Natural law theories in the early Enlightenment / T. J. Hochstrasser.

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Paperback re-issue.

26966

Pufendorf, Samuel von.

Natural law -- History.

Law -- Philosophy.

Law -- Germany -- History.

1. Introduction: natural law and its history in the early Enlightenment --2. Socialitas and the history of natural law: Pufendorf's defence of De Jure Naturae et Gentium --3. Voluntarism and moral epistemology: a comparison of Leibniz and Pufendorf --4. Christian Thomasius and the development of Pufendorf's natural jurisprudence --5. Natural law theory and its historiography in the era of Christian Wolff --6. Conclusion: the end of the history of morality in Germany.

Paperback Re-issue: In this ambitious study T. J. Hochstrasser analyses and explains the development of natural law theories in Germany between Grotius and Kant. Particular attention is paid to Samucl Pufendorf and his followers, who incorporated many of the key theoretical insights of Thomas Hobbes into German political theory, and evolved a natural law theory based on human sociability and a self-sufficient conccpt of human reason. In so doing, they fostered a mcthodology in German philosophy, eclecticism, which remained a major creative force in intellectual life down to the cmergence of Kantian idcalism. This intellectual tradition is recovered through a detailed analysis of the so called histories of morality', which assessed innovations i cthics and political philosophy by describing the progress of the discipline since ancient times, and thus constitute the fiust scrious histories of political thought. Equal consideration is also given to rationalist attempts by Leibniz and Woll to defend traditional scholastic natural law against Hobbes and the followers of Pufendorf, and thus the work offers a detailed account of the range and importance of natural law theories within Germany in the era of enlightened absolutism, up to and including the onset of the Kantian revolution in moral philosophy. - back cover.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780521027878

xiii, 246 pages ; 23 cm