The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

400 Pages·2002·1.64 MB·English

by  Samuel Pufendorf

the whole duty of man
natural law and
enlightenment classics
Knud Haakonssen
General Editor
Samuel Pufendorf

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natural law and
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i enlightenment classics i
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i The Whole Duty of Man i
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i According to i
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the Law of Nature
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Samuel Pufendorf
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i TranslatedbyAndrewTooke,1691 i
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EditedwithanIntroductionby
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i IanHunterandDavidSaunders i
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TheWorksofSamuelPufendorf
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TwoDiscoursesandaCommentarybyJeanBarbeyrac
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TranslatedbyDavidSaunders
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liberty fund
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Indianapolis
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ThisbookispublishedbyLibertyFund,Inc.,afoundationestablishedto
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Frontispiece:TheportraitofSamuelPufendorfistobefoundatthe
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photoreproductionbyLeopoldoIorizzo.Reprintedbypermission.
07 06 05 04 03 c 5 4 3 2 1
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Pufendorf,Samuel,Freiherrvon,1632–1694.
[Deofficiohominisetcivis. English]
Thewholedutyofmanaccordingtothelawofnature/SamuelPufendorf;
translatedbyAndrewTooke,1691;
editedwithanIntroductionbyIanHunterandDavidSaunders.
Twodiscoursesandacommentary/byJeanBarbeyrac;translatedbyDavidSaunders.
p. cm.—(Naturallawandenlightenmentclassics)
WorksbyJeanBarbeyractranslatedfromtheFrench.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
isbn 0-86597-374-1(hc:alk.paper)—isbn 0-86597-375-X(pb:alk.paper)
1. Naturallaw. 2. Ethics. 3. State,The.
I. Hunter,Ian,1949– II. Saunders,David,1940–
III. Barbeyrac,Jean,1674–1744. Twodiscoursesandacommentary.
IV. Title:Twodiscoursesandacommentary. V. Title. VI. Series.
K457.P8D43132002
340(cid:2).112—dc21 2002023042
liberty fund, inc.
8335AllisonPointeTrail,Suite300
Indianapolis,Indiana46250-1684
contents
Introduction ix
the whole duty of man, according
to the law of nature 1
TwoDiscoursesandaCommentary
byJeanBarbeyrac 263
NoteontheTranslation 265
TheJudgmentofanAnonymousWriteron
theOriginalofThisAbridgment 267
DiscourseonWhatIsPermittedbytheLaws 307
DiscourseontheBenefitsConferredbytheLaws 331
Index 361

introduction
In1691,eighteenyearsafteritsoriginalpublication,SamuelPufendorf’s
De officio hominis et civis appeared in English translation in London,
bearing the title The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Na-
ture. This translation, by Andrew Tooke (1673–1732), professor of ge-
ometryatGreshamCollege,passedlargelyunalteredthroughtwosub-
sequent editions, in 1698 and 1705, before significant revision and
augmentation in the fourth edition of 1716. Unchanged, this text was
thenreissuedasthefifthandfinaleditionof1735,whichishererepub-
lishedforthefirsttimesince.1Fiveeditions,spanningalmosthalfacen-
tury,beartestimonytotheEnglishappetiteforPufendorf’sideas.
There are important regards, however, in which The Whole Dutyof
Man differs from Pufendorf’s De officio.2 In the first place, Tooke’s
translationistheproductandinstrumentofashiftinpoliticalmilieu—
from German absolutism to English parliamentarianism—reflectedin
the translator’s avoidance of Pufendorf’s key political terms, in partic-
ular “state” (civitas) and “sovereignty” (summum imperium). Second,
1.TheWholeDutyofMan,AccordingtotheLawofNature,bythatfamouscivilian
SamuelPufendorf...nowmadeEnglishbyAndrewTooke.Thefiftheditionwith
thenotesofMr.Barbeyrac,andmanyotheradditionsandamendments(London:
R.Gosling,J.Pemberton,andB.Motte,1735).
2.Theoriginalformoftheworkmaybecomparedinthenewcriticaleditionof
thefirstLatinandGermaneditions.SeeSamuelPufendorf,SamuelPufendorf:De
officio, ed. Gerald Hartung, vol. 2, Samuel Pufendorf: Gesammelte Werke (Berlin:
AkademieVerlag,1997).Thereadershouldalsoconsultthemostrecentandmost
accurate English translation: Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen
AccordingtoNaturalLaw,ed.JamesTully,trans.MichaelSilverthorne(Cambridge:
CambridgeUniversityPress,1991).
ix
x introduction
theanonymouseditorsofthe1716/35editionintensifiedTooke’sangli-
cizationofPufendorfthroughtheinclusionofmaterial—aseriesofim-
portantfootnotes,revisedtranslationsofkeypassages—takenfromthe
first edition of Jean Barbeyrac’s1707French translationoftheDeoffi-
cio.3 Especially in his footnotes, Barbeyrac had moderated the secular
and statist dimensions of Pufendorf’s thought in order to retainsome
continuitybetweencivildutiesandreligiousmorality—enoughatleast
toremindcitizensofalawhigherthanthecivillawandtoremindthe
sovereignpowerofitsresponsibilitytoprotectthenaturalrightsofcit-
izens. Those reminders, though suited to the “polite”post-Hobbesian
worldofearly-eighteenth-centuryLondon,hadnotbeenatallgermane
toPufendorf’soriginalintentionandtext.
Inthe1735editionofTheWholeDutyofMan,Pufendorf’sthought
hasthusbeensuccessivelyreshapedinthecourseofitsreceptionintoa
series of specific cultural and political milieux. To approach this text
fromtherightanglewemustfollowasimilarpath.Wethusbeginwith
Pufendorf himself, and then discuss Barbeyrac’s engagementwithPu-
fendorf, before entering the English world of Andrew Tooke and the
anonymous editors who, in 1716, introduced the fruits of Barbeyrac’s
engagementintoTooke’stranslation.
The son of a Lutheran pastor, Samuel Pufendorf was born in the
SaxonvillageofDorfchemnitzin1632,movingtotheneighboringtown
of Flo¨ha the following year.4 This was the middle of the Thirty Years’
War, whose horrors and fears Pufendorf experienced as a child, with
killingsinnearbyvillagesandthefamilyforcedtofleeitshomebriefly
3. Jean Barbeyrac, trans.,Lesdevoirsdel’hommeetdu citoien,telsqu’ilsluisont
prescritsparlaloinaturelle(Amsterdam:H.Schelte,1707).
4.ForhelpfuloverviewsofPufendorf’slifeandwork,seeJamesTully,“Editor’s
Introduction,”inTully,ed.,Man&Citizen,xiv–xl;andMichaelJ.Seidler,“Samuel
Pufendorf,”intheEncyclopediaoftheEnlightenment,ed.AlanCharlesKors(New
York:OxfordUniversityPress,2002).ThereisnostandardbiographyofPufendorf,
butimportantcontributionstowardonecanbefoundinDetlefDo¨ring,Pufendorf-
Studien.Beitra¨gezurBiographieSamuelvonPufendorfsundzuseinerEntwicklungals
HistorikerundtheologischerSchriftsteller(Berlin:Duncker&Humblot,1992).Also
useful is Wolfgang Hunger, Samuel von Pufendorf: Aus dem Leben und Werkeines
deutschenFru¨haufkla¨rers(Flo¨ha:Druck&Design,1991).