Samuel von Pufendorf's "On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law"

Details

Life
Samuel von Pufendorf was a court historian and professor of law born in Saxony in 1632, the same year as Baruch Spinoza. He studied at universities in Leipzig and Jena, and met Galileo, Grotius, Descartes, and Hobbes. He was a tutor to the family of a Swedish envoy to Denmark, which resulted in his spending eight months in prison in Denmark when Sweden began a war against Denmark. But he used the time well by writing his first book, Elements of Universal Jurisprudence (1660), which borrowed ideas from Grotius and Hobbes and is seen as a foundational text in modern theories of natural law. He left Denmark, survived a shipwreck, and, in 1661, took a position at the University of Heidelberg. He later taught at the University of Lund at the invitation of the King of Sweden. His major work, On the Law of Nature and of Nations was published in 1672, and the more popular compendium to this work, On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law, in 1673. The latter work served as a university textbook for over a hundred years. His An Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms and States of Europe (1682) stayed in print for several decades. He wrote several other works of history and replies to critics, and, under a pseudonym, a book critical of the Catholic Church. He died in 1694.

Context and Themes
The 200 years prior to Pufendorf's birth (1632) had seen the invention of the printing press, the Inquisition, discovery of the Americas, the Protestant Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and Council of Trent, Wars of Religion in France, and the Thiry Years’ War and Eighty Years’ War ending in the Treaty of Westphalia. Pufendorf was certainly aware of this tumult and of the intellectual discoveries and controversies in the Europe of his day. His work on natural law can be seen as an attempt to solve a very pressing problem: Could rights, responsibilities, and powers of citizens and states be described and agreed upon so as to limit destructive civil wars, wars of religion, and wars of conquest? Advances in science and mathematics, and the continuing assault on Aristotelian metaphysics and Scholasticism, seemed to show the way. Pufendorf starts with a few premises about humanity’s sociability, ability to reason, need for others, and desires. From these, he derives duties to God, self, and others and goes on to discussions of a duty not to harm others, agreements, language, family life, government, and several other topics. His approach suggests several questions. Does natural law require God as an enforcer? Could natural law work outside Europe and across radically different cultures? Do evolving ethical views even within the same European civilization undermine his theory?

Readings
The readings this month are:

An excerpt from “Prolegomena” or “Preliminary Discourse Concerning the Certainty of Right” to The Rights of War and Peace, Hugo Grotius. This short, 8-page excerpt from the Online Library of Liberty provides additional context for Pufendorf’s arguments about natural law.
On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law, Samuel von Pufendorf. We’ll read the entire work (177 pages in the Cambridge edition available from Amazon and elsewhere). Among the free options is one from the Online Library of Liberty (1735 trans.).

Secondary Readings