On the Natural State of Men

142 Pages·1990·2.832 MB·English

by  Samuel Pufendorf

SAMUEL PU FEN DORFS
ON THE NATURAL STATE OF MEN
The 1678 Latin Edition and English Translation
Translated, Annotated, and Introduced by
Michael 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
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 1
i. Pufendorfs Life and Works 3
II. The Modern Natural Law Tradition 13
III. The ‘Natural State’ in Pufendorf 25
IV. The Function of the ‘Natural State’ in
Early Modern Natural Law Theory 43
Notes to Introductory Essay 54
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 71
COMMENTS ON TEXT AND TRANSLATION 77
"DE STATU HOMINUM NATURALI" (Latin Text of 1678) 83
"ON THE NATURAL STATE OF MEN" (Translation) 109
NOTES TO 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 more 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, Northwestern University, and the New York Public Library for
respectively supplying me with the 1675, 1677, and 1678 editions of
Pufendorfs Dissertaiiones academicae selectiores, the essay collection in which
"De statu hominum naturali" is found. I am likewise indebted and grateful to
the underfunded and no doubt understaffed Library of Congress, particularly
the head of 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
Department at Helm-Cravens Library of Western 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 of scholarly work. Western 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
encouragement, I am particularly grateful to Alan B. Anderson, Head of the
Department of Philosophy and Religion. Finally, I thank the Department of
Political Science at Portland State University (OR) for providing me with
working space and other facilities during the summer of 1987.
Though mostly completed by then, this project has also benefited
from my participation in the NEH Summer Institute on Early Modern
Philosophy at Brown University (1988). The stimulating presentations of the
Institute staff, particularly Edwin Curley, David Fate Norton, Richard
Popkin, and Jerome Schneewind, as welt as conversations with them and
other participants, including Mary Gregor and Mark Waymack, improved my
understanding of early modern moral philosophy and made 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 Garber, the
Institute’s director, for making this valuable opportunity available to me.
My colleague and sometime collaborator, Craig L. Carr (Department
of Political Science, Portland State University, OR), deserves special mention
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 important 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 demanded 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
There are few discussions of Pufendorf in English, particularly ones
that are both general and short.2 Moreover, 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
formidable. In what follows, I offer both a broad overview of Pufendorfs
work and its 17th-century context, as well as a more detailed analysis of the
subject of this newly edited and translated text on the state of nature. My
treatment is divided into four major sections. Following a survey of
Pufendorfs 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 main intellectual predecessors: Grotius, Hobbes, and Weigel. Section
III contains a description of Pufendorfs various treatments of and carefully
distinguished meanings for the ‘state of nature/ as well as a structured
content analysis of the essay translated here for the first time. Finally, in
Section IV, I discuss Pufendorfs 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.
Given my essay’s double function of introducing both Pufendorf and one of
his works, portions thereof are necesarily more 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. PUFENDORFS LIFE AND WORKS
Samuel Pufendorf was bom into a Lutheran pastor’s family in
Dorfchemnitz-bei-Thalheim, in Saxony, on January 8, 1632, a year that also
saw the birth of Spinoza, Locke, and Cumberland. Their century was marked
by tremendous social, political and intellectual upheaval-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 Reformation’s legacy of religious fragmentation contributed to
ongoing political reorganization of major proportions-the disintegration of
the German (Holy Roman) Empire coinciding with the ascendancy of
Sweden, France, and Prussia as modem, secular nation-states, and with the
transformation of the Netherlands 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. Nothing represents this better than the brutal Thirty-Years’ War (1618-
48) that was but half over at the time of Pufendorfs birth. Though his
immediate environment 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. He 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 diplomatic 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 war with
Denmark. Whether 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 of books an already planned work that inaugurated the rest of his
career.
In the Elementa jurisprudentiae universalis, a work much indebted to
Grotius and Hobbes, Pufendorf deduced in quasi-mathematical 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 mature system. He edited and
annotated two works on classical antiquity,8 and-perhaps most importantly
for his future career-he made the acquaintance of the great classical scholar,
Gronovius, and also of Peter de Groot, 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
Recommended 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. To prove his usefulness, he
also wrote 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 Roman law, Pufendorf now demonstrated the
Saxon courage and manly independence so lauded by some of his German
expositors by promptly refusing it. Instead, he requested an appointment 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 commentaries on the Corpus
Juris.10 Under 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-the first such chair in
Germany, 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 German constitutional law. But after being
spurned once more by the juristic establishment, he had his existing position
transformed into a chair in natural law and politics. And so it remained until
his removal to Sweden.
Pufendorfs eight years in Heidelberg were among the happiest of his
life. In 1665, he entered into a successful marriage with the widow of an
academic colleague, a union that produced two loyal daughters. At the
university, both the content and style of his teaching made him popular
among the students, a number of whom were lodged at his house (as he
himself had lodged with Weigel at Jena12). The Elector appointed him privy
councilor and entrusted to him the education of his son. And Pufendorf
supplemented 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 demonstrate his qualifications for the chair on the