On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law

by Samuel von Pufendorf, Michael Silverthorne (Translator), James Tully (Editor)

Samuel Pufendorf is one of the most important moral and political philosophers of the seventeenth century. His theory, which builds on Grotius and Hobbes, was immediately recognized as a classic and taken up by writers as diverse as Locke, Hume, Rousseau, and Smith. Over the past twenty years there has been a renaissance of Pufendorf scholarship. On the Duty of Man and Citizen is Pufendorf's own epitome of his monumental On the Law of Nature and of Nations, and it served as a basic text in European universities throughout the Enlightenment. This edition has a lucid and historically sensitive translation by Michael Silverthorne, the first since the early twentieth century. James Tully's introduction sets the text in its context, summarizes the main arguments, surveys recent literature on Pufendorf, and shows how Pufendorf transformed natural law theory into an independent discipline of juristic political philosophy that dominated reflection on politics until Kant.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Law, Classics

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1673

About the author

Baron Samuel von Pufendorf was a German jurist, political philosopher, economist, statesman, and historian. His name was just Samuel Pufendorf until he was ennobled in 1684; he was made a Freiherr (baron) a few months before his death in 1694. Among his achievements are his commentaries and revisions of the natural law theories of Thomas Hobbes and Hugo Grotius.

Reviews

[Ethan Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since this is a digest of his very long work (which I kind of want to read), it doesn't have the kind of sustained argumentation I was hoping for. But all the same, it is a very coherent exposition of principles of natural law that are still largely consistent with Western mores three hundred years later. We still consider it necessary for everyone to abide by agreements and organize mutual defenses against human aggression.

"Natural law" is the phrase used in Pufendorf's age to refer to principles of morality that hold for all possible societies and that is known through reason. It is contrasted with divine law, which is known by special revelation, and civil law, which can be formulated in one way or another at the discretion of a sovereign. (I tend to think that they called it "law" mostly by analogy with those other two categories. So it's not surprising that a decline of interest in the substance of ecclesial law was accompanied by a decline in interest in the term "natural law.")

I admire the effort to describe certain principles of human morality that are constant across time and cultures, and I think this kind of thinking deserves to be preserved even where the imaginary of "law" loses it salience. Excepting his tendency to assume that human social institutions are formed by agreement and not by status (plenty of cultures are way more status based than that of modern Europe and this raises questions about whether a more general account of status relations than Pufendorf offers would be appropriate for natural law) it's not as easy as one might think to find clear ethnographic counter examples to most of the moral principles that Pufendorf outlines. One doesn't have to read Pufendorf specifically, but I think some exposure to the natural law tradition is valuable. I would personally recommend the intro to Grotius' Law of War and Peace over this digest.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, five stars is pretty good. Pufendorf is not particularly famous today, but he, along with Hugo Grotius, were pretty important in the 17th century for their theories of natural law. This text is particularly clear, though the fact that it is his compendium of a much longer work means that many conclusions are asserted more than they are supported. If you are interested in the development of non-Catholic versions of natural law, this is a great book to read.

[Lady of the Ashes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pufendorf examines the laws and morals of society. Thought provoking

[Jonathan]

Rebind

[Craig Bolton]

Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) by Samuel Pufendorf (1991)

[Craig Bolton]

"WHOLE DUTY OF MAN, ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF NATURE, THE (Natural Law Paper) by SAMUEL PUFENDORF (2002)"