son of Hugo Grotius, both of whom had'taught the Elector of the Palatinate, Kart Ludwig, who was an alumnus of the university.9

7

R ecom m ended by these two notables and his own Elementa, which he had calculatingly dedicated to Karl Ludwig, Pufendorf soon (1661) received an invitation to the University of Heidelberg. T o prove his usefulness, he also w rote around this time a short legal opinion called "Wildfangstreit" in which he defended the Elector's right to levy a medieval serf tax on immigrants from the surrounding Rhenish towns and on knights. Offered a professorship (ordinarius) in Rom an law, Pufendorf now dem onstrated the Saxon courage and manly independence so lauded by som e o f his G erm an expositors by prom ptly refusing it. Instead, he requested an appointm ent on the law faculty as a professor of politics. As he later explained, he had no desire to add yet another to the 999 existing com mentaries on the Corpus Juris.10 U nder probable pressure from Karl Ludwig, the reluctant university senate

then

proposed

an associate professorship

(extraordinarius) in

international law and philology (humaniora) on the philosophy faculty which Pufendorf accepted. Soon after his arrival, though, he turned this position into a professorship in natural and international law -th e first such chair in Germ any, as he himself later recalled11--and began lecturing on Grotius. A few years later, in 1664, Pufendorf tried again to join the law faculty by vying for a vacant professorship in G erm an constitutional law.

But after being

spurned once m ore by the juristic establishment, he had his existing position transform ed into a chair in natural law and politics. And so it rem ained until his rem oval to Sweden. Pufendorfs eight years in H eidelberg were among the happiest of his life. In 1665, he entered into a successful marriage with the widow of an academ ic colleague, a union that produced two loyal daughters.

A t the

university, both the content and style of his teaching made him popular among the students, a num ber of whom were lodged at his house (as he himself had lodged with Weigel a t Jen a 12). The Elector appointed him privy councilor and entrusted to him the education o f his son.

And Pufendorf

supplem ented his concrete political education at court by utilizing the excellent university library to further expand the already broad and diverse learning so evident in his main works. Ironically, much of his writing during this period was evoked by less satisfying experiences. To dem onstrate his qualifications for the chair on the

8 law faculty, Pufendorf had written two essays later included in his Dissertationes (1675): the "Dissertatio de obligatione erga patriam" (1663), on the subject of patriotism, and the "Dissertatio de Philippo, Am yntac filio (1664)» on the distinction between regular and irregular states. Upon being passed over, he expanded some of their themes into his famous broadside against the G erm an Empire and the guild of constitutional lawyers defending it.13 Pseudonymously disguised as the work of a traveling Italian nobleman (Serverinus de M onzambano) writing home to his brother (= Esaias?), Pufendorfs De statu imperii Gertnanici was completed in 1664 but not published until 1667 at The Hague (at the request o f Karl Ludwig, who had nonetheless approved of its publication). Such caution was required because of the book’s explosive contents.

W ritten in an aggressive style, it is a

brilliant and incisive attack on the condition of the Holy R om an (i.e., Germ an) Empire, which Pufendorf famously described

as ’'freakish"

(monstrum simile) in the sense o f being neither a regular nor, strictly speaking, an irregular state.14

A hue and cry was raised immediately

throughout Germany, and the book was quickly banned from universities and condemned by the Pope, the Empire’s spiritual head. N onetheless, since it expressed what many already thought but dared not say, it soon becam e very popular among those content to let others risk their views for them . As a defender of Monzambano, Pufendorf was naturally-despite formal d e n ialssuspected and accused of being the author, though he did not publicly admit the fact until the work’s 1684 edition.15 Despite the emerging statist system, most 17th-century E uropean scholars still regarded themselves primarily as m embers of the republic of letters, as Stoic citizens o f the world, as it were; their patriotism was cultural rather than political.

This was especially true in Germany, and it partly

explains Pufendorfs readiness to move to Sweden in 1668 when Charles XI offered him a professorship in natural and international law at the newly founded University of Lund.

Pufendorf had had Swedish connections all

along, not only through his brother, who had rem ained in the Swedish foreign service, but also through the many young Swedish noblemen attending his classes at Heidelberg. H e later explained his acceptance of the Swedish offer as an effort to improve his fortunes, but no doubt the increased hostility of

9

his colleagues at Heidelberg (especially after the publication of De statu imperii) also played a role. His relations with Karl Ludwig w ere not a factor, as these had rem ained amicable. Though the latter was sorry to lose his scholar, and even asked Esaias to induce him to remain, in the end he placed no obstacles in P ufendorf s way. T he next twenty years in Sweden w ere both more troublesome and m ore productive for Pufendorf. Shortly upon his arrival at Lund (1668), he published an anonymous defense of Monzambano, his "Dissertatio de republica irregulari," which would also be included in the later Dissertaiiones. Then, in 1672, came his long m asterpiece, the De jure naturae et gentium, which both his friends and enemies had eagerly awaited.

A systematic

integration of moral, legal, and political relations under the general rubric of natural law, it is also im portant for its acute critical discussion of the argum ents of previous natural law thinkers. Its immediate and wide impact was no doubt magnified by the 1673 publication of Pufendorfs D e officio hominis et civis juxta legem naturalemy a much shorter epitom e16 of the main work’s conclusions that also reveals Pufendorfs persistent pedagogical intent. In this latter respect, at least, De officio was successful beyond all expectations: it soon becam e the standard European textbook on natural law for the next hundred years.

Both De jure and De officio appeared in

innum erable subsequent editions and thus ensured Pufendorfs fame and influence as the equal of G rotius and H obbes.17 U nfortunately, Pufendorfs fame further irritated those already opposed to his views.

T he m inor skirmishing with some o f his Lund

colleagues that had begun soon after his arrival there now turned vicious. His De jure was immediately attacked for its supposed heresy and anarchy by Nikolaus Beckmann and Joshua Schwartz (respectively professors of Roman law and theology a t Lund) and their many traditionalist Scandinavian and G erm an allies, who regarded Pufendorf as an enemy of Lutheran orthodoxy. Schwa rtz~a Lutheran pastor who was also, ironically, Pufendorfs confessor! --published an Index novitatum some three months after the De jure appeared, providing thereby a specific inventory of th e latter’s erroneous "innovations.''18 Fortunately, Pufendorf had learned early on how to protect himself: De jure was dedicated to the king, and D e officio to Count Gustav

10 Steenbock who, as chancellor of the university, led Pufendorfs successful defense there. But safety was not enough. O ver the next fourteen years, Pufendorf replied to the wrong, outrageous, and often libelous charges of his adversaries in a series of ad hoc explanatory essays m arked by satire, wit, and often blunt, colorful language. Collectively published in 1686 under the title of Eris scandica, these still untranslated pieces have occasionally been dismissed as unimportant; still, they not only had a long subsequent history at G erm an universities but also provide much autobiographical detail about Pufendorfs life and important clarifications of his views.19 It was probably during this same period following the publication o f his main works that Pufendorfs essay "De statu hominum naturali" was written. It first appeared in 1675 with Pufendorfs other academic essays (many of which date from the earlier Heidelberg period) in the collection titled Dissertationes academicae selectiores. According to Krieger, who has argued generally that P ufendorfs intellect followed his career, these essays constitute a great divide in Pufendorfs life, since he now turned from ethics and politics to history and theology.20

Certainly, Pufendorfs external circumstances soon changed

radically. After the long Danish siege of Lund in 1676, Charles XI called his scholar to Stockholm and made him privy councilor, secretary of state, a n d most important for his literary career-royal historiographer.

T here is

disagreement over the degree of Pufendorfs subsequent involvement in Swedish affairs of state, but here at court his first written work was the Einieitung zu der Historie der vomehnisten Reiche und Staaten so iiziger Zeit in Europa sich befinden (1682-86). This one unfortunate attem pt to write in G erm an was apparently based on his historical lecturcs at Lund, which may also have played a role in his original appointm ent as historiographer.21 More daring in its interpretations and evaluations than Pufendorfs subsequent historical writings (being in Germ an, it could take some risks in Stockholm), it was explicitly intended as a textbook for politically aspiring young aristocrats, a role in which it long succeeded. Thereafter, the royal historiographer produced two other works of note:

Commentariorum de

rebus Suecicis libri X X V I ab expeditione Gustavi Adolphi in G ennaniam ad abdicationem usque

Christinae (1686), and

the

posthumously

(1696)

11

published De rebus a Caroio Gustavo Sueciae regisgestis commentariorum libri VII.

These successive accounts of recent Swedish history were based on

careful and objective archival research (one recalls Leibniz’s similar labors). But as his history began to approach his older contem poraries, Pufendorf was m ade increasingly aware of the delicacy o f his concrete circumstances. A tension grew betw een his autonomous historian’s and hired apologist’s roles, and his relations with members of the Swedish aristocracy accordingly deteriorated. Fortunately, another position awaited him.

The G reat E lector of

Prussia, Frederick William, had been making overtures for nearly two years when, in 1686, Pufendorf accepted the post of royal historiographer in Berlin. Escape from Stockholm was not his only motive, however. By this time, Prussia was ascending and Sweden in decline, and Pufendorf was always eager to serve the stronger monarch. H e was also drawn to Frederick by a common view regarding church-state relations that had suddenly become im portant to all of E urope after Louis XIV’s revocation (1686) of the Edict of Nantes.

As leader of the Protestant opposition to this belated act of

C atholic intolerance, Frederick opened Prussia (with the Edict of Potsdam) to religious refugees from France, thereby accumulating both moral and econom ic capital.

P ufendorfs own reaction was to write his De liabitu

religionis Christianae ad vitam civiiem (1687), a work on church-state relations presented as a councilor’s advice to Protestant princes like Frederick (to whom it was dedicated).23 D espite the latter’s standing offer and his own acceptance, Pufendorf was detained in Sweden for almost two m ore years because Charles XI did not want to lose his royal historiographer a t the very time when the latter’s work was approaching his own reign. A fter a flurry of negotiations, Pufendorf was finally (in 1688) "loaned" to Berlin for two years, but not allowed to take with him the essentially completed manuscript of part two of his Swedish history.

This was to prevent him from changing the

account and also to induce him to return-w hich, to his own misfortune, he eventually did. Frederick William died shortly after Pufendorfs arrival in Berlin, but the accession o f his son, Frederick III, did not significantly alter our scholar’s fortunes.

H e soon added the positions of privy and judicial councilor to

12 those of secretary and historiographer. As in Sweden, however, his main task was to write history* Thus, his first major undertaking was an account of the G reat Elector’s reign, the De rebus Friderici Wilhelmi Magni Electoris Brandenburgici commentariorum libri X IX , which was com pleted by 1692. Its continuation, the De rebus gestis Friderici II I Electoris Brandenburgici, was left incomplete a t Pufendorfs death and did not, in fact, appear until 1784. One of its noteworthy features is a long discussion of the English G lorious Revolution (1688), which Pufendorf supported on the ground that Jam es II had broken the social contract between ruler and people.24

Finally,

Pufendorfs ongoing interest in church-state relations, and also his more recent attraction to Jacob Spener and Pietism, came to light in his most theological work, the Jus fecicde divinum sive de consensu protestantium. Finished in 1694, shortly before his death, it saw publication in 1695 along with his completed history of Frederick William. The hostage manuscript of Pufendorfs history of Charles X still languished in Sweden, where it could not be published for want o f suitable facilities.

Desiring its publication as much as Charles XI, Pufendorf was

induced to return to Sweden in the spring of 1694. A fter formally agreeing there not to alter the text, he received royal permission to publish and was allowed to take a copy o f the manuscript to Germany, along with a barony also bestowed by the king. But the return sea voyage was too strenuous for the aging scholar, and he succumbed to illness exacerbated by a foot injury shortly thereafter, on O ctober 26,1694. It was not the first tim e that travel to Sweden became fatal to one of Europe’s leading scholars.25

I I . T H E M O D E R N N A T U R A L LA W T R A D IT IO N T o understand Pufendorfs conception of the natural state, and its function in his philosophy» we must situate him m ore explicitly in relation to his predecessors within the modern natural law tradition.26 Superficially, this tradition may be seen as part of a much larger natural law continuum encompassing ancient, medieval, modern, and contem porary positions. But in fact it is a distinctively m odern phenom enon whose ancient and medieval antecedents do not determ ine its specific problematic. There were actually two stream s o f natural law during this period, and while they sometimes ran together, only one of them perpetuated the so-called classical approach.27 This latter stream drew heavily upon medieval and Renaissance scholasticism and attem pted consciously to integrate its own doctrines with Christian revelation. In consequence, it had a distinct theological character. T he other owed more to antiquity and its Renaissance humanist revival, as well as to m odern science; while expectably trying not to run afoul of Christian doctrine, its religion was ‘natural* instead of revealed.

Leibniz

(1646-1716)» who had substantial debts to Suarez and Spanish scholasticism in general, who desired to relate the kingdoms o f nature and of grace, and who sought constantly to unify all the churches, represents the form er stream ; while Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, and others who devised a new ‘science’ of morality in response to m odern skepticism (cf. Section IV below) exemplify the latter. Thus, Pufendorf-even though his relation to Lutheran scholasticism remains

largely unexplored-stands

outside

the

classical

14 tradition.28 For, in explicit reliance on natural reason alone, he willingly argued views perceived to be at odds with Scripture, insisted on a separation of church and state, and sought confessional unity only among Protestants. Also, in direct contrast to Leibniz, who always hoped to join the E m peror’s court in Vienna in order to realize his life-long unification schemes in religion and politics, Pufendorf (as M onzambano) challenged the very notion of a Holy Rom an Empire. Only in view of these and o ther differences to be noted later on is it possible to understand references to his kind of position as "the false face of natural law."29

Overview: Pufendorf s Predecessors and Successors The seminal figure of the m odem natural law tradition was Hugo Grotius (1583-1645).30 All later representatives knew and reacted to his work, ^particularly his magisterial De jure belli ac pacis (1625). Many of its views were already anticipated in an earlier book, De jure praedae (actually,

De Indis, 1604/5), only one chapter of which ( Mare librum , 1609) appeared during his lifetime, the rest being discovered only in 1864 am ong his manuscripts. Grotius’ English contemporary, John Scldcn (1584-1654), not only penned a specific reply to the Mare librum in 1618 (pub. 1635) appropriately titled Mare clausum , but also produced a larger, more influential work, the De jure naturali et gentium iuxta disciplinam Ebraeorum (1640),31 wherein he anticipated Hobbes by postulating at the beginning of his theory an original state of total human freedom.

H e also challenged

G rotius’ attem pt to base natural law on innate rational principles and tried, as the title of his book indicates, to determ ine the law’s content by studying the Old Testam ent.

For these reasons, and also because he sought to

establish the law’s obligatory character by means of divinely threatened sanctions, Selden is sometimes considered a ‘religious’ thinker. Still, various central elements of Thomas Hobbes’ (1588-1679) position can already be found in him. Hobbes, in his De cive (1642), Leviathan (1651), and earlier

Elements o f Law (1640), took G rotius and Selden and transform ed their ideas into the position that is perhaps most representative of 17th-century natural law theory.

15

Though he cited Selden in De jure, Pufendorf was not satisfied with his theologizing and therefore preferred H obbes’ adaptations of the form er’s im portant ideas.

M oreover, in decided contrast to many of his G erm an

countem poraries, he regarded H obbes as a major contributor to the evolution o f natural law theory, and in his three main works, the Elementa (1660), D ejure (1672), and De officio (1673), he tried innovatively to advance H obbes’ position along with that of Grotius.

On the other hand, his

reservations about Hobbes led him also to favor Richard Cumberland (16321718), author o f De legibus naturae disquisilio philosophica (1672), whose Stoic critique of Hobbes coincided partially with his own.32 H istorical ‘developm ent’ is notoriously theory-dependent. Thus, while Anglo-American

m oral

and

political

philosophers

have

frequently

overlooked Pufendorf altogether (the sheer absence of a scholarly tradition speaks for itself) in proceeding from H obbes to Locke (or to Kant), some G erm an scholars have seen in him "the first and most im portant systematizer of secular natural right in Europe"33~and not merely for nationalistic reasons. W hile some recent studies are beginning to close this interpretation gap, much w ork rem ains to be done. As for P ufendorfs successors, there is no question about John Locke (1632-1704) as a natural law thinker. This claim is based not only on Locke’s early Essays on the Laws o f Nature (1660s), but also on his b etter known Two Treatises o f Government (1690), which discusses the state of nature, natural right, natural law, the social contract, property relations, and other standard topics of the tradition.34 Locke read and recom m ended Pufendorf, and was himself used by Jean Barbeyrac (1674-1744),

Pufendorfs

im portant

18th-century

translator

and

dissem inator,35 to correct the latter’s work. Indeed, as Richard Tuck has felicitously concluded, the m odem natural law tradition was "...fundamentally cohesive.

Locke corresponded with Barbeyrac and praised Pufendorf...;

Pufendorf adm ired both Selden and Hobbes; everyone adm ired G rotius.”36 T he im pact o f Pufendorfs thought was also felt in the early 18th century through his friend and correspondent, Christian Thom asius (16551728), especially the latter’s explicit defense of Pufendorfs principles in the Institutiones jurisprudentiae divinae (1688), his more original Einleitung zur Sittenlehre (1692), and also his Paulo plenior historia juris nafuralis (1719), an

16 important history of the modern natural law tradition.37 Thom asius’ more famous and influential successor, Christian Wolff (1679-1754), was more Leibnizian, more metaphysical, a n d -a t least according to the form and expression of his thought-m ore scholastic.

H ence, he is b etter seen to

belong to the classical natural law tradition than that of G rotius and Pufendorf.

Evidently, however, this latter distinction had becom e much

fuzzier and less helpful by the mid-18th century, and Pufendorfs own complex position, whose tensions made it partially com patible with a variety of different interpretations, was itself becoming obscured by the uses others made of it.

Thus, in France, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) read

Grotius and Pufendorf carefully before treating many topoi of the modern natural law tradition in his own political writings.31* And in Britain various figures of the so-called Scottish Enlightenm ent were influenced by the 17thcentury natural law movement through G ershom C arm ichaers (1672-1729) annotated edition of Pufendorfs De officio (1718, 1724), particularly by its selection as the set text in moral philosophy at Glasgow, where it helped transmit the natural jurisprudence tradition to H utcheson, H um e and Smith.39 Many of these later developments rem ain to be fully explored. But regarding Pufendorf himself one thing is clear: no one writing on law and morality for more than half a century after 1672 could afford to ignore him.40 Nor, indeed, can anyone writing on this period today.

Grotius, Hobbes, and Weigel Grotius* main interest in both of the aforem entioned works--an interest suitably stimulated by contem poraneous conflicts of competitive colonialism-was international law. This he carefully distinguished from both the divine and human positive law, as well as from the law of nature, seeking to establish it by means of a classical common consent argum ent. But his discussion of the natural law also laid the essential groundwork of subsequent modern natural law theories. Thus, in the Prolegom ena to his Dc

jure belli, G rotius based natural law upon m an’s inborn and "impelling desire for society (# 6 ), a Stoic notion from which he derived the consequent requirem ent that each man respect and abstain from that belonging to

17

another, namely his property or suum (# 8 ).41

H e distinguished clearly

betw een the consensual basis of civil or municipal law (# 1 4 ) and the origin of divine law in G od’s will, and rooted natural law in "the essential traits im planted in man" (#12). And since it is human reason that discerns these traits and their implications for action, G rotius accordingly defined the natural law as a "dictate of right reason, which points out that an act, according as it is o r is not in conformity with rational nature, has in it a quality of moral baseness o r m oral necessity; and that, in consequence, such an act is either forbidden or enjoined by the author of nature, God" (1.10.1). Much has been m ade of G rotius’s reliance on reason, and he has often been characterized as the first great secularizer of natural law on the basis of his statem ent, in the Prolegom ena (#11), that reason can discern the natural law "even if we should concede that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God."42 Nearly as often, however, has it been m aintained that such a position was held by many others before Grotius, and that he therefore offered nothing new or distinctive. For instance, we find the view just described in Suarez’s De legibus, ac Deo legislatore (1612), where it is attributed to Gregory of Rimini (II.6.3) and associated with the intellectualist (vs. voluntarist) position of Suarez’s contem porary opponent, G abriel Vasquez. Even apart from the difficult and probably undecidable question of direct influence in this case (Grotius rarely cites Suarez, and not in this instance), it is likely that the well-read Grotius was at least aware of the long debate over the primacy of G od’s intellect or will (i.e., His ordained or absolute powers) that preceded him.43 But none of this solves anything, and one isolated statem ent suffices neither to establish the thesis’ meaning nor its originality.

The precise m anner of reason’s

deployment is what matters. H ere we have two clues. First, as the C reator of human nature, by which H e orients His own legal injunctions and we our obedience, God clearly rem ained an ultim ate feature of G rotius’ system, which is neither secular nor novel in this respect. M ore revealing, though, is the following statem ent regarding the law’s origin and force:

'T h e law of nature

nevertheless has the reinforcem ent of expediency; for the author of nature willed that as individuals we should be weak, and should lack many things

18

needed in order to live properly, to the end that we might be more constrained to cultivate the social life" (#15).

Situated in the context of

Grotius* rejection of C arneades' relativistic claim that law rests on nothing but expediency,

and very carefully qualified

as

a

m ere subsidiary

consideration, this assertion is nonetheless im portant for suggesting a rather different use of reason.

Hum an weakness and need, we are told, are an

inducement toward a social life which must be regulated by natural and, eventually, civil laws demanding respect for each person’s suum.

In other

words, the content as well as the obligatoriness o f the natural law emerges from a rational consideration of actions required for individual m en’s wants to be satisfied in a social context. So regarded, G rotius’ position is indeed, as we shall elaborate in Section IV below, both secular and novel. Though much remains to be said here, one can already see some of Pufendorfs key borrowings from Grotius. O ne of these is the central notion of sociality (socialitas) which Pufendorf acceptcd but transform ed.

In

Grotius it remained at least partially an innate instinct found already in animals and children, a spontaneous sympathy or fellow-feeling for others but Pufendorf also considered it a later product of the socialization process spurred by G rotian weakness and need (imbecitlitas and indigentia), one that we are actually obligated to bring about.

Secondly, Pufendorf

approved of Grotius’ rational (vs. religious) determ ination of the natural law’s content, though he maintained more strongly that a divine legislator is needed to explain the law’s obligatoriness (i.e., its character as ‘law’) and rejected G rotius’ "even if we should concede..." hypothesis as an absurd scholasticism.45 Finally, he adopted G rotius’ suggestion that morality and law be organized according to a deductive, m athem atical model. But here his enthusiasm waned between the Elementa and De jure, since he later deemed G rotius’ enterprise too rigidly systematic and intellectualistic 46 Hobbes, who is, after Grotius, one of the most cited authors in Pufendorfs De jure,41 eventually came in for the sam e sort of criticism. His recognized influence on Pufendorf was nonetheless of an order so large that the latter was both then and now known as the "G erm an Hobbesian."48 Hobbes’ position in De cive, which "savours somewhat o f the profane, [but] is nevertheless for the most part extremely acute and sound," provided both

19

challenge and resource for Pufendorf already in the early Elementa, but it was not until the De jure that its genuinely formative contribution clearly em erged.

Hence, the much greater opposition evoked by this later work

from P u fendorf s theological and scholastic opponents. H obbes took G rotius’ secularism much further. In brief, he viewed nature as a purely mechanistic system of forces lacking intrinsic normative significance-at least the sort found therein by scholastic m etaphysicians-and populated by unsocial or minimally social individuals driven by an equally mechanical, passional dynamic to secure their own preservation and advantage. Since such predominantly egoistic striving in pursuit of one’s own ‘natural rights’ (to all things needed for one’s preservation) results in a (natural) state of constant, self-defeating ‘w ar/ these prudential reasoners are seen to be led by certain ‘natural laws’ to establish a civil ‘state* characterized by the presence o f an absolute, sovereign authority through whose agency their individual desires for self-preservation and

self­

enhancem ent are prom ised a reasonable and mutually compatible degree of satisfaction. In this framework, both moral and social laws as well as the order established by them are little more than rational means for the successful pursuit o f selfishness, and natural right and law become essentially explicable in term s of the effective use of power.4^ In contrast to G rotius and the previous scholastic tradition, they are not based on natural tendencies toward fellowship and cooperation. N or are they commands of God, who rem ains essentially on the fringes of Hobbes’ system.50 If the much more cautious and traditional G rotius had angered many of his contem poraries, H obbes threatened and outraged them.

But

Pufendorf always treated H obbes respectfully, despite his fundamental though m easured disagreem ent with him on some matters. As we shall see below, one im portant difference with H obbes concerned his anthropology, which Pufendorf deem ed too one-sided and extreme. If G rotius made human nature too spontaneously social, Hobbes failed to m ake it social enough. Though he also took man to be self-interested, ambitious, weak, and prone to anger, Pufendorf felt justified on the basis of experience in endowing humans with considerably m ore fellow-feeling than H obbes had allowed. Hence, he rejected the latter’s characterization of the natural state as a state of total

20

and inevitable ‘war.' This also meant, as we shall see, that there are various pre-civil possibilities for social order, making the em ergence of (he civil from the natural state less urgent and necessary, and tem pering--at least theoretically--the absoluteness of civil authority once established.

Finally,

though he essentially agreed with Hobbes’s rejection of the classical conception of man as a zoon politikon, particularly as reflected in G rotius’ innate social instinct, Pufendorf criticized the form er’s strict and direct theoretical transitions from nature to the state of nature to the civil state.51 His own strong emphasis on will and freedom led him to reject any kind of determinism, be it organic or mechanistic. O ne of Pufendorfs chief and self-acknowledged debts to H obbes concerned the hypothetical-deductive method. N ot merely another means for scholastic derivation and deductive certitude, it offered instead a way of rigorously constructing a moral-political order defined by defensible rights and laws upon an appropriately grounded starting point. This starting point, as Pufendorf realized by the time of De jure, was the conception of m an’s natural state that H obbes had adopted from Selden and others, and that also became a lynchpin of his own m ature natural law philosophy.52 O f course, Pufendorfs important qualifications of Hobbes’s anthropology, including the assumption of human freedom, significantly affected both the m ethod’s starting point and its actual operation in his own case, so that it yielded some interestingly different results. Specifically, it was his alternative conception of nature, or his ontology, that allowed him to modify H obbes’s account of the transition from the natural to the civil state in such a way th at various G rotian elem ents could reemerge. T he key to some of these innovative developm ents was Pufendorfs teacher a t Jena, the eclectic Cartesian, E rhard Weigel (1625-99),53 who first induced him to link G rotius and Hobbes within a larger synthesis. For it was from Weigel, too, that Pufendorf derived

his im portant ontological

distinction between physical and moral entities.

Before we turn to this

concept, however, and to better understand its application, another preliminary comment about his philosophical m ethod is needed. As noted already, the idea of developing ethics in a m athem atical fashion was clearly in the air well before Pufendorf. Still, it was probably

21

Weigel who sparked his (and Leibniz's) immediate interest therein. Though W eigel’s

Idea

mathematicarum

mathcseos and

universae

cum

speciminibus

inventionum

his Arithmetische Beschreibung der Moralweisheit

appeared only in 1669 and 1674 respectively, he had lectured on these subjects at Jen a during P ufendorfs stay there shortly before 1660. Hence, it is appropriate to sec his influence in the E lem ental organization according to "definitions, axioms, and observations.” O f immediate interest to us here, however, is not the success or failure of the somewhat artificial use of m athem atical m ethod in Pufendorfs work (which he himself, in his Preface to the first edition of D JN , called an "immature" product of his youth), but the fact that one of its sections is specifically devoted to "observatons.” For this reflects an im portant empirical thrust by which Pufendorf tried always to balance his rational deductivism. If dissatisfaction with an exclusively deductive m ethod partly accounts for P ufendorfs objection to being called a Cartesian, then his conviction about the relcvance of actual experience helps explain the addition of num erous references to Francis Bacon in the second edition (1684) of De jure.54 Such experience served Pufendorf mainly in two capacities:

as a

negative check on or a positive confirmation of theoretical claims (cf. his critique of Hobbes’ anthropology), an d -m o re importantly--as the inductive ground upon which to erect theoretical assertions. The content of natural right and natural law is not deducible, he thought, from ultim ate rational principles alone but must also be discovered through an investigation of concrete m oral, legal, and social relations and institutions. This conviction sheds light on some of Pufendorfs activities that may otherwise seem extraneous to his main natural law philosophizing: his lifelong contact and collaboration with Esaias (including the Einleitung), his own involvement in affairs of state, his later labors to write the history of existing states, and even his interest in church-state relations. T o be sure, such a dual strategy of employing both a priori and a posteriori m ethods risked serious tensions, some of which underlie Krieger’s characterization of P ufendorfs system as a ’’politics o f discretion” (i.e., an inappropriate theoretical accommodation to given political circumstances). O n the other hand, it was consistent with Pufendorfs own understanding of

22 scientific rationality as already exhibited by Hobbes. It accounts, moreover, for his immense acclaim in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, especially in Germany. M ore than any other natural law thinker of the time, Pufendorf tried consciously to embed the myriad details of ordinary m oral, social, and judicial life within a comprehensive rational system that in turn implied them. This respect for reason and experience alike made his philosophy very attractive in the complex post-Reformation context of emerging nation­ states, whose leaders and officials were searching for a new, secular foundation of moral and political order.55 Beside elements of method, Weigel’s most im portant contribution to Pufendorfs thought was his distinction between so-callcd physical and m oral entities (erttia physica and entia moralia).56 According to Pufendorf, the latter are strictly speaking only dependent ’'modes" (modi) of physical objects, "imposed" (impasitio) on them by rational and free beings (G od and humans). Nonetheless, they constitute a separate non-physical sphere57 that enabled him to avoid the all-encompassing materialism (and determ inism ) implied by contemporary physical science, whose powerful m ethod was otherwise so attractive.

In a period when Aristotelian scholasticism

confronted more and increasingly persuasive challenges from the sciences, the conccpt of moral entities allowed Pufendorf to elaborate various dimensions of moral and social reality not adequately describable in scientific terms, and to provide the language of natural right and law with an independent frame of reference not requiring translation into another idiom. Moral entities thus belong to an ontology of morals that prefigured, albeit very generally, Kant’s later distinction between phenom enal and noum enal realms,58 and they clearly differentiate Pufendorfs natural law theory from others of that period. Pufendorf identified four kinds of moral entities: person(ality), status (state), quantity, and quality—o f which the first two are the most im portant. "Instituted to bring order into the lives of men" (DJN, 1.1.5), each of them is further subdivided, and together they provide the framework for Pufendorfs systematic elaboration of natural right and law. Personality is a function of the free intellect and will by which various kinds o f law are not only established but also known and followed. Thus, it grounds the possession of

23

both obligations and rights. Though individuals are the paradigm instances o f personality, Pufendorf followed the prevailing juristic tradition in also allowing for composite or corporative persons: any type of m oral agency that is the subject of rights and duties has personality.59

M oreover, since

individuals may play several roles or parts at once (i.e., assume different personae) according to the various legal realms into which they are in­ c o rp o ra te d ,’ they may be in possession of several interrelated but possibly conflicting personalities at the same time. This is in fact so, according to Pufendorf, in that humans typically inhabit divine, natural, and civil realms alike. Personality leads directly to Pufendorfs rich, analogical notion of status, any adequate rendition of which requires a variety o f contextdependent English equivalents.60 This term can refer to one's social rank (the English 'status’ or G erm an Stand), one’s circumstances (in German, Zustand), or to a specific version of these such as one’s civil condition (i.e., ‘the state’).

The several meanings often overlap, corresponding to the

multiple personalities then assumed.

Essentially, though, status indicates

one’s human situatedness in particular kinds of moral-legal ‘space’ (to use Pufendorfs own analogy: EL> I.D3.1-3, DJN, 1.1.6, and DO, 1.1) created by divine a n d /o r hum an assignation, and in term s of which one understands one’s powers, obligations, and rights. The most basic of these is the so-called ‘state of nature.’ H orst D enzer has operationally dem onstrated the importance of the natural state by employing it as the central, mediating notion o f his expository framework (‘n a tu re -state of nature-civil state’) for Pufendorfs philosophy61

The structure of De jure naturae clearly supports such an

interpretation. A fter treating of moral entities and human intelligence and freedom in Book I, Pufendorf turns almost immediately (Sec. 2) in Book II to a close examination of man’s natural state. Here, the realities o f hum an selfinterest, weakness, and sociality together yield, in Section 3, the suprem e principle o f the natural law:

"Every man, so far as in him lies, should

cultivate and preserve toward others a sociable attitude, which is peaceful and agreeable a t all tim es to the nature and end of the hum an race” (II.3.15). From this principle, all other human obligations and rights are eventually

24

derived, as Pufendorf proceeds gradually and exhaustively from the proper role of humans as such to roles played in particular adventitious ‘states’: from the personal to the public, the familial to the civil, and the national to the international levels. The general theoretical foundations laid in Books IIII may also be contrasted with the practical applications of Books IV-VIII, thereby revealing both Pufendorf s retention of this classical distinction and also the employment of his alternatively deductive and inductive m ethod.

III. THE ‘NATURAL STATE’ IN PUFENDORF Toward the beginning of his im portant personal and intellectual biography, Treitschke62 exhibits P ufendorfs stuffy academician’s reputation in G erm any by quoting some verses of Friedrich Schiller: "Drum lasst der wilden W olfe Stand"/ U nd schliesst des Staates dauernd B and!/ So lehren vom K a th ed e r/ H err Pufendorf und Feder."

O f interest here is not

Pufendorfs 19th-century image per se, but its characterization by Schiller in term s of the natural state ("der wilden Wolfe Stand”) seen in opposition to a contract-based civil society. The natural state’s importance to Pufendorfs public is also indicated by the frontispiece to the first G erm an translation (1681) of De officio . W e find there an allegorical depiction of the state of nature:

a ruler sitting on a throne holds on his lap a tom e entitled "Jus

Naturale," while his philosopher-servant points toward a picture of a naked man crawling in the grass and eating fru it-a scene repeated several tim es in P ufendorfs various accounts of the natural state, including this essay.63 As for Pufendorf himself, he says in Eris scandica (Specimeny III.l) that his description of m an’s natural state has evoked the most criticism from his opponents. And Staiu (# 1 ) maintains still more pointedly that the naturalstate doctrine "rightly claims for itself the chief place in the architectonic of politics, and political tracts that do not even touch upon it must be considered gravely defective.”

Pufendorf therefore agreed with his

contem poraries and posterity on the im portance of the natural state to his m ature natural law philosophy.

So do contem porary scholars who claim

26 more generally that the positions of 17th- and 18th-century political theorists may be essentially characterized by their particular conceptions of the natural state.

Separate Treatments o f the 4Natural State * in Pufendorfs Works Pufendorfs own estimation o f the topic’s im portance is also revealed by the fact that there are five different discussions of it in his works, beginning with the Elementa (1660).

Though still largely inchoate and

incompletely elaborated here (to which extent it may be '‘g n w d y defective”), Pufendorfs comments on the state of nature ad u m b rate-lik e the Elementa as a w hole-m any of his later views and distinctions. The concept is first introduced under the more general notion of status and described there (Ï3.2.) as "humanity, or human life....that condition in which every man whatsoever, by virtue o f the very fact that he is a man, is constituted." Entry to the natural state is gained "at the moment when an individual can be properly called a human being," that is, "when he begins to live and feel," while death provides the exit. Everyone in that state has both obligations and rights vis-à-vis other persons that are assigned by th e natural law, and this fact distinguishes humans from brute animals. T he Elementa already rejects as sub-human Hobbes’ overly grim characterization o f the natural state and hints several times64 at Pufendorfs later distinction between the fictional and real versions of status naturalis. M oreover, there are already some indications of the pedagogical use o f the fictional, counterfactual state of nature that recurs in Pufendorfs later writings. Hence, even though th e Elementa discussion is scattered, undeveloped, and in general not as strategically employed as part of a larger argum ent, it does support the broader claim that this early work contains all of P ufendorfs original ideas, which only get further elaborated in his later writings.65 In De jure, Pufendorf treats the natural state at the beginning o f Book II. Situated between the chapters on man’s unsuitedness for a life without laws (Ch. 1) and on the law of nature (Ch. 3), his discussion here is clearly foundational. Its careful argum entation is punctuated and often carried by

27

lengthy quotations from classical authors, and is distinguished by Pufendorfs explicit and persistent effort to critique both Grotius’ and H obbes’ positions, particulary that o f D e cive. This extended account is unquestionably basic to P ufendorfs three rem aining discussions of man’s natural state which are evidently linked to it by paraphrase a n d /o r direct quotation. The first of these is in his shorter natural law textbook, the De officio (II. 1), which generally follows the topical order o f DJN but also sacrifices Pufendorfs acute critical discussions of H obbes and others for neatly abbreviated sum m aries of his own conclusions. P ufendorfs final two accounts of the natural state were in p art or whole polem ical/explanatory responses to attacks on his published works. O ne of them comprises C hapter 3 of his long, untranslated essay, Specimen controversarium (1677),66 portions of which are becoming increasingly significant for our historical understanding of early m odern natural law theories.

Originally presented to Johannes Baazius, the archbishop of

U ppsala, this m onograph was intended to summarize, clarify, and vindicate P ufendorfs position in the bitter debate over De jure and De officio into which he had been dragged by the vicious attacks of his religious and scholastic opponents. M ore specifically, its discussion of the natural state is a detailed response to Joshua Schwartz, author of the Index novitatum (1672). Schwartz, who failed intentionally or not to distinguish his own religious conception of a perfect natural state (i.e., a status integritatis) from P ufendorfs clearly defined alternative, severely criticized the latter’s supposed falsification or divergence from the Scriptural version o f man’s origin. Given such critics’ efforts to polemically distort and thereby control his own position, Pufendorfs essay very clearly differentiates the several senses of status naturalis.

It also emphasizes the natural state’s merely

"Active" or ‘'conceptual" character, as well as the purely rational basis of P ufendorfs larger position. Finally, Specimen's main focus throughout is on the so-called pre-cultural rather than the pre-civil version of the natural state, that is, upon the state of need initially transcended through human cooperation in the context of various pre-civil societies. Pufendorfs academic essay, "De statu hominum naturali," which is newly edited and translated here for the first time, comprises his last word on

28 the subject, as it were. Though the collection in which it first appeared was published in 1675, several pieces therein had earlier been issued separately, some in the Heidelberg period. The essay itself has, to my knowledge, not been independently dated, but internal evidence places it in the period 167375, shortly after the appearance of De jure and the theological attacks thereon, and probably also after the publication of Cum berland’s De legibus

naturae (1672). M ore specifically, it seems to have been w ritten in 1675 as a new and current contribution to the collection to which it belongs.67 Like other essays in that work, it was occasioned by the doctoral defense of one of Pufendorfs students at Lund (H erm ann Fleming). Also like them , since relatively few manuscripts of the collection are extant, it rem ains for m odern readers one of the least accessible of Pufendorfs writings.

Statu is the longest self-contained treatm ent of the natural state we have from Pufendorf. It reiterates the main distinctions but also develops certain aspects of Pufendorfs position more thoroughly than the o ther four accounts. Barbeyrac already recognized its value in quoting portions of it in the supplemental notes to his translation of De jure . And it has also figured prominently in more recent scholarly discussions of Pufendorf that recognize the importance of the status naturalis concept.68

Competing Accounts o f the ‘Natural State ' in the 17th Century Before preceding to a closer analysis of Statu and its significance, it will be helpful to give a broad sketch of Pufendorfs various conceptions of the natural state, and also to describe briefly some of their historical antecedents or competitors.69 Four different versions of the natural state were available during the early 17th century. (1) A ristotle and the scholastic tradition indebted to him took man’s ‘natural state’ or place to be within an ideal pol'ts that allows him to realize his proper human function. Though the state as such is comprised o f other, smaller social units like family and household, it is strictly speaking not constructed out of them; for it is not in essence an artificial, man-made entity. Likewise, the solitary individual who plays such an important role in 17th-century accounts as the ultim ate

29

analytical unit from, by, and for which states are composed also has no theoretical im portance here, for the state is considered to be a teleologically ‘prior’ entity toward which individuals, as political animals with an inborn social instinct, naturally strive. In a sense, therefore, the state is needed to explain or fully account for its individual members, instead of relying on them for its own existence and meaning. (2) According to both Stoicism and Christianity, humanity originated in a pre-civil (natural) state of 'utopian’ perfection (the Golden Age, Paradise).

There, before their eventual devolution through gradual

deterioration or some kind of sudden 'fall/ men were free, equal, and happy. As in A ristotelianism , this original state of perfection provided a norm for determ ining the content of the natural law. Pufendorfs chief objection here was that all such notions, while they may function well enough as theoretical ideals, are nonetheless useless for explaining and directing human action in the real world of experience.

Thus, Statu (# 3 ) dem ands explicitly that

concrete political maxims be derived from a conception of man as we find him in the here and now, endowed with limited cognitive and volitional abilities, and not from man in a state of unrealistic perfection. A third (3), "Epicurean" account of the pre-civil state of nature contrasted sharply with the Aristotelian, Stoic, and Christian versions alike. It had much in common with that of Hobbes, whose m aterialist and ‘atheist’ philosophy was often com pared to this scorned ancient sect (not surprisingly, of course, given his association with that modern "Epicurean," Gassendi, through the M ersenne circle).

According to the Epicurean view, humans

were originally free, equal, solitary, and at odds with one another. T heir precivil condition was m arked by war, chaos, and general insecurity because effective right and law were taken to be positive or conventional only, rather than natural. And it was in order to escape this undesirable natural state that they eventually joined together and by agreem ent formed civil societies to ensure their own safety and welfare. T he precise characterization o f this position, and also the extent of its similarity to Hobbes, depends on a broader interpretation of their respective philosophies. Hans Medick maintains that the Epicurean view, despite its identification of a general pattern of state-form ation in the context of a pre-

30

civil State of nature* offered no ‘science’ of politics as such. For it revealed no universal rules of right and obligation, and no common social and political norms: these were thought to be totally lacking in the state o f nature, and then to vary from one state to another depending on the particular agreements of the respective ‘founding fathers/ The Epicurean schem e was essentially a generalized (historical) description of the actual genesis of particular states, not a theoretical model of an invariant pattern o f stateformation each o f whose steps/stages could be shown to be deductively related to other, subsequent ones. Richard Tuck, on the o ther hand, finds in (Gassendi’s) Epicureanism "a fully developed view of rights in a state of nature which are bargained away by self-interested men following the law of nature in order to create a multiplicity o f civil societies."70 W hile admitting the diversity of conventional agreements according to the Epicurean view, along with its accompanying relativist or skeptical implications, he maintains its compatibility with a more basic "minimalist" ethics and politics of universal import. Hobbes (4), both Medick and Tuck agree, worked out a genuinely scientific theory of politics.

Seeing

‘Epicurean’ (meta)physics

(i.e.,

materialist mechanics) confirmed in the successful sciences of his day, and impressed by the hypothetical-deductive (m athem atical) method, H obbes turned to the human sphere and sought to develop there a sim ilar ‘science’ of society, starting from a hypothetical natural state of isolated individuals through whose decisions the sovereign states of early m odern times could plausibly arise.

In doing so, he responded to a twin dem and for both

evidence and methodological rigor, just as in the physical sciences. It was his effort to meet this challenge, along with a shared understanding of the contemporary crisis of morals and politics and the failure of existing theories to meet it, that made Hobbes so persistently attractive to Pufendorf.

Different Meanings o f 'Natural State*in Pufendorf In replying to his opponents’ misunderstanding or distortion of his meaning m Specimen (III), Pufendorf notes that the terms ‘nature’ and

31 ‘natural’ are very ambiguous, and that anyone employing them owes his readers clear definitions. H e then proceeds to show that the term ‘natural state’ m eans different things in the various intellectual disciplines. In physics or natural philosophy, for instance, it signifies a state of normality, wholeness, or well-formation, in contrast to things that are monstrous, distorted, or m utilated. definitory contrast:

M edicine in turn supposes a slightly different

here natural means well as opposed to sick or ill.

R om an law (at least some of the jurisconsults) distinguishes the natural state from the state of civil society. And theology, finally, considers the perfect, integral, prelapsarian condition of Adam and Eve to be natural to man, whose sin m ade him ‘fa ir into an ‘unnatural’ state of physical weakness and m oral corruption. Always respectful of both ordinary and scholarly discourse alike, Pufendorf rejected none of these usages out of hand, as long as they were clearly distinguished from one another (cf. Statu # 2 ).

In fact, he

incorporated a num ber of them into his own accordingly complex discussions. Although P ufendorfs different accounts of the natural state overlap, they also vary significantly in content and emphasis. As may be expected, the m eaning of ‘natural state’ changes accordingly, and actual uses of the term are often context-relative and sometimes ambiguous.71

Hence, any

generalized scheme is potentially misleading. On the other hand, such an outline can make Pufendorfs different uses m ore discernible and, if suitably qualified, can aid in their interpretation and interrelation. T he following summary diagram will serve as the basis of our subsequent analysis.

PUFENDORF’S USES OF ‘NATURAL STATE’ I. adventitious states

state of man ( 4 integral s ta te )... A. - state of humanity (ad deum) (vs. state of brutes) 1. full, pure fictive (i) II. natural state

B. in se (vs. state of culture) 2. limited, partial real (ii)

1. full, pure C. ad alios homines (vs. civil state)

2. limited, partial real (ii)

a) abandoned new born infants b ) uncultured, isolated, full-grown men (cf. ancient G reek accounts) c) post-lapsarian hum ans before ^ receiving divine assistance d ) post-lapsarian hum ans after receiving divine assistance c) shipw recked individuals 0 Am erican Indians g) other ancienis who 'lost' o r ‘left ” behind’ th e use of tools (culture) h ) m any humans, originally coming into being all at oncc i) the hum an race, as now, scattered ^ around the earth j) the scattered patriarchs as such k) sovereign states 1) citizens (as such) o f different sovereign states |m )in d iv id u a l m em bers o f prc-civil I societies ' In ) individuals w ho a rc citizens of specific sovereign states

33

As we have already seen, Pufendorfs divisions begin with the general notion of status, a m oral entity or mode ‘imposed* by rational agents upon a given physical reality. Next, so-called adventitious states (I) are distinguished from the natural state. These modes characterizing humans "at birth, or some tim e thereafter, by virtue of some human deed" (DJN, 1.1.7) designate humanly assigned or chosen roles in life such as one’s political, economic, or ecclesiastical station, along with the rights and obligations attending them (EL, I.D3.8). (These products of human social interaction em erge gradually in the o th er categories (II.B and C] as well.)

The natural state (II), by

contrast, is imposed by G od a t the m om ent of an individual’s creation, namely at or shortly before birth (DJN, 1.1.7; EL, I.D3.2; Specimen, 111.10). Pufendorf subdivides it into three distinct and im portant types:

(A) the

natural state with respect to G o d -also called the state o f humanity, (B) the natural state of each person by himself, and (C) the natural state of humans in relation to one another (DO, I. 2-5). O f these, the latter two versions are further analyzed and illuminated by specific examples. T he perfect or integral state (Paradise, etc.) fits nowhere into this scheme except as an object of denial. Breaking with religious and scholastic orthodoxy, Pufendorf followed the "Epicurean" H obbes72 in treating only of m an’s im perfect state. This is consistent with his repeated insistence that his views are based solely on reason (and experience), making no appeal to Sacred Scripture.

However, just as Scriptural examples and language

continue to occur in his reason-based analysis, there remains an echo of the integral state in Pufendorfs state of humanity (A),73 especially insofar as our hum anity is distinguished from the condition of unintelligent brutes.

Man

was placed into this ‘natural state’ (A) by his Creator, and in it he is, in contrast to animals, obligated to obey the law o f nature while also enjoying the common rights shared by all humans as such (EL, I.D3.2-3). Even though Pufendorfs discussion focuses mainly on the remaining two versions of the natural state (i.e., B and C), it is im portant to note here that the state of humanity (A) docs not simply disappear.

Or, if it does, it is only as a

fundam ental presupposition o f the other two versions. For insofar as humans are under the divine regime they always have specific natural obligations and rights.74 This consideration is as im portant as Pufendorfs eventual appeals

34 to experience in arguing against Hobbes’s extreme version of the natural state. Pufendorfs prime distinction, though, is between (B) the natural state of single individuals left alone by themselves (in se ) and (C) their natural state in relation to one another (ad alios), that is, between a pre-cultural and a pre-civil state of nature. In the former, we imagine man "left entirely to himself, without any added support from other men, assuming indeed that condition of human nature which is found a t present" (D O , II.1.4).75 As a solitary, prehistorical being, he is unable in such a condition to develop the tools

and

institutions

improvement.

required

for

his

own

self-preservation

and

In the pre-civil state, on the other hand, men are related

through kinship and the similarity of their shared hum an nature alone. Not subject to any common authority (beside God), nor joined by any formal (political) agreements, they are unable to command one another. These two versions of the natural state are obviously not exclusive, and this partly accounts for their frequent conflation: one can be in (B) and (C) at the same time.

Yet, in Pufendorf at least, (B) always presupposes (C) in that civil

society complements an already developed cultural life rooted in pre-civil societies. But (C) does not necessarily presuppose (B) because one can live an organized communal life without belonging to a formally established state

(civitas). Both the pre-cultural and the pre-civil natural states are once more divided into what Pufendorf calls (1) a pure, full, and som etim es *fictive’ version, and (2) a partial, limited, and sometimes real version. Though more elusive, this distinction is just as im portant as the previous one, and Pufendorf uses it in discussing both (B) and (C). Sometimes the context is unclear and the distinction seems to operate independently without a clear reference.

Consequently, the function of the additional subdivisions or

examples (a-n) may also be murky. In fact, Pufendorfs examples sometimes do double duty, as when the same individual is situated in both (B) and (C), or when he is considered as both an individual and a group member. The full or pure natural state is fictive in being a logical construct with a theoretical function but no actual, historical reality, at least in regard to individuals as such (B l, C li). The really existing natural state, on the other

35

hand, can be limited or partial in several senses: either it pertains only to some men rather than to all at once (B2, C2), or else it describes the always partial and historically gradual enculturation a n d /o r (pre-civil) socialization of men (B2, C2m).

The remaining category (C lii) reflects an important

difference betw een organized groups and individuals as such (i.e., not as group mem bers): namely, the really existing (prc-civil) natural state is a later historical developm ent characterizing relations among separate organized groups and their group members; a pure natural state (B or C) am ong solitary individuals is in fact not realizable at all in the sense that they would soon perish.

The partial redundancy between (C lii) and (C2) occurs only in

category (C), not in (B), since it is only there that individuals may be considered both in themselves and also as groups members. Pufendorf still thinks here o f culture as a common human phenom enon instantiated by degrees of m ore or less, and not o f separate cultures. Hence, a person may be cultured or not, or cultured to a specific degree, but one cannot be both cultured and uncultured at the same time. Contrarily, as a m em ber o f a formally organized group (pre-civil or civil), one may be in a state of war with those outside and in a state of peace with those inside that group. O ne thing is certain-like Hobbes, Pufendorf never considered the natural state in its full or pure sense as an historical actuality. H e was not writing natural o r social history in this sense.76

H e did, however, use

examples from past history (even ‘sacred history’) to exhibit the limited or real natural state.

Such examples, and indeed that whole state as such,

provide a sort o f empirically ‘real* bridge between the pure, fictive state of n ature (B l) understood as a hypothetical absolute beginning, and the actual state of civil society (Cliik-1, C2n). This interm ediate, transitional realm was o f great interest to Pufendorf, and it is precisely here, we shall see, that his distance from H obbes and his proximity to G rotius and the classical tradition em erges most clearly. P ufendorfs various accounts of the natural state address different segments o f this general scheme which, despite some ambiguities, is rem arkably consistent.

Thus, the state o f humanity (A) described in the

Elementa (I.D3.2-3) is but briefly m entioned in De jure (1.1.7, not II.2), De officio (II.1.3), and

Specimen

(III.3),

becoming

a m ere background

36 assumption in Statu. Aiming to amend Hobbes, the De jure account focuses primarily on the pre-civil state (C), and our own essay offers a thorough elaboration of the pre-cultural state (B). Statu also distinguishes very clearly between the pure (1) and limited (2) versions of the natural state in general, and develops most explicitly the direct parallels betw een fictive individuals (C lih) and really existing states (civitates) (C l iik) in a pure state o f nature.

Synopsis o f "On the Natural State o f Men" The longest of Pufendorfs accounts of the natural state, Statu contains his most straightforward» explicitly summative statem ent of the subject. It is unconstrained by the textbook brevity of De officio, an d -d esp ite Pufendorfs intention to enlighten the "simple-minded” and confute the "ignorant and male-volent" (# 1 )—its progression is in general not dictated by an effort to answer seriatim his theological opponents’ particular difficulties, as in Specimen. With fewer classical quotations, it also reads more smoothly than the De jure account. Presenting a less (overt) critical interaction with Hobbes (and Spinoza), which lies more beneath the surface here, im portant aspects of Pufendorfs own position (such as the pre-civil, cultural state, where men have left ‘nature’ in one but not another sense) are more completely brought to light.

Thus, the essay provides an excellent

introduction to Pufendorfs view of its topic. Unlike his larger works, Pufendorfs essays are not provided with chapter and section headings. But for purposes of analysis, we can group Statu’s 24 sections into five main parts. I.

(Sec. 1): The essay opens with an explicit com parison between

Pufendorfs analytical-deductive method and the procedure of the natural sciences, which arc taken as models. Like a physical scientist, the political philosopher explains his object (the "moral body" o f the state) by deductively (re)constructing or deriving it from a pure, analytically arrived a t starting point. The latter is, of course, the so-called natural state in term s o f which the nature, necessity, and advantages of civil society may be understood. Boldly (though implicitly) broadcasting his common cause with H obbes and his dissatisfaction with previous political thinkers, including Grotius,

37

Pufendorf asserts that theories which do not utilize the natural state concept in this way "must be considered gravely defective." II. (Secs. 2-3): A fter defining the natural state as "the state of men outside of civil society--a state from which all inventions and hum an customs seemly and useful for this life have been removed" (cf. C and B above), Pufendorf rejects efforts to interpret it as a perfect condition of either individuals o r states. Instead, he insists that we consider man as we find him --needy and "tinged with depravity," not as he might or ought or we wish him to be. A perfect natural state, envisioned either as an ideal rational norm for hum an action (Aristotelianism, Stoicism) o r a state of prelapsarian integrity (Christianity), transcends even general human experience. It therefore fails to explain the formation, end, and function o f existing civil societies, which can be b etter accounted for without such supra-rational or trans-empirical assumptions.

Reflecting both his humanist (vs. scholastic) and Protestant

origins, Pufendorf will examine the proper relationships of imperfect individuals and states (civitates) only. The latter, though themselves always imperfect (#23), are nonetheless "a sort of remedy" (# 2 ) for individuals’ deficiencies in the natural state. And since they are thus "more perfect," it is natural (in both a classical and a Hobbesian sense) for individuals to enter them. III. (Secs. 4-6): H ere Pufendorf introduces his im portant distinction between m en’s prc-cultural (B) and prc-civil (C ) condition and develops at some length both the form er’s full (fictive) and limited (real) versions. As in De jure and D e officio, classical literature is employed to depict the wretchedness o f a pure natural state lacking the benefits of cooperative hum an activity. Even though the human race as a whole has never been in such an extrem e (not really possible) state, it is nonetheless useful to portray it so in order to make men appreciate and be well disposed toward one another. Besides, a limited version of this state has in fact existed, and can still exist, as Pufendorf tries to show by reference to post-lapsarian A dam and Eve, who could have been saved from the pure state of nature only by G od's special assistance. Additional examples of such a state are found in ancient G reek history and 17th-century ethnographic descriptions of various New W orld peoples.

38

'lliese types of examples, and especially Pufendorfs effort to relate them to one another, are unique to Statu, and they reveal a peculiar intellectual problematic confronting him as he developed his theoretical conception of the natural state.

In noting the theological attacks on

Pufendorf, we have already seen that the biblical account o f m an’s origins was a possible stumbling block for any 17th-century state-of-nature theorist. But so were the many descriptions of both primitive and civilized nonEuropean peoples (e.g., American Indians, the Chinese) brought back by explorers, for they challenged the standard, E uropean conception of human history. B itter battles over biblical chronology thus erupted in the early 17th century, and our essay gives a glimpse of how Pufendorf tried to negotiate them. To wit, he simply retained the orthodox ‘single pair’ account of hum an origins and suggested that after divinely assisted humans had been scattered over the earth, some of them simply ‘forgot’ the knowledge and skills previously acquired (from God and, eventually, one another). A nd this left them in a relatively more complete natural state than their m ore ‘cultured’ and ‘civilized’ European conquerors.77 Pufendorfs examples in this section are also noteworthy because they exhibit his ‘empiricism’ in two quite similar ways. First, early m an required God’s assistance because he had not yet had time to develop tools and skills on his own. Currently primitive peoples, on the other hand, have not had time to recover (redevelop) their former knowledge and skills. As suggested by the Prometheus myth, absolute beginnings require divine assistance; otherwise, as we know from our own individual and collective experience, cultural development emerges only through cooperative hum an effort over time. Secondly, Pufendorfs incorporation of both religious and ethnographic ‘data’ into his theoretical framework of the natural state itself reveals a respect for evidence. For each of these reports was doubly ‘factual’ in his eyes: not only as an established intellectual position in potential conflict with his own view, but also one that he himself for various reasons (e.g., he remained a devout Lutheran all his life) believed to be true.78 Needless to say, it is important for m odem readers trying to understand Pufendorf to be aware of such easily forgotten details.

39

Finally, in Sec. 6, Pufendorf introduces his contrast between pre-civil and civil societies, noting that it is possible for humans to live well in the form er condition before states are established. M en’s initial desire to escape the

(pre-cultural)

natural

state’s misery induces them early on

to

communicate, share, and cooperate with one another, to live, work, and trade together; in other words, it helps make them social. The civil state’s eventual role is merely to secure and multiply these already gained advantages in the changing context of ever more num erous and complex hum an interactions. Em ergence from the pre-cultural state of nature is a continuous historical accomplishment of at once self-interested and social human beings at various levels of development. O pen-ended and always incomplete, it also remains subject to individual excesses. These too provide a reason for forming states, albeit one that elicits from Pufendorf an earnest Stoic (and Rousseauan) warning about greed, vanity, and luxury. IV.

(Secs. 7-18): This long portion of Statu discusses the natural state

in relation to other men (C). Contrasted with civil society, it is alternately considered as a "conceptual fiction" and as something that "really exists" (#7). Its general definitely features are, first, that no one in such a state has the authority to command others or impose his will on them, and, second, that there is no common authority whom everyone is obligated to obey. None but one, th at is: since the state of humanity (A) underlies all other natural or adventitious states, humans are always subject to the natural law recognized by them through right or sound reason, and consequently they have certain responsibilities and rights toward one another. Just as humankind as a whole has never really been in a pure precultural state, so also has it never been in a pure pre-civil state. Notably, Pufendorf begins his account of hum an history with an original conjugal pair, seen already as a small society structured by an authority relationship. From m arriage in turn arise paternal as well as larger, household relations also under the rule o f a patriarchal paterfamilias.79

In these small pre-civil

societies, where strong kinship ties still partially preclude the need for the full exercise of authoritative power, individuals have already left the natural state and taken im portant steps toward civil society. The natural state as a pure actuality is for Pufendorf a much later historical development, arising

40

first among the various extended patriarchal societies that multiply, disperse» and then compete with one another. It is this later state of nature that men decide eventually to leave by agreeing to form civil states where submission to a common authority insures their respective and collective advantage. Even though a pre-civil natural state among individuals has never really existed, it is very thoroughly discussed in this portion o f our essay. Its fictional or hypothetical character^0 serves Pufcndorf in several capacities. First, it allows him to sketch the anthropology of pure natural man on which all later social arrangem ents depend» particularly the pre-civil societies distinguishing his own view from that of Hobbes. Second, it enables him to show how, given such human characteristics and pre-civil arrangem ents (including the state of nature among separate families), civil states eventually become necessary. And, third, it provides him with a direct model for the appropriate internal and external workings o f states, which are like hypothetical individuals in a pure but actual natural state. This individualstate analogy is visible in Statu’s very structure: Secs. 19-24 rely explicitly on Secs. 8-18, as Pufcndorf draws ‘lessons’ for statesmen from the natural state of individuals. In his own words, "What has been related thus far makes it easy to see that an exact knowledge of the natural state can suggest to leaders of states many things concerning a state’s external and internal affairs whose observance is extremely necessary" (#19). Jn this sense, too, as he claimed at Statu’s beginning, is the fictional o r hypothetical character of m en’s pre-civil condition important to Pufendorf s theory o f the state. Part IV contains several cohesive sub-units, including Secs. 8-12, which treat o f natural rights and natural liberty in regard to individuals, different forms of the state, and sovereigns. Contrary to Hobbes, the natural right of self-preservation is not an unrestricted privilege or license to do anything whatever, and justice and injustice exist already in the natural state. Still, even in Pufendorf, this state offers but limited protection against others. O ne’s personal security cannot be assured by others’ presum ed m oral probity and benignity; instead, it depends mainly on one’s own strength» which is to be.increased by means of strategic friendships and alliances. The main topic of Secs. 13-14 is men’s natural equality, which Pufendorf defines not in terms of equivalent physical or mental abilities but

41

in term s of equal obligations and rights under the natural law. And Secs. 1518 describe his "middle course" between Hobbes, Grotius, and others in response to the question of w hether humans are naturally friends or enemies. D espite their inborn self-love and wickcdness, Pufendorf argues here, men are nonetheless linked by bonds of natural similarity, mutual need, and the desire for social relations, as well as by their common obligations toward the natural law. H ence, they are naturally at peace, not war. Yet this peace becomes increasingly unstable and unreliable as pre-civil societies grow in num ber and complexity (in a sense, as the natural state among groups spreads). T he prim e virtue amid such changing conditions is caution. But even this can be but a temporary solution, and a t a certain point entry into civil society under a common authority becomes necessary, or natural. V.

(Secs. 19'24):

Consideration of the pure natural state among

individuals helps civil societies to determ ine properly their external bearing toward other sovereign states (Secs. 19-21) and their internal policies toward their own citizens (Secs. 22-24). As in the case of individuals, the primary interest and obligation o f states is to preserve themselves. W hile they may best achieve this by maintaining themselves in a state o f military readiness, Pufendorf also notes here the economic prerequisites of national security: private wealth, a full treasury, and the equal trade relationships essential to both of these. In this, he clearly recognizes the mutual interdependence of the new m arket economy and the emerging nation-state that both preserves and (economically) depends on it. Pufendorf also advises the formation of alliances based on mutual self-interest, approves of officially sanctioned ‘spying’ on the p art of resident ambassadors (like his brother, Esaias), and urges the m aintenance of a rough equilibrium of forces among states. Above all, he warns, a state should never rely on peace alone, or on the always qualified treaties and assurances of its supposed friends. Many details of this discussion are derived from G rotius and Hobbes. Caution toward others is even more warranted among states than am ong individuals. For despite the general similarities between these, they also differ in im portant ways. For example, the negative consequences of individual self-interest are partially offset by the mutual benevolence generated by m en’s common kinship, and also by the fact that some human

42

needs can only be met cooperatively. States as such, however, though also subject to the natural law's dictates (e.g., in being forbidden to wage wars merely to limit another’s strength), are not similarly restrained by other natural bonds; besides, they are also more self-sufficient than individuals. Hence, they are better examples of the pure state of nature than any pre-civil individuals or societies.

The best instance of a pure natural state in this

sense is ironically that farthest removed from the interpersonal level. Finally, Pufendorf refers explicitly to the pedagogical value of the whole foregoing discussion:

"...a consideration o f th e natural state of

individuals and its misery is very useful for making citizens love and devote themselves completely to the civil state’s preservation, and also for making them endure gladly the burdens necessary for the m aintenance of states" (#23). These burdens include, Pufendorf admits, the "rare" inconveniences unreasonably imposed by rulers.

States, even though they "remedy" the

imperfection of individuals (#2), are themselves imperfect, and no revolution can ever change this fact. They must, in any case, limit the natural liberty of individuals, restrict the power of private citizens, and prevent the rise of factions-all in order to preserve themselves against internal dangers and maintain the peace that is their final raison d ’etre. W hile they themselves are thus both privileged and condemned to reside in a state of natural liberty, their individual members, the citizens, necessarily are not.

IV . T H E F U N C T IO N O F T H E ‘N A T U R A L STATE* IN E A R L Y M O D E R N N A T U R A L L A W T H E O R Y One approach to the question of Pufendorfs importance, particularly his conception of m an's natural state, is through a brief analysis of recent scholarship. This may be roughly divided into three categories reflecting an imprecise chronological sequence. First, toward the end of the 19th century, the memory of Pufendorf and other long-forgotten "grosse Deutsche" was resurrected by nationalistic G erm an scholars like M eyer and Treitschke. T heir richly biographical accounts making use of many earlier sources now often difficult to obtain placed Pufendorf within the ‘classical’ natural law tradition that was reemerging at the time.

Despite some hagiographical

excesses, these works provide many im portant details about the man, his writings, and the social circumstances surrounding them.

Hence, they

constitute

18th-century

an

im portant

bridge

between

much

earlier,

discussions (typically in Latin) of Pufendorf and later, 20th-century studies for whom they are a guide thereto.81 C ertain m ore recent works like those of Fetscher and Laurent may seem to belong in this first category insofar as they continue to interpret Pufendorf largely as a classical natural law thinker. T he same is true of the Carnegie editions and translations (including the introductory essays) of P ufendorfs m ajor writings which appeared earlier this century. According to different criteria, however, these works belong to a new generation of Pufendorf scholarship. R epresented mainly by the studies of Welzel, Wolff,

44 Scheuner, Denzer, Palladini and others, it comprises broad and detailed textually-based analyses of Pufendorfs thought, including its philosophical antecedents, context, and later influence.

Also in this category are more

specialized treatm ents like those o f Rabe and Lezius on P ufendorfs notions of religion and toleration respectively, and Krieger’s highly interpretive yet very helpful study of Pufendorfs "politics of discretion"-as of now still the only book on Pufendorf in English. Despite their merits, neither of these first two approaches fully explains the immense popularity of Pufendorfs writings throughout the late 17th and early 18th centuries, nor the surprisingly sudden and--since th e n persistent lack of interest in his thought, especially on the part of many Anglo-American political philosophers strongly attracted to H obbes, Locke, and other 17th-century figures.

No mere neo-scholastic or neo-classical

thinker could have attained Pufendorfs stature and influence during his time. Nor can his reputation be sufficiently explained by describing him as a m ere ‘systematizer’ of natural law or the ‘reconciler’ of G rotius and H o b b es-b o th of which he in a sense was.**2 N either function alone would have m erited Pufendorf the high esteem in which he was subsequently held by Thomasius, Barbeyrac, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, and many others. A more plausible answer to these questions has em erged from some very recent studies that have turned a whole new leaf in the study o f 17thcentury natural law theory.

D enzcr’s thorough analysis of Pufendorf,

especially of previously under-emphasized notions like cultura and status

naturalis> has been transitional and even seminal here. The sam e m ust be said of Hans Medick’s important elaboration of the similarities between Pufendorf, Locke, Smith, and other figures of the Scottish Enlightenm ent, particularly their conception of man’s natural state and its role. T h eir work has contributed essentially to the reinterpretation of 17th-century natural law theory currently being developed by Richard Tuck and Istvan H ont.83 Besides throwing new light on Grotius and H obbes, this current work provides, I think, the best context for understanding P ufendorfs importance in general and of our essay in particular. The new view owes much of its persuasiveness to the fact that it rests squarely upon Pufendorfs own self-interpretation. In his prefaces to Dc jure

45

and o ther main works, and even more fully in Specimen, I ("De origine et progressu disciplinae iuris naturalis"), Pufendorf sketched the previous history o f natural law theory and situated himself explicitly therein in relation to G rotius, Selden, Hobbes* and Cumberland. His account was continued and elaborated by Jean Barbeyrac, who prefaced his 1706 French translation of P u fendorf s D e jure with a long "Historical and Critical Account of the Science of Morality."

From there, the tale passed into Jacob Brucker’s

magisterial Historia critica pfulosophiae (1742-44, 1762), through which the young K ant imbibed the history of philosophy, and also, in part, into Adam Smith’s brief lecture on the history o f the natural jurists’ theory of sociability which opens his Lectures on Jurisprudence (1762-63,1766). According to J. B. Schneewind,84 it occurs as late as 1798, in Christian G arve’s Uebersicht der vomehmsten Principien der Sittenlehre. T he prime distinguishing feature of this history is its estimation of G rotius as the first ‘m odern’ natural law thinker, without whose moral problem atic various im portant dimensions of Hobbes, Selden, Pufendorf and others also recede from view. T hat they w ere in fact eclipsed toward the end of the 18th century is clear from the critical and dismissive treatm ent of G rotius in Johann G ottlieb Buhle’s Geschichte der neuem Phiiosophie (1802), and from the brief, hurried mention of Pufendorf in Karl Friedrich Staudlin’s Geschichte der Moralphilosophie (1822). By this time, H um e and Kant had so changed the face o f (m oral) philosophy that G rotius and his immediate followers, particularly Pufendorf, seemed irrelevant.55

Late 19th-century

efforts to revive them as ‘classical’ natural law philosophers only made things worse.

T heir self-assigned ‘modernity’ which one must understand to

appreciate them was, until recently, forgotten. Grotius* prim e objective, according to Pufendorf and Barbeyrac, was to m eet the challenge to morality posed by scepticism. As Popkin and others have shown,86 the revival of ancient sceptical arguments through the recovery of Cicero and Sextus Empiricus, and their persuasive restatem ent by Renaissance humanists like Valla, M ontaigne, Sanchez, C harron and, later on, Bayle, was immensely im portant to the developm ent o f early modern thought. For by endangering both physical and moral certainties, it evoked many interesting new positions from those who rallied in opposition to it.

46

Formal opposition in the early 17th-century was m arshalled by the French monk, Marin M ersenne (1588-1648), whose voluminous L a Verité des Sciences.

Contre les Sceptiques ou Pyrrhoniens (1625) set out a basic anti-

sceptical programme that inspired three of his m ore famous friends and protégés:

Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes.®7 U nited by their common

opposition to the reigning Aristotelianism of the day which they considered vulnerable to sceptical attacks, these thinkers each sought to develop a new philosophical position whose acceptancc of certain sceptical prem ises (e.g., the relativity of sense perception and the variation of m oral judgm ents) was nonetheless consistent with the assertion of a more fundam ental empirical and moral ‘science/ The Cartesian version of this project is well known, that of the others more often overlooked. But Descartes’ refutation of general epistemological skepticism fell well short of the recovery of ethics: his moral philosophy rem ained largely provisional and is acknowledged to be much less developed and original than other areas of his thought.

G assendi and

Hobbes were more successful in reestablishing morality on an objective, scientific basis. This was partly because, by turning to Grotius, they not only came to appreciate the specific relativistic arguments underlying modern moral scepticism but also found a new strategy for overcoming them. To understand this strategy and the moral scepticism it confronted, one must try to forget the altogether different problem posed later on by Hume.88 Its main concern was the great diversity of m oral convictions and practices revealed by both foreign exploration and dom estic strife whereby the very possibility of any universal, objective truth

seem ed to be

undermined. Much like the new physics, whose ‘scientific’ character could no longer—since the revival of ancient challenges to ‘proper perception’- b e formulated in metaphysical terms resting on supposed ‘ordinary experience,’ the new moral philosophy recognized that appeals to ‘common sense’ only made the pluralist challenge more evident instead of dissolving it. N or did ethnocentric normative preferences for the particular customs o f so-callcd ‘civilized’ (vs. ‘barbaric’) nations, which had persuaded previously in the absence of clear alternatives, do so any longer.

Scholasticism in general,

moreover, had been further discredited by the successes of G alilean physics and the attacks of Bacon (H obbes’s employer from 1621-26), and thus

47

offered no resource for a metaphysics of morals. Hence, if there was to be an objective, universal morality and a political order built thereon, an entirely new approach was required. G rotius’ tactic in founding the new 'science’ of morality emerged largely from the Ciceronian Stoicism by which he and many of his contem poraries were em bued.89 As we saw earlier in Section II, he rooted his ethics in the fundam ental notion o f sociality, humans’ natural tendency toward fellowship and cooperation.

Yet he also employed a subsidiary

argum ent based on expediency which can now be seen to b e-d esp ite G rotius’ cautious disclaimers--at the heart of his battle against moral skepticism. In fact, as C icero’s De offlciis-one of whose central them es is the essential compatibility o f morality and expediency-had already shown, the two approaches need not be at odds. G rotius could therefore argue his new case against the sceptics by referring to self-interest, a universally acknowledged trait of hum an nature, and characterize the laws of personal and social morality in term s o f their usefulness thereto. At the sam e time, he could claim that these laws a rc both conducive to and required by th e sociality toward which all m en are naturally inclined. A sceptic might well balk at the latter claim alone, but his own pursuit of otaraxia would make him respectful of the former.

H ence, by linking the two arguments and showing that,

bccause of m an’s given social nature, true self-interest requires just such rules as arc com patible with the human desire and need for social interaction, G rotius could establish a sound and persuasive basts for the required post-sceptical m oral science. A significant feature of this new approach lay in the nature and employm ent of empirical evidence. defined,

are

not

universals

Rules of expediency, no m atter how

extracted

from

single

instances

but

generalizations based on repeated experience. Thus, much like the physical sciences that served as its model, the new morality form ulated and legitim ated its particular laws by reference to general human experience, remaining unaffected by isolated apparent counter-instances (i.e., exceptions) that might otherwise generate sceptical doubts. But the price to be paid for such flexible reliance on experience was that the ethical principles yielded by this

approach

were

accordingly

restricted.

In

contrast

to

more

48

comprehensive traditional systems of morality, they could constitute only a kind of minimalist ethics consisting of a small core of rationally determ ined principles and rules, but surrounded by a much wider penum bra of legitimately diverging moral, social, and political practices.90 In other words, the new moral science’s demonstrative modesty established it m ore firmly in the face of scepticism than existing moral systems, but it also m ade it less inclusive than they, and more open to moral and social discretion.

This

particular feature helps to explain why it evoked m ore than a m urm ur from zealots who were still wedded to their theological and metaphysical claims, never having taken the challenge of skepticism seriously enough.91 O ne of the most exciting and yet controversial features of this interpretation o f natural law theory is its application to H obbes, who thus appears in continuity with rather than in opposition to G rotius.92 H obbes met the twofold sceptical challenge to ordinary and moral perception by developing a hypothetical materialist physics that was suggested to him (and Gassendi) by ancient Epicureanism and m odem physical science (G alileo). By resting his moral psychology on this foundation and by employing the hypothetical-deductive method of the natural sciences, he was able to introduce both added rigor and a needed anchor in experience into G rotius’ self-interest argument for reestablishing the intellectual integrity of ethics. He was certainly not alone in his employment of the m athem atical m ethod, as we have noted, since Descartes, Weigel, Spinoza, Leibniz, and many other contem poraries were all attracted by the certainty and systematic order of its deductions. In others’ hands, however, this m ethod produced only a more rigorous (quasi-mathcmatical) metaphysics still characterized by many scholastic features. But H obbes took Baconian empiricism m ore seriously, and his own procedure was not merely formally m athem atical o r deductive, but also explicitly empirical, much in the fashion of current scientific experimentalism.

Only thus could it contribute to the developm ent of a

genuinely m odern moral and political ‘science’ able to m eet the sceptical challenge. The natural state was a crucial feature of this new science. N ot yet prom inent in Grotius’ account,93 it becam e a central feature of H obbes’ methodology, providing him with a pure yet empirically grounded starting

49

point for his theoretical deductions (much like the frictionless surfaces and ideal inertial motions of early modern physics).94 In a way, it was for I Iobbes and others a perfect surrogate for traditional universais, including that of the ideal hum an in the ideal state. For it combined the best features of both history and metaphysics while avoiding some of their drawbacks. By relying for its precise description on general observation rather than particular contingent facts o f hum an behavior, the natural state had the advantage of being a t once empirically confirmable and resistant to falsification, even while rem aining revisable.95

At the same time, as an abstract, ideal

description o f the human condition (now and ‘originally’), it also had universal norm ative significance for human action.

Like a conceptual

‘laboratory’ based on experience, it provided insight into ‘human nature’ as such and the general laws directing it. By employing his G rotian premise of hum an self-interest, and also his own deterministic and methodological assumptions, H obbes duly derived from it the minimal ‘rights’ and ‘obligations’ o f individuals both without and within civil society including the necessary character o f the state itself. Pufendorf basically adopted H obbes’ anti-sceptical strategy, including the state of nature.

Yet he also rejected some of its assumptions and

modified it by reintroducing certain classical, G rotian features that made it more attractive to his 17th- and 18th-century followers. W e shall conclude with some of these interesting and influential developments, some of which are most evident in Statu. First, Pufendorf objected on both empirical and rational grounds to H obbes’

anthropology,

particularly

the

individualism and psychological egoism.

latter’s

perceived

extreme

Accordingly, he also refused to

characterize the natural state as one of complete freedom and total war. He returned instead to G rotius’ Stoic sociality principle and elaborated it more broadly into an irreducible though not incompatible counterweight to human self-interest, particularly its narrow H obbesian construal. This may be seen at Statu (# 1 5 ), where humans are said to be linked by bonds over and above mutual

need,

specifically

by

the

common

kinship

that

encourages

endearm ent and benevolence among them, and by the dictates of the natural law imposed by G od on all alike through human reason. As noted earlier,

50

Pufendorf retained the ‘state of humanity’ (i.e., the natural state ad D euni) as the basis of men’s true equality and explained this latter notion in term s of their equal obligations and rights under the law, including that of mutual respect (Statu, #13). If the sociality principle in H obbes and G rotius may be said to have rested primarily on need and natural inclination respectively, then in Pufendorf it clearly acquired the status of a specifically m oral (vs. prudential) ‘obligation’ as w ell-som ething he found lacking in both of his predecessors. Pufendorfs effort to encompass what seem to be a num ber of disparate approaches led to occasional ambiguities and tensions in his position that reemerged later on in the 18th century. H ere, it is im portant to notice that he did not simply reintroduce sociality as an independent instinctual or rational co-principle of self-interested want, but sought rather to explain its emergence in terms of a general developm ental framework inherited from Grotius through Hobbes, and passing through him self into later moral philosophy. According to this view sociality is, like speech, a historical product of collective human development, arising naturally and spontaneously out of individuals’ self-interested dealings with one another in a context of relative scarcity, weakness, and consequent insecurity. W ithout entirely superceding or eliminating that self-interest, it may eventually acquire a distinct force o f its own, transcending its initial character as a m ere ‘unsocial sociability* (to use a later term), and becom e also a noninstrumental virtue valued for its own sake. Such a scheme clearly involves a kind of return to beginnings as well, since the cultural and social development from which men benefit depends initially on their recognition of a shared humanity and a common obligation to obey the m oral law commanding them to be social. Therefore, sociality is in Pufendorf at once a desire, a need, and an obligation; both a precondition and a product of human development.96 Seeing the deficiencies in his predecessors’ accounts, Pufendorf sought thus to remedy them. The extent to which his own m ore complex position was successful in this must be judged partly on the basis of whether later, more selective adaptations thereof were either m ore o r less adequate than that position itself.

51 A second im portant development is Pufendorfs richer concept of sociality, which directly influenced his variations upon the natural state. H obbes had proceeded dircctly from the natural to the civil state, for given his anthropological assumptions, no ‘space’ (i.e., status) rem ained for other non-contractual,

pre-civil

forms

of

natural

society.

At

least

he

underestim ated the ability of these to remove the disadvantages o f the pure or com plete state of nature. By contrast, Pufendorfs own clear distinction betw een the pre-cultural state o f absolute need (B) and the pre-civil state of absolute freedom (C), as well as his notion o f a ‘really existing’ (vs. pure) natural state in each case, allowed for precisely such intervening possibilities. In the really existing state of nature, men’s collective satisfaction of their needs both dem ands and encourages forms of sociality that, by mitigating their m utual insecurity, arc a temporary substitute for civil submission. Hence, hum an nature docs not require immediate subjection to the external yoke of a civil sovereign for its preservation. There are other roles ( ‘states,’ personae) for men to play before and beside that of ‘subject’ or ‘citizen’; they must not, in order to satisfy their need, necessarily or always forfeit their natural free d o m -a t least as Pufendorf understands this.97 This leads to a third im portant feature of Pufendorfs position evident in Statu.

Though the establishm ent of civil society is not theoretically

necessary in his scheme, at least not to the degree of H obbes, it is nonetheless an inevitable (even natural) outcome of ‘cultural* development. In an im portant passage describing the pre-cultural state (Statu #6), Pufendorf notes how m en’s desire to escape the natural state’s misery induces them to share and cooperate with one another in rather specific ways. By exchanging their knowledge, skills, and goods within and across historical boundaries, they collectively make up their individual deficiencies and raise their standard of living (cultus vitae). Through such intellectual and m aterial commerce, the contributions of each redound to the good of all. To be noted here is that these relationships described by Pufendorf-in language that later reverberates in Adam Smith—are coincident with the economic transactions of early m odern society (division of labor, exchange relations, the m arket). It is these economic relations by which m en’s needs and wants can be relieved before the formation of the civil ‘state’ that eventually

52

become too complex--due to a rising population (# 1 4 ) and the artificial expansion of human needs (#6)--to be carried on without it.

W hen they

begin to disrupt the social bonds that both underlie and are fostered by them, civil authority must at last be introduced.98 Once established, the civil state’s function is not only to secure the peace by supplementing with external, positive sanctions the hum an and moral bonds now too weak to regulate men’s interactions (# 1 4 ), but also-and notably-to further the very commercial relations whose complexity first helped create this insufficiency. Thus, it must secure the internal conditions for private accumulation of goods (# 6 ) and prevent the creation of foreign trade monopolies (#21). At this point of human em ergence from the precultura! state of need (B), when it has become necessary for individuals to leave the pre-civil state (C) as well, their interests and those of states tend ironically to coincide, as the private accumulation of wealth serves to buttress the very state whose function it is to facilitate it (#22). And Pufendorf has now become, as Krieger showed,99 the philosopher of the early m odern bourgeois state. This

claim

demands

immediate

qualification,

however,

since

Pufendorf had some genuine reservations about the developm ents just noted. H e cautioned earnestly against the moral degeneracy (i.e., avarice and luxury) spawned by im m oderate efforts to remedy o u r natural wants (# 6 ; cf. DJN, VII.1.6) and also deemed it necessary to insist upon every hum an being’s equal right and dignity, regardless of how rich or poor they might be (#13)~clearly implying in each instance that social realities w ere already otherwise.

This appeal to m oderation and moral restraint suggests two

things. First, consistent with Pufendorfs strong assertion o f hum an freedom* the transition from pre-civil societies to the state is not strictly necessary: other possibilities for human social life exist if m en would only choose to limit their desires. And second, since they generally do not, and as sociality becomes increasingly defined in commercial terms while losing its broader basis in men’s shared humanity and divinely sanctioned natural law, the nature of the civil state that emerges in response to it changes as well. No longer and merely the guarantor of humankind’s self-wrought em ergence from its natural condition of need and want, it becomes instead (am ong other

53

things) the facilitator of unlimited accumulation. From here it is not far to both Locke and the early Rousseau. Finally, Pufendorfs interpretation o f sociality in terms o f market relations highlights the problem of circularity that some com m entators have detected in natural-state theories in general and in regard to Pufendorf in particular.100

The state o f nature plays in early modern society a role

com parable to that of the Genesis account in the early Church,101 namely, it helps society to explain and justify itself.

As Medick has put it, "In its

conception of the state of nature, early m odern bourgeois society for the first time theorizes itself.”102 Like scientific fictions or hypotheses, neither ‘pure’ nor ‘really existing’ natural states are ever presuppositionless. R ather, they always reflect either an idealized actuality or an opposing (but proposed) unactualized ideal-thereby either affirming or challenging a social given. In either case, the state of nature is obviously value-laden and not a m ere description.

This m eans that despite Pufendorfs rejection of traditional

versions of the natural state as something "ultimately intended by nature" or "a norm to which civil states must be conformed,” his Own conception thereof is itself normative. This is so in at least two ways.

First, since the rights and duties

operative in the natural state carry over at least partially into the civil society established to secure them, its ‘natural’ outcome, the conception of the form er directly shapes the character of the latter. This is clearly evinced in Statu by the various pre-civil natural societies whose authority relations partly prefigure those of the state, and by the extended analogy betw een the proper behavior o f individuals and states in a purely natural setting. Secondly, as a (presumably undesirable) "fictional opposite" of culture and civil society, the pure natural state suggests by direct contrast what actual social and civil relations ought to be. Ironically, therefore, rather than being an absolute beginning, it is a premise already containing many of its own conclusions. If this suggests ‘impurity,’ it is surely one that only a god could avoid.

N ot only absolute'beginnings themselves require divinity, but also

conceptions thereof.

N O T E S T O IN T R O D U C T O R Y E SSA Y 1. References to original sourccs arc mostly in the text. In addition to clearly shortened titles (e.g., Statu = "De statu hominum naturali"), the following abbreviations for Pufendorfs works will be used: E L = Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis, DJN = De jure naturae et gentium, D O = De officio hominis et civis, ES = Eris scandica. 2. T h e only full-length study o f Pufendorf in English is Leonard Kxicger’s The Politics o f Discretion: riifendorf and the Acceptance o f Natural Law (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1965). J. B. Schneewind’s reccnt article, "Pufendorfs Placc in the History of Ethics," Synthese 72 (1987), pp. 123-55, is not introductory in a broad sense but focuses on Pufendorf as moral philosopher, an aspect sometimes overlooked by those interested in him mainly as a political thinker. For another brief account, see Erik Wolf, "Pufendorf," Encyclopedia o f Philosophy, 8 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1967), vol. 7, pp. 27-29. Access to Pufendorf will soon be facilitated. A new edition and translation of DO by Jam es Tully and Michacl Silverthorne will appear in Cambridge University Press’ T e x ts in the History o f Political Thought" series, and the present translator is collaborating with a colleague on a collection of newly translated readings from E L and DJN. 3. R. R. Palm er and Joel C o u lto n ,^ History o f the M odem World, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1962), pp. 130*31. 4. The quote is actually a paraphrase from Paul Meyer, "Pufendorf," Wissenschaftliche Beilage der Leipziger Zeitung, No. 131 (Nov. 1, 1894), p. 522B. Also see Horst D enzer’s modern edition and G erm an translation: Samuel Pufendorf, Die Verfassung des deutschen Reiches (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1976), including his Nachwort on pp. 160-211. 5. For a description of the intellectual atm osphere at Leipzig, see Heinrich von Trcitschke, "Samuel Pufendorf," Historische und politische Aufsätze (Leipzig: G. Hirzcl, 1897), vol. 4, pp. 205-11. See also, more generally, Max Wundt, Die deutsche Schulphilosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr, 1939), and Peter Petersen, Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantischen Deutschland (Leipzig: Felix M einer, 1921), especially pp. 118-27,166-86, and 380-84. 6. O n the frosty relationship between Leibniz and Pufendorf that was due to differences in both personality and outlook, see N oberto Bobbio, HLeibniz et Pufendorf," Rivista di filosofia 38 (1947), pp. 118-29; H ans Welzel, Die Naturrechtslehre Samuel Pufendorfs (Berlin: W alter de G ruyter, 1958), pp. 4-6, esp. n. 15; and Treitschke, pp. 239-46. Some o f Leibniz’s relevant writings are in The Political Writings o f Leibniz, ed. & trans. Patrick Riley (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 64-75. 7. The offer from Halle was connected with the prospect of an undesirable marriage, and Pufendorfs past experience at Leipzig would have

55

inclined him against returning there. See Erik Wolf, "Pufendorf," Crosse Recntsdenker der deutschen Geistesgeschichte, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr 1963), p. 317. * , , ■*: I-aurenberg’s Craecia antiqua (Amsterdam, 1660), and J. M eursius Miscellanea laconica (Amsterdam, 1661). 9. W hile in Holland, Pufendorf also m et and disliked Spinoza. Meyer, p. 521B. H e objected to the latter’s materialism, determinism, and ‘atheism ,’ and later added a special refutation of his views to the 2nd ed. (1684) o f DJN (II.2.3, and 4.4). P ufendorfs efforts to distinguish Spinoza’s position from that of Hobbes, whom he liked better, did not convince Barbeyrac, however, who referred to M ...Mr. Hobbes, whose Notions a t the bottom are not much distant from Spinoza’s,..." See O f the Law o f Nature and Nations, trans. Basil Kennet, 3rd ed., with the large notes of Mr. Barbeyrac (London: R. Sare, 1717), p. 107, n. 6. 10. Meyer, p. 522A; Krieger, p. 19. 11. Krieger, p. 19; Horst Denzer» "Pufendorf," in H. M aier, H. Rausch, and H. D enzer, eas., Klassiker des politischen Denkens, 2 vols. (München: Beck, 1968), vol. 1, p. 34, n. 18. According to Barbeyrac, Pufendorfs duties at H eidelberg included regular lectures on Grotius. See "An Historical and Critical A ccount of the Science o f Morality" (the preface to Barbeyrac’s 1706 French translation of P ufendorfs DJN), sec. 30. 12. Like Leibniz, Pufendorf seems to have had a close relationship with Weigel, but one cannot conclude this simply on the basis of their lodging arrangem ents. A 1669 woodcut of Weigel’s residence shows it to have been a rather large structure some eight stories high, and it is likely that more than a few students rented quarters there. See H erm ann Schüling, Erhard Weigel (1625-1699). Materialen zur Erforschung seines Wirkens (Giessen: Universitätsbibliothek, 1970). 13. As Pufendorf himself admitted in his preface to the posthumous edition (1706) of the work, he had written it out of anger at being denied his desired professorship. See Denzer, Klassiker, p. 35, n. 20, and Treitschke, p. 221. 14. See D enzer edition, ch. 6, #9, p. 106, and also pp. 186-90 (D enzer’s introduction) for P ufendorfs doctrine on regular and irregular states. Meyer, p. 522A-B, gives a brief synopsis. As Wolf, Rechtsdenker, p. 328, notes, the term monstrum was m eant only as a description and not derogatively. When he realized his readers took it in the latter sense, Pufendorf removed the term from the second edition. Also, it is helpful to know that, besides M onzambano, Pufendorf used the pseudonyms Petrus Duneus and Julius R ondinus in some other works. 15. Pierre Laurent, ’’Samuel Pufendorf (8.1.1632 - 26.10.1694), I & II," Bulletin de Litterature Ecclesiastique (Toulouse) 84 (1983), p. 114, and Treitschke, pp. 286-87.

56

16. Pierre Laurent, Pufendorf et la lot naturelle (Paris: Vrin, 1982), pp. 37-39, regards DO as more than just a summary of DJN and finds therein an important expansion of Pufendorfs naturaJ theology, as well as an effort to base his naturalistic ethics -in contrast to K ant-u p o n a theodicy. 17. O n the various editions o f Pufendorfs works, see W aiter Simons’s Introduction to Samuel Pufendorf, De jure naturae et gentium , trans. C. H. and W. A. Oldfather, Classics o f International Law t ed. Jam es Brown Scott (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), pp. 59a-62a; H orst Denzer, Moralphilosophie und Naturrecht bei Samuel Pufendorf (M ünchen: Beck, 1972), pp. 359-73; and Laurent, Pufendorf,; pp. 239-51 (a survey o f Pufendorf editions in European libraries). 18. Besides refuting his critics' specific claims, Pufendorf also replied to the broader charge of ‘innovation’ in ES. See his Apologia pro se et suo libro, # 4 , pp. 14-15, and Specimen controversarium, II.2, pp. 170-71. In the second passage, Pufendorf says that the question of novelty is less im portant than that of truth. Page numbers refer to what is probably the most easily available edition of ES, namely that of Mascovius, who appended the work to his 1744 (repr. 1759) edition of DJN. 19. Since it remains entirely untranslated, ES is quite inaccessible to most readers. Its frequently colloquial Latin is an additional barrier. Laurent, Pufendorf, pp. 39-49, 202-206, and Bulletin, pp. 179-84, gives a helpful summary and background information. Much im portant m aterial for understanding this work and Pufendorfs G erm an intellectual milieu in eneral is also provided by Fiam m etta Palladini, Disctissioni seicentesche su amuel Pufendorf: scritti latini 1663-1700 (Bologna: II mulino, 1978). Some of the accusatioas levelled by Pufendorfs enem ies were th at he had m urdered his parents and raped his servant. The latter charge may have had some tenuous connection with Pufendorfs inconclusive discussion of polygamy at DJN, V I.l.17-18. According to Treitschke, pp. 263-64, this chapter remained an important focal point of opposition to Pufendorf for some time. It may also explain why the 16/7 edition o f Pufendorfs Dissertationes used for this translation is bound with G. Feltm ann’s Tractatus depolygamia (Leipzig, 1677).

f

20. Krieger, pp. 33-38. Denzer questions this radical dichotomy in his review of Krieger’s book, in Zeitschrift fu r Politik (N eue Folge) 16 (1969), pp. 144-46. 21. Treitschke, p. 296, refers to the work’s "intolerable language." According to Meyer, p. 523B, it was written in two parts, published respectively in 16«2 and 1686. For an estimation of its im portance to G erm an political historiography, see Alfred Dufour, ’T rad itio n et m odernite: de la conception pufendorfienne de PEtat," Archives de pltilosoohie du droit (Paris) 21 (1976), pp. 56-57.

57

22. For an English translation still available, see Samuel Pufendorf, The Compleat History o f Sweden, 2 vols., Irans. C. Brockwell (London: J. Brudenell, 1702; reprinted Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1977). 23. T he work prefigures K ant’s view o f church-state relations in his 1784 essay on "enlightenment": the institutional church must be subservient to state control, while individual conscience remains free. The 1687 Bremen edition o f De habitu has been reprinted by Frommann-Holzboog, 1972. For discussion, see H orst Rabe, Naturrecht und Kirche bei Samuel von Pufendorf (Köln: BÖhlau, 1958), and Simone Zurbuchen, "Naturrecht und natürliche Religion bei Samuel Pufendorf," Studia Philosophica (Switzerland) 45 (1986), pp. 176-86. 24. Treitschke, p. 296, and H ans Rödding, Pufendorf als Historiker und Politiker in den HCommentarii de rebus gestis Friaerici Tertii" (H alle, 1912), pp. 13-16. 25. D escartes’ fate is well known. T he aged Grotius, who had served as Sweden’s am bassador to France during 1634-45, was also so exhausted by a stormy N orth Sea voyage from Sweden, where he had just resigned his post, th at he took ill and died. 26. W hat to call it depends partly upon philosophical interpretation, including the selection of ius (right) or lex (law) as the m ore basic notion, and the translation or ius as either ‘right’ or ‘a right.’ This may vary somewhat from one thinker to another, being also related to the question o f w hether a figure is best seen in the intellectualist or voluntarist tradition of ethics (the form er emphasizing ius and the latter lex). To complicate things even more, existing translations sometimes render both ius and lex as ‘law.’ Pufendorf him self notes at DJN, 1.1.20, that ius is a highly ambiguous term, standing alternately for law (lex), for a body or system of homogeneous laws, for a judge’s verdict, or for the moral quality by which we rightly (recte) command * persons or possess things, or by whose power (vis) something is owed us by another. Richard Tuck’s fine book, with its focus on Grotius, is quite appropriately titled Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). It sheds much light. Also very helpful, particularly on the primacy of right over law in Grotius, is Karl Olivecrona’s excellent "Die zwei Schichten im naturrechtlichen Denken," Archiv fä r Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 63/1 (1977), pp. 79-102. I have retained the traditional ‘natural law* terminology in this introduction not only because Pufendorf emphasizes the dependence of right(s) on law, but also because the interpretation o f these term s in various thinkers remains, frankly, unclear to me. Needless to say, a minimal requirem ent for clarity in m odern discussions o f these topics is new or suitably revised translations that pay consistent attention to such matters. 27. T he two stream s are distinguished by Ernst Troeltsch, "Das stoisch­ christliche N aturrecht und das m oderne profane Naturrecht," Historische Zeitschrift 106 (1911), ser. 3, vol. 10, pp. 237-67; by Ilans-Peter Schneider, Justitia universalis: Studien zur Geschichte des "christlichen Naturrechtsn bei

58

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Frankfurt/M : Klostermann, 1967); and by Horst Dreitzel, "Das deutsche Staatsdenken in der frühen Neuzeit (II)»" Neue Politische Literatur 16 (1971), pp. 265-68. 28. Dreitzel, pp. 27C-71, maintains that Pufendorfs work reflects many topoi of Lutheranism and the political Aristotelianism of his time. Also see the references at note 5 above, esp. Petersen, and for somewhat earlier background, Q uentin Skinner, The Foundations o f Modem Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), esp. Vol. 2: M The Age of Reformation.11 Leibnizs relation to Suarez and others is explored in Albert Heinekamp, ed., Leibniz et la Renaissance (W iesbaden: Steiner, 1983) [ = Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa, Vol. 23). G rotius and Pufendorf were also familiar with much of this Renaissance scholasticism (and occasionally cite it), but paid less attention to it because of their new intellectual problematic. Both were ‘humanist’ polymaths with ‘eclectic’ intellectual interests in search of new foundational analyses, not simply the recovery or preservation of older ones. 29. Michael B. Crowe, The Changing Profile o f Natural Law (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), p. 223. Heinrich A. Rommen, The Natural Law , trans. Thomas R. Hanley (St. ta u is : H erder, 1947), p. 70, expresses the difference between classical and modern natural law theory by distinguishing the former’s "metaphysical" from the latter’s "rationalist" orientation. The concern with epistemology was, of course, a general feature of the early m odern era, which wrestled with scepticism and sought to understand the new scientific grasp of the world. 30. See Tuck, Theories, pp. 58-81, and Knud H aakonssen, "Hugo Grotius and the History of Political Thought," Political Theory 13/2 (1985), pp. 239-65. 31. See Tuck, Theories, pp. 82-100, esp. pp. 90ff. 32. O n Cumberland, see Iring Fetscher, "Der gesellschaftliche ‘Naturzustand’ und das Menschenbild bei Hobbes, Pufendorf, Cum berland, und Rousseau," Schmollers Jaixrbuch 80/6, # 2 (1960), pp. 25-39; and Schneider, Justitia, pp. 186-95. John Maxwell’s 1727 translation of Cum berland’s work, A Treatise o f the Laws o f Nature, has recently (1978) been reprinted by Garland Publishing Company (NY). 33. Dreitzel, p. 271. 34. See John Locke, Essays on the Law o f Nature, ed. W. von Leyden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), and the discussion in Crowe, pp. 237-45. u jc k e ’s stature as a natural law thinker and his debts to Pufendorf also emerge in James Tully’s A Discourse on Property: John Locke and Bis Adversaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), passim Barbeyrac ("Historical and Critical Account," secs. 29-31) had already placed Locke in the company of Pufendorf and others as a follower of Grotius.

59

35. See Sieglinde O lhm er, Berlin und die Verbreitung des Naturrechts in Europa; kultur- und sozialgeschichtliche Studien zu Jean Barbeyracs Pufendorfüebersetzun^en und eine Analyse seiner Leserschaft (Berlin; W aller de 36. Tuck, Theories, p. 176. 37. According to the preface of his fnstitutiones, Thomasius was at first strongly opposed to P ufendorfs doctrines but becamc converted after reading the latter’s autobiography in ES (Apologia). O n Thomasius, sec Lewis w hite Beck, Early German Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1969), pp. 247-56; Erik Wolf, Grotius, Pufendorf, Thomasius (Tübingen: Mohr, 1927), pp. 97-124; M. Hinrich Rüpine, Die Naturrechtslehre des Christian Thomasius (Bonn = Röhrscheid, 1968); and W erner Schneiders, Naturrecht und Liebesethik: Zur Geschichie der praktischen Philosophie im Hinblick a u f Christian Thomasius (Hildesheim: Olms, 1971). Both of the two latter works also contain much m aterial on Pufendorf and his influence. A modern facsimile reprint of Thomasius’ Historia juris naturalis (Halle: Magdeburg, 1719; Stuttgart: FroiiimannHolzboog, 1972) is available. 38. O n Pufendorf and Rousseau, see R. D eraihe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la science politique de son temps, 2nd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1970). 39. G ershom Carmichael and his influence have been well studied by Jam es M oore and Michael Silverthorne. See their "Gershom Carmichael and the N atural Jurisprudence Tradition in Eighteenth-Century Scotland," in Istvan H ont and Michael Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping o f Political Econom y in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 73-87; and "Natural Sociability and Natural Rights in the M oral Philosophy of G erschom Carmichael," in V. Hope, ed., Philosophers o f the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984), pp. 1-12. Carm ichael’s notes to D O are available in English translation as: Gershom Carmichaels Supplements and Appendix to Samuel Pufendorfs "De officio hominis et civis .../' as well as the introduction to the 1769 Edition and the 1727 1Acta Eruditorumu Review o f Carmichael's Notes, compiled by John N. Lenhart, trans. Charles H. Reeves (Cleveland, OH: J. N. Lenhart, 1985 [POB 20261, Cleveland, O H 44120]). A nother translation of C arm ichael by M oore and Silverthorne is currently being prepared. H um e’s relation to Pufendorf is discussed by Duncan Forbes in H um e’s Philosophical Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 390. Also see A nnette Baier’s interesting use of Pufendorf in "Hume’s Account o f Social Artifice: Its Origins and Originality," Ethics 98 (1988), pp. 757-78. 40. O n P ufendorfs widespread influence, see Welzel, pp. 1-3; and Krieger, pp. 255-66. 41. O n this topic, see Olivekrona’s im portant article. References to and quotations from G rotius are to De jure belli ac p ads, 2 vols., trans. Francis W. Kelsey (New York: Oceana, 1964; = a reprint o f the 1925

60

Carnegie edition/translation). Also consult the Prolegom ena to De jure praedae commentarius, trans. Gladys L. Williams (New York: O ceana, 1964; = a reprint of the 1950 Carnegie volume). Even though most of this latter work was unavailable in the 17th century, its foreword com plem ents and clarifies that of De jure belli and should therefore be read along with it for an appreciation of Grotius’ general project. 42. Haakonssen, pp. 247ff., Crowe, pp. 223-33, and Forbes, pp. 41-42, all warn of "premature secularization" in regard to G rotius and his im m ediate followers. 43. The medieval and Renaissance background to G rotius is thoroughly discussed by James St. Leger, The "Etiamsi Daremus" o f Hugo Grotius (Kome: Gregorianum, 1962), esp. pp. 45-57 and 96-121. St. Leger attributes the paucity of direct references to Suarez in De jure belli to “the bitter hostility towards Suarez in the royal courts o f England and France'* (p. 106)—a sentiment occasioned by Suarez*s Defensio fidei catholicae adversus anglicanae sectae errores (1613), where he defends tyrannicide under certain circumstances such as those of James I’s England. For a discussion o f the rationalist/voluntarist debate prior to Grotius, see also Francis Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), esp. pp. 77-84. The best historical study of the ‘right reason* concept is Karl Bärthlcin’s "Zur Lehre von der ‘recta ratio* in der G eschichte d e r Ethik von der Stoa bis Christian Wolff," Kantstudien 5 6 /2 (1966), pp. 125-55, which discusses Grotius, Hobbes, and Locke, but not Pufendorf. 44. Cf. De jure praedae, Prolegomena, 6’-7, p p . 11-14. The attem pt to dem onstrate human social inclination by emphasizing m en’s continuity with other living things was a Stoic strategy employed later on by Cum berland in arguing against Hobbes. Sec Fetscher, pp. 25-39, and note 6 / below. 45. Spicilegium juris naturae, 1.1, 6, 13 (in ES), and DJN, II.3.19. It should be noted that G rotius’ initial position, in De jure praedae, Prolegomena, 5*, pp. 8-9, had been much more voluntaristic and in some ways closer to Suarez. Also, Pufendorf s insistence upon a divine legislator is not inconsistent with his rejection (at ES, p. 367) o f V alentin A lberti’s attem pt to link the natural law (which is universal and based on nonsectarian reason) with Christianity. See Zurbuchen on the "deconfessionalization" of religion in Pufendorf. 46. In particular, Pufendorf objected to Grotius* claim that the laws of nature are like the laws of logic. See Richard Tuck, T h e ‘M odern’ Theory of Natural Law," in Anthony Pagden, ed., The Languages o f Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 104. Despite the (to m odem readers) apparently cluttered and ad hoc nature of many o f his discussions, Grotius himself criticized his precedessors for precisely such faults and sought to impose a systematic, m athem atical order on the subject. See De jure praedae, Prolegom ena, 4’ and 13’, pp. 7 and 29• and De jure belli, Prolegomena, #37-38 and 55-58.

61

,47. O ne of the many valuable features of D enzer’s Moralphilosophie is its C itation Index of authors mentioned in DJN. O n G rotius and Hobbes, see pp. 350-51. 48. Patrick Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau: The Transformation o f the Divine into the Civic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 177 and 180. The quotation from Pufendorf is from the Preface to his Elementorum jurispruaentiae universalis libri duo, trans. W illiam A. O ldfather, Classics o f international Law, ed. Jam es Brown Scott (Oxford: C larendon Press, 1931), p.xxx. 49. See Tuck, Theories, p. 127, on H obbes’ transformation of Selden’s theory of obligation. Almost any account of Hobbes, especially during this anniversary year of his birth, risks being challenged. I take my own version to be fairly conventional; at least it sees Hobbes as many of his contem poraries did. However, a num ber of recent studies have questioned the extent of H obbes’ psychological egoism, its necessity to the derivation o f an absolute state, the nature and role of cooperative pre-civil arrangem ents, as well as the normativity (prudential vs. moral) of H obbesian natural rights and laws. See G regory Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and Tom Sorrell, Hobbes (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986). These and other works are ably discussed by Edwin Curley, "Recent Work on Hobbes: 1975-1988," a paper (presumably forthcoming) delivered at the NEH Sum m er Institute on Early M odern Philosophy, Brown University, 1988. Some of the recent interpretations of Hobbes would, if m aintained, bring H obbes’ position much closer to that of Pufendorf. 50. H obbes does make professions of theism that can be used to explain his references to the immutable and eternal laws of nature, and also to account for his unmistakably prescriptive language. Counsels of prudence can becom e moral laws if G od commands us to follow th em -as Hobbes him self suggests at one point (Leviathan, XV; M acPherson ed., pp. 216-17). Most interpreters, however, either refuse to take Hobbes’ professions of theism seriously or argue that they conflict with too many other fundamental elem ents of his philosophy. On this, too, see Curley. 51. See note 97 below. 52. O n Selden’s state o f nature, see Tuck, Theories, pp. 86, 90-91, and 93. Also see note 93 below. 53. On Weigel, see Beck, pp. 151-54; E. Spiess, Erhard Weigel, der Lehrer von Leibnitz und Pufendorf (Leipzig: J. Klinkhardt, 1881), and (for bibliography) Schilling. T ne term ‘eclectic,’ it should be noted, had an im portant technical sense in the 17th and 18th centuries, referring to undogmatic efforts to encompass many diverse points of view in one’s own position. It was linked to Renaissance humanism and, as we shall see below in Section IV, to the new ‘science’ o f morality constructed by G rotius and his

62

followers. Pufendorf referred to himself as eclectic in a 1688 letter to Thomasius. Denzer, Klassiker, p. 29. 54. See Specimen controversarium (in ES), II.3, on Pufendorfs Cartesianism, and Denzer, Moralphilosophie, p. 349, on his references to Bacon. Pufendorfs rational-empirical m ethod is discussed by D enzer, pp. 279-96, Krieger, pp. 51-68, and Wolf, Rechtsdenker, pp. 318-19. 55. See Wolf, Rechtsdenker, pp. 333-34; and Treitschke, p. 254. 56. See Welzel, pp. 19-30; Wolf, Rechtsdenker, pp. 316 and 338-44; Denzer, Moralphilosophie, pp. 67-74; Wolfgang Rod, "Erhard W eigels Lehre von den entia moralia" Archiv fü r Geschichte der Philosophie 51 (1969), pp. 58-84; and Schneewind, pp. 124-30. 57. Welzel, pp. 19ff., sought on this basis to characterize Pufendorf as the first ’'Kulturphilosoph," but he has been criticized for this by D enzer, Moralphilosophie, pp. 15-16, and Wolf, Rechtsdenker, p. 337. w elzel has generally been taken to task for his anachronistic use o f later judicial categories to interpret Pufendorf, and should therefore be used with care. 58. There are fundamental differences as well, of course, in that K ant’s two spheres are ‘metaphysically’ more independent o f one another than those of Pufendorf, are not subject to 'positing’ in the same sense, and arise out of a somewhat different philosophical problematic. 59. There have been efforts to find the source o f R ousseau’s ‘general will’ in Pufendorf. Thus, Crowe, pp. 236-37, quotes G ierke’s claim that Rousseau "was not the inventor o f personne morale, or its volonté générale. They were as old as Pufendorf, and even older." But Riley, pp. 176-80 has recently shown this interpretation, which was also proposed by H endcl (JeanJacques Rousseau, Moralist, 1934), to rest on Barbeyrac’s misleading French translation of Pufendorf. 60. Denzer, Moralphilosophie, p. 112, n. 64. 61. Denzer, Klassiker, p. 42; and Moralphilosophie, pp. 59-238 (its structure), esp. p. 124. Pages 331-32 of the latter work also give a brief content outline of DJN. 62. Treitschke, p. 202. 63. Hans Medick, Naturzustand und Naturgeschichte Der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Die Ursprünge der bürgerlichen Sozialtheorie als Geschichts­ philosophie und Sozialwissenschaft bet Samuel Pufendorf, John Locke, und A dam Smith (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), p. 40, n. 3. David Kettler’s review, "History and Theory in the Scottish Enlightenm ent," Journal o f M odem History 48 (1976), pp. 95-100, does not do justice to Medick’s im portant discussion of Pufendorf.

63

64. References to the state of nature in the Elementa are scattered and generally short. In Book I, see D2.1, D3.2-3, D5.15 (apparently a discussion o f Grotius, D ejure belli, II.2, on the origin of property), and D13.8. In Book II, see Ax.1.6, Obs.4.14, and Obs.3.5-6. This last reference is to material corresponding to the first three chapters in DJN, Book II. 65. See H aas W ehberg’s Introduction to the Carnegie edition/translation of EL, p. 11. Cf. Wolf, Rechtsdenker, p. 321. Also, D enzer, Moralphilosophie, C hart 3 on p. 329, offers a conceptual outline of 66. See ES, Mascovius edition (1744), pp. 176-86. 67. Briefly, the internal evidence for Statu’s 1675 composition date consists of the following: 1) The essay copies, almost verbatim, large portions of the DJN (1672) description of the pre-cultural state of nature. More specifically, near the end of Statu, #4, there is an unacknowledged line from Virgil that had been formally quoted at DJN, 11.2.2: the attribution was probably lost during the transcription. 2) Statu, #2, is devoted to a refutation of Jacob Thom asius’ (i.e., Christfried W aechtler’s, his graduate student) notion o f the natural state as a state of perfection, as argued in his De societatis civilis statu naturali ac legali (1670). The second, enlarged edition of this work, which also surveys and criticizes previous conceptions of natural law, including th at o f Pufendorf, appeared in 1675, suggesting that Statu was an im m ediate response thereto. [The Library of Congress has the only U.S. copy, which is too brittle to be xeroxed or microfilmed.] 3) In the same vein. Statu, # 3 , emphatically distinguishes Pufendorfs natural state from the ‘perfect state’ interpretations of Schwartz and Beckmann with which Pufendorf was confronted after the appearance of DJN (1672). Finally, 4) Statu, #15, w here Pufendorf refers to this natural similarity [which] fosters greatly the association and mutual endearm ent of individuals in every class of living things/' may be an oblique reference to Cumberland. The latter’s argum ent (in De legibus naturae> 1672) against Hobbes employs numerous examples from the animal realm where sociality and mutual benevolence are fostered by natural similarity. O f course, the appeal to animals was standard in the ancicnt sources used by many early modern thinkers, including Grotius, but Cum berland makes coascious use of organic comparisons in opposing H obbes’s mechanistic materialism. See Fetscher, p. 28. It is therefore very likely that Statu was written after 1672, and only somewhat less probable that its exact date is 1675. 68. See D enzer, Moralphilosophie; Medick; and Istvan Hont, "The Language of Sociability and Commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the Theoretical Foundations of the ‘Four Stages Theory,*" in Pagden, ed., Languages, pp. 253-76. 69. These brief and general descriptions are substantially indebted to Medick, pp. 31-38. 70. Medick, p. 32, and Richard Tuck, "Optics and Sceptics: The Philosophical Foundations of Hobbes’s Political Thought," in Edm und

64

Leites, ed., Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modem Europe (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 245. Tuck indicates the need for new study of Gassendi’s moral philosophy and its relation to H obbes. M ore generally, see Lynn S. Joy, Gassendi the Atomist (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1988). 71. Denzer, Moralphilosophie, pp. 100-101 and 112. The only previous discussions of any length regarding Pufendorfs conception of m an’s natural state that are known to me are Denzer, pp. 92-127, Medick, pp. 30-63, and Fetscher, pp. 10-25. All of them are quite helpful. 72. In a long footnote discussing the importance o f H obbes’ m ethod for Pufendorf, Medick, pp. 44-45, n. 17, refers to Pufendorfs short history of morality in Specimen, I, where the latter explicitly com pares the "Epicurean" Hobbes to Cumberland and himself, who are united by their "Stoicism" (# 6 ). According to Medick, pp. 40-42, the influence of H obbes on Pufendorf, especially regarding the naiural state, has been missed by previous expositors like Welzcl, Wolf, and Krieger. Dreitzel, pp. 270-71, on the other hand, stresses Pufendorfs Lutheran and scholastic milieu, and thinks that Krieger and the Anglo-American political tradition out of which he writes have overemphasized the importance of Hobbes. 73. Denzer, Moralphilosophie, pp. 102-103. The natural state ad Deum, in both DO, II.1.3 and Specimen, III.3, is basically equivalent to the state of humanity in EL, I.D3.2. 74. Contra Denzer, Moralphilosophie, p. 102, and M edick, p. 49. The natural state, according to Pufendorf at DJN, II.2.9-10, is always governed by rational laws; it is not a lawless state o f robbers. Also bearing on this is Pufendorfs view on the importance of natural religion, (See D JN , 11.4.3*4, and DO, 1.4) Like many other ‘tolerant’ early m odem thinkers, such as Locke, the demands of morality set strict limits to ‘atheism .’ Cf. Zurbuchen. 75. Pufendorf contrasts nature and culture and m eans by the latter those things created or produced by humans through their own free activities. But culture is not strictly nature’s opposite, since cultural developm ent is itself natural for man. See DJN, II.4. O n the various meanings of cultus and cultura in Pufendorf, see Denzer, Moralphilosophie, pp. 96-98, and Joseph Niedermann, Kultur. Werden und Wandtungen des Begriffs und seiner Ersatzbegriffe von Cicero bis Herder (Florence: Libraria A ntiquaria, 1941) [=Biblioteca dell’ "Archivum Romanicum," 1.28], pp. 132-74. 76. He was, however, writing the sort of ‘conjectural history o f society’ that became quite important in the 18th century. This thesis is im portant in both Medick, pp. 13-29, and H ont, pp. 267ff. At Specimen, 111.10, Pufendorf clearly distinguishes ‘priority’ of nature and (logical) order from that of time. 77. Medick, pp. 53-54, n. 40, also points out that by having humans merely ‘forget’ their biblical beginning, Pufendorf can begin anew and reason safely about the common origins of humanity in an imperfect state of nature.

65

Problem s of biblical chronology had been brought lo a head when, in 1641, Isaac La Pcyrère began circulating his Men Before A d a m , wherein he doubted Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and argued on the basis of Scripture that not all branches of the human race were descended from Adam. Though the book was immediately banned (and not published until 1655, in H olland), privately circulated copies evoked zealous refutations. O ne of the first of these was by Grotius, in 1643. See Richard H. Popkin, Isaac L a Peyrère. His Life, Work and Influence (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987). 78. See, in general, William Brandon, New Worlds fo r Old. Reports from lhe New World and Their Effect on the Development o f Social Thought in Europe, 1500-1800 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1986), esp. pp. 8187. 79. Medick, pp. 22-23 and 58-63, notes how Pufendorfs (really existing) pre-civil societies already embody various TIerrschaftsm om ente" revealing social preconceptions such as patriarchalism and absolutism that a re later reflected in the state. 80. As Pufendorf himself notes (ES, Apologia, #11), the methods of hypothesis and fictio contrarii are strictly speaking not the same. But they both constitute a kind of mental or conceptual experiment employed for purposes of argument. See Denzer, Moralphilosophie, pp. 40, 114-15, and 121-22 . 81. Laurent, Pufendorf, p. 255, lists a number of these earlier biographical accounts, of which his own book makes good use. Authors referred to in the following section are all listed in the Bibliography. 82. Treitschke, p. 257; Wolf, Rechtsdenker, pp. 318-19; Scheuner, pp. 127 and 130-31; Dreitzcl, p. 271. 83. The following account relies mainly on Tuck’s articles, "Optics," "Grotius, C am eades and Hobbes" and 'T he ‘M odern’ Theory of Natural Law," and on Istvan Horn’s "The Language of Sociability and Commerce,” all cited earlier. 84. Schneewind, pp. 123 and 151. Garvc still treated Grotius as the first m odern moral philosopher and also devoted space to Pufendorf a5 G rotius’ follower, even though his own book discussed mainly Kant’s ethics. 85. Tuck, "Modern Theory," pp. 100-101, and Schneewind, pp. 123 and 151, n. 5. Buhle’s and Staiidlin’s accounts, like Brucker’s in the 18th century, were formative for the subsequent history of ethics, which has generally overlooked or minimized the importance of Grotius and Pufendorf. 86. R ichard II. Popkin, The History o f Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley, CA: University o f California Press, 1979), and Charles B. Schmitt, Cicero Scepticus: A^Study o f the Influence o f the “Acadêmica" in the Renaissance (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972).

66

87. On the M ersennc circle and ihe "mitigated scepticism" of some of its members, see Popkin, History, pp. 129-50. The im portance of this association for Hobbes in particular is detailed in Tuck’s "Optics." Also see Peter Dear, Mersenne ana the Learning o f the Schools (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). 88. Tuck, "Modern Theory," pp. 114-15, emphasizes the pre-H um ean nature of early modern scepticism, wnich was founded upon the experience of varying customs and morals and not upon the fact-value distinction for which-since it challenges even a single instance-such historical and sociological details are of secondary importance. Even though Pufendorfs ontology of entia physica and entia moralia was a precursor of ‘H um e’s fo rk / it still disallowed a radical split between descriptive and normative judgments; fact and value, thougn distinct, were still very much connected. Denzer, Moralphilosophie, pp. 127-28. Also relevant here is that C arve, who still discussed Grotius and Pufendorf in his history of ethics, has no mention of Hume. Schneewind, p. 123. Despite the difference just noted—which relies on a certain interpretation of Hume, Forbes, pp. 3-90, has shown that there are numerous continuities between Hum e and the previous natural law tradition, including Pufendorf.

89. On the general influence of Stoicism in early m odern Europe, see Michel Spanneut, Permanence du Stoicisme: De Zenon a Malraux (Gembloux: Duculot, 1973), pp. 213-316. The precise influence of Stoicism on Grotius and Pufendorf, and on other major philosophers of the period, remains to be fully explored. 1'here is, for instance, almost no attention to Pufendorf in G unter Abel, Stoizismus und die friihe Neuzeit (New York: W alter de Gruyter, 1978), and in G erhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early M odem State, ed. Brigitta Oestreich, trans. David M cIJntock & H. G. Königsberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Both works focus mostly on Lipsius and the ‘Machiavellian1 political tradition furthered by him. 90. Cf. Pufendorfs view on polygamy (n. 19 above). M ore generally, see his comments at DJN, 1J.2.10, on "moral quantities" and the latitude of judgment they allow. 91. The political and social disintegration accompanying the Reformation and the sceptical challenges to traditional justifications of political authority left a vacuum that was filled, almost necessarily, by a quasi-Machiavellian power politics exemplified by Richelieu and others. These new statesmen saw it as their role to balance the various exclusivistic religious and political interests within their territories in order to prevent the latters’ destruction. The new moral science of Grotius and his followers directly reflected this concrete state of affairs. It argued, as we have just seen, for a minimalist ethics of functionally necessary rules that also allowed for considerable diversity of opinion outside its central core. It was in essence a principled prudentialism whose transcendence of extreme moral and political scepticism was actually conjoined with a more mitigated sceptical attitude open to a plurality of views. Since such openness naturally displeased those with

67

broader or deeper commitments of all persuasions, who sought as always to embody their specific beliefs in more restrictive social institutions, 17thcentury thinkers like Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf, who had been shaped by the pluralist culture of Renaissance humanism (vs. scholasticism, against which they all revolted), and who feared the social chaos created by religious conflict, tended to appeal to a strong political authority to make the world safe—ironically—for ‘scepticism’! Thus, the powerful early modern state was essential for protecting the very intellectual positions that both m irrored and justified it, and it is thoroughly anachronistic now, and ironic, simply to criticize these views as being illiberal. 92. See Richard H. Popkin, "Hobbes and Scepticism,1' in Tjnus J. Thro, SJ, ed., History o f Philosophy in the Making (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982), pp. 133-48. Popkin finds few references to scepticism in H obbes and thinks that, despite the latter’s lengthy association with the M ersenne circle, he "does not seem to have been part of the sceptical crisis going on around him" (p. 135). Still, he tries to make sense of Hobbes* reputation as a sceptic by focusing on his "religious scepticism” (i.e., his questioning of Moses’s authorship of the Pentateuch) and also his socalled "political scepticism" (his view that, in the absence of any rational criterion for settling moral and religious claims, the latter must be adjudicated by an absolute political authority). But Tuck clearly shows in "Optics," esp. pp. 236-37 and 248-63, that H obbes’ physics and ethics alike were motivated by the same anti-sccptical intent as o ther members of the M ersenne circle. One common feature of these early opponents of scepticism was their preoccupation with opticsunderstandably so, since many of the sceptical arguments challenging the reliability of sense perception focused on vision. Thus, Tuck notes, "Hobbes’ general philosophy in fact first appeared in print in the form of a treatise on optics printed in M crsennc’s Baflistica of 1644 and a report by Mersenne aoout his theories in the preface to that work" (p. 237). For a general outline of H obbes’ theory and its anti-sceptical thrust, see the first two chapters of his Elements o f Law (1640). M ersenne also recommended Hobbes’ De Cive (1642) to Sorbiere as an ideal refutation of scepticism. Tuck, "Modern Theory," p. 114. 93. Cf. text and references at n. 52 above. Denzer, Moralphilosophie, pp. 119-20, finds no state of nature in Grotius, while Tuck, "Optics," pp. 243, 259, and "Grotius," p. 55, apparently does, though he gives no citations. At De jure belli, 11.2 ("The Origin and Development of the Right of Private Ownership"), Grotius briefly describes a post-diluvian natural state characterized by common ownership and still exemplified by the tribes of America, in the Prolegom ena (pp. 10’, 11*) to his earlier De jure praedae, he speaks quasi-historically about humans’ gradually developing need to establish civil society, o f how the natural society of all men had eventually to be supplem ented by (civil) societies of some men in order to insure everyone’s security and sharing of cultural advantages. In neither work, however, does G rotius employ the state of nature systematically as p art of a distinct argum entative strategy, as is clearly the case in Hobbes and Pufendorf. Though Tuck does not claim as much, since he does refer to a "State of nature" in crediting G rotius with "the blueprint according to which

63

most of the interesting political theories of the next century were constructed" ('Grotius," p. 55), his comments here appear to be a t least misleading. > . One argument for clearly distinguishing the state o f nature in Grotius and in Hobbes, Gassendi, and others is the latter’s use thereof in connection with the hypothetical-deductive method derived from the physical sciences. Much like the atomistic structures underlying their own physical theories, the function of the natural state in these thinkers seems also to be a ‘saving of (moral) appearances’ by giving a lawlikc structure to the world. 94. Cf. Michael Nutkiewicz, "Samuel Pufcndorf: O bligation as the Basis of the State,1' Journal o f the History o f Philosophy 21 (1983), pp. 15-16: "The most profound insight that early modern political thinkers took from natural science was the assumption that knowledge entails the ability to reconstruct (either actually or theoretically) the object of inquiry. This methodological principle of natural science was earned into early m odern political theory, offering new analogies to political thinkers. Just as the laws of inertia, for example, are ‘discovered’ in a hypothetical vacuum, men are studied in an imaginary state o f nature. The subject m atter of the political philosopher becomes the ontology of the state: the political thinker’s task is to explain rather than to describe the mechanism o f the state. The emphasis on reconstructing political society and the attem pt to discover the mechanism by which men generate or ‘make’ their institutions turned the state into an artifact, a product of man’s labor." Nonetheless, because he is unclear about the various distinctions made in Section II above, Nutkiewicz, pp. 21-23, misunderstands the role of the natural state in Pufendorf, whom he distances too much from Hobbes in this regard. 95. According to Medick, p. 47, the (pure) natural stale is based on evidence rather than fact. 96. See Wolf, Grotius, p. 90; Denzer, Moralphilosophie, pp. 93-96; Medick, pp. 53-54; and Hont, pp. 266-70. 97. Hobbes’s rejection of Aristotelian man as a zoon politikon (De cive, 1.2, V.5) left a vacuum between the natural state of men and civil society. This was because the G reek polis, which had been a combination o f state as a formal political entity and various pre-civil societies that even Hobbes admitted were natural to humans, was no longer possible in early modern times. Many so-called pre-civil societies had by then fallen into disarray because of profound religious, economic, and intellectual changes that separated individuals from one another and m ade a swift transition from the pure state of nature to the modern contractual state imperative. Pufendorf was both more traditional and m ore m odern than H obbes in trying to reintegrate such pre-civil societies into the latter’s scheme. H e accomplished this by pluralizing the meaning of ‘natural state’ and interpreting sociality in terms of the emerging m arket relations of early modern commercial society. This loosening of the necessary connection between Hobbes’ purely natural state and civil society (the state) also affected the latter’s nature, as well as the conditions when and under which

69

submission to il is required. H ere, Pufendorf may be seen as a precursor of Locke. Cf. l lont, pp. 264, 274; and Denzcr, Moralphilosophie, p. 126. 98. Medick, pp. 22-23,52-53, 61,63; and Hont, p. 272. 99. Krieger, pp. 6-11; cf. Wolf, Rechtsdenker, pp. 330-31. 100. C. B. M acPherson, The Political Theory o f Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), and Louis Dumont, From Mandeville to Marx: The Triumph o f Economic Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). O n Pufendorf, see Krieger, pp. 91-92, and Medick, pp. 34-38 and 62-63. 101. See Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: R andom House, 1988), pp. 98-126. 102. Medick, pp. 23 and 33.

S E L E C T B IB L IO G R A P H Y [Prim ary Sources listed include only Pufendorfs main natural law writings (represented either by a m odern edition or translation, or by the best and most easily acccssible earlier edition) and som e other works available in a recent edition or translation. Various early editions of some of Pufendorfs works can also be found in Latin a n d /o r in English translation as part of several microform series, particularly EA RLY ENGLISH BOOKS, 16411700 (University Microfilms International), C A RN EG IE CLASSICS O F IN TER N A TIO N A L LAW (entire series reissued in microform by William S. Hein & Co.), and the PE RG A M O N HISTORY O F ECONOMICS SERIFS (M icroforms International, NY). Moreover, microform copies of Pufendorfs works are becom ing increasingly available in U.S. libraries as scholars request them from rare book collections (see National Register o f Microform Masters). T he list of Secondary Sources contains the most im portant studies on Pufendorf and his influence since the late 19th century, including books and articles as well as relevant portions of larger works. For a more comprehensive bibliography, see H orst D enzer’s Moralphilosophie below.]

A. Texts and Translations Pufendorf, Samuel A. "Briefe von Pufendorf." Ed. Konrad V arentrapp. Historische Zeitschrift 70 (1893), pp. 1-51, 193-232, and Historische Zeitschrift 73 (1894), pp. 59-67. ___ . Briefe Samuel Pufendorfs an Christian Thomasius. Ed. Emil Gigas. Munich, 1897. [TTiis and the previous item have been reprinted together as Samuel Pufendorf, Briefe Samuel Pufendorfs an Christian Thomasius. Pufendorf-Briefe an Falaiseau, Friese und Weigel, Scriptor R eprints, Sammlung 18. Jahrhundert. Ed. Jörn G arber. Scriptor, 1980.) __ . The Compleat History o f Sweden. 2 vols. Trans. C. Brockwell. London: J. Brudenell, 1702; reprinted Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1977.

72

___. Dissertationes acaäemicae selections. Lund: 1675; Upsala, 1677; Frankfurt/M .: C. W eidmann, 1678.

Adam Junghans,

___ . Elementorum jurisprudence universalis, libri duo. The Hague, 1672. Photographic reprint edition, with translation by W illiam A bbott Oldfather. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931 (= No. 15 of CLASSICS O F INTERNATIONAL LAW series, ed. Jam es Brown Scott, published by Carnegie Foundation for International Peace). ___ . Eris scandica. Frankfurt/M .: F. Knoch, 1686, 1706; also reprinted in Mascovius ed. of De jure naturae in 1744 and 1759. ___ . De habitu religionis christianae ad vitam civilem. Bremen, 1687; reprinted Frankfurt/M .: Fromann-Holzboog, 1972. ___. De jure naturae et gentium, libri octo. Frankfurt/M ., 1686. Photographic reprint edition, with translation by C. W. and W. A. O ldfather. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934 (= No. 17 of CLASSICS O F INTERNATIONAL LAW series, ed. Jam es Brown Scott, published by Carnegie Foundation for International Peace). ___. De jure naturae et gentium, libri octo. Ed. G ottfried Mascovius. Frankfurt & Leipzig: Knoch, 1744; reprinted 1759 (contains Pufendorfs Eris scandica). ___ . De iure naturae et gentium, libri octo. Ed. G. Mascovius. Frankfurt/M .: Minerva, 1967; reprint of Frankfurt & Leipzig ed. of 1759 (reprint does not include Eris scandica). ___ . O f the Law o f Nature and Nations, Eight Books. Trans. Basil Kennet. 4th ed. London: R. Sare e t al., 1729 (contains all of Barbeyrac’s large notes and Carew’s translation of Barbeyrac’s 1706 preface to his French translation of De jure naturae et gentium, "An Historical and Critical Account of the Science of Morality"; the Carew translation was also reprinted in 1749, in the 5th edition of Kennet). ___. De officio hominis et civis, libri duo. Cam bridge, 1682. Photographic reprint edition, translation by Frank G ardner M oore. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1927 ( - No. 10 o f CLASSICS O F INTERNATIONAL LAW series, ed. James Brown Scott, published by Carnegie Foundation for International Peace). ___ . Die Verfassung des deutschen Reiches. Trans. & annot. Horst Denzer. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1976.

B. Studies Bobbio, Noberto. (1947), pp. 118-29.

"Leibniz et Pufendorf."

Rivista di fdosofia 38

73

Cassirer, Erich. Natur- und Völkerrecht im Lichte der Geschichte und “Cf systematischen Philosophie. Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn, 19X9, *dd. 1 K /1 - O Q *

D enzer, Horst. Moralphilosophie und Naturrecht bei Samuel Pufendorf: eine geistes- und wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Untersuchung. Aalen: Scientia V erlag, 1972. -----. "Pufendorf." In H aas M aier, H einz Rausch, & Horst Denzer, eds. Klassiker des politischen Denkens. 2 vols. München: C. H. Beck, 1968 (2nd ed. 1969), vol. 1, pp. 27-52. Diesselhorst, Malte. Z um Vermögensrechtssystem Samuel Pufendorfs. G ottingen: Schwartz, 1976. D reitzeî, Horst. "Das deutsche Staatsdenken in der frühen Neuzeit." Neue Politische Literatur 16 (1971), pp. 17-42,256-71,407-22, esp. 265-71. D ufour, Alfred. "Tradition et m odernité de la conception pufendorfienne de l’Etat." Archives de Philosophie du Droit (Paris) 21 (1976), pp. 55-74. Fetscher, Iring. "Der gesellschaftliche ‘N aturzustand’ und das M enschenbild bei Hobbes, Pufendorf, Cumberland, und Rousseau.“ Schm ollen Jahrbuch, 80, 6, # 2 (1960), pp. 641-85. Forbes, Duncan. H ume's Philosophical Politics. Cam bridge University Press, 1975, pp. 3-90.

Cambridge:

___ . "Natural Law and the Scottish Enlightenment." In R. H. Cam pbell and A. S. Skinner, eds. The Origins and Nature o f the Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982, pp. 186-204. G ierke, O tto. Natural Law and the Theory o f Society, 1500 to 1800. Trans, with introduction by Ernest Barker. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957; Cam bridge University Press, 1934. H ägerstrom , Axel. Recht, Pflicht und bindende Kraft des Vertrages nach römischer und naturrechtlicher Anschauung. Ed. Karl Olivekrona. Stockholm /W iesbaden: O tto Harrassowitz, 1965. H ont, Istvan. ’T h e Language of Sociability and Commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the Theoretical Foundations of the ‘Four Stages Theory.’" In Anthony Pagden, ed. 1he Languages o f Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 253-76. Ilung, Karl-Heinz. Naturrecht und Sittlicfikeit. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983, pp. 83-89, 204-12. Krieger, Leonard. The German Idea o f Freedom: History o f a Political Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957, pp. 46-80.

74

___. "History and Law in the 17th Century: Pufendorf." Journal o f the History o f Ideas 21 (1960), pp. 198-210. ___. The Politics o f Discretion: Pufendorf and the Acceptance o f Natural Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. I^aurent, Pierre. Pufendorf et la loi naturelle. Paris: J. Vrin, 1982. ___ . "Samuel Pufendorf (8.1:1632-26.10.1694), I & II." Bulletin de Litterature Ecclesiastique (Toulouse) 84 (1983), pp. 100-14, and pp. 178-97. Lezius, Friedrich. Der Toleranzbegriff Lockes und Pufendorfs. Leipzig: 1900; reprinted Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1971. Medick, Hans. Naturzustand und Naturgeschichte der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft; die Ursprünge der bürgerlichen Sozialtheorie als Geschichtsphilosophie und Sozialwissenschaft bei Sam uel Pufendorf, John Locke, und Adam Smith. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & R uprecht, 1973. M einecke, Friedrich. Die Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte. 2nd ed. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1925, pp. 279-303. Meyer, Paul. Samuel Pufendorf: Lebens. Grimma, 1894.

ein Beitrag zur Geschichte seines

M oore, James, and Silverthome, Michael. "Gershom Carm ichael and the Natural Jurisprudence Tradition in Eighteenth-Century Scotland.” In I. H ont and M. Ignatieff, eds. Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping o f Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1983, pp. 73-88. ___. "Natural Sociability and Natural Rights in the M oral Philosophy of Gershom Carmichael." ln V. Hope, ed. Philosophers o f the Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984, pp. 1-12. Nutkiewicz, Michael. "Samuel Pufendorf. O bligation as the Basis of the State." J o u m a lo f the History o f Philosophy 21 (1983), pp. 15-29. Olivekrona, Karl. "Die zwei Schichten im naturrechtlichen Denken." Archiv fü r Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 63/1 (1977), pp. 79-103. Othmer, Sieglinde C. Berlin und die Verbreitung des Naturrechts in Europa; kultur- und sozialgeschichtliche Studien zu Jean Barbeyracs PufendorfUebersetzungen und eine Analyse seiner Leserschaft. Berlin: W alter de Gruyter, 1970. Palladini, Fiammetta. Discussioni seicentesche su Sam uel Pufendorf: scritti latini 1663-1700. Bologna: II mulino, 1978.

75

Prats, Jaim e Brufan. L a actitud metodica de Samuel Pufendorf y la configuration de la 'disciplina juris naturalis." Madrid: Instituto de Estúdios Políticas, 1968. ~ . Raí e^ IlorSt* Naturrecht und Kirche bei Samuel von Pufendorf. Köln: Bohlau, 1958. J Scheuner, Ulrich. "Samuel Freiherr von Pufendorf/1 Oie Krossen Deutschen. Berlin, 1957, vol. 5, pp. 126-35. Schneewind, J. B. "Pufendorfs Place in the History of Ethics.” Synthese 72 (1987), pp. 123-55. Schneider, H ans-Peter. Justitia Universalis: Studien zur Geschichte des "christlichen Namrrechtsn bei Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Frankfurt/M : Vittorio Klosterm ann, 1967. Schneiders, W erner. Naturrecht und Liebesethik. Ilildesheim: Olms, 1971. Treitschke, Heinrich von. Historische und politische Aufsätze. Leipzig: G. Hirzel, 1897, vol. 4, pp. 202-304. Tuck, Richard. "Grotius, Carneades and Hobbes.” Grotiana (n.s.) IV (1983), pp. 43-62. ___ . "The ‘M odern’ Theory of Natural Law.” In Anthony Pagden, ed. The Languages o f Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 99-119. ___. Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development. Cam bridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1979. ___ . "Optics and Sceptics: The Philosophical Foundations of Hobbes’ Political Thougnt/' In Edm und Leites, ed. Conscience and Casuistry in Early M odem Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 235-63. Welzel, H ans. Die Naturrechtslehre Sam uel Pufendorfs. W alter de G ruyter, 1958.

Berlin:

___ . "Ein K apitel aus der Geschichte der amerikanischen Erklärung d er M enschenrechte: John Wise und Samuel Pufendorf.” In Rechtsprobleme in Staat und Kirche, Festschrift fü r R udolf Smend. Göttingen: O tto Schwartz, 1952, pp. 387-441. ___. Die Socialitas als oberstes Prinzip der Naturrechtslehre Samuel Pufendorfs. H eidelberg: H erm ann Meister, 1930. W ieacker, Franz. Privatrechtsgeschicfite der Neuzeit. G öttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967, pp. 280-322.

2nd ed.

76

Wolf, Erik. Grosse Rechtsdenker der deutschen Geistesgeschichte. 4ih ed. Tübingen, 1963, pp. 306-66. ___ . Grotius, Pufendotf, Thomasius. Tübingen: J. C. B. M ohr, 1927, pp. 64-73. Zurbuchen, Simone. "Naturrecht und natürliche Religion bei Samuel Pufendorf." Studia Philosophica (Switzerland) 45 (1986), pp. 176-86.

C O M M E N T S O N T E X T A N D T R A N S L A T IO N

In

his Moralphilosophie und Naturrecht bei Samuel Pufendorf

(M ünchen: C. H. Beck, 1972), p. 367, Horst D enzer lists three early editions of Pufendorfs Disseriationes academicae selections. Pierre Laurent's more recent survey of Pufendorf editions in major European libraries (Pufendorf et la loi naturelle [Paris: Vrin, 1982], pp. 239-51) also identifies these editions, but notes as well that the work was reissued at Amsterdam in 1698 under the altered title of Analecta politico.

Hans WelzePs doctoral dissertation, Die

Socialitas als oberstes Prinzip der Naturrechtslehre Samuel Pufendotfs (Heidelberg: H erm ann Meister, 1930), p. ix, refers to a 1691 edition (with no place or publisher given), but fails to mention it again in the later, fuller version of his book, Die Naturrechtslehre Samuel Pufendorfs (Berlin: W alter de G ruyter, 1958), p. 7; here, Welzel cites only the Upsala edition of 1677. Leonard Krieger, The Politics o f Discretion: Pufendorf and the Acceptance o f Natural Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 273-74, refers only to the 1675 and 1677 editions, mainly the former.

My own critical

transcription of Pufendorfs "De statu hominum naturali," one of the "select academ ic essays” in the collection, is based on the following three early editions: (A )

Samuelis Pufendorfii, Dissertationes academicae selections

(Londini < =L und> Scanorum: Adami Junghans, 1675), pp. 582-632 < U C L A Library>. Bound with two lengthy essays of Pufendorf that

78

appeared later in the collection of polemical essays known as Eris scandica (1686): ipsi

nuper

"Specimen controversarium, circa jus naturale

motarum"

(Canabrugi,

1678),

and

1Spicilegium

controversarium" (Francofurti, 1680). (B) Sam. Pufendorfii, Dissertationes academicae selectiores (Upsaliae, 1677), pp. 458-96 < Northwestern University Library >.

Bound with

G. Feltmann, Tractatus de pofygamia (Leipzig, 1677). (C) Sam. Pufendorfii, Dissertationes academicae selectiores, nova editio auctior (Frankfurt & Leipzig: Christian W eidm ann, 1678), pp. 497-538

.

Bound

with

Karl

Scharschmidt, Disquisitio de republica monstrosa, ejusque Defensio contra Monzambano et Pufendorftum. The first edition of 1675 was quickly followed by the second and third editions of 1677 and 1678 respectively. The second edition corrected the first and was itself, in turn, corrected by the th ird -a t least in the case of our essay. It also contained a long appendix discussing moral entities and the nature of human action that was later transferred to the "Epistola ad Scherzerum" in Eris scandica (1686).

Both the second and the third editions contained

another appendix titled "Bulla d e m e n tis IX, papae, super suppressione quorundam

ordinum

religiosiorum, accessit

Brevis

Com m entatio

ad

eandem." N either of these appendices was listed in the respective table of contents. Since the two later editions were newly typeset and bound together with other works of Pufendorf, or of others, the pagination am ong the three editions is not uniform. Still, "De statu hominum naturali" is always the final (10th) essay, immediately preceding any appendices. All three editions begin with a brief introductory dedication to Pufendorf s brother, Esaias. Though the Latin text of the three editions varies in 93 places, most of the differences are plain misprints. Therefore, my critical apparatus lists only 19 instances where variations seem potentially significant in the sense of revealing more than printers’ errors. Even so, most of these variants do not affect the sense in a major way, and the essay does not constitute a so-called textual problem.

79

My transcription is based mainly on the revised edition of 1678, and I have evaluated alternate readings in the first two editions by referring to it. In some instances, however, I have preferred earlier readings to later ones, for even the 1678 edition is not always reliable. In fact, some errors that occurred initially in the second (1677) edition were apparently carried over to it, suggesting th at it was based only on the second and not also the first edition of the work.

My own aim has been to establish the best textual

reading in each instance, whether or not it happens to be the most recent. T he critical apparatus lists only actual variants, and lack of mention indicates agreem ent with the preferred 1678 (or other) edition. Page numbers (in parentheses) in the text and translation correspond to the third edition. I have treated Pufendorfs occasionally altered punctuation as a variant, b ut not the printer’s abbreviation symbols used extensively throughout all three editions to maintain an even right margin. T he main symbols employed for this latter purpose are: ; (the semicolon), which substitutes for the ‘ue’ ending (e.g., atq; atque) a (a horizontal straight line over a vowel), indicating the absence of a final ‘m ’ or ‘n’ (e.g., norma * normam) 9

3

(a subscripted 9-like symbol) taking the place of the ‘us’ ending (e.g., statg = status) (a subscripted 3-like symbol) which replaces a ‘ue’ ending (e.g., neq 3 = neque)

e (a iota-like symbol beneath the vowel *£) indicating the omission of an ‘a' (e.g., q u ^ = quae) These marks are sometimes difficult to detect in the text, particularly since Pufendorf also makes frequent use of the semicolon (in place of our own comma or period) to separate clauses. All of them have been eliminated in my transcription. O ther alterations in my newly edited text include the use of *et’ in place of

the omission of Pufendorfs italics in the case of proper personal

names, and the use o f quotation marks instead of italics to indicate direct quotations from other authors. W hile the translation retains Pufendorfs num eration for the essay’s major sections, I have added paragraph sub-divisions within these as

80

indicated by the sense. Their absence would strain the patience of most contemporary readers. For similar reasons of style and comprehensibility, I have sometimes broken up and even rearranged P ufendorfs long periodic sentences, changed passive into active voice-(or vice versa), and altered the grammatical subject of some sentences.

In general, I have sought to

transform the heavy-handed noun orientation of Pufendorfs Latin, with its many substantives and abstractions, into a more fluid, verb-oriented prose (e.g., ‘to obligate’ rather than ‘to lay an obligation on’). Scholars disagree about the stylistic merits of Pufendorfs Latin, and also about those of past English translations (of his major works).

In his translation of De jure

naturae, O ldfather sought explicitly to be stylistically faithful of Pufendorfs Latin.

My own goals as translator, in contrast, are accuracy, fluidity, and

accessibility to contemporary readers. M ore precisely, I have tried consistently to retain the same one-to-one English equivalents for Latin terms, especially crucial ones like ius (right) and lex (law). But this was sometimes impossible. Thus, status and civitas are both rendered as ‘state.’ In this instance, the political and the m ore general meanings of ‘state’ are easily distinguishable by context. O ther uses are m ore subtle, however, and it is im portant that a translation reflect them.

For

example, Kricger, pp. 158 and 289 (n. 54), notes an im portant distinction between civitas and respublica that is not found in O ldfather.

W hen

Pufendorf uses civitas he means ‘the state’ properly so-called; only regular states are civitates. Irregular states, on the other hand, or states in a general or generic sense (i.e., w hether regular or irregular), are called respublicae (i.e., ‘commonwealths’- a term that O ldfather sometimes employs for civitates as well). Another important term is potestas. According to Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 157*58, who translates it as ‘authority,’ the term is im portant for contrasting Pufendorf and Hobbes and must therefore be carefully distinguished from other terms like potentia (power), vis (power, force), vires (strength), faculias (faculty, ability, power), and (sum m um ) imperium (sovereignty, authority, rule, command)--a term that also depends often on context for its precise meaning.

81

Finally, Pufendorfs sometimes careless references and citations are explained in a separate set of notes accompanying the translation. I have checked all of the classical quotes and citations for accuracy, but not those to less known m odern authors (e.g., Olfert D apper). In these latter instances, however, 1 have supplied bibliographical and sometimes biographical information.

TEXTUAL VARIANTS (a). C: varios. (b). A & B: artes? Id. The period at the end would normally lead one to expect tamdiu earlier in the sentence, even though quamdiu is also acceptable. Quamdiu is certainly consistent with the question mark ending the sentence in A and B. (c). C: disponatur. (d). B & C: piorum. (e). A: hum anam inundare solitas. B & C : humanum m undare solitas. (f). A~C: sapientum. (g). A & B: multiplicati. (h). C: parca. (i). A & B : fu n d a m e n tals: in. (j). A : injunxit. (k). B: cognitionc juncti. C: cognitione, juncti. (1). A & B: autem cum aliis hominibus nihil. (m). C: solum. (n). A & B = commoditates. (o). A-C: ingerente. Cum. D espite Pufendorfs end-of-sentence punctuation in all three editions, the beginning of the sentence suggests a question. (p). A & B: sit. (q). A : sane. (r). A-C: quibus. The occurrence of ipsi opprimendo later in the sentence, in all three editions, supports my reading of cut. Nonetheless, the translation works b etter with the plural throughout. (s). C: vicinarum.

"D E S T A T U H O M IN U M N A T U R A L I" (Latin Text of!678) # 1 . Qui circa corporum naturalium constitutionem investigandam soliciti fuerunt, non salis habuere, faciem corum exteriorem» et quae primo statim obtutu in oculos incurrunt, adspexisse; sed et eadem penitius rimari, et in paries, ex quibus componuntur, resolvere praecipuus labor fuit. Quin et dem um quicquid est corporum ad primam quandam materiam reducere visum, quac ab omnibus particularibus formis abstracta conciperetur; ad quam /(4 98) ubi pcrventum fuit, ulterius quo progrederentur non habuerunt. E andem viam institere, queis indolein nobilissimi corporis moralis, civitatis nimirum, curatius perscrutari cordi fuit; quibus non externam tantum ejusdem

adm inistrationem ,

ac

magistratuum varietatem, ac vocabula

classesque populi evolvere suffecit; sed et intrinseca velut ipsius dispositio, ex potestatc ac jure imperantium , et obligatione civium resultans, perspecta; ncc minus partes, ex quibus vastum illud corpus componitur, accurate discrctae. Quin ad disciplinae illius perfectionem insigniler facere judicatum, omnes societates velut transscendere, et mente concipere conditionem atque statum hominum, qua(is ille extra societatem, et ab omnibus artibus et institutis humanis vacuus intclligi potest.

ïnde enim liquido demum cernere licet,

quae necessitas ac ratio fuerit societatum civilium combinandarum, quid potestatis ant obligationis ex eanm dem natura promanet, quid commoditatis denique ac peculiarîs habitudinis inter homines ex iisdem proveniat. Unde isthaec doctrina suo sibi jure principem in política architectonica vindicat

84

locum; sic ut gravi defectu laborare judicandi sint libelli politic!, qui istam ne summis quidem digilis attigerunt. Q uae et ipsa ratio nos movet, ut m ateriam isthanc de statu hominum naturali incudi subjicere jam aggrediamur, quo ilia traclatione velut splendescat, simul accom m odation

omnisque

simpliciorum quoque palato

cavillandi

ansa

imperitis

au t

fiat

malevolis

praeripiatur./(499) #2. Propositum est igitur nobis contem plari statum hominum, quo extra societatem civilem vivere, el in quo om nia inventa et instituta hum ana, queis vitae huic decor et commoditas fuit conciliata, abstracta intelliguntur. Eum "naturalis status" vocabulo adpellare placet, non solum quia istud a non paucis hoc sensu adhibetur; sed et quia cum usu communis sermonis congruit, naturalia contradistinguere iis, quae m ediante facto humano existere coeperunt.

Ouod si autem vocabulum "naturale" aut "status

naturalis" ab aliis, aut in alia disciplina diverso modo accipiatur, id quidem pace nostra facere licet:

dummodo cam, quae istis placet, horum

terminorum significationem cum ilia, quam nos jam determinavimus, nolint confundere. Sed et hoc patet, per naturalem statum nos heic non intelligere perfectissimam hominis conditionem, aut quam ultim o velut natura intendit, el in qua ut homo persistat, eadem utique velit; aut ad quam velut normam status civitatum, quantum corruptio huniani generis adm ittit, sit exigendus. Nam sane civilis status naturali nostro statu, inprimis ubi singulis in hominibus consideratur, longe existit perfection neque tam en naturae repugnat, quod homines hoc velut proscripto ilium subierunt.

Sic neque

nobis aliquid est negotii cum "societatis civilis statu naturali et legali," quem Vir. Clar. Jacobus Thomasius Lipsiae non ita pridem commentus est; cui naturalis status societatis civilis est perfectissima humani generis societas, et qualis extitura fuerat, si istud intra primaevam /(500) integritatem , in qua a Deo conditum fuit, perstitisset: legalis autem status, qualis jam intra tantam mortalium corruptelam haberi potest; ob quam in dvilibus institutis non omnia ad unguem possum exigi, sed multa imperfecta et vitiosa toleranda sunt.

Enimvero si quis earn distinctionem accuratius examinare velit,

inveniet quae merito dcsiderari possunt.

Nam prim o non video, quam

congme status naturalis, i.e., ex mente ipsius perfectissimus, in quo utique perfectissimas leges esse, iisque perfecte obtem perari intelligitur, statui legali

85

opponatur. Deinde isthaec distinctio ex Arisiotele petita, cui alius natura, alius lege servus esse traditur, ad statum societatis humanae minus dcxtre videtur adplicari. Aristotelem

nondum

perfectissimum

non

Nam ad

praeterquam

quod

liquidum

pcrducta,

arguat;

gratis

sit

quoquc

servitus aut

aliquis

naturalis apud saltern

statum

civitatum

status

praesupponitur, in quo cives omnis vitii et malitiae sint exsortes. civitates revera sint medicina quaedam hum anae imperfectionis.

Cum

Id quod

inter alia etiam S. Scriptura innuit, dum potestatem summorum imperantium vocabulo "gladii" notat; cui gladio in perfecto et primaevo statu locus non est. Unde et absurdum arbitram ur, quod # 3 2 dc requisites belli justi ex statu naturali, i.e., ex ipsius mente, perfectissimo agit.

Nam inter illos

perfcctissimus status non est, ubi tale quid commititur, quod bello sit vindicandum. Inde status quidem hominum seu humani generis diversus esse potest; sed status societatis civilis in genere /(501) consideratus uniformis est.

Sicuti nec ilia satis sibi constant, quod inscriptio quidem istius

dissertationis Nde societatis civilis statu naturali et legali" loquatur:

in #5

autem eadem distinctio "humanae societatis" feratur; cum humana societas civili utiquc longe sit amplior. Sed nimirum uti nos quidem prohibere non possumus, quo minus quis ea distinctione, velut inventis novis insulis auriferis, sibi gratuletur: ita insignem aliquem ejusdem usum perspicere nos nondum potuisse ingenue profitemur; cum aliunde eorum institutorum, quibus illustrandis eadem adhibetur, ratio longe solidior dari possit.

Nec

tam en si quis eandem mordicus tueri velit, nos eo nomine haereseos ipsi crimen impingemus. # 3 . Ulud praeterea in limine hujus dissertationis monemus, nos homincm cum suis inclinationibus heic considerare, prout nunc eum sese habere deprehendim us, abstrahando, num ab initio diversus ille fuerit, vel non; adeoque

nos sem per heic naturam

hominis pravitate

infectam

praesupponere. Cum enim propositum nobis sit isthaec dogmata ex lumine rationis deducere, extra rhombum fuerit altius heic vclle adscendere, quam quousque nostra ratio sibi jam relicta pertingcre valet. Sane enim quae de statu primi hominis, ex quo ipse peccato suo evolutus est, jam novimus, earn cognitionem divinis literis debemus.

Et si quae ejusdem vestigia apud

scriptores Ethnicos occurnint, ea videntur reliquiae traditionis alicujus inter

86

antiquissimos mortalium aliquandiu /(5Ö2) conservatae, donee ea lapsu temporum alicubi plane cxolevit, alicubi in fabulosa com m ents degeneravit. Inde nec nostrae jam operae est acquirere, unde ilia maiitia ac miseria, qua genus humanum nunc involutum cernitur, prim itus prom anarit; cum sola ratio heic debili progrediatur pede:

quicquid sat ingeniöse disputet

M om aeus de Verit. Relig. C h r i s t c. 16 & 17.

Neque vero adparet, quem

magnopere usum in doctrina civili. habeat, homines in prim aeva ilia integritate constitutos contemplari, ac istorum conditionem statuere velut exemplar, ad quod leges et institiita civilia sint exigenda et adapianda. Sive enim ponamus civiiates inventas dispellendae indigcntiac, sive ad pariendam securitatem adversus mala, quae homini ab homine imminent; ad utrum que declarandum non opus videtur praesupponere, hum anum genus initio in summa rerum affluentia egisse, ac nulla prava libidine ad m utuo nocendum solicitatum. Nam ea felicitas cum istis finibus, ob quos nostrae civitates jam sunt constitutae, stare nequit. Ac si quis penilius velit rim ari ilia instituta, quae in nostris jam civitatibus malitiam hominum praesupponunt; is facile agnoscet, quam parum cognationis cum iisdem fuissent habiturae majores societates, si quas praeter conjugalem et patem am in genere hum ano integro sibi quis velit deformare. • #4.

Caeterum hoc loco bifariam potissimum statum hominis

naturalem considerabimus. Primo quidem si concipiamus anim o hominem sibi soli plane relictum citra omne subsidium hum anum post nativitatem ipsi accedens, ac citra omnia /(503) inventa hum ana, queis necessitates aut commoditates hominum sublevantur et promoventur; et ita quidem , ut ponamus hominem non amplioribus animi corporisque dotibus instructum, quam nunc in eo nulla praevia cultura deprehenduntur, neque eundem peculiari Numinis a ira foveri.

Ad hanc rem pcnitus intelligendam age

abstraham us ab ilia cognitionc, quam super originibus hum ani generis ex divinis literis hausimus, ac intra limites rationis sibi jam soli relictae maneamus. Mac igitur duce satis liquido colligere videm ur posse, hum anum genus non extitisse ab aeterno, sed aliquando initium cepisse. Sive autem ponamus unum par hominum ab initio tindecunque provenisse, sive plures simul exorti fingantur; miserrimum tamen eorundcm statum concipiamus necesse est. Isti enim cum primum undecunque prodirent, vel infantes fuissc

87

ponendi suni, vel justam staturam jam habentes. Si prius ponamus, aique simul imbecillitatem

infantum

recens ex utero m aterno prodeuntium

adspiciamus; utique illis misere pereundum fuisse videtur, nisi velut per miraculum brutum aliquod animal ubera miseris praebuerit; id quod de quibusdam exposítis antiqui autores memorant.

Quod ipsum tam en cum

brutis contubcrnium bestiarum alumno non parum ferinae indolis daturum erat. Si autem posterius ponamus, nempe primos istos homines justa statim fuisse

statura;

necessário

tam en

concipiendi

erunt

nudi,

non

nisi

inarticulatum sonum em ittere valentes, omni disciplina ac /(504) cultura vacui;

quibus

fame

vellicante

obvium

quidvis

arreptum

gustuque

praetentatum fuerit, donec uteunque esui aptum inveniretur, (nam et infantes quicquid adprehenderint ori statim admovere cernimus) sitim obvius liquor levaret, contra injurias aeris antra aut densae arbores qualecunque suffugium darent.

Tales si in terra adhuc plane inculta sibi solis relictos

destituam us, quamdiu miserrimam ac fere belluinam vitam acturos fuisse arbitram ur, donec propria experientia ac ingenio, aut occasione ex solertia quorundam animalium petita paulatim ad aliquem vitae culuim proficcrcnt, et v a r ia s ^ usus m editando extunderet a r t e s t

Id quod facile agnoscet, si

quis om nia illa velit circumspicere, quibus jam in vita nostra utimur, et quam difficile cuivis futurum fuerit omnia ista proprio m arte invenire, ni aliorum hominum manuductio et opera praeiret; imo quam de plerisque nunquam in m entem plurimis fuerit ventumm. Atque hacc causa videtur, quare gemina hiscc de conditione prim orum hominum tradiderint scriptores ethnici, qui super veris originibus generis humani ex divinis literis nihil didicerant, sed suo tantum ratiocinio ducebantur. Vid. Horat. scnn.J. sat3. Lucretius I.V. D iodorus Siculus I.I. c.8.

Item quod, cum statum Paradisi ignorarent,

finxerint de singulari quadam aeris tem perie, terraeque ultronea fertilitate, quae primis numdi tem poribus extiterit; quasi alias genus humanum ita recens enatum servari non potuerit, si ea, quae nunc est, aeris intemperies extitisset, tantoque /(505) labore victus fuisset quarerendus.

Vid. Ovid.

Metamorph. 1.1.107. Virgil. Georg. 2. v.336. Lucretius I.VI. "At novitas mundi nec frigora prim a cicbat. Nec nimios acstus, nec magnis viribus auras. V eteres Philosophi" apud Lactantium lib.2. cap.12. "Non erat,” inquiunt, "in principio mundi hiems et aestas; sed perpetua temperies, et ver aequabile."

88

#5.

Q uanquam autem in tali statu et quidem extremo ejus gradu

Universum genus humanum simul et semel nunquam extitcrit; haut abs re tamen est eundem hoc modo velut delincari, non solum ut intelligamus, quam multa bona homines hominibus dcbeant, eoque ad philanthropian et socialitatem d isp o n an tu r^; sed etiam quia unus et alter peculiari casu revera in eum penitus, aut in aliquem ejusdem gradum devolvi potest. Ac revera in statum huncce conjicitur infans, qui per scelus parcntum in locum vastum, et ab omni cultu humano vacuum, e t quo nullus hominibus accessus solet esse, exponitur.

Qui plenum specimen status istius repraesentare posset, si

contingeret, eum in tali solitudine citra om ne hum anum auxilium adolescere. Qui autem naufragio aut per vim aliorum nudus, egenus, omnique instrumento destitutus in desertam, planeque incultam insulam ejicitur, ad aliquem duntaxat status naturalis gradum delapsus esi, quatenus utique memoriam cultae vitae, artium que notitiam retinuit, cujus subsidio facilius suis necessitatibus consulere potest. Sic apud Virgil. A cn. III. A chaemenidi "dira illuvies, /(506) immissaque barba, Consertum tegmen spinis, D um vitam in sylvis inter deserta ferarum Ilustra dom osque trahit.

Vicium

infelicem baccas, lapidosaque corna D ant rami, et vulsis pascunt radicibus herba." Sic et protoplasti, postquam admisso peccato felicissima Paradisi conditione exciderant, parum ab extremo gradu status naturalis, de quo nobis jam sermo est, abfuisse videntur, nisi qua divina bonitas miseris peculiariter succurrit. Cum enim in Paradiso vestibus non indiguerint, e t fructibus horti ultro enatis victitaverint; non adparet, quom odo actualem cognitionem habuerint earum artium, quibus genus humanum jam nativam indigcntiam repellit; praesertim si tam exiguo temporis spacio com m orationem corundem in Paradiso cum plerisque circumscribamus. Nisi dicere velimus, Adami in Paradiso scientiam sese extendisse, ipsoque actu jam tunc sese exseruisse circa futura quoquc contingentia, et talia quidem, quae statum peccati praesupponunt, eam que scientiam per lapsum mansisse integram. Quod cum valde difficile probatu sit futurum, simplicius putaverim dicere, ex peculiari Dei gratia et informatione protoplastos ejectos miseriam et egestatem ejus status, in quem devoluti erant, sat m ature dispulisse; adeoque ab ipso D eo didicisse usum praccipuarum rerum, quibus vitae hum anae indigentia sublevatur. Cum enim post lapsum statim iidem praecinctoria sibi e foliis

89

ficulneis contexuissent, m ateria ad vestimenti usum inepta, et non tam repellendis aeris injuriis, quam velando utcunque /(507) pudori inserviente; Deus m ateriam utrique usui longe aptiorem subministravit, confectis e pellibus anim aliura tunicis. Q uas quomodo alias tam cito in vestes aptare sibi hom ines potuissent, ferram entorum adparatu destituti, et pecoribus jugulandis nondum adsueti, si divina informatio abfuisset, nos quidem non dispicimus.

U nde a pari non obscure videmur colligere posse, divinam

manuductionem circa alias quoque res istis allubuisse, quae non minus vitae hum anae necessariae quam vestim enta erant, nec minus difficilem primam inventionem habuisse videntur. Sic cum D eus hominem expresse ad agrum colendum ablegaret, e t pane eundem deinceps vesci juberet, utique nobis persuasum est, D eum ipsi tradidissc naturam seminum, tem pora sementis, modum terram subigendi, ac quomodo ex seminibus panis cibo humano ideoneus posset confici.

Nam ad haec omnia proprio m arte addiscenda

longa experientia et m editatione opus erat.

U nde vetustissimos Graeciae

incolas, qui nescio quo casu usum frumenti amiserant, legimus diu glandibus et fructibus sponte natis victitassc, antequam agricultura apud ipsos inveniretur. Cum tam en filius Adami primogenitus statim ad agriculturam, tanquam artem jam notam et excultam, sese adplicuisse in divinis literis m em oretur. Sic Adamum jam habuisse usum ignis et ferri, vel ex sacrificiis sat firm iter colligi videtur.

Nam ut Thubalkain primus ferri inventor

statuatur ex Genes.IV.22. necessum non est; cum antea usus ferri potuerit esse /(508) simplicior; iste autem insigni dexteritate in arte fabrili polluerit. Atqui utriusque usum tam cito potuisse istis innotescere citra informationem divinam, fidem sane videtur excedere.

Sane ignis inventio tanti est res

m om enti visa veteribus Graecis, ut cum a Prom etheo ex coelo in terram delatum fabulati sint. E t de incolis insularum Canariarum et Philippinarum, ut et insulae apud Sinas, quae los Jardenas vocatur, memorant, illos ante adventum H ispanorum usum et notitiam ignis non habuisse.

Vid. Georg.

H ornius de Origin. Gent. Americ. 1.1. c.8 & 1.2. c.9. A deoque cum semel eo excidissent, per com plura forte secula neque meditatione, nequc fortuito experim ento eundem instaurare potuisse. M ultae quoque fuerunt nationes, quae usum ferri diu ignorarunt, utut ejus materiam regio ipsarum possiderct. Sic igitur prim a hominum stirps sat m ature status naturalis incultum exuit,

90 postquam DEO docente usum earum rerum, quas tetigimus, percepisset; quae non solum vitae hum anae cumprimis sunt necessariae, sed et instrument! vicem subeunt caetero vitae cultui parando. Q uod autem longo post tem pore minus culturae apud quosdam populos deprehensum est, quam apud primos istos homines, corum que sobolem jam fuit, alicubi quidem causa fuit regionis, quam sortiti sunt, infelicitas. Alios fortasse validiorum violentia in longínquas, incultasque regiones ejectos egestas oppressit, nullo instrumentorum adparatu ex pristinis sedibus deportato. In similem inopiam inciderunt, qui migratione in /(509) rcmotas terras suscepta per incuriam ejusmodi instrum enta secum ferre neglcxerunt, aut casu aliquo iisdem exuti sunt. Quae reparare, cum commercia nondum frequentarentur, difficillimum fuit.

Etsi alii defectum istum adhibita m ateria minus habili utcunque

supplere conati sunt. Sicuti multi populi Americae in ferri vicem usurparunt lapidcs, tcstas ostrearum, ossa ac dentes animantium, arundinem e t similia. Vid. D. D apper in descriptione Americae edit. T e u t o n p. 11, 149, 157, 171, 301,418,632, 643, 650,653, 654. #6. Caeterum

cupido

a

miseria

status

istius

naturalis

quam

longissime discendendi societatem inter homines non parum promovit, instituta communicatione rerum ad vitae culturam facientium; per quam omnibus inventa et elaborata velut in medium conferuntur, et cujuslibet industria universis emolumento cedit; cum alias exiguum valde sit, quod unius hominis ingenium invenire, aut industria elaborare citra aliorum auxilium queat.

Cui fini in genere humano receptum p er informationem

p rio ru m ^ inventa in alios transfundere, operas sociare, commercia exercere, domicilia conjungere, congressus celebrare.

U t tam en societates civiles

instituerentur, ad hunc quidem finem adeo necessarium non videtur, cum et discere quid ab aliis, et operas communicare, et res perm utare liceat cum illis, qui commune nobiscum imperium non agnoscunt.

Ex co n seq u en t

tamen per civitates cultus vitae insigniter promovctur, dum per eas civibus praestatur securitas, ut et citra / ( 5 10) impedim entum operi incumbere, et industriae suae fructum securius caperc qucant. Illud tam en observandum, mortalium multos, dum status naturalis misérias dispellere, vitam que copioso adparatu instruere laborant, modum heic excessisse, viamque ad avaritiam et luxuriam patefecisse, magno malorum proventu genus hum anum inundare

91

s o lita s ^ . Inde e t divinae literae ct sapientium ^ praccepta modum studio adquirendi, ac vitam velut expoliendi ponere jubent; ne circa supervacua sudetur, et breve hoc quod degimus aevi inter inania curarum frustra effluat, nec vigor in debilem mollitiem frangatur. Cum longe melius vita exigatur modico sobrioque adparatu, et virili patientia ad aspera obdurato corpore, quam p er nimias copias, quae onerant potius, quam instruunt, aut per teneram mollitiem, quae etiam mcdiocrium molestiarum sensum exasperat. # 7 . A ltero modo statum hominum naturalem consideramus, prout ille statui civili oppom tur, et prout quilibet sui esse arbitrii, nullique imperio hum ano subjectus intclligitur. Qui ipse status vel per fictionem concipitur, ve! revera existit. Prius sit, si fingamus ab initio magnam aliquam hominum multitudinem undecunque extitisse sin eu lla unius ab altero dependcntia; et ut nihil inter ipsos vinculi praeter communem naturam intercederet. Aut si fingamus jam totum genus humanum ita esse dissolutum, ut quilibet ab alterius im perio liber sui plane arbitrii intelligatur, nullo itidem vinculo inter homines superstite, quam /(511) quod ejusdem speciei animalia sint. Hac posita fictione, quae fad es humani generis futura fuerit, non obscure ex sequentibus colligi potest. Nam eo minus de hoc laborandum videtur, quod ejusmodi status revera nunquam in genere humano extitit, nec ut adparet unquam existet; adeoque quod nunquam universum genus humanum simul et sem el in statu naturali, isthoc modo designato, fuit constitutum. Nam prout divinae literae super originibus generis humani tradunt, inter primum par hominum arctissima fuit matrimonii conjunctio, in qua Deus uxorem marito subjectam esse jussit. Ex his prognati potestati patriae erant obnoxii. Ac cum genus hum anum sem per fuerit per generationem propagatum, ac deinceps quoque sit propagandum, isthaec peculiaria vincula nunquam ex universo genere hum ano tolli possunt. Ast qui revera existit status naturalis, non

quidcm

initio

rerum

fuit,

sed

tunc

demum

emersit,

quando

m ultiplicand) homines in diversas famílias, easque segreges coeperunt separari. Tunc enim qui in eadem familia degebant, peculiari quidem inter se vinculo nectebantur, patem o, maritali, aut herili; cum reliquis autem extra familiam constitutis in naturali statu versabantur. civitates illi, quos eadem

Post introductas autem

civitas complcctitur, civili invicem vinculo

junguntur. Ipsae autem civitates inter se, et qui in diversis civitatibus degunt,

92

in natural] invicem statu vivere intelliguntur.

Sic ut jam in statu naturali

invicem vivant, qui neque communem habent dominum, /(512) et quorum unus alteri non imperat, aut subjicitur.

Vincula autem consanguinitatis,

cumprimis propinquae, «d benevolentiam quidem m utuam anim os hominum fere soient disponere; per ilia tamen sola statum naturalem tolli non arbitram ur, nisi peculiare insupcr vinculum, imperii quid producens, accédât. Etsi bcnevolentia, quae ex propinqua cognatione provenil, ut et peculians inter quosdam amicitia, suavi animos vinculo conjungens, non p a u c a ^ velut symptomata status naturalis soleat intercipere aut sedare; quae frequentius, atque gravius sese sueverunt exserere inter eos, queis nil nisi hum ana natura est communis. Vid. Gen.XIII.8. #8. Praecipuum porro jus, quod statum naturalem com ilatur, est, quod qui in eo statu degunt, nemini in hisce terris sint subject], nulliusque praeterquam D EI O.M. imperium in se agnoscant. Quo intuitu etiam iste status libcrtatis naturalis nomine venire solet, per quam quilibct citra antcgressum factum humanum sui juris, ac arbitrii, nulliusque hominis imperio obnoxius esse intelligitur. Etsi alias, si subtiliter rem considerare velimus, utique inter statum ipsum et ex eodem profluens jus aliquid sit discriminis. Quia porro naturalis ista libertas subjectionem duntaxat alterius hominis excludit, nequaquam autem earn subjectionem, qua homo suo Creatori est obnoxius: igitur eadem libertas cum hoc sem per tem peram ento est intelligenda, quo imperio divino in hominem sua constet autoritas. C aetem m quae /(513) libertas hominibus in statu

civili degentibus

attribuitur, reliquias tantum quasdam libertatis naturalis complectitur. Nam liber civis, quatenus mancipio opponitur, id habet, ut actiones suas, ex quibus potissimum lucrum aliquod aut emolum entum provenire aptum est, pro lubitu exercere et adplicare possit, (cum servi contra ad dom inorum nutum operas obeant, et quicquid inde provenit, iisdem adquirant;) de caetero tamen non ad legem tantum naturalem, sed et civilia scita, sum m orum que imperantium peculiaria jussa sese teneatur com ponere. Etsi isthaec libertas alicubi laxior, alicubi malignior deprchendatur, prout per leges civiles pauca aut plura legi naturali supcradduntur. Ac inprimis illae civitates servitutis nota infamantur, ubi omnia, quae cives adquirunt, im perantcs ad sc rapiunt non tarn in usus reipublicae, quam ad libidinem istom m im pendendum. D e

93 caetero autem isthaec civium libertas, quam personalem soient vocare, sub una reipublicae form a regulari per se non amplior aut malignior est, quam sub altéra: nec qui in aristocratiis aut democratiis degunt, habent, quod se prae regnicolis magnifice efferant; cum illi aeque atque hi legibus civilibus sint adstricti, et oneribus, quae ad conservationem civitatis requiruntur, obnoxii:

ab abusu autem imperii nuîli reipublicae plane sit cautum. Ast

integrae civitates, quae e t ipsae personarum moralium rationem habent, in naturali invicem libertate vivunt, quatenus abs nullius extranei imperio dependent, ac principium actionum suarum publicarum in seipsis /(5 î4 ) habent.

Q uae

libertas

itidem

omnibus aeque civitatibus competit,

quam cunque reipublicae formam habeant, modo révéra sint integrae civitates, ab aliis non dependentes.

Adeoque frustra sibi aristocratiae aut

dem ocratiae majorem heic libertatis gradum arrogant, utut ex usu politicae G raecanicae hoc vocabuli peculiariter istae prae regnis non citra supercîlium jactare soleant. Principes autem hactenus naturali frui libertate intelliguntur, quod in actionibus publicis non ex arbitrio alterius hominis, sed proprio ex judicio dependeant, form ato tarnen ad legem naturalem divinamque, e t si quae sunt leges civitatis fundamentales. InW privatis autem actionibus supra leges civiles ut tales sint, ut tarnen ultro sese ad eas, quarum ratio in ipsos cadit, com ponere debeant. # 9 . Ex eo autem , quod in naturali statu viventes nullius hominis imperio subjecti solum Deum agnoscant superiorem, consequitur, eosdem, (si seponantur ea, quae ex peculiari Dei revelatione fluunt,) in directione actionum suarum nil aliud quod sequantur habere, praeter proprium judicium ad legem naturalem rite exactum.

Necessum est quippe, ut qui

principium agendi in setpso habet, in quantum non est subjectus direction) alterius, actiones suas ex proprio judicio regat.

Nam si vel maxime quis

alium, quem prudentiorem se arbitratur, in consilium advocet, aut eidem alius ultro consilium suum offerat, utut fortasse eum audire teneatur, quatenus istius suggestione, quid sana ratio dictitet, liquidius perspicere potest: /(515) ultim a tarnen decisio sui negotii ad quemque redit, cui utique consiliarii sui rationes discutiendae, e t num sibi conveniant decernendum est. Inde et consiliis ipsis in se et directe vis obligandi non inest, sed indirecte tantum , quatenus quis sanae rationis dictata sibi proposita sequi tenetur. De

94

caetero uti hoc quidem summorum imperantium fastigio non repugnat, ad aliorum consilia audienda obsirictum esse; ita illud cum summo impcrio stare non potest, si consiliarii im perantem invitum suo jure cogere queant, ut ipsorum consilium utique sequatur. Adeoque nihil aliud consiliariis relictum, quam rationes ingerere, hortari, obtestari, ad ultimum denique m unere suo abire potius, quam in perniciosa reipublicae consilia consentire.

Sicuti

proceres regni Chinae fecisse m em orantur M artinio hist. Sinic. l.VI. p.m.206. Ex quo et illud adparet, consiliarium, si bona fide sententiam suam exposuit, de eventu non teneri; et consequenter in summos principes omnium publicorum negotiorum, in quantum directionis hum anae capacia sunt, imputationem ultimo demum redundare. #10. Quia porro homines magnam

partem

actionum

suarum

impendunt circa conservationem sui, quam e t ratio comrnendat, et affectus ipsis tantum non inseparabilis, per quam sibi profícua adquirere, noxia repellere student: inde sequitur, quod cuique in naturali libertate constituto sui cura post D EU M O.M. prim o ad seipsum redeat, adeoque cuilibet maxime sit vigilandum circa /(516) dispicienda et adplicanda media, quae ad sui conservationem facere judicantur.

Ne autem fortasse quis arbitretur,

infinitam licentiam quidvis agendi hoc modo stabiliri ex eo obtentu, quod, cum cuique summum velut arbitrium circa salutem suam conservandam tribuatur, ad quem finem m edia investigai e et eligere itidem ipsius sit judicii, ad hoc ut quidvis agendi sit ücentia, sufficiat judicasse, hoc nostrae saluti expedire: probe observandum est, conservationem sui non ita debere pro adaequata omnium actionum regula venditari, ut per eandem quis plane absolutus intelligatur abs quavis obligatione, quam erga caeteros homines exercendam lex naturalis ipsi adjunxit^. Quam ob causam etiam illis, qui in statu naturali degunt, utique illicitum habetur, talia media sub obtentu conservations propriae adhibere, quibus aliorum jus violatur. Q uaecunque enim facultas agendi homini tribuatur, ca sem per intelligenda est cum tali temperam ento, quod sana ratio illis suggerit, qui m em inem nt, alios quoque homines existere, pari cum ipsis agendi facultate et jure praeditos, ad quos ipsos cuivis sem per respectus habendus. U nde si unicus duntaxat homo in orbe terrarum existeret, de eo revera dici posset: naturam dedisse ipsi jus in omnia. Cum enim neque in brutis animantibus, neque in vegetabilibus aut

95 aliis rebus inanimatis existât aliquod jus, quod facultati hominis opponi queat; adparet isto, quem supponimus, casu nullam fore creaturam, quae hom inem ju re im pedire posset quaevis agere, et quibusvis uti, quae ad /(517) sui conservationem aut commoditatem ullo modo facere judicaret.

Ast

postquam p!ures homines orbis capit, non utique ulli homini jus erit talia sui conservandi m edia adhibere, quae cum aliorum injuria ac pernicie sunt conjuncta, nullamque rationem aliorum hominum habeant.

Adeoque

absurde in statu naturali fingitur aliquod jus in omnia, etiam adversus ipsos homines exercendum. Q uia enim in illo statu cuique jus competit omnibus modis repellendi ab sese, quae ad ipsius perniciem ab aliis eidem intentantur; vanum est dixisse; cuilibet homini licere in alterum agere, quae sibi videantur. Nam inane et nullum censendum est jus agendi, cui alter suo ju re resistere etiam per violentiam potest. Patet quoque ex hisce, absurde dici; in statu naturali non esse locum injustitiae. Cum enim injustitia com m ittatur per actum, quo aliorum jus violatur, et vero cuivis homini jus sit per ipsam naturam datum, et non ex pacto demum quaerendum , conservandi suam vitain, m em bra ac libertatem contra invasionem aliorum, nulla légitima causa subnixam: manifestum sane est injustitiam exerceri, intentato alterius vitae, m embris ac libertati, malo, cui ipse probabilem causam non praebuerat. Sed et ex iisdem patet, quatenus admittendum sit, quod aliqui jactant:

in statu naturali mensuram juris esse utilitatem, seu in eo statu

cuique jus esse agendi, quae sibi expedire judicat.

Quanquam enim ea

locutio commodam possit adm ittere interpretationem , separando utilitatem m om entancam et spuriam ab ea, quae ad diutum itatem e t in universum /(5 1 8 ) valet: tam en ab ista locutione est abstinendum non solum, quia usu vulgi utilitas fere opponitur ei, quod decet; sed etiam quia vocabulum utilitatis propriae excludere videtur respectum ad alios homines, qui tam en a singulis hominibus in directione actionum suarum etiam in statu naturali nunquam plane sequestrari potest aut debet. #11. Ex supra dictis etiam fluit; in statu naturali cuiquc sui defensioncm propriis praecipue viribus peragi, aut corum, quos pactis ad auxilium sibi ferendum adstringere possit. Cum enim qui in eo statu invicem vivunt, neque alterius in se imperium agnoscant, neque alterum suo sub im perio com plectantur; patet, neque

alios ad

ipsorum

defensionem

96 peculiariter obstringi, neque ipsos ad sui defensionem pro im perio eos posse adigere. U nde nihil aliud superest, quam ut, cui seipsum servare cordi est, proprias vires expediat repellendis quae sibi intentantur malis; aut qua istas sufficere desperat, alios ad opem sibi ferendam foederibus conciliet. Enimvero quia in statu naturali existentes praesupponuntur communi duntaxat cognatione junctiW , per quam regulariter cuilibet, ut sibi sit ipse proximus, perm ittitur; hinc inter istos nemo praesum itur de suo plus dare, quam quo ipse commode carere potest, aut alterius rationibus sese magis adplicare, quam propria salus admittit. Adeoque quia om nia pacta de auxilio alteri ferendo in naturali statu hanc tacitam habent limitationem, quatenus alterius salus et utilitas citra destructionem nostrae salutis et utilitatis a /(519) nobis fulciri promoverique potest:

inde revera lubrico valde heic

fundamento ejus salus nititur, qui unice in fide aliorum et pactis adquiescit. Nam si, qui auxilium mihi promiserat, post deprehendat, salutem suam periclitari, si a me suas rationes non separaverit, suo sese jure a pacto discedere arbitrabitur. Sin ex levitate animi, aut amplioris spe lucri fidem exuerit, nihil relictum, quam ut propriis viribus infidum socium ad pacta servanda compeliam, adeoque pro uno hoste duos accipiam. U nde revera illud in naturali statu certissimum auxilium, quod quis sibi praestare ipse potest; et tanti quisque est, quantum sine aliorum auxilio ipse valet. #12. Q uia etiam, in statu naturali qui existit, nullius hominis im perio voluntatem suam submisit; inde si quis eo in statu injuriam ab altero acceperit, ab solo ipsius judicio, ad legem tarnen naturalem attem perato, dependet, exequi an dissimulare et digerere eam velit, quanti earn taxare, aut quam ejusdem reparationem, et in futurum cautionem exigere placeat. Sic et si quid eo in statu ab altero alicui debeatur, non necessum est, ut jus velut fundatum habere hic censeatur, sententiam alicujus judicis antecessisse; sed qui causae suae m om enta ad propriae rationis lancem rite exegerit, eandem que secum sanae rationi liquido adprobare potuerit, satis fundatus in sua intentione esse judicabitur. Ac ubi ab altero, quod debetur, ukro non praestatur, quisque sibi exsecutionem eo, qui commodissimus ipsi videtur, modo potest facere. /(520) Ne tarnen heic quis judicio p er vehem entiam affectuum, aut proprium am orem corrupto in legem naturalem impingat; rationis utique est, ut ubi ad arm a jam fuerit perventum , aut mox ad ea sit

97 decurrendum , non repudiemur, si qui alii extra studia partium positi iniervenire velint, et circa honestam ac decentem litis compositionem operam suam offerant. Sed et ubi in ipsam causam ullum probabile dubium cadat, aut alter testetur, se paratum esse ad faciendum omne id, quod justitiae congruat, modo super causa prius liquido constiterit; recusare quis non poterit, quin arbitrorum cognitioni causam subjiciat, eo quod isti incorrupte pronunciaverint sententias.

H ac enim via causae firmitas

clarissime perspicitur, simulque prohibetur, ne per impotentiam animi aut pleonexian in bella injusta et non necessaria ruatur. # 13. A ddendum quoque aliquid de ea affectione naturalis status, qua in eo viventium quilibet alteri natura aequalis censetur. D e qua aequalitate ut recte intelligatur, sciendum est, illam non capiendam esse de aequali gradu dotium animi, quibus unum hominem ab altero plurimum differre cemimus; neque etiam praecise de aequalitate virium, prout ilia capi videtur ab H obbesio de Cive c.l. #3. eo argumento, quod utique adultus homo alteri cuicunque m ortem possit inferre, maximum malorum, quo sese invicem hom ines m actare valent.

Etsi et hujus aequalitatis consideratio non sit

inutilis eum ad finem, ut ne quis robore corporis stolide ferociat, aliisque ideo insultare praesum at. /(521 ) Nam tantum non est discrimen virium inter diversos

homines

adultos,

et

integritate

membrorum

ac valetudinis

gaudentes, ut qui uni prae altero adest major gradus virium, supra omnem laesionis aleam eundem constituât.

Praesertim cum quod viribus deest,

solertia et dexteritas supplere queat; et quem aperto M arte aggredi quis non audet, insidias eidem struere possit; denique qui singulos non timet, a multis sibi cavere debeat.

Enimvero aequalitas, quam hoc loco potissimum

intendimus, in eo consistit, quod non solum ea obligatio, quae homines ad observandam erga se invicem legem naturalem stringit, aequaliter sese habeat, ita ut nem o ab eadem vel plane sit exemtus, vel laxius quam alter teneatur; sed et quod quilibet in naturali statu positus par jus ac parem potestatem in se habeat ad se conservandum, suasque actiones ad proprium arbitrium , praelucente sana ratione, dirigendas.

Ex quo consequitur,

quantacunque homo quis bona prae altero homine forte possideat, aeque tam en officia legis naturalis adversus alios eidem esse exercenda, ac ipse ab illis exspectat; nec per ea cuiquam plus licentiae dan* aliis insultandi:

98 adeoque quod quis sibi non vult fieri, nec a lte n esse faciendum. Sicuti nec vice versa si parcior in aliquem natura videatur fuisse, non ideo per se condemnatur statim est, ut circa fruitionem juris communis sit deterioris conditions, aut ut sua salus minus ipsi cordi esse debeat, quam aliis. Sed quae unus ab altero expectat, eadem caeteris paribus ab eodem alter quoque expectare potest; et quod /(522) juris quis in alium statuit, eo e t ipsum uti convenit.

Nec minus ex hoc adparet, neminem sibi peculiare jus fingere

debere adversus alios valiturum, quod non aliis vicissim pari in casu exercendum competat; ac neminem indignari debere, si alius citra cujusquam injuriam suo agit arbítrio, suique conservandi om nia m edia licita adhibeat; aut sibi ejusmodi eminentiam arrogare, ui nullo antegresso idoneo facto alios sibi obnoxios postulare velit. Sic v.g. valde improbum foret, si quis religioni sibi non duceret aliis sua eripere, taliterque erepta juste sibi adquisita duceret; et tam en praetenderet, semel sibi utcunque adquisita nullo m odo alienari posse. Hoc enim pacto tale jus in alios statuit, quo alios adversus ipsum uti recusat.

Sic e t intolerandae dam nandi sunt insolentiae, si qui

dogma illud Graecanicum de servis natura ita explicarunt; quasi caeteris jus esset per modum venationis istos subigere, aut eo solo nom ine, quod barbarorum abstrahere.

ignominioso

vocabulo

notarentur,

invitos

in

servitium

Contra, si verborum ferociam removeas, mascule naturalem

aequalitatem aestim abat Ariovistus, dum Caesari reponit:

"si quid ipsi a

Caesare opus esset, sese ad eum venturum fuisse: si quid ille se velit, ilium ad se venire oportere.

Si ipse populo R om ano non praescriberet,

quemadmodum suo jure uteretur, non oportere se a populo R om ano in suo jure impediri,'' apud Caesarem de B.G. 1.1. #14. Probe tamen heic observandum, etsi jus, quod naturalem statum comitatur, aequaliter /(523) videatur com petere quibusvis, qui in eo statu degere dicuntur: id tam en longe dispari sese velut facie exserere in singulis hominibus, aut segregibus patribusfamilias, et integris civitatibus, prout quisque a viribus naturalibus est instructus. Q uae enim libertas naturalis in civitatibus integris splendidissimum ac nobilissimum jus habetur: ea ipsa si in singulis, e t qui sibi solis relicti sunt hominibus concipiatur, usque adeo adpetenda non est, ut potius quantocyus cum subjectione civili sit perm utanda, generis humani multiplicatione posita. Scilicet quia in plurimis

99 m ortalium

proclivitas

deprehenditur

alios opprimendi,

rebusque

suis

exspoliandi; indc parura alicui prodest sui esse arbitrii, ni talibus sit succinctus viribus, ut se contra aliorum violentam invasionem tueri queat. Inde et rationis est, ut qui virium suarum imbecillitatem sentit, libertatem et aequalitatem suam adversus validiores intempestive ne jactitet, nec earn efflictim nimis depereat; sed potiorcm salutis conservationem habeat, et quatenus sibi soli relictus aliis praedae futurus erat, a subjectione potentioris praesidium sibi, quam mollissimis potest conditionibus, conciliet. #15. Superest ut videamus, quam habitudinem status naturalis, in respectu ad alios homines consideratus, obtineat; scu quod eodem redit, an qui in statu naturali vivunt, se invicem amicos, an vero hostes habere debeant.

Ubi quid pronunciandum sit, mea sententia optime inveniet, qui

penitius expcndcrit, turn quae hominum sit eo in /(524) statu cunjunctio, turn quae m utuae sint ipsorum inclinationes. Conjunctio ilia absolvitur partim naturae similitudine, partim Creatoris O.M. per legem naturalem dictato. Sim ilitudinem naturae in universo genere humano etiam illi agnoscunt, qui ex uno pari conjugum quidquid est mortalium ortum traxisse ignorant. Etsi enim mira varietas et in externa corporum habitudine, ac in animis deprehendatur; ea tam en tanta non est, quo minus dici qucat, unum aeque esse hom inem quam alterum . Earn autem naturae similitudinem in quovis anim antium genere ad conjunctionem non parum conferre, perque eandem ista inter se conciliari tralatitium est. Ipsa autem lex naturalis utique dictitat, nefas esse cuivis homini, etiam qui in naturali statu nobiscum vivit, nocere, aut per ludibrium insultare:

sed contra officia humanitatis crga quosvis

exercere et pacta conventa, cum quibuslibet inita servare praecipit. Quam legem si quis dolo malo violaverit, etiam sola ratio suggerit, id ipsum impune non laturum .

Accedit, quod homini perpetua solitudine nihil tristius;

conversatione autem nihil^1^ sit jucundius. Sic ut monstro similis sit futurus, si quis om nes in universum homines aversetur. Igitur id s a l t e m ^ necessum est, ut quibusdam hominibus sit conciliatus homo, e t amicum sese adversus eosdem gerat, nem pe illos, quos sua conversatione complecti cupit. Denique cum m anifestum sit, plurim a commoda, nec pauciora mala ab aliis hominibus in hom inem redundare /(525) posse, prout benevolo aut infenso in ipsum anim o fuerint; necessum est ei, qui salutem suam am at, turn ne alios per

100 injurias in se irritet, tum ut saltem adversus illos amicum se ferat, quorum ope ad necessitates aut incommoditates(n>suas carere non potest. #16. Ex adverso

constat, homini

amorern

proprium

suam que

utilitatem et gloriam fere inter prim a haberi. Eoque istius, ex quo nihil aut parum in nos proficisci videtur posse, exigua fere habetur ratio. Nam quae nuda, eaque undiquaque sterili benevolentia continentur amicitiae, inter mortales oppido quam rarae sunt. Enimvero per istum am orem sui non rite tem peratum , non tantum benevolentia adversus alios hom ines valde retunditur; sed et saepe talis in homine paritur inclinatio, ut aliis ultro noxam inferre cupiat. Cui enim ignotum est, quam saepe propriae cura utilitatis, ad rectam rationem non probe exacta, homines subigat, non m odo aliorum hominum commoda susque deque habere, sed et eadem directe impugnare, et ex aliorum incommodis suum emolumentum quaerere, lege natural! nequidquam diversum ingerente?^0) Cum autem aliis sua utilitas aeque cordi sit, non possum non frequentissime hac ex causa homines inter se committi. Sic quid vulgatius est in genere humano, quam ut quis ad proprias opes cumulandas alterum fortunis evertere aggrediatur:

ut ad potentiam et

gloriam sibi parandam multa hominum millia perdere egregium facinus ducat: ut denique per ingenii malignitatem aliis insultare pro delectam ento habeat, et ex aliorum dolore /(526) voluptatem sibi quaerat? Q uae pravitas id quoque mali parit, quod per eandem etiam modestioribus ingeniis, et qui alias libenter suis rebus contenti aliena non adpeterent, et quieti suae incumbentes aliis nihil negotii facesserent, tantum non necessitas adferatur pacem abrumpendi, et quibuscunque mediis contra istam sese muniendi. Semel autem commisso bello non isti solum, quos inter rixa prim um conflata fuit, ad mutuum exitium connituntur: sed et vicini non parum inquietantur, ac saepe praeter votum bello involvuntur. Sic ut unius turbulentia multos etiam modestos perpetuis litibus exercitos tenere possit.

Praeterea et in

plerisque mortalium ea est ingenii pervicacia, ut non solum quam ipsi undecunque hauserunt opinionem pro vera habeant, et ab omnibus pro tali agnosci cupiant; sed etiam diversa sentientes eo solo nom ine oderint, et gravissimis malis m actare laborent, quod ab ipsis dissentiant. D enique et hoc frequenter contingit; ut plurium utilitates velut collidi videantur, et ad eandem rem plures animum adjiciant, quam neque com m um ter possidere

101 velint aut possint, nec unus eandem alten lubens concederc dignetur. Quae pcstilentissimum E ndos pomum repraesentare suevit. ïnde est, quod inter eos, qui in naturali statu invicem vivunt, praesertim si p er opportunitatem situs nocendi

fit^

inviccm facultas, tantum

non perpetuae vigeant

suspiciones, ac m utua diffidentia. In multis quoquc deprehendatur cupiditas aliorum vires subruendi, et increm enta praepediendi, ex aliorum ruina vires /(527) suas augcndi, data denique occasione alios praeveniendi opprim endi.

et

#17. H aec om nia igitur qui curatius expenderit, sane fatebitur, in unum quidem extremorum impingere, qui nimis crude ingerunt:

nullum

homine esse anim al mansuetius; eoque vel solam reverentiam legis naturalis, quae nefas esse dictiiat hominem homini nocere, vel eiiam pacta, fidemque datam incolum itatcm et securitatcm hominum satis munire.

Cum utique

constet, longe maximam partem malorum et molestiarum, quae hominem in isthac m ortalitate prem unt, ab aliis hominibus provenire. Ex adverso autem non paulo

nocentius impingunt, qui statum

naturalem

bellum esse

pronunciant, et quidem omnium in omnes, seu quorumlibet in quoslibet, qui in eo statu invicem vivunt. Sane cnim bellum involvit professum animum alteri quocunque modo nocendi, simulque idoneum adparatum hostilitati exserendae. A tqui multis nunquam fuit aut est animus aliis nocendi; puta, qui longissimis locorum intervallis disjunguntur, aut qui per modestiam, vel quia rebus suis id conducere non arbitrantur, aliorum rebus non imminent. Sunt etiam, qui pacatum in nos animum verbis fideque data c o n testa n ts, et adparatum , quo nobis nocere poterant, dissolvunt, ac bona fide ad quietem sesc componunt. Tales quo colore inter hostes nostros numerabimus? Imo cum nullus homo aliorum hominum auxilio carere queat, quod nequidquam speraverit, si erga istos hostem se exhibuerit; ipsa propriae /(528) conservationis ratio prohibet, ne quis omnes homines pro hostibus traclare possit aut velit.

E t quanquam insita mortalibus malitia, quae sese quam

maxime in noxam aliorum effundere gaudet, nunquam penitus heic exuatur et corrigatur; tam cn quia ilia non quavis occasione sese vult expromere, saepe etiam volentem facultas destituit; non adparet, quare propter earn solam, nondum in aliquos hostilitatis actus eram pentem , quis statim pro hoste haberi possit. A deoque cum causae, quae homines invicem collidere

102 idoneae sunt, vel universales non sint, vel non perpetuo in actus hostiles erum pere soleant:

sane eaedem non sufficere judicandae sunt, lit ita

simpliciter status naturalis pro statu hostili declarari queat. Ex quibus et hoc patet, falso a non nemine tradi; injustitiae in statu naturali nullum esse locum, ubi nulla pacta intervenerunt. Equidem circa hostes, in quos nobis justa bellandi causa est, obtinet illud Poetae: "Dolus, an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?" et, "Arma tenenti Omnia dat, qui justa negat." Sed cum ostensum s

sit, nequaquam hominem eo solo, quod in statu naturali vivtt, alteri cuicunque hostem esse; et ex adverso constet, hominibus ilia, quae ab aliis violari nefas sit, non ex solis pactis esse quaesita, sed non pauca ab ipsa natura esse data: quis negabit, injustitiae locum esse, si in eo, quicum in naturali statu vivitur, id violetur, quod soli naturae in acceptis refertur? Sic nec illi sunt ferendi, qui ita crude jactant; qui nobis nocere potest, eundem et velle nocere; adeoque si occasio offeratur isti nocendi, earn nequidquam /(529) esse praeterm ittendam ; quod certum sit, alteram , si ipsi detur occasio, non omissurum, quin nos perdat.

Enimvero hactenus tantum, et sub hac

correctione ista sententia adm ittenda est; qui nocere potest, ille e t nocere velle potest, seu eundem etiam facile libido nocendi subire potest. Igitur hoc sanaete) rationis est, ut istum accurate incipiamus observare, et m ature innoxia munimenta nobis circumponamus, ac nostras quoque vires augere, aut amicos nobis adjungere studeamus.

Turn etiam si videamus eundem

injustis mediis et per oppressionem aliorum potentiam suam auctum ire, ad ipsum in ordinem rcdigendum inita cum oppressis societate incumbamus. Ast ut incertus et in futurum prominens metus causam mihi det certum praesensque malum alteri intentandi, id vero nulla ratio adm iserit; quippe cum hoc modo conjunctio ilia naturalis inter homines plane tolleretur, ac vita humana ad gladiatoriam conditionem redigeretur, ubi aut occumbendum aut occidendum; qua ad coaservationem hominis nihil ineptius. Gellius lib.VII. c.3. "Neque hum anae vitae negotia et actiones et officia vel occupandi vel differendi, vel etiam ulciscendi vel cavendi similia sunt pugnae gladiatoriae. Nam gladiatori composito ad pugnandum, pugnae haec proposita sors est, aut occidere, si occupaverit, aut occumbere, si cessaverit. H om inum autem vita non tam iniquis neque tam indomitis necessitatibus circumscripta est, ut idcirco prior injuriam facere debeas, quam nisi feceris, pati possis."

103 #18. Q uae cum ita sint, manifestum est, mediam /(530) quandam viam heic esse tenendam . Nam uti status naturalis propter conjunctionem hominum, turn ex similitudine naturae, turn ex m utua indigentia, turn ex dictato legis naturalis pacem ingerentis resultantem , pro bello proprie dicto haberi nequit: ita idem ob malitiam hominum, cupidinumque e t affectuum rectae rationi obluctantium vehementiam indolem pacis satis lubricae et infidae habebit. Sic ut ideo quem libet nobis amicum praesum ere debeamus, anim um que gerere prom tum ad officia pacis et humanitatis adversus quem libet exercenda, qui ista adm ittere velit: et nihilominus salutis nostrae solicitam sem per curam agere, eam que ita munire, quasi aliorum amicitiae parum sit confidendum; nec unquam per fiduciam alienae probitatis aut innocentiae in supinam nos negligentiam relaxemus. #19. Ex hactenus traditis facile adparet, accuratam status naturalis notitiam m ulta suggerere civitatum rectoribus posse, quae et circa extraneos, et in ipsa civitate observatu quam maxime necessaria sunt.

Ac primo

quidem , quia non omnium civitatum vires ad aequilibrium sint redactae, aut unam a pluribus simul invadi contingere potest; et vero communis hominum cognatio debilius vinculum est, quam ut propter illud solum operosa aliorum auxilia sibi quis spondere possit: igitur ad conservationem civitatum facit, m ature sibi amicos et socios quaerere; postquam non facile ad auxilium ferendum accurrit, quicum nihil unquam nobis fuit commercii, et cujus nullam /(531) antea rationem videmur nabuisse, nisi praesenti periculo adm oniti; praesertim cum ejusmodi auxilium multo fere adparatu opus habeat. U t autem quis in altero fiduciae quid locare queat, etsi non parum facial religio fidei, sanctum mortalibus nomen; tamen quia regulariter homini conservatio sui ante respectum aliorum habetur: inde isti potissimum quaerendi sunt socii, quos communis nobiscum utilitas jungit, et quorum interest nos salvos esse. Equidem ut quis in aliorum sese accingat auxilium, fas humanitatis, misericórdia, decus, gloria speciose ingeruntur. Enimvero sola haec vocabula saepe non nisi sterilem eliciunt affectum, aut languidius procurant auxilium, quam quod dispcllendis nostris necessitatibus sufficit. Ast ubi praesens ex societate alterius emolumentum allubescit, aut quando ad nos trajecturum est incendium, ubi proximi domus in cineres consedit; tunc dem um bona fide et enixe pro aliis depugnatur. Quin et cum rectoribus

104 civitatum hacc prima incumbat obligatio, civitatis suae conservationem quaerere, sane per isiam prohibentur statum suum pro altero periculo exponere, nisi quatenus concurrens utilitas admiserit.

Sic ut quibusvis

foederibus haec tacita inesse limitatio intelligatur; quatenus per ista salus nostrae civitatis non cst periclitatura. Ac nihil frequentius historias evolventi occurrit, quam commutatis temporibus atque utilitatibus foedera ultro expirasse. U nde et hoc patet, quam necessarium sit rectoribus civitatum, et qui Istis consilia subministrant, non suae solum sed et /(532) aliarum rerumpublicarum conditionem, e t in quantum communi nobiscum utilitate jungantur, nosse, ut ad quorum amicitiam adplicare nos debeamus, liquido judicare liceat.

In quo ipso non affectus consulendi, sed salus civitatis

cynosurae loco respicienda est. #20. Deinde cum status naturalis habeat indolem pacis sat lubricae et parum fidae, rectorum civitatis est solicite circumspicere, e t obscrvare consilia et actiones eorum, ex quibus ullo modo suae civitati dam ni quid inferri possit; ne fortasse ipsis dormitantibus aliquid in eosdem cudatur, quod postea elusisse serum sit, et ut ipsi in tem pore opponere queant, quae ad securitatem propriam faciunt.

Prorsus uti Poeta Argum repraesentat:

"Centum luminibus cinctum Argus habebat. Inde suis vicibus capiebant bina quietem; C aetera servabant, atque in statione m anebant.

Constiterat

quocunque loco spectabat ad Io: A nte oculos Io quamvis aversus habebat." Cui fini recentioribus temporibus instituti sunt perpetui seu residentes legati, queis praeter negotia, quae subinde inter duas civitates intervenire solent, et ad quae expedienda peculiares legatos m ittere onerosum foret, id quoque potissimum incumbit, observare quae apud alios agitantur, quae ullo respectu nostram civitatem possunt tangere.

A tque hacc profcssa velut

curiositas aliorum destinata expiscandi nihil jam injuriae aut offensae judicatur

habere,

postquam

cultiores

populi

mutuo

istam

consensu

recepem nt, eam que adeo veniam dant petuntque vicissim. /(5 3 3 ) E t quatenus ea inter media nostrae conservations adhibetur, eo ipso quoque naturaliter licita habebitur.

Neque vero alicui injuria fit, si quae ipse in

alterius fraudem machinatur, ab hoc solerter eludantur. Quod si autcm ea occasione quid eliminetur, quod in damnum civitatis rcdundat, garrulitas aut proditio ministrorum vindicanda fuerit, per quos ista arcana em anarunt.

105 #21. Ex indole quoque status naturalis id consequitur, ut, c u i^ conservatio sui curae est, quantum in se, opera danda sit, ne alius quispiam enorm ia nimis e t supérflua virium

increm enta capiat, e t quae ipsi

opprim endo sufficere possint; utque adeo vicinorum® vires in aequilibrio teneantur.

Id quod tamen hautquidquam eo extendimus, ut adprobare

velimus ea bella, quae nullam aliam habent causam justificam, quam ut gliscentes vicini vires coerceantur; praesertim si hie eas legitimis mediis quaesiverit, puta haereditate, dote, ultronea submissione aliorum, industria civium, aut alia quadam fati benignitate; ac ipso vitae suae tenore testetur, cupidines suas circa propria duntaxat coaservanda occupari, ad aliena rapienda non extendi. Verum istam aliorum vires nimis exuberantes librandi licentiam p e r talia duntaxat media exerceri volumus, quae cum aliorum injuria non sint conjuncta.

Puta, ne pecuniam nostram tem ere in alterum

transferam us, eoque dum nos exhaurimus, alterum locupletemus.

v.g. Sit

aliqua civitas, quae mercium hinc inde transportationem sibi soli vindicare voluerit, aut quae /(534) suas merces aliis obtrudendo eorum opes ad se derivare aggrediatur.

Ile ic sane recte faciunt caeterae civitates, si ipsae

commercia sua per se exercere instituant, aut eas importari merces prohibeant, quibus per stultitiam aut luxuriam civium pecunia ipsorum ad alios devolvitur. Sic si praepotentem civitatem vel extemus hostis invadat, vel intestinae agitent turbae, non injuriam faciunt aliae civitates, quarum interest ejus potentiam imminui, si ipsae interea eandem cum hostibus colluctantem destituant, nec quo minus ilia mala extrahantur prohibeant, quousque ista defatigata nimis vires decoxerit.

Sic quia utique fas est

auxilium illi ferre, qui ab altero injuste invaditur, aut cui jus suum denegatur: igitur si praepotens civitas alios injustis bellis lacessat, aut jus iisdem reddere detrectet, prudenter caeteri faciunt, si ubi implorantur, hac occasione usi cum illo, qui injuriam patitur, sese conjungant, societatisque viribus eundem in ordinem redigere laborent. #22. Sed e t consideratio naturalis status non pauca suggerere potest, quae salutariter in ipsa civitate observantur.

Ac illud quidem manifeste

exinde colligitur, civitati operam esse dandam, ut post D EU M O.M. ei in seipsa praecipua sit fiducia reposita; utque adeo propriis praecipue viribus nitatur. Cum enim propter insitum quibusvis am orem propria salus cuique

106 maxime sit cordi, quam plerique aliorum incolumitati longe praeferunt; patet valde infelicem esse, et vix aliud quam prccarium ducere spiritum rempublicam, quae /(535) summam spem in alieno auxilio collocare sem per cogitur, aut quae aliorum invasiones pecunia data donisque redimit. Inde rectoribus civitatum quam maxime incumbit eniti, u t ipsarum vires propriae sint quam validissimae.

Id quod obtinetur, si ea quae ad rem m ilitarem

faciunt quam optime sese habeant; si viri, arma, equi, naves sem per sint in promtu, finesque regionis, ac praecipua loca probe sint munita.

Neque

eadem cura relaxanda aut negligenda, licet per longum temporis spatium pax civitati arriserit; cum summo in periculo versentur civitates, quas diutum a pace languentes, et in otium resolutas repentinus hostis invadit; cui oppositae tum ultuariae et inexercitatae copiae nil nisi stragem augent. Sed et divitiae civitatis per licita media quantum fieri potest, augendae aut conservandae, ac pacis cumprimis tempore, ut aerarium juxta et privatae civium facultates gliscant providendum, quo ingruente bello sumtibus sufficere queant. Neque enim bellum sem per seipsum potest alere; et lepide Flamininus quondam Philopoemenem, cui a pecunia destituto miles in promtu erat, dixit, pectus quidem et brachia habere, sed ventre defici. #23. Praeterea statum naturalem singulorum hom inum ejusque miseriam considerasse, plurimum facit ad hoc, ut cives statum civilem ament, e t ad eum conservandum omni studio incumbant; simulque libenter tolerent ilia onera, quae tuendis civitatibus sunt necessaria. H aec enim onera minima pars sunt eorum malorum, quae vitam /(536) dissolutam com itatura erant; quibus immersus longe miseriore futurus erat conditione, quam qui in civitate durissimum videtur vitae genus agere. Ex adverso qui de status istius naturalis miseria nihil unquam cogitavit, is aegro animo fert onera, quae per imperantes civibus imponuntur, tanquam supervacua, aut ad molestiam plebi faciendam, aut ambitioni tantum e t luxuriae im perantium alendae inventa. Cum tam en qui rite rcm expenderit, non magis super istis querelam moveri par esse agnoscat, quam super pretio vestium aut calceorum, quibus corpus contra injurias aeris, offensasque munitur. Imo qui statum huncce naturalem probe cogitaverit, aequiore animo feret incommoda, quae aliquando ab ipsis imperantibus praeter rationem experitur. Quippe cum in statu civili ista inter rariora habeantur, et quae intcrventu meliorum pensantur: in naturali autem

107 siatu paria istis aut graviora mala tantum non quotidiana erant, ac sine fine et m odo expectanda. A tque ista incommoda cordatus civis haudquidquam indoli status civilis per se adscribet, eoque nomine in istum iniquiore erit animo; sed communem potius rerum hum anam m imperfectionem agnoscet. Cum enim civitates praecipue inventae sint adversus mala, quae homini ab homine im m inent, cui fini utique alii homines fuerunt adhibendi; ita accurate provideri non potuit, quin interdum aliquid malorum prom anaret ex illis ipsis hominibus, quibus ad averruncanda mala humana nos subjecimus. E t haec qui probe /(537) perpenderit, facile si quae sunt incommoda status tolerat, nec ad res novandas est proclivis; praesertim cum post mutationem fere magis alii homines, quam alii mores succédant; et pleracque in republica m utationes per bella civilia fiant; quae inter gravissima civitatum mala m erito habentur. #24, D enique et hoc ex supra dictis colligitur, rectoribus civitatum procurandum esse, ut ex ipso velut ambitu civitatum proscribantur ea, quae status naturalis, quantum is civili opponitur, sunt propria; utque adeo cives neque inter se, neque in respectu ad imperantes ita sese habeant, prout illi, qui in naturali statu invicem vivunt.

Tali enim modo vinculi civilis

convulsionem oriri necessum est. Inde civibus non est perm ittendum jus in armis habere, aut injurias sibi illatas bello privato exsequi, jusque sibi ipsis velut dicere.

Nam hac ratione vitae civili inquietudo et lubrica securitas

status naturalis conciliatur. Q ua super re solicite quoque praecipit Jacobus Rex Doni regii 1.2. p.m.79. Et concedendum non est, unius civis potentiam in tantum excrescere, ut ea contra opes totius civitatis aliquid valere queat. Hue enim qui excessit, non aliter considerari potest, quam talis, cui libertas naturalis com petit, quique adeo civitati non necessario, sed tantum precario paret. Cum que tam amabilis res habeatur hominibus summo imperio potiri, facillime hunc, ut eidem manus injiciat, libido subire potest. A deoque nihil propius est, quam ut praepotens ejusmodi civis in hostem praesentis status evadat eo /(538) periculosiorem, quod jam intra ipsa velut m oenia sit receptus.

Eandem ob rationem cavendum est, ne in civitate factiones

oriantur, aut si ortae sint, quantocyus dissolvantur.

Illae enim ubi vires

sumserint, nova velut civitas in media civitate extruitur. Cum autem factio nunquam se satis tutam arbitretur, quamdiu ilia pars civitatis, cui jure summa

108

rerum competit, est incolumls:

manifestum est, factionem omni occasioni

immlnere, ut oppressa altera parte summam civitatis ad se ira h a t A tque ista in pracscns pro ratione instituti nostri sufficiant.

"O N T H E N A TU RA L STA TE O F M EN" (Translated by M ichael Seidler) #1. Those who busily investigate the make-up of natural bodies do not consider it sufficient to inspect only the external appearances that immediately m eet the eye at a first glance; rather, they also make extraordinary efforts to probe those bodies more deeply and to analyze them into their com ponent parts. They are determ ined, indeed» to reduce the nature of bodies ultimately to some prime m atter conceived in abstraction from all particular form s,/(498) and think it impossible to proceed beyond such a point. The same path has been taken by those concerned to examine carefully the character of the most prom inent moral body, namely the state. D eem ing it insufficient to discover only the state’s external administration, its various officials, and the names and classes of its people, they also study the internal organization resulting from the authority and right of its rulers and the obligation of its citizens, and make precise distinctions among that immense body’s com ponent parts. In fact, they think it notably conducivc to their discipline’s perfection to transcend all societies, as it were, and to conceive m en’s situation and state as it can be understood outside of society and without all hum an arts and customs. For from this alone can one clearly discern the necessity o f and reason for the formation of civil societies, what authority and obligation flow from their nature, and finally what advantage and special bearing among men arise from them.

110 Therefore, thai doctrine rightly claims for itself the chief place in the architectonic of politics, and political tracts that do not even touch upon it must be considered gravely defective. And this very consideration induces us now to subject the topic of men’s natural state to a thorough reexamination, so that it will shine brightly, as it were, becoming m ore appreciated by the simple-minded at the same time that it deprives the ignorant and malevolent of every opportunity for quibb)ing./(499) # 2 . We therefore propose to study the state of m en outside of civil society--a state from which all inventions and human customs seemly and useful for this life have been removed.

It seems appropriate to call it a

"natural state," not only because many people so employ the term , but also because it is consistent with ordinary speech to distinguish natural things from those owing their existence to hum an intervention. If other persons or disciplines interpret the term s ‘natural’ or ‘natural state’ differently, they may do so with our leave, provided they do not confuse the meaning they prefer with the one we have just assigned. Clearly, too, by ’’natural state” we do not m ean here a perfect condition of man:

neither in the sense of a state ultimately intended by

nature wherein it surely wishes man to remain, nor one that functions as a norm to which civil ‘states’ must be conformed so far as the corruption of humankind allows. For the civil state is surely much more perfect than our natural stale, above all when the latter is regarded in single individuals, and it was not contrary to nature for men to en ter it once the latter had, as it were, been proscribed. And so we also have nothing in common with "the natural and legal state of civil society” recently invented by the distinguished Jacob Thom asius of Leipzig.1 According to him, civil society’s natural state is the perfect society that would have existed if humankind had rem ained in the primeval /(500) integrity into which God had placed it. Its legal state, on the other hand, refers to a society that is possible now, amid the great corruption of mortal beings on account of which not everything in civil institutions can be made ‘just so,’ but many imperfections and deficiencies m ust be tolerated. Indeed, if anyone were to examine that distinction m ore closely he would discover what it leaves genuinely to be desired. For one, I do not see

I ll how consistently the natural stale (which he considers most perfect in the sense of having the most perfect laws, to be sure, as well as perfect obedience thereto) is contrasted with the legal state. Then, the Aristotelian distinction between natural and legal slavery2 seems clumsily applied to the state of society. For beside the fact that natural slavery remains insufficiently clear in Aristotle (at least it does not prove a perfect state), Thomasius gratuitously presupposes a kind of civil state wherein citizens are without any fault and wickedness, when in fact states arc a sort of remedy for human imperfection. This latter point is among those affirmed even by Sacred Scripturc when it term s the authority of Ihe highest rulers one of "the sword"—something out of place in a perfect and primeval state. Hence, in our opinion, the statements in # 3 2 about the requirem ents of a just war in the natural state (which he deem s most perfcct) are also absurd, for there is no perfect state among those where deeds must be requited by war. The state of men or humankind can be diverse, but civil society as such /(501) is uniform. And so it is also inconsistent to have the title of his discourse speak "concerning the natural and legal state o f civil society" while the same distinction is made in # 5 with respect to "human society," which is certainly much more inclusive. To

be

sure,

even

though

we

cannot

prevent anyone

from

congratulating himself for this distinction as for the discovery of new, goldbearing islands, we honestly confess that we have not yet been able to discern any notable use for it. For the iastitutions it is used to elucidate can be much better explained in another way. Still, if anyone iasists on maintaining the distinction we will not charge him with heresy on that account. #3. W e also give notice at the beginning of this essay that here we shall consider m an with his inclinations as we now find him to be, disregarding the question of w hether or not he was originally different, and that we will always presuppose a hum an nature tinged with depravity. For since we propose to draw these teachings from the light of reason, it would be outside our sphere of competence to ascend higher here than reason alone can attain.

It is to the Divine Scriptures, no doubt, that we owe

w hatever knowledge we now have concerning the first man’s state, from which he was ejected because of his own sin. Any traces thereof encountered in ethical writers appear to be remnants of some tradition temporarily

112 preserved among the earliest mortals /(502) until it was forgotten in one place through the lapse of time and, elsewhere, it degenerated into incredible fictions. Hence, we are also not trying to find out the original source o f the wickedness and misery now engulfing humankind, since reason by itself proceeds with a halting step h e re -a s M ornaeus argues quite cleverly in his

On the Truth o f the Christian Religion, chs. 16-\1? Nor, to be honest, is it clear just how useful it might be in the science of the state to imagine men situated in that primeval integrity, and to erect their situation as a model to which civil laws and customs must be conformed and adapted. For w hether we suppose that states were formed for dispelling want or for securing men against the evils threatened by their fellows, neither claim requires us to presuppose humankind living initially in supreme abundance, undisturbed by any perverse desire to harm one another. For that happy situation is inconsistent with the ends for which our current states have been established.

And if anyone probed more deeply those civil

customs that presuppose men's wickedness, he would easily recognize how little in common with them those larger societies beyond the conjugal and the paternal would have had, which he could sketch for himself am ong an uncorm pted humankind. #4. T o proceed, here we will consider m an’s natural state mainly in two ways. First, let us imagine him after birth abandoned utterly to himself without any human support, and without all /(503) the hum an inventions by which m en’s needs are m et and their convenience prom oted. L et us also suppose him endowed with gifts of mind and body no greater than those presently found in him without any antecendent cultivation, and not cared for by G od in any special way. For a thorough understanding of this m atter, let us abstract from the knowledge about humankind’s origins that we have drawn from the Divine Scriptures and remain within the limits o f reason alone. W ith its guidance, we can infer quite clearly that humankind has not always existed but had a beginning sometime in the past. Now, whether we suppose that one human pair emerged initially from somewhere or imagine more o f them springing up at the same time, we must still conceive their state to have been very miserable. For when they first came into existence from somewhere, they

113 must have been either infants or already fully grown.

If we suppose the

form er and picture at the same time the weakness of newborn infants, it seems that the first humans must surely have perished miserably had not some brute anim al miraculously offered them its breasts—as ancient authors relate concerning certain individuals who were exposed to die.

(This

cohabitation with brute beasts would have given the nursling a considerable share of their wild disposition.) But if we suppose the latter, namely that those first humans were fully grown right away, we must still conceive them as naked, capable of emitting only inarticulate sounds, and lacking all instruction and /(504) improvement. W hen hunger pinched, they seized upon anything in their path and examined it by tasting until they somehow found something edible. (For infants too, we see, immediately put into their mouths whatever they have grasped.) Any liquid they encountered slaked their thirst, and caves or dense trees gave them refuge-such as it w as-from the harsh climate. If such m en had been left alone on earth when it was still entirely uncultivated, with only themselves to rely on, we think they would have lived a very miserable and almost bestial life until-by their own experience and ingenuity, or by chance observations of the resourcefulness of various anim als-they advanced gradually toward a certain standard of living and ’’devised the various arts through general practice aided by reflection."4 Anyone who is willing to examine everything used by us now in our lives will readily admit all of this, and also how difficult it would have been to invent all these things on our own without the preceding guidance and achievem ents o f other m en-indeed, how m ost m en would never have thought of the majority o f these things at all. In fact, this seems to be the reason why ethical writers who had learned nothing about humankind’s true origins from the Divine Scriptures but were guided only by their own reasoning transm itted accounts identical to this about the first men’s condition. See H orace, Satires 1.3, Lucretius, bk. V, Diodorus o f Sicily, bk, I, ch. 8.5 Likewise, since they did not know of the state of Paradise, it explains their speculations about the earth’s unusually mild climate and spontaneous fertility during the first ages of the world--as though humankind so recently sprung forth could not have been preserved otherwise, if there had been

114 today’s intem perate climate and /(505) humans had had to obtain their nourishment by such great labor.

See Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. I, 1.107,

Virgil, Georgies bk, II, 1.336, Lucretius, bk. VI. "But the infancy of the world produced neither hard cold nor excessive heat nor winds of great force." At Lactantius, bk. 2, ch. 12, the ancient philosophers say, "In the beginning of the world,...there was neither winter nor summer, but a perpetual tem perate climate and equable spring."6 # 5 . Even though the human race as a whole has never a t one and the same tim e been in such a state, certainly not a t an extrem e degree thereof, it is hardly irrelevant for us to delineate it so. For not only may we com e to understand how many good things humans owe one another, becoming disposed thereby to philanthropy and sociality, but also, in a special instance someone or other may in fact fall into such a state either deeply or to some degree. Indeed, an infant is cast into it if through his parents’ wickedness he is abandoned in a vast place neither inhabited nor frequented by humans. If he grew up thus alone, beyond all human assistance, he would represent a pcrfcct instance of that state. But one whom shipwreck or the violence of others throw naked, destitute, and deprived o f every tool onto a deserted, wholly uncultivated island sinks only to a certain degree of the natural state, insofar as he has undoubtedly retained a memory of the cultivated life and a knowledge of its arts that helps him see more easily to his needs. As Virgil says of Achaemenides a t Aeneid 111:

"Ghastly in his squalor,/(506) with

unshorn beard, and garb fastened with thorns, he dragged out his life in the woods among the deserted haunts and lairs of wild beasts. Boughs offered him a miserable diet of berries and stony cornels, and plants fed him with their uptorn roots."7 The first humans, also, after they had sinned and fallen from the supremely happy state of Paradise, seem to have been but slightly removed frotn the extreme degree of the natural state being discussed here, and this only because the divine goodness promptly gave them special assistance in their misery. For since they had no need of clothes in Paradise and subsisted on the spontaneously growing fruits of the garden, it is unclear how they had actual knowledge of those arts by which the hum an race now satisfies its inborn need, particularly if we (like most people) limit their stay in Paradise

115 to such a brief timespan. We could say that Adam’s knowledge increased in Paradise and by its own activity extended itself already then to future contingencies, particularly those presupposing a state of sin, and that this knowledge rem ained unimpaired during the Fall. But since this would be very difficult to prove, I think it simpler to say that the first humans, upon being expelled from Paradise, rather quickly dispelled the misery and want of their fallen state by means of G od’s special grace and instruction, and that they learned from God H im self how to use the things most im portant for meeting the needs of hum an life. For after the Fall they immediately wove aprons for themselves out of fig leaves. But since this material is unsuitable as clothing, being more useful for somehow concealing one’s shame than for warding off inclem ent w eather,/(507) God furnished a m aterial much better for either use by fashioning them tunics from animal hides. W e certainly do not sec how* else they could have fashioned these so quickly into clothes for themselves, without divine assistance, since they had no iron tools and were as yet unaccustomed to slaughtering animals. It seems distinctly possible to infer, on the same basis, that divine guidance was also pleased to assist them in regard to other things no less necessary for human life than clothes, and whose initial discovery seems to have been no less difficult. Thus, since God expressly sent man to till the soil and then ordered him to eat bread, we are certain that H e taught him the m ethod of ploughing the ground, the nature o f and times for sowing seeds, and how to make bread fit for human consumption from them. For man would have needed long experience and reflection to learn all these other things on his own. Accordingly, we read that the most ancient inhabitants of G reece who had lost the use of cereal crops by I-know-not-what misfortune subsisted for a long time on naturally growing nuts and fruits before agriculture was discovered among them. Yet, the Divine Scriptures tell of Adam’s firstborn son applying himself immediately to agriculture as an already known and refined art. From this, or from the mention of sacrifices at any rate, it seems proper to conclude firmly that Adam already used fire and iron. (There is no need to claim, according to Genesis IV.22,8 that iron was first discovered by Thulbalkain. It could be that the use of iron was /(508) simpler before his

116 time, and that his notable skill in the m etal arts made him preem inent therein.) But that the use of either of these could have become known to them so quickly without divine instruction surely exceeds belief. In fact, the discovery of fire seemed of such moment to the ancient G reeks th at they made up the tale of Prometheus bringing it from heaven to earth. And the inhabitants of the Canary and Philippine Islands, they say, and also those of the islands near China called The Jardcnas, did not use or know of fire before the Spaniards’ arrival.

See G eorg Horn, On the Origins o f the

American Tribes, bk. 1, ch. 8, and bk. 2, ch. 9.9 Once they had lost it, it turned out that they were unable to regain it for many generations through either reflection o r random experience.

Many nations, too, w ere long ignorant

about the use of iron even though their region contained the raw m aterial for it. Hence, the first generation of men left the uncultivated natural state quite soon after learning from God the use of the aforem entioned things, which are not only prime necessities of life but also become, in turn, the means for providing its other refinements. The reason why, long thereafter, some peoples have been found to be less improved than those first men and their offspring, was, in one case, the unprosperous region which they had been allotted. Others, perhaps, were overwhelmed by want in the distant, uncultivated places into which they had been forced by stronger men, and to which they had not brought a supply of tools from their form er abode. Those who carelessly neglected to bring such tools with them while migrating /(509) to remote lands, or who were deprived of them by some misfortune, fell into a similar destitution. Since they did not yet engage in much trading, it was very difficult for them to recover these things. Still others, though, tried in one or another way to make up for the loss by employing less suitable materials. Thus, many peoples of A m erica used stones, oyster shells, animal bones and teeth, bamboo, and similar things in place of iron. See O. Dapper,

A Description o f America, G erm an edition, pp. 11, 149, 157, 171, 301, 418, 632, 643,650, 653, 654.10 #6. Furtherm ore, men’s desire to get as far away as possible from the misery of the natural state did much to prom ote fellowship among them once they had begun sharing life's amenities. Through sharing, discoveries and

117 products are bcsiowed on everyone, made public as it were, and any one person s diligence benefits all of them together; while otherwise, without others help, a single man’s ingenuity can discover and his diligence produce very little.

It is therefore an established practice among humankind to

transm it to others the discoveries made with the assistance of one’s predecessors, to undertake joint projects, to engage in commerce, to dwell together, and to m eet frequently with one another. But the establishment of civil societies seems not to have been necessary besides for the achievement of this end, since we may learn things from others, partake of their achievements, and trade with them, even though they acknowledge no com mon authority with us. Subsequently, however, men’s standard of living is significantly furthered by states because, in them, citizens can securely devote themselves to their work without /(510) hindrance and be more assured about reaping the fruit of their own industry. It must finally be noted, though, that many mortals have exceeded the norm here while laboring to dispel the miseries o f the natural state and equip their lives with abundant provisions. By this they have opened a way for avarice and luxury, which commonly inundate humankind with a great flood o f evils. Thus, both the Divine Scriptures and the teachings of the sages order us to limit our desire for acquiring things and embellishing our life, as it were, lest we toil for superfluities and pour out this brief span of our life in vain am ong empty cares, dissipating our energy upon debilitating luxuries. Life is far b etter spent with modest and sober trappings, and with a manly body hardened by patience to endure adversities, than with excessive resources that burden rather than sustain us, or in tender luxury that exasperates even mild discomforts. # 7 . A second way of considering man’s natural state is to contrast it to the civil state, and to think of everyone being his own master and subject to no hum an authority. Such a state is either a conceptual fiction or else it really exists.

T he form er would be to imagine a great multitude o f men

originally coming into existence from somewhere, with none of them dependent on the others in any way and no bond among them beside their com mon nature. Alternately, we could imagine the entire human race so dispersed that everyone is taken to be entirely his own master and free from

118 any other’s authority, again with no bond remaining among them beside /(511) their being animals of the same spccics. Given such a fiction, one can clearly gather from the following what humankind’s future condition would have been. The task is easy because a state of this kind has in fact never existed among the human race; nor, apparently, will it ever exist. T he human race as a whole was never at one and the same time situated in a natural state so described.

For as the Divine Scriptures relate concerning the origin of

humankind, the first human pair was joined very closely through the bond of matrimony, wherein G od has commanded the wife to be subject to her husband.

T heir offspring were under the father’s authority.

And since

humankind has always been propagated through procreation, and must also hereafter continue to be so propagated, those special bonds can never be removed from the human race as a whole. The really existing natural state, we may be sure, did not occur at the beginning of things but emerged only when humans started multiplying into different families separated from one another. For then, those living in the same family were linked among themselves by special paternal, marital, or m aster/slave bonds, while those remaining outside it were encountered in a natural state.

A fter the establishment of stales, however, those persons

included in any one of them were joined together by a civil bond. But states among themselves, as well as those living in different states, are thought to be in a natural state with respect to one another. Even now, those who have no common m aster and neither command nor obey one another continue to live reciprocally in that state./(5l2) Kinship ties, especially close ones, usually dispose m en’s minds toward mutual benevolence, but we do not think that they alone abolish the natural state without the addition of a further, special bond creating som e authority. Even if the

benevolence stemming from

close kinship-like

special

friendships sweetly binding certain people’s souls to g eth er-o ftcn precludes or abates many symptoms of the natural state, these tend to obtrude themselves more frequently and forcefully among those having nothing in common except their human nature. See Genesis XII1.8.11

119 # 8 . Now, ihc chief right attending the natural state is that those living in it are subjcct to no one on this earth and acknowledge no ruler over themselves beside G od Almighty. When it is so considered, moreover, that state is usually called a state of natural liberty. By virtue of this liberty, and barring some preceding human deed, anyone and everyone is taken to be rightful m aster of himself and answerable to no other man. All the same, if we consider the m atter more precisely, there is certainly a distinction between that state itself and the right flowing from it. For natural liberty excludes only subjection to other human beings, but by no means that by which man is answerable to his Creator.

Therefore, it must always be

understood with this qualification: insofar as its sway is coasistent with the divine rule over man. Furtherm ore, the /(513) liberty attributed to those living in the civil state encompasses only some rem nants of their natural freedom. In contrast to a servant, a free citizen can initiate and direct his own actions as he pleases, especially those from which he

stands to derive some profit or

advantage. (Slaves, on the other hand, undertake tasks with the approval of their m asters and acquire for them whatever issues therefrom.)

In other

respects, however, he must conform himself not only to the natural law but also to civil ordinances and the special commands of the highest authorities. This liberty is found to be m ore or less restricted from place to place, depending on w hether civil laws add much or little to the natural law. And those states especially are branded as repressive w here rulers seize everything acquired by the citizens, not so much for the commonwealth’s use as for the satisfaction of their own wasteful fancies. M oreover, that liberty of citizens usually called personal is neither m ore nor less restricted under one regular form of commonwealth as such than under another, and those who live in aristocracies or democracies have no grounds for boastfully exalting themselves over those who live in monarchies. For all are equally bound by civil laws and obliged to carry the burdens necessary for the state’s preservation. From the abuse of authority, however, obviously no commonwealth can be secure But entire states, which have a moral personality o f their own, live in natural liberty with respect to one another insofar as they depend on no

120 external authority and have within themselves the principle of their own public actions./(5l4) This liberty belongs in a like and equal m anner to all states, whatever kind of commonwealth they are, provided they are in fact whole and independent of others. And aristocracies and democracies are mistaken in claiming a greater degree of liberty for themselves here, no m atter how accustomed they are from G reek political usage to flaunt this term proudly before monarchies as applying specially to themselves. Sovereigns are thought to enjoy natural liberty to the extent that, in their public actions, they rely not on another’s decision but on their own judgm ent-adjusted, of course, to natural and divine law, and to whatever fundamental laws o f the state there may be. In their private actions, though, while they are above civil laws as such, they should still conform voluntarily to those that pertain to themselves. #9. From the fact that those who live in a natural state are subject to no man's authority and acknowledge God as their only superior, it follows that without G od’s special revelation they have nothing else to direct their actions beside their own judgment properly conformed to the natural law. For insofar as he is not subject to another’s direction, a person having a principle of acting within himself must govern his actions according to his own judgment.

Thus, if som eone relies very heavily upon the advice of

another whom he deems wiser than himself, or if the other offers that advice of his own accord-in whatever way he may be drawn to listen to the other: perhaps the latter’s suggestion makes the teaching of sound reason more discernible- / ( 5 15) the final decision regarding his own affairs nonetheless reverts to each person himself. Surely it is up to him to analyze his advisor’s reasons and determ ine whether they are appropriate for himself. Thus, also, counsels as such do not obligate directly but only indirectly, insofar as one is bound to follow the dictates o f sound reason that have been proposed to him. Further, while it is not contrary to the dignity of the highest authorities to have to hear others’ advice, the ability of advisors to compel a reluctant ruler against his will to follow their counsel w ithout fail is inconsistent therewith. An advisor’s role is limited to presenting reasons, to urging, imploring, and finally even resigning his post rather than approving counsels pernicious to the commonwealth. This is what the nobles o f the

121 kingdom of China did, according to M artini’s History o f China, bk. VI, p. 206.12 It is also apparent from this that an advisor who has presented his opinion in good faith is not liable for the outcome, and that final accountability for all public affairs—insofar as they are susceptible to human direction-appropriately falls back upon sovereigns. #10. T o continue, since humans devote a large portion of their actions to their own preservation (which is recommended both by reason and by a nearly inseparable feeling through which they are keen to acquire advantages for and ward off injuries from themselves), each person situated in a state o f natural liberty is, after God Almighty, primarily responsible for his own care, and everyone must be most concerned /(516) to discover and im plem ent the means judged efficacious for his self-preservation. Although the main decision concerning the preservation of one’s own safety and, likewise, about the detection and selection of the means therefor belongs to each individual, it must not be thought, however, that we thus establish an unlimited license to do anything whatever, on the pretext that an action is licit if it has been judged to further one’s welfare. Instead, it is to be well noted, self-preservation should not be advertised as so adequate a rule for all actions that, through it, anyone is entirely absolved from whatever obligation the natural law enjoins him to perform toward others.

Therefore, it is

definitely considered wrong, even for those residing in a natural state, to excuse the employment of means by which the right of others is violated by appealing to their own self-preservation. For whatever power of acting is attributed to man, we must always consider it to be restricted by sound reason; the latter makes us mindful of the existence o f other persons w hom since they are endowed with a like power and right o f acting as we ourselvesanyone whoever must always respect. H ence, if only a single hum an being existed in the world, it could truly be said o f him that nature gave him a right to all things. For since brute beasts, plants, and other inanimate things have no right capable of opposing m an’s power, in the case at hand there is clearly no creature that can rightly prevent a man from doing and utilizing whatever /(517) he deems in any way conducive to his own preservation or convenience. But now that the world contains many men, surely none of them has a right to employ such means of

122 self-preservation as involve harm and destruction to others and pay no regard to them. Moreover, it is absurd to assume that the natural state contains a right to all things that is to be exercised even against men themselves. For in that state everyone has a right to repel from himself by any m eans the things whereby others threaten to destroy him.

This makes it vain to say that

anyone may do to another whatever he likes, for a right to act which another may rightly oppose even with violence must be considered useless and empty. These things make evident, too, the absurdity of saying that there is no injustice in the state of nature. For since injustice occurs through an act by which the right of others is violated, and since every person has in fact a natural and not merely conventional right to preserve his own life, limbs, and liberty against an illegitimate attack of others, it is clearly unjust to threaten an evil against another’s life, members, and liberty for which th at person has provided no demonstrable cause. The same things also reveal the extent to which we must grant certain people’s assertion that in the stale of nature the measure of right is utility, or that each person has therein a right to do whatever he deem s expedient for himself.

Even though this expression can be suitably interpreted by

distinguishing a temporary, spurious utility from one that is lasting and general,/(518) we ought nonetheless to avoid it. For not only are the useful and the Fitting usually contrasted in common usage, but also, the word ‘utility* as such seems to exclude a regard for other men that single individuals, even in the state of nature, can and may not entirely dispense with in directing their own actions. #11. The foregoing also implies that, in the natural state, each person’s self-defense is accomplished chiefly through his own strength, or through that of others whom he is able to bind by agreem ents to assist him. Since those who live in that state together do not acknowledge another’s authority over themselves and have no authority over him in turn, it is clear that others are not specially bound to defend them, and that they themselves have no authority to compel them to it. Consequently, whoever cares about preserving himself must either ready his own strength to repel the evils threatened against him, or else, insofar as he despairs of its sufficiency, he must secure the aid of others by means of agreements.

123 Indeed, since we suppose those in a natural state to be linked only by common kinship-perm itting each of them to be, as a rule, dearest to himself-none of them is assumed to contribute more of his own resources than he can conveniently dispense with, or to devote himself more to another’s affairs than his own safety permits. Furtherm ore, since all agreements concerning aid to another in the natural state have this tacit reservation: "insofar as I can contribute to your security and further your interests without destroying my own,” /(519) relying solely on others’ good faith and agreements is really to rest one’s own safety on a very slippery foundation. For if one who has promised to assist me discovers afterward that his own safety will be endangered unless he distinguishes his interests from mine, he will think it right to break his agreem ent. But if a fickle mind or hope of greater gain has induced som eone to lay aside his promise, I have no choice but to coerce the unfaithful ally with my own strength to fulfill his agreements and, thus, to double the num ber of my enemies. Therefore, in the natural state the most dependable assistance is in fact that which a person can render himself, and everyone is worth only as much as he can accomplish without others’ help. #12. Also, because those in a natural state have not placed their will under anyone else’s authority, if anyone in that state has been injured by another, it will depend on his judgment alone-adjusted to the natural law, of course-w hether to punish the offense or neglect and endure it, how to assess it, or what reparation and future security to demand. Likewise, if one person owes something to another in that state, the latter’s right does not require an antecedent judicial verdict in order to be deem ed well established. Instead, one will be judged to have a sufficiently grounded intention if one has made a proper rational assessment of the importance of one’s cause and can satisfy oneself about its clear acceptability to sound reason. And when another does not furnish what he owes of his own accord, each person may secure its perform ance by w hatever means seems most appropriate to himself./(520) Yet, lest anyone infringe upon the natural law because his judgment is corrupted by intense passions or love of his own affairs, reason surely urges that when som eone has already reached for weapons, or is about to, he should not reject the intervention of neutral third parties willing to facilitate an honorable and appropriate settlem ent of the quarrel. And when there is

124 any credible doubt concerning one’s cause, or when the other party declares himself ready to do everything consonant with justice, provided only that one's cause is first clearly established, one may not refuse to have the m atter examined by arbiters because they will pronounce an uncorrupted decision. For the merit of one’s cause is most clearly seen in this way, and, at the same time, one is prevented from rushing into unjust and unnecessary wars because of greediness and lack of self-control. #13. We must also add something concerning that aspect of the natural state whereby all those living in it are thought to be by nature equal to one another.

T o be properly understood, this equality m ust not be

interpreted as an equal degree of mental endowment, in which we see one person differing greatly from another.

N either is its exact m eaning an

equivalence of strength, as Hobbes seems to take it at On the Citizen, ch. 1, # 3 ,13 arguing that an adult, at any rate, can kill anyone e lse-d eath being the greatest evil that human beings can inflict on one another. (Still, a consideration of this kind of equality may be useful in preventing som eone from rudely flaunting his physical strength and presuming on its account to abuse othcrs.)/(521)

For the difference in strength among diverse adults

whose limbs and health are sound is not so great as to place one who is stronger than another beyond every risk of injury. This is particularly so because shrewdness and skill can make up for a lack of strength, because one can devise treacheries for another whom one does not dare to attack openly, and, finally, because one who docs not fear single individuals m ust still beware of groups. Indeed, the equality we principally m ean here consists not only of the fact that no one is entirely exempted from or more loosely bound than another by men’s equal obligation to observe the law of nature toward one another, but also of the fact that everyone situated in a natural state has an equal right and authority to preserve himself and to direct his actions according to his own choice enlightened by sound reason. It follows from this that however many more goods than others a person may by chance possess, he must nonetheless perform his natural duties toward them , just as he himself expects from them. Nor does his wealth grant him a greater license to insult them: one must not do to another w hat one docs not wish done to

125

oneself. Likewise, if nature has been more niggardly toward someone, this in itself does not necessarily condemn him to a lesser enjoyment of the common right or oblige him to deem his own welfare less important than others do theirs. R ather, whatever one person expects from another the latter may, in similar circumstances, also expect from him; and whatever /(522) right anyone asserts against another is appropriately enjoyed by the latter as well. No o n e -it is equally clear from this-should fashion himself a special right valid against others which they may not in turn exercise in similar instances. And no one should take offense if another acts on his own without injuring anyone else, employing all permissible means to preserve himself. N or should anyone claim to be so distinguished that others must be subject to him--unless a previous deed provides an adequate basis for this.

Thus it

would be quite wrong, for example, if someone unscrupulously deprived others of their possessions and considered the goods thus seized to be justly acquired by him, while nonetheless alleging that his own acquisitions, however gotten, can in no way be taken away. For in this m anner he would claim a right against others which he is unwilling to have them exercise against himself. Similarly, we must condemn the intolerable insolence of anyone who interprets the G reek doctrine of natural slavery to mean that some people have a right to subdue others like wild gam e or, on the sole pretext of the latter’s ignominious designation as ‘b arb arian s/ to drag them into slavery against their will.

In contrast to th is-if one removes the

arrogance o f his w ords-is Ariovistus’ vigorous affirmation of m en’s natural equality in replying to Caesar (Caesar, On the Gallic War, bk. I):

Tf he

himself had had need of anything from Caesar, he would have gone to him and that if C aesar wanted anything from him he ought to come to him. If he for his p art did not dictate to the R om an people as to the m anner in which they were to exercise Iheir right, he ought not to be obstructed by the Roman people in his right.1,14 #14. It must be well noted here, however, that even though the right accompanying the natural state belongs equally /(523) to anyone living therein, it nonetheless appears in a very different light, as it were, in single individuals, in the scattered patriarchs, and in whole states, according to the natural strength of each of these. For the same natural liberty that whole

126 states consider a most splendid and noble right is so little to be sought after when imagined in single individuals abandoned to their own devices in a setting where human numbers are increasing, that the sooner they exchange it for civil submission the better. Since most mortals are seen to have an inclination to oppress others and deprive them of their possessions, free choice is evidently of little use to anyone unless he is endowed with sufficient strength to protect himself against the violent attack of others. And it stands to reason, therefore, that one who is aware of his own weakness should not unseasonably flaunt his liberty and equality in front of those who are stronger than het or love it desperately, to death. R ather, insofar as he Is a prey to others if left alone to himself, let him b etter preserve his safely by procuring the help of someone more powerful to whom he subjects him self on the easiest possible terms. #15. It remains for us to see what bearing m en have toward others in the natural state or, alternately, whether they should regard each o ther as friends o r enemies. W hat needs to be said here will best be discovered, in my opinion, by thoroughly considering both the bond among m en in that /(524) state and also their inclinations toward one another. The bond among men can be briefly described, partly from the natural similarity among them and partly from what G od has prescribed through the natural law.

T hat there is a natural similarity in all of hum ankind is

acknowledged even by those who do not know all m ortal traits to be derived from one conjugal pair. For although we detect a wonderful variety in the external appearance of bodies and among minds, it does not diminish our ability to say that one person is as human as another. M oreover, received opinion has it that this natural similarity fosters greatly the association and mutual endearm ent of individuals in every class of living things. In any case, the law of nature itself declares it wrong to harm or scoff derisively at any human being, even one who lives in a natural state with us. Instead, it enjoins us to carry out the duties of humanity toward everyone and to keep the agreements we have entered into, with whomsoever they were made. If anyone has violated this law by deceit, even reason alone suggests that he will not go unpunished.

127 Furtherm ore, since nothing is more miserable for a human being than constant solitude and nothing more pleasant than social intercourse, som eone who avoided all other men would be like a freak. Hence, human beings must join themselves to at least some o ther men and conduct themselves as friends toward them, certainly toward those in whose company they desire to live. Finally, since it is obvious that very many goods and no fewer ills can redound to a person from others,/(525) depending on whether they are well or ill disposed toward him, one who values his own well-being m ust not arouse others against himself by injuring them, and he must be friendly toward those at least whose resources he cannot do without in providing for his own needs and conveniences. #16. It is well known, on the other hand, that people usually prefer love of their own possessions and consider their own advantage and glory to be most im portant, and that they tend on that account to pay small regard to anyone with little or no ability to benefit them. Friendships held together by a bare and in all respects sterile benevolence are exceedingly rare among mortals.

Indeed, that im m oderate self-love not only greatly restricts our

benevolence toward others, but it also inclines us frequently toward harming them besides. W ho does not know how often a concern for their own interest improperly adjusted to right reason impels men not only to treat others’ benefit with indifference, but also to impugn it directly by seeking their own advantage in the tatter’s m isfortune-despite the natural law’s fruitless insistence to the contrary?

Because others’ interests are equally dear to

them, however, men cannot avoid being veiy frequently at odds. Thus, what is m ore common in humankind than trying to expel someone else from his possessions in order to augment one’s own wealth, than causing many thousands of others to lose something outstanding in order to acquire power and glory for oneself, and finally, than amusing oneself by insulting others out of natural spite, and seeking pleasure for oneself from their pain? /(526) This perversity also has the bad result that, through it, even those m ore m odest characters who would otherwise be gladly content with their own possessions and not covet those o f others, and whose preoccupation with their own peaceful condition would cause others no trouble, that these are all but forced to break the peace and to fortify themselves against it by whatever

128 means. Indeed, once a war has started, not only do those among whom the quarrel first arose endeavor to destroy one another, but their neighbors are also much disturbed and often get involved beyond their wishes. Thus can one m an’s trouble keep even many tem perate men em broiled in constant disputes. Besides, most mortals have a tem peram ental stubbornness that not only makes them consider their own variously acquired opinions as true, and eager for others’ acknowledgment thereof, but that also makes them hate those who see things differently. These they labor to afflict with the gravest evils simply because they disagree with them. Finally, it also happens often that the interests of many people appear to collide, and that many individuals set their hearts on a common object which they neither can nor w ant to possess together. None of them, moreover, deigns to concede it willingly to another--a state of affairs customarily represented by the noxious fruit of Strife. For all these reasons, nearly constant suspicions and m utual distrust thrive among those living together in a natural state, especially if their situation provides them with opportunities for harming one another. And many of them evince a desire to undermine and impede the growth of others’ strength, to augment their own strength out of the latters’ ruin /(527) and, when an occasion is finally given, to beat them to the blow and crush them. #17. Hence, one who has thoroughly pondered all these things will no doubt adm it that it is extreme and overly simplistic to claim th at no animal is gentler than man and, therefore, that respect for the natural law alone (according to which it is wrong for one person to harm another) or even agreements and promises rendered arc sufficient to ensure m en’s safety and security. For it is quite certain that by far the greatest portion of the evils and troubles burdening men in this mortal state stem from other men. Considerably m ore harmful, on the other hand, is the insistence of those who pronounce the natural state to be one of war, indeed a w ar of all against all or of anyone against anyone living together in that state. For war surely involves a professed intention to harm another in some way and, a t the same time, adequate preparation for undertaking hostilities.

But many

people have never had, nor now have, the intention of harming others. This

129 includes those, for example, who are separated by very long, intervening distances, and those who do not threaten others’ affairs because of modesty o r because they do not think it conducive to their own. Still others attest their peaceful intention toward us by means of words and promises, dismantle the arm am ents by which they can harm us, and commit themselves to peace in good faith. By what pretext will we num ber them among our enem ies? R ather, since no one can do without the assistance of others-as one who shows him self an enemy toward them will have anticipated in v a in concern for their own self-preservation /(528) makes everyone unable and unwilling to treat all other persons as enemies. Though there is in humans an innate wickedness that enjoys harming others as much as possible, and that can never be entirely extirpated or corrected, it nonetheless does not disclose itself on just any occasion. Often, too, a person lacks the ability to implement his wicked desires. Hence, it is not clear why som eone can straightway be considered an enemy on account of that wickedness alone, before it erupts into hostile acts against others. M oreover, since the causes that can set men at odds with one another are either not universal or tend not to break out into hostile acts on a constant basis, they should certainly not be deemed a sufficient w arrant for simplistically declaring the natural state a state of war. These considerations also reveal the falsity of some men’s doctrine that injustice has no place in the natural state, where no agreements have been m ade. Admittedly, to enemies whom we war against justly these lines of the Poet are pertinent:

"Whether deceit or valour, who would ask in

warfare?" and "He who denies his due to the strong man arm ed grants him everything."1* But it has been shown that a man is by no means anyone else’s enemy simply because he lives in a natural state with him.

Also, on the

contrary, it is certain that many things whose violation by others is wrong were acquired by men not only through agreements but from the natural law itself. W ho will deny the injustice, therefore, if one who lives in a natural state with us experiences a violation of something that nature alone has granted him? Similarly, we should also not tolerate those who so indiscriminately toss out the claim that someone who is able to injure us also wishes to do so,

130 and that if an opportunity for harming him presents itself we ought not fruitlessly /(529) to forego it, since he will surely not fail to destroy us if given a chance to do so. In fact, this opinion is acceptable only to the extent that it is corrected thus: someone who is able to harm us can also will to do so, or the desire to harm can more easily enter into him. It therefore makes good sense for us to begin watching him carefully, to surround ourselves betimes with harmless defenses, and also diligently to increase our own strength or get the support of friends. Even when we see the other about to increase his power with unjust means and by oppressing others, let us try to force him back into line by allying ourselves with the oppressed party.

But surely

reason will not allow me an uncertain fear of the future as a pretext for threatening certain and present evil against another. For in this m anner the natural bond among men would be completely destroyed and hum an life reduced to a gladiatorial situation where one must either succumb or kill. Nothing is less suitable than this for m an’s preservation. Gellius, bk. VII, ch. 3, "The occupations and actions of human life, and the obligations of anticipation or postponem ent or even of taking vengeance o r precautions, are not like a combat of gladiators. For to a gladiator ready to fight the fortune of battle offers the alternative, cither to kill, if he should conquer, or to die, if he should yield. But the life of men in general is not restricted by such unfair or inevitable necessities that one must be first to commit an injury in order to avoid suffering injury."16 #18. In view o f these things, some kind of middle /(530) course must obviously be maintained here. Because of the bond among men resulting from the similarity of their nature, their mutual need, and the natural law’s dictate urging peace, the natural state cannot properly be considered a state o f war.

But because of men’s wickedness, their desires, and the passions

which struggle vehemently against right reason, it is also characterized by a rather unstable and undependable peace. Therefore, we ought to suppose anyone our friend and be ready to perform the duties o f pcace and humanity toward him if he is willing to receive them. Just the same, we should also be anxiously concerned about securing our own safety at all times, as if the friendship of others were little to be relied on, and never allow ourselves to slide into passive neglect by trusting in others’ moral integrity or innocence.

131 #19. W hat has been related thus far makes it easy to see that an exact knowledge of the natural state can suggest to leaders o f states many things concerning a state’s external and internal affairs whose observance is extremely necessary. First of all, since the strength of all states is not equal, since one state may be invaded by several others at once, and, indeed, since the bond of m en's shared kinship is by itself too weak a guarantee o f others’ toilsome assistance, states further their preservation by seeking friends and allies for themselves at the proper time. For later on one with whom we have never had anything to do, and for whom we seem to have had no /(531) previous concern except when rem inded by imminent danger, will not readily hasten to assist us, especially since this kind of assistance requires considerable preparation.

The sacredness of promises among mortals does much to

undergird our confidence in others. Still, since men typically value their own preservation m ore than other people’s respect, we should seek to ally ourselves with those especially who are bound to us by common interest and to whom it m atters that we be safe. To be sure, to ready oneself for others’ assistance one makes grandiloquent appeals to the claims of humanity, to mercy, to honor, and to glory; in fact, however, these names alone often elicit but a sterile sympathy or procure assistance that is too ineffectual to dispel one’s difficulties. But when one enjoys a present advantage from associating with another, or when fire has reduced a neighbor’s house to ashes and is about to leap over to one’s own, then at last docs one fight earnestly and in good faith on behalf o f others. Indeed, the prime obligation of leaders to seek the preservation of their own states surely forbids them to endanger their own status for another's sake, except insofar as a coincident advantage permits. Thus, all treaties are understood to contain this hidden restriction: "insofar as it will not jeopardize the safety o f our state."

And nothing strikes a reader of

history m ore often than the autom atic expiration of treaties after times and interests have changed. It is likewise apparent from this that leaders of states and their advisors need to be acquainted not only with the condition of their own but also /(532) that of other commonwealths, including the degree to which

132 these are linked with them by common interest.

This enables them to

determ ine clearly whose friendship they should cultivate--a m atter w here the guiding consideration must be not the feelings of the one being advised but the state’s welfare. #20. Next, since peace in the natural state is quite unreliable and little to be trusted, leaders must look about anxiously and observe the plans and actions of those who can harm their„state in any way, lest perhaps a blow which it is afterward too late to parry be struck against them while they are dozing, and so that they can erect defenses for their own security in due time. That is how the Poet represents Argus: "Now Argus’ head was set about with a hundred eyes, which took their rest in sleep two at a tim e in turn, while the others watched and rem ained on guard.

In whatsoever way he stood he

looked at lo; even when his back was turned he had Io before his eyes."17 To this end, the post of perm anent or resident ambassador has quite recently been established.

Beside the difficulties tending to occur now and then

between two states, for whose resolution the sending of special legates would be burdensome, such persons are also specially responsible for observing those affairs of others which are capable o f affecting their own state in any respect.

This undisguised eagerness to fish around for information about

others’ designs, as it were, is considered to be in no way harmful or offensive nowadays when the more cultivated peoples have mutually consented to it and, indeed, give and request permission for it in turn./(533) And insofar as it is employed as a means of self-preservation, it is also regarded as naturally permissible. For no one is in fact injured if his own deceptive machinations against another are skillfully eluded by the latter. But if on such an occasion something harmful to the state is divulged, the garrulity or treachery of the ministers through whom those secrets leaked out must be punished. #21. From the character of the natural state it also follows that those who value their own preservation must try, as far as they can, to prevent anyone else from excessively and unnecessarily increasing his strength to the point of being able to overwhelm them, and to maintain an equilibrium among their neighbors’ strength. But here we by no means go so far as to approve wars whose only justification is the aim of limiting a neighbor’s growing strength. This is especially so if the latter has sought to acquire it by

133 legitimate m eans like heredity, gift, the voluntary submission of others, the industry o f citizens, or some other liberality of fate, and if the tenor of his life dem onstrates that he desires only to preserve his own possessions and not to seize those of others. Indeed, we want that permission to level the excessive strength of others to be exercised only through nonmalcficcnt means. For example, let us not transfer our money to another indiscreetly so as to enrich him while we ourselves are impoverished, as happens when a state monopolizes the transport of commercial goods in both directions or /(534) undertakes to draw off others’ wealth to itself by forcing its own goods on them. H ere, the rem aining states are certainly justified in resolving to carry out their commercial transactions on their own, or in prohibiting the importation of those goods through which their citizens’ money is, because of the latter’s foolishness or luxury, heaped on others. Likewise, if an exceedingly powerful state is either invaded by an external enemy or shaken by internal disturbances, other states in whose interest it is to see the form er’s power diminished do it no injury if they abandon it while it is contending with its enemies, o r if they deny it the means for abbreviating those ills until it has been exhausted and has consumed its excessive strength. In the same way, it is undoubtedly perm itted to assist someone who is unjustly attacked by another or denied his right. Thus, if a very powerful State provokes others with unjust wars or refuses to grant them their right, the remaining states act prudently if, upon being implored, they use the occasion to unite themselves with the injured parly and endeavor by means of this association’s strength to bring the aggressor back into line. # 2 2 . A consideration o f the natural state can also suggest many things whose observance benefits the state internally. O ne obvious lesson gathered therefrom is that a state must exert itself so that, after God Almighty, it trusts above all in itself and relies mainly on its own strength. F or since an inborn self-love makes everyone most concerned for their own w elfare-w hich

most

people

far

prefer

to

the

safety

of

o th ers-a

commonwealth is clearly very unfortunate, inhaling little m ore than borrowed breath, if it /(535) is always forced to place its highest hope in foreign assistance or buys off others’ attacks with money or gifts.

'I7ms,

134

leaders should do their utmost to make their own states as strong as possible. This involves keeping things of military value in the best possible condition; always maintaining men, weapons, horses, and ships in constant readiness; and fortifying well the country’s borders and im portant areas. This care must never be relaxed o r neglected, even though peace has long smiled upon the state. For slates that are suddenly attacked by an enem y after having been enervated during a long, idle peace are *in the greatest danger: their hastily marshalled and unpracticed forces only augment the slaughter.

A state’s

wealth should also be maintained and increased as much as possible by licit means. In times of peace, especially, foresight demands that citizens’ private resources grow as much as the public treasury, so that they suffice to cover the state’s expenses when w ar descends.

For a war cannot always sustain

itself, as Flaminius rem arked wittily once to Philopoemenus, who had a ready army but no money: "You have a chest and arms, that’s true, but no belly."18 #23. Furtherm ore, a consideration of the natural state of individuals and its misery is very useful for making citizens love and devote themselves completely to the civil state’s preservation, and also for making them endure gladly the burdens necessary for the m aintenance of states.

For these

burdens are but a very small portion of the evils that would have attended a life /(536) without civil bonds, immersion in which would have been far more miserable than what seems to be the harshest existence in a state. O ne who has never thought about the misery of that natural state bears the burdens which rulers impose on citizens with ill will, as if they were superfluous and contrived either to annoy the people or merely to nourish the rulers’ am bition and extravagance.

In contrast, som eone who has correctly

estimated the m atter admits that it is no more suitable to com plain about such burdens than about the price of clothes or shoes by which the body is protected against severe w eather and injuries. Indeed, one who has reflected thoroughly upon this natural state will bear m ore patiently the unreasonable inconveniences that he sometimes experiences at the hands of rulers. For these are in fact rarities in the civil state, and counterbalanced by the occurrence of b etter things. But in the natural state one could expect equivalent or worse evils not only on a daily basis, but also without end and measure. Moreover, a judicious citizen will

135 by no m eans attribute those inconveniences to the character of the civil state as such and be therefore more discontented with it; rather, he will acknowledge the general imperfection of human affairs. For although states were specially devised against the evils that threaten one person from a n o th e r-a n end necessarily requiring other people’s involvement--it was not possible to take precautions so precise as to prevent the em anation of an occasional evil from those very persons to whom we subjected ourselves in order to avert human evils. Also, one who has thoroughly /(537) weighed these things puts up willingly with any inconviences of his status and is not inclined to revolt against the government.

This is especially so because such changes are

almost always followed by other men rather than by other practices, and because most changes in a commonwealth occur through civil wars, which are deservedly held to be among the gravest civil evils. #24. Finally, this too is gathered from the foregoing. Leaders must take care to ban from the confines of states those things that belong to the natural state considered as the civil state’s opposite, and to prevent citizens from behaving among themselves or toward their rulers like those living in a natural state together. For the civil bond is necessarily ruptured if they do behave in this way. Citizens should therefore not be granted a right to bear arm s o r to avenge by private war the injuries done them, as if assigning themselves rights. For in this manner, civil life acquires the restlessness and insecurity of the natural state-som ething about which we are also anxiously w arned by King James, The Kingly Gift, bk. 2, p. 79.19 Also, the power of a single citizen must not be allowed to grow so great that it can prevail against the might of the whole state in any way. For one who has exceeded this point is ho different than someone in possession o f his natural liberty: he obeys the state not because he must but because he cares to. And since the possession of supreme power is so pleasurable for men, the desire to seize it can very easily enter into this person. Indeed, nothing is m ore likely than for such a very powerful citizen to become an enemy of the current order /(538) --one all the more dangerous because he has in a sense already been received within the walls.

136 For the same reason, one must prevent the rise of factions in the state, or, if they have already arisen, one must dissolve them as quickly as possible. For when they have grown strong it is as if a new state is built up in the state’s midst. And since a faction never deems itself sufficiently secure while that part of the state which rightfully possesses the highest authority remains unimpaired, it obviously threatens a t every opportunity to revolt and appropriate the state’s authority to itself. For now, let this be a sufficient explanation of our view.

N O T E S T O T R A N S L A T IO N 1. The reference is to Christfried W aechtler, Resp., De societatis civilis statu naturali ac legali, dissertatio politico,... Praes.... J. Thomasius, etc. (Lipsiae, 1670). This was an im portant Leibzig dissertation for which Jacob Thom asius (1622-1684) acted as praescs. Originally written in 1670, it was reissued in an expanded edition in 1675, the year Pufendorfs collected Dissertationes academicae selectiores first appeared. W aechtler (Thomasius) surveys the principal positions on natural right, including those of Grotius, H obbes, and Pufendorf, and himself interprets the natural state as one of happiness and perfection—which explains the attention Pufendorf gives the work here. For a short discussion, see Fiam m etta Palladini, Disscussioni seicentesche su Samuel Pufendorf, Scritti latini: 2663-2700 (Societa’ Editrice II Mulino, 1978), pp. 290-91. See British Museum General Catalogue o f Printed Books, photolithographic edition to 1955 (London: Trustees of the British Museum), vol. 251 (1964), col. 346. The work is also listed in The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints (Chicago: Am erican Library Association), vol. 591 (1978), p. 273c, appearing there as: Thom asius, Jacob, 1622-1684, De societatis civilis statu naturali ac legali, dissertatio politico, sub praesidio...m. Jacobi Thomasii...respondente Christfriedo W aechtlero...(Lipsiae, literis Johann. George. 1675), 56p. 2. Aristotle, Politics* bk. I, chs. 4-6, esp. 6 (1255a4 ff.). 3. Philippe de Mornay, Seigneur du Plessis-Marly (1549-1623), De Veritate religionis christianae liber adversus atheos, epicureos, ethnicos, judaeos, mahumedistas et caeteros infideles, a Philippo M om eo, Plessiaci domino ... gallice prim um conscriptus, nunc autem ab eodem latine versus (Antwerp: C. Plantini, 1583). The original French edition appeared in 1581, and the work was reprinted num erous times in French, Latin, and English (trans. begun by Sir Phillip Sidney). See Catalogue Generale des Livres de la Bibliothèque Naiionale-Auteurs (Paris: Imprimerie N ationale), vol. 119 (1933), col. 1046. 4. The final portion of the sentence repeats Virgil, Georges I. 133. It is quoted explicitly (but without attribution) at De jure naturae II.2.2, and Pufendorf probably borrowed it from there along with much of the surrounding discussion. The passage reveals how easily and uaselfconsciously classical expressions were transferred into early m odern writings, and it also helps place this essay in the period 1672-75. 5. H orace, Sermones 1.3.99-106 < see Horace, Satires and Epistles, ed. John C. Rolfe (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1949), p. 11>. Lucretius, De rerum natura V. 925-987 . Diodorus Siculus 1.8 . 6. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.107-8: 'Ver erat aeternum , placidique tepentibus auris/m ulcebant zephyri natos sine scminc flores.” See Ovid,

138 Metamorphoses, 2 vols., tr. Frank Justus Miller, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956), vol. 1, pp. 8-11. Virgil, Georgies 11. 336-38: "non alios prim a crescentis origine m undi/inluxisse dies aliumve habuisse tenorem /crediderim : ver illud erat, ver magnus agebat/orbis,..." See P. Vergili Maronis, Opera, ed. Frederick A rthur Hirtze! (Oxford: C larendon Press, 1900). Lucretius, De rerum natura> R ouse ed. & tr., V. 818-19, pp. 398-99: "At novitas mundi nec frigora dura ciebat/nec nimios aestus nec magnis viribus auras.” Lactantius, Dtvinae Institutiones II. 11(12). Text: Lucii Caecilii Firiniani Lactantii, Opera Omnia , 2 vols., editio novissima Fritzsche Bunemanni, O. F. and N. Le Nourry < ~ Vol. 6 of J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologia lMtina> (Paris: Siron, 1844), vol. 1, col. 317. Trans.: Lactantius, TheDivine institutes, Books I-VII, tr. Sr. Mary Francis M cDonald, O. P. (W ashington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1964), bk. II, ch. 11, p. 143. The translation refers to ch. 11 of bk. II, while Pufendorf cites ch. 12. There is some variation in the text incorporated into the various editions. 7. Pufendorfs reference is composed of several proxim ate passages from Virgil’s Aeneid : "respicimus. dira inluvies immissaque barba,/consertum tegimen spinis" (III.593-4), M cum vitam in silvis inter deserta ferarum / lustra domosque traho" (III.646-7), and "victum infelicem, bacas lapidosaque co m a,/ dant rami, et vulsis pascunt radicibus herbae" (111.649-50). See Virgil, Aeneid , 2 vols., trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: H arvard University Press, 1953), vol. 1, pp. 386-87 and 390-91. Pufendorf alters the Latin slightly to suit his context; I take similar liberties with the translation. 8. Genesis IV.22: "Zillah, the other wife < o f one of Cain’s descendants >, bore Tubal-cain, the m aster of all coppersmiths and blacksmiths,...“ The New English Bible (New York: Cam bridge University Press, 1970), p. 5. 9. Georgius Ilornius, G. II. de Originibus Americanis libri quatuor (Hagae Comitis, Lugduni Batavorum, 1652; reissued at Hemipoli in 1669) < see Brit. Mus., vol. 107 (1961), col. 187>. Cf. H orn, Georgius, Georgii Homii de Originibus americanis libri quatuor (Hagae Comitis, sumptibus A. Vlacq, 1652) . G eorg H orn, 1620-70, professor o f history a t Leiden after 1648, was famous for his polemics against Isaac Vos on the true age of the earth. The subject of Am erican Indians and their origin-over which G rotius and D e Laet had battled earlier-becam e very im portant after 1650, largely because o f its connection with this religiously controversial question. H orn’s book, like many others o f its type, was both very learned and very conjectural at the same time. See Louis G abriel Michaud (1773-1858), Biographic universelle ancienne et modeme..., nouvelle edition, introd. by Charles Nodier, 45 vols. (Paris, Leipzig, 1843*65; reprinted Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1966-68), vol. 19, pp. 640-641; Lee Hldridge Huddleston, Origins o f the American Indians, European Concepts, 1492-1729 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1967), pp. 107, 119, 125; and, m ore generally on the New W orld’s importance for European learned debates, William Brandon, New Worlds for Old; Reports from the New World and Their Effect on

139 the Development o f Social Thought in Europe, 1500-1800 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1986). 10. Although Pufendorf writes of ‘D.’ D apper in all three early editions, the reference is almost surely to Olfert D apper (1636-89), Die unbekante neue Welt, oder Beschreibung des Welt-teils Amerika und des Sudlandes... >D urch Dr. O. D (apper) < o r rather, Arnoldus M ontanus (? )> , translated from "De nieuwe en onbekende Weereld" by J. C. B eer (?) (A m sterdam : Jacob von Meurs, 1673). See The British Library General Catalogue o f Printed Books , Five-Year Supplement, 1971-75 (London: Trustees of the British Museum), vol. 3 (1978), col. 2050. As for the G erm an edition m entioned by Pufendorf, the Cat. Gen., vol. 35 (1908), col. 826, lists: O lfert D apper, Die unbekante Neue Welt, oder Beschreibung des Welt-teils Amerika, und des Sud-landes: darinnen vom Uhrsprunge der Ameriker und Sudlaender, und von den gedenckwuerdigen Reysen der Europer darnach zu ... Mit vielen ... Abbildungen gezieret. Translated by J. C. Beer. (Amsterdam: Jacob von M eurs, 1673). Cf. Brit. Mus., vol. 48 (1966), co). 752. In NUC, vol. 391 (1975), p. 598b, the work appears as: Montanus Arnoldus, 16257-1683, Die unbekante Neue Welt, oder Beschreibung des Welt­ teils Amerika und des Sud-landes:... Durch Dr. O. D. zu Amsterdam: Bey J. von Meurs, 1673. (H ere, there is no mention of J. C. Beer as translator.) Indeed, the Dutch original for D apper’s G erm an edition was M ontanus’ De Nieuwe en onbekende weereld: o f Beschryving van America en V zuid-land,... (Amsterdam: J. Meurs, 1671) , which D apper was accused o f having plagiarized (see ibid., p. 5 9 /c > . The same charge was levelled against the Englishman, John Ogilby (1600-1676), though with less justification than in D apper’s case . O lfert D apper (1636-89) was a self-proclaimed Dutch physician (there is no record of his ever having earned a medical degree or having practiced m edicine) whose considerable fame in the 17th century rested on a number o f well-illustrated historical and geographical works dealing especially with Africa, the N ear East, and Asia which D apper composed through extensive and often indiscriminate borrowing from other, unacknowledged authors. See D onald F. Lach, "China in W estern Thought and Culture,” in Philip W iener, ed., Dictionary o f the History o f Ideas, 4 vols. (New York: Scribner’s, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 356b-357a, and Michaud, Biographie Universelle, vol. 10, pp. 125-26. 11. Genesis XIII.8: "So A braham said to Lot, ‘Let there be no quarreling betw een us, between my herdsmen and yours; for we are close kinsmen.’" The New English Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 13. 12. M artini Martinii,...Sm/ctfe historiae decas prima, res a gentis origine ad Christum natum in extrema Asia, s'tve magno sinarum imperio gestas complexa (M onachii: J. Wagner, 1658) . Also, M. Martinii... Sinicae Historiae Decas prima, res a gentis origine ad Christum natum...gestas complexa (Monachii, 1658; another, final edition of P art I (P art II never appeared) was published in 1659 at Am sterdam ) < see Brit. Mus., vol. 154 (1962), cols. 230-3l>. This work by the Jesuit missionary M artinus M artini, 1614-61, was the first history of China written by a European directly from Chinese annals,

140 and it set the stage for a bitter controversy over historical chronology involving the Bible and ancient Chinese history. M artini’s De bello Tartarico historia (Rom e, 1654), and his Novus Atlas Sinensis (A m sterdam , 1655), were also influential and widely read. T he latter was the first scientific atlas and geography of China to appear in Europe. See Donald F. Lach, "China in W estern Thought and Culture," vol. I, pp. 356a and 358b, and M ichaud, Biographie Universelle, vol. 27, pp. 152-53. 13. Thom as Hobbes, De C/Ve, ch. 1, #3. 14. Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico 1.34.2, and 1.36.2. Cf. text: C. Iuli Caesaris, Commentariorum> ed. R enatus D u Pontet (Oxford: C larendon Press, 1900). Trans.: The First Eight Books o f Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, trans. w. notes and introd. by Edward Brooks, Jr. (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1896), pp. 27-28. 15. Virgil, Aeneid, II.390-1, Fairclough translation, vol. 1, pp. 320-21. Despite Pufenaorfs suggested attribution, the second quote is from Lucan, The Civil War , Books 1-X, trans. J. D. Duff, Loeb Classical Libran' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), 1.348-9, pp. 28* 29. 16. The Attic Nights o f Aulus Gellius, 3 vols., trans. John C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: H arvard University Press, 1960), VI. 3.30-32, vol. 2, pp. 22-23. 17. Again, Pufendorf attributes a passage to the (wrong) "poet" (cf. note 14 above). In this instance, the reference is to Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.625-29, M iller translation, vol. 1, pp. 46-47. 18. See Plutarch's Lives, 11 vols., trans. B ernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), vol. 10: "The Life of Philopoemenen," II.3, pp. 260-61. The statem ent o f Titus Flaminius (whose ‘Life’ follows that or Philopoem enen) is m eant both literally and figuratively. T he translation is mine. 19. Jam es I (1566-1625), King of England, Basilicon Doron or Regium Donum (l599)-also known as The Father’s blessing, A Prince’s Looking Class, Vaeterliches Testament, etc. Jam es I, son of Mary Q ueen of Scots, succeeded Elizabeth I to the throne of England. This worlc, which Jam es dedicated to his first son, Henry (whose death in 1612 led to th e eventual accession in 1625 of his younger brother, Charles I), saw num erous editions in Latin, English, French, and G erm an, including the following: Jacobi primi, Angliae, Franciae et H ibem iae rzgis..Sasilikon Doron, sive Regis instuutio...(London: J. Norton, 1604) . Cf. Jacobi Prim i ..JBasilikon Doron, sive Regia Institutis ad Henricum Principem, etc. (London: J. Norton, 1604) < see Brit. Mus., vol. 114 (1962), col. 485 >. A later, Latin edition by Joh. Christoph. Beckm ann appeared at Frankfurt/O . in 1679 and 1682-both dates after the appearance of Pufendorfs Dissertationes academicae selectiores (1675, 1677, 1678) containing the present essay. A recent edition is The Basilicon Doron o f King James Vfy with an introduction, notes, appendices, and glossary, ed. Jam es Craigie (Edinburgh, 1944-50), Scottish Text Society Publications, series 3, vols. 16 and 18.

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

1.

Justus Hartnack, From Radical Em piricism To K ant’s Critical Idealism

2.

Leonard A. Kennedy, Peter of Ailly and the Harvest o f Fourteenth Century Philosophy

3.

D on MacNiven, Bradley’s M oral Psychology

4.

T.C. Williams, The Unity of K ant’s Critique o f Pure Reason

5.

K enneth Maly and Parvis Em ad, fleidegger on H eraclitus: A New Reading

6.

R ene Descartes, Principals of Philosophy, Blair Reynolds (trans.)

7.

Antoine A m auld, On True and False Ideas, New Objections To Descartes’ Meditations, and Descartes’ Replies, Elm ar J. Kremer (trans.)

8.

Philip M. Hillmer, The Antinomy Structure of K ant’s Transcendental Dialectic

9.

Laura W estra, Plotinus and Freedom: A Study o f Enneads 6:8

10.

Ian Charles Box, The Social Thought of Francis Bacon

11.

François, Poullain de la Barre, The Equality of the Two Sexes

12.

Conrad of Prussia, The Commentary of Conrad of Prussia on the De Unitate Et Uno of Domenicus Gundissalinus, Joseph Bobik (trans.)

13.

Samuel PufendorPs On the Natural State o f Men, Michael Seidler (trans.)

14.

K urt F. Leidecker, The Record Book of the St. Louis Philosophical Society, Founded February 18(56

15.

John H . Heiser, Logos and Logic in the Philosophy of Plotinus

16.

P eter McLaughlin, K ant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology

17.

Ira Robinson, The Thought of Moses Maimonides

18.

Butterworth, The Identity of Anselm’s Proslogion Argument for the Existence o f God with the Via Quatra of Thom as Aquinas